Windows Weekly Episode 821 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/Rich Campbell (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Throt is here. Well, actually, he's in Mexico. Richard Campbell's home in British Columbia. We are, go. We have lots to talk about. Loop has finally shipped. We'll talk about Microsoft Loop. Bill Gates says AI is the biggest technology transformation since the Gooey. And finally, seconds come to your Windows clock. It's all coming up next on Windows Weekly podcasts you love
TWiT Intro (00:00:29):
From people you trust. This is,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:00:40):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Throt and Richard Campbell. Episode 821 Recorded Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 Windows everywhere. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by Miro. Miro is your team's visual platform to connect, collaborate, and create together. Tap into a way to map processes, systems, and plans with a whole team. Get your first three boards for free to start creating your best work yet at miro.com/podcast. And by Collide, collide is a device trust solution that ensures that if a device isn't secure, it can't access your apps, it's zero trust for Okta. Visit collide.com/ww and book a demo today. And buy cash. Fly Cash Fly is the only CDN built for throughput, delivering rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods, and 30% faster than other major CDNs. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashfly.com. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Microsoft. Who is these days? The leader in technology. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:01:59):
The big,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:01:59):
It's just like
Paul Thurrott (00:02:03):
The I'm gonna do that. The whole show, I mean,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:02:04):
All over again.
Paul Thurrott (00:02:06):
That's so we were, I was telling Richard before the show, I'm sorry. We, we were walking down the street in Mexico, and this truck drives by, and the truck's like this big, and it's carrying this thing that's like the size of the hindenberg. It's just trash. And I looked at my wife and I said, only in Mexico. Da da. And now I'm, now, I can't stop doing it. I'm
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:02:24):
Sorry. No, you are home, aren't you? Richard? Can I'm back home again. Yeah. Back in studio. Studio. Let, lemme put you back in Coquitlam. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> set up in Wales. You're tr you're, you're, are you home for a while? Or yeah. Long enough that I think we'll probably go up to the coast place. So then you'll, I'll be in Madeira Park and you'll have views of the ocean. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, while we're talking. It's so funny. Everybody in Canada. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> seems to have a lake house or a coast place. I, yeah. I know. It's what's, what are we doing wrong down here, Paul?
Paul Thurrott (00:02:54):
Leo, we don't have enough time to discuss that topic, but I'll just throw it a couple of, couple of loose.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:03:00):
Paul Throt is throt.com. He's in Mexico. What am I talking about? You have your Mexican place. There you go. So jealous.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:08):
Well, I'm selling my American place, if that helps. Right?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:03:12):
It's gone. Or is an escrow yet?
Paul Thurrott (00:03:14):
Will be gone in about a week.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:03:16):
Yeah. Great. Throt.Com. T H U R R O T t.com. Lean pub.com for his books. Richard Campbells at Renez Radio, they are your genial hosts for this episode of what's new in chat. G P T, I'm sorry, <laugh> Bing chat.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:32):
Excuse me. Around these play parts. We call it Bing Chat B Buddy B
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:03:37):
Chat M 365 co-pilot. Ooh, that's right. Actually, you know, we, people were saying you should do an AI show. Yeah. I think increasingly this is it. Yeah. Right here, kids. Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:03:51):
Yeah. Well, okay. But I, I assume on the Google show, they're talking about this a lot. This will come up with Apple. Mm-Hmm.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:03:56):
<Affirmative>.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:58):
You know, it's gonna be you, it's gonna be a big in many different places.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:04:03):
Yeah. It's a technology, right. It's gonna be everywhere. It's odd to have Microsoft leading though, or
Paul Thurrott (00:04:09):
At least it's un unfamiliar. It's unfamiliar.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:04:11):
Well, Google you know, finally released their bard in yesterday and, well,
Paul Thurrott (00:04:16):
They call it barf, you know, it's fine
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:04:18):
Google barf. But really, there's actually something even more exciting in the news. I saw a little tease last week that's something exciting was coming. And it's finally here. We've been talking about this for it seems like a year loop.
Paul Thurrott (00:04:35):
You're it's been more than a year, Leo. Yeah. Wow.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:04:38):
It's been a long time. Can I sign up today?
Paul Thurrott (00:04:41):
So, yes. If you have a Microsoft account, you should be able to just get right in.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:04:45):
Oh, yay. It's preview still. It does look. A I mean, I'm just looking at, it looks a little bit like notion. Uhhuh <affirmative>.
Paul Thurrott (00:04:53):
So you appreciate my tweet of today, which says, Redmond, start your Photocopies
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:04:58):
<Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:04:59):
Because this thing doesn't look a little like notion. It's actually kind of disgusting how
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:05:05):
Much it looks. They, they really made no attempt, in fact, to
Paul Thurrott (00:05:08):
No, no. It's, it's Baldfaced. And I, I, you know, I have to say, I have a little bit of a problem with that, and I don't just mean ethically, although, absolutely. Ethically, and I'm curious actually, Richie, what you think about this. It's not a theory, but a mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, this idea, you know, that Microsoft has several decades of productivity apps and services experience. They have billions of people who use Microsoft Office are familiar with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and or Outlook. Yeah. On note, whatever.
(00:05:38):
And this is a new way of doing things. This is a new way of doing things. Just like teams is a new way of doing things, you know this new style of chat-based collaboration in that case and meet, you know, meetings and all that stuff. So rather than make this product something familiar to Microsoft people, they have made it not just familiar, but identical to Notion, and I should say, because we, we should mention there are dozens and dozens of Notion ripoffs out in the world. Sure. Citi and many others that look and work exactly like Notion as well. But this is Microsoft. Right. And so, what do I mean by that? So one of, one of the odd things moving from me from like, say word to Lou <laugh> notion is I type Wow. And I wanna make they
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:06:24):
Even duplicated the little box on the left. You
Paul Thurrott (00:06:26):
Click, I think I, what the hell? I That's, thank you. That's my point. I, we're gonna get to that. So hold on one second. Okay. Sorry. So one, one of the, no, no, that's, I know that's what I mean. It's not, it's not a little bit like it's a direct
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:06:38):
Copy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:06:39):
It's a photocopy. Yeah. So when, when you're typing text in Word, and you say, well, I want this thing that I'm typing to be heading, there's a, you know, there's a keyboard shortcut for that. Right? Or you can apply, you can use, most people probably use the, the toolbar there or whatever, the ribbon. I use keyboard shortcuts.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:06:55):
What's the keyboard shortcut? Is it slash
Paul Thurrott (00:06:58):
No, it's control Alt one for heading one. Control T two heading
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:07:01):
Two. Oh, okay. That's a
Paul Thurrott (00:07:02):
Little different. No, that doesn't, doesn't work in there. Don't, oh, don't do it there. <Laugh>. That my, my point is it doesn't, so the way it works in notion is you actually have to think ahead of time to do it. You can apply a style after the fact. It's difficult. You have to click that little box you were just talking about, but Right. For the most part, what you want, like, when I'm doing the notes, I keep saying, like, today, I can't stop this. When I'm doing the notes, I will think, okay, this is gonna be heading and I type slash H two. That's how you do it in notion. You do it proactively, and then you type your heading and you move on, and the next thing you type is text. It's fine. You can go back using that little box. It looks like a domino, and you click it and you say, it says, turn into, and then you can, you, you know, so it's multiple headings and there's no keyboard shortcut for this.
(00:07:43):
Right. Which is my problem. I'm I like to keep my hands on the keyboard. So when you move to Microsoft Loop, now, there is no version of what I just said for Microsoft Word and Loop. The way you do it is the way you do it. In Notion, and I mean, exactly the same way. Wow. You type a slash you get a choice of headings and what other options. It, it's, it's a weird way to optimize a tool. I, I, and maybe, you know, Richard, when they made the original version of Teams mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, was it literally designed so that if you were coming from Slack, it would be the quickest possible transition. I mean, it
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:08:16):
Was, do you remember? It was pretty close. They had their, they had their own elements as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But you know, it's, it's interesting that all of these things are just front ends to SharePoint. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So just another ruin, another SharePoint view in a way.
Paul Thurrott (00:08:30):
Right. This is the the man behind the curtain.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:08:33):
<Laugh> is still SharePoint still
Paul Thurrott (00:08:35):
Share. Yeah. Which is, oh, you know, it's, listen, this is, this is the white whale of Microsoft. You know, let's make a friendly front end to SharePoint that actually works for
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:08:43):
Everybody. Yeah. They would really like that. I mean, I don't know how much time they've actually spent copying notions so much as they, this is a very common visual metaphor these days. Okay. Right. That set. They, these set of symbols are, are pretty standard and so forth. The, if the Alt keys surprised me, the, you know, how close it is is remarkable. Right. It's just a question of, you know what I mean? I know. I think Nosha is a great product. Is it that big that they even know it's name? I know.
Paul Thurrott (00:09:15):
Well, I'm looking at this and I'm saying they know more than it's,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:09:18):
They know
Paul Thurrott (00:09:18):
It's name guarantee. I think they know how it was designed, how it was written, how,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:09:21):
Yeah. You know, the point being, the teams only came into being, when Microsoft failed to buy Slack. Like they knew they needed a conversational engine. They, they needed that capability, and so they tried to buy it first. And when they weren't able to buy it, then they had to make it. Right. Yep.
Paul Thurrott (00:09:35):
And the big success of Teams, by the way, is that they've vastly exceeded the capabilities of Slack and turned it into their most successful platform in forever. I can't even remember. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I don't even, I'm not even sure what to point to especially in the productivity space you know, since the original bundling of products into something called Office, maybe it's been a long
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:09:54):
Time. Yeah. Well, to try and displace Outlook as the sovereign app, like the sort of first place you go at the beginning of your workday, not a trivial problem. Like that's a
Paul Thurrott (00:10:03):
Hard something to not, that happens overnight. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But this is the, but this is, this parallel is, is perfect. Because when you look at teams to Outlook and this notion that these things are gonna coexist for a while, eventually the old people are gonna die off <laugh>, you know, and teams moves forward. Right? this is to, I would say office, the rest of office as Teams is to Outlook, right? It's this modern content creation tool with realtime collaboration. And, you know, it's not, we're not gonna round Robin Word Docs throughout Outlook anymore. We're gonna, we're gonna do the stuff in here. And there's also that connection to the past already. The, you, you can also bring these components into other Microsoft's Sure. Microsoft 365 apps.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:10:47):
Let's, this is the conversation to have with Steven Rose on Run Ads a year ago. When, when, when they're first talking about Loop with this, let's go meet the workers where they are. Yes. And the, the scenario he painted was, I have a salesperson who's used to having a spreadsheet emailed to them each day. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with the current product pricing and so forth. And now that spreadsheet is autopopulated from SharePoint data. So you don't have to re-mail it to him. He can open the same one each time. It's always, it's a live document. It just immediately pro populates. Now, we could go look at that in SharePoint through or through teams. Like, there was lots of ways to look at that same set of data. But if it, if it makes him happy that it's an a Excel spreadsheet sitting in, in Outlook, fine, we'll meet you where you are.
Paul Thurrott (00:11:35):
This is also how, sorry, Leo how you kind of mix and match the old and the new mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I, one of the disconnects with Teams and Outlook is that people who are stuck in their ways with Outlook are stuck in their ways with Outlook. But this is an interesting way to bridge the past and the, you know, in the new right. That you can say, look what you, you're still gonna use a Word doc, but now there's gonna be a, a loop component in it. You know, that's always updated.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:11:59):
They clearly took their own advice. This is the template Gallery, bad idea, brainstorm. And number one in the bad idea is create an app identical to competitors. We, we can learn from the competition's strength. Oh my God. Use their weaknesses and build our own strategy.
Paul Thurrott (00:12:16):
You, you picture a bunch of bros high fiving themselves at their intelligence over that little bit of humor.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:12:21):
Uhhuh, we did it. <Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:12:24):
Are you going to the yacht afterwards?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:12:26):
<Laugh>, I mean,
Paul Thurrott (00:12:27):
Like, seriously guys, what it, it's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:12:28):
Sad. So how soon are we moving to this
Paul Thurrott (00:12:31):
As soon as possible, Leo? That's the thing. So
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:12:34):
We're losing, we should tell people you're, wait, now you're ready to run some SharePoint in your life right now that we're using something me tell you what could look similar, which is notion to do the to do the show rundown. And there's really no reason we shouldn't use Loop for this. Right?
Paul Thurrott (00:12:50):
Right. Well then there are good reasons to use Loop, right? So we're already paying for Microsoft 365, so we're gonna have no limits on sharing. And
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:12:57):
That types of content you have to pay for Notion to get some of those features.
Paul Thurrott (00:13:01):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, look, I'm, I am absolutely not against paying for tools that I use. I, I please do not take it that way. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> but I'm already paying for this big hairball called Microsoft 365 that offers a lot of value. This is gonna be another big part of the value for me, you know, whereas for me, personally, teams is not something I like or use on purpose or need. You know, it's something I have to use for work or whatever, but I don't like it. This type of product is something I do use. I use it in my personal life. My wife and I have notion, notebooks, whatever they're calling, I don't know what they're called mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But we have, we, we share things together this way as well. Everything we're doing around our apartment here in Mexico, the, the home sale is all through Notion. And but we also pay for Microsoft 365. Right. And this is, is kind of an unfettered Microsoft ecosystem centric version of Notion. So, no, I notice. Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:13:51):
I mean, I tried to sign up for the iOS version and you have to have a business account Microsoft 365, and your administrator has to enable it. So we should, that's not the case on the, that's not the case on the web. That's right.
Paul Thurrott (00:14:03):
Yeah. So let's talk, actually talk about that availability a little bit. So the, there are three versions of the app that are available today web, and then the two mobile apps. The web version is open to everybody. So if you have a Microsoft account, you can get in. If you have a com, what we'll call it's, it's called a Microsoft Worker School account, a commercial account. Your administrator has to go through some fairly complicated steps, by the way to allow that in the organization to some level, and then to allow certain people in, et cetera, et cetera. So, yes. So I believe, I don't know on the end Android side, if that's the same, I haven't even even tried it yet, cuz I was looking at it the other day and I couldn't get into anything cuz it was too early. But yeah, it's very complicated on the commercial side. It's not, it's, there's gonna be a Windows native app, which almost certainly like Teams will basically be a web app, right. Will be this app, but Right. Running locally. So if you want to test this now, the easiest way is to, to use the web person
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:14:59):
And the web person. Yeah. I wonder if it won't just be a part of Teams, right? That Oh, interesting. Make it part of Teams.
Paul Thurrott (00:15:06):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:15:07):
Well, we're about to get a Teams 2.0, like by all indications, they're moving away from being in an Electron app. Right. And wouldn't be that much of a stretch to say, Hey, we're the Loop stuff's here as well. Like, I really don't, my impression of Loop was never that it was an app at all, that it was just another interface over top of SharePoint that hook into a bunch of different places.
Paul Thurrott (00:15:28):
This is the interesting thing to me about Loop. You used this the example of Steven Rose with the guy with the spreadsheet, and Yeah. I talked to Brad about this. He has the exact same need where you're, you're talking about Loop in, in the context of components that will appear inside of other apps or inside teams, whatever it might be. There are two types. I, so far it seems like two, there are two things you could be excited about that or the thing I'm excited about <laugh>, which is a notion that is in the Microsoft ecosystem. I'm, I'm actually in a weird place where I'm interested in this app. One thing, I haven't tried this yet, it would be interesting to me if I could write in this thing, by which I mean write news articles or book chapters, whatever it is the trick. I mean, I could, the, the trick is gonna be the output. The trick is gonna be getting the data out in perfectly formatted whatever.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:16:19):
Yeah. Which is not what this is built for. Right? I,
Paul Thurrott (00:16:22):
No, and that's the thing. So we'll see.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:16:26):
Well, the real question here now is you say you look at Word OneNote and Loop and say, okay, well how are these things different?
Paul Thurrott (00:16:36):
Yeah. it's not the first time in Microsoft's history. There's been a lot of overlap. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:16:41):
I feel like Loop is a unique kind of platform. I mean, it's not, you wouldn't want to, unlike Word, you wouldn't want to create a, a, you know, word documents in it novel or a short story.
Paul Thurrott (00:16:53):
I don't know, really. I, I guarantee I, I really, I I don't. So one of look, I <laugh>, we all have, in my task bar right now, I have four chat apps, right? I have teams, Skype, WhatsApp, and Discord. I also have, by the way, five writing apps. Actually technically six, but I'm gonna leave that last one for later. You know, word typo. A markdown pad, notepad and notion. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, for me as a, from just a, like a, an efficiency standpoint where I have to remember how to do things, you know, feet wear things. It would be really neat if I could replace a few of those things Right. And put 'em all in one app. Right. And is well,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:17:33):
And apparently the one app is SharePoint. I mean, the only sin that One note really had,
Paul Thurrott (00:17:37):
I need you to stop saying that word, because you're really putting a bitter taste inside of this chocolate.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:17:44):
You know, Jeff, Jeff Teer standing right behind you, Paul, right now. Yeah. No, but like, actually the beauty of this is you're using SharePoint without knowing it, isn't it? Exactly.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:53):
That's the best way to use SharePoint.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:17:55):
Except, except for your poor IT guy. Although admittedly, SharePoint online is a lot less painful than an on-prem SharePoint. And, and isn't the IT guy happy if you're all using SharePoint backends? Isn't that good? Isn't it Guy ever all happy? No. Right. The, the upside to the SharePoint thing, if you're there as opposed to OneNote, I mean, OneNote I can collaborate with, right? I can share a a notebook with you. It's got limits. But the real problem is it's a file somewhere typically on OneDrive. The up, the, the reason to have SharePoint on the backend is that you already have the infrastructure for backup and for multiple access and for security privileges. And that's right. For you know, rights around access to information tagging so forth. Sharepoint already understands all of that. Why would they try and reduplicate all that in, in one note in other places when the SharePoint,
Paul Thurrott (00:18:46):
I think what you just described is the real reason this thing has taken so long to come to market mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because the, the, the really for all of the notion Rip Offing occurring here, the real difference between these two products is everything you've just said. Yeah. That this infrastructure exists,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:19:02):
It already exists. Depend on these mature,
Paul Thurrott (00:19:05):
Yep. Yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yep. This is what they've really kind of, the thing we see is the tiny front end part. Yeah. You know, the big part is the, you know, the,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:19:14):
All those backend pieces. Yeah. And that's why, you know, I felt like one note's been an orphan for a while. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, they played with some different versions and so forth, but the biggest thing here was the isolated backend piece. That it was just a file somewhere on one drive largely hidden from you.
Paul Thurrott (00:19:30):
I think, well, this is, this happened to OneNote to some degree, because remember in the beginning, the idea behind OneNote was don't worry about it. There are no files. Yeah. There are always files.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:19:39):
There's always files. It's a lot. There always files. Right. And, and the But what was compelling OneNote was the first tool that Microsoft made where it worked on your phone and it worked on your laptop, and it worked on your tablet, and it worked on your PC and the
Paul Thurrott (00:19:52):
Sink. And it literally was the first one actually.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:19:54):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:19:55):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:19:55):
And, and, and you know, way, you know, way back in those early days, we were collaborating over it where two of us would be in a meeting and we could each contribute to the same document. It's just that it never had, they never improved the backend. Like one note should have a snapped over top of
Paul Thurrott (00:20:11):
Show. They made some really dramatic bad decisions with one note that I think have haunted it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> a long, long time too.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:20:19):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Well, it also was it bought in heavily to the pen based tablet thing? Yes. And which, you know, both guys use it, think it's great. You know, they really do. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:20:31):
They get together earlier in St. Louis,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:20:33):
Back in I don't know, 2005 when Microsoft was really pushing the tablet. I mm-hmm. <Affirmative> I was stuck on a flight with a sales guy who who folded it over, got his pen out, said, oh, this is so great. Watch this. I'm gonna do a sales presentation. I can annotate it. You can see it. It's gonna be amazing. That was the one guy, by the way, he probably said that was the guy that was the guy, and he found him
Paul Thurrott (00:20:55):
Probably still doing it. So everyone has, I assume, has read the Steve Jobs biography. It's one of the best sections of the book. The I, the iPad and the iPhone exists solely because some guy from Microsoft ended up at Steve Jobs's birthday party wouldn't shut up about the tablet. Pc, I'll show you. Steve Jobs went to work on money and said, listen, we're gonna kill this thing immediately. Do what you can. <Laugh> and Yeah. That's why, that's why that all stuff all happened. He couldn't stand it. Yeah. anyway. Oh, so, yes. Anyway, I I what Richard said earlier, at some point in the show, you mind, you said something to the tune of, we're gonna meet people where they are, you know, basically. Yeah. And to me, this is, I I don't believe that Sacha Nadella is, you know, it's all, you know, unicorns and rainbows. And I don't mean it like that, but if, if his time at the top at Microsoft, I think has a theme. It is
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:21:39):
That me people where they are Yeah. And any too, the idea that you're not going to tra try to make that old, incredibly productive salesperson who's done this thing for years and is gonna keep doing his thing. You're not gonna ask him to change that. He's gonna keep doing the thing he's always done, but is going to be tied into the system is not going to be isolated.
Paul Thurrott (00:22:02):
Right. Listen, no, it's, it's, it's, it's perfect because it's not enough to make this thing over in the site. It's better in some way than this other thing. Right. It, they've done the integration bit where Yeah. If you're going to stick with whatever your old fashioned tools are, great. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, when are you retiring, by the way? Bob <inaudible> and <laugh>, you know, will the rest of the world can still move forward. And
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:22:21):
One, one day nobody will be using that spreadsheet. Yeah. But in the meantime, it actually is isn't an impediment to everybody else.
Paul Thurrott (00:22:28):
We should also point out, by the way, that what we're describing, and this came up, I think when Mary Jo was surround, you know, a year and a half ago mm-hmm. <Affirmative> this notion this notion <laugh>, this notion of loop as being the modern 21st cloud-based, 21st century cloud-based version of Olay. Right. <laugh> that of these like compound documents
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:22:48):
Linking and embedding.
Paul Thurrott (00:22:50):
Yeah. Right? I mean, it's sort of the internet based version of that,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:22:54):
Right. In many ways. Right. And that is SharePoint as the document management tool, right? Yeah. So the, the bottom line is that all of those different things that you might link and embed into other things, right? All can live in this repository that has all the sophistication you
Paul Thurrott (00:23:09):
Need. There's no doubt that the Microsoft of the 1990s envisioned some Cairo based object oriented file system that would handle all the stuff you just described. I'm
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:23:17):
Pretty sure that's the road ahead, right? Yeah. Like, that's the book that, that Gates wrote, right. Just actually being implemented in a, I hate to say it, like a pretty compelling way. Yeah. For better or worse. This is, I I don't, it took a while. I don't see anything bad about it. It's easy to make fun of SharePoint, but SharePoint is very sticky.
Paul Thurrott (00:23:39):
So easy. So easy.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:23:41):
And, and the online version of SharePoint, like as an IT person is so much wildly better.
Paul Thurrott (00:23:48):
That was in
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:23:49):
The customizations have been teamed there.
Paul Thurrott (00:23:52):
I was speaking in Harlem, speaking of Harlem, we've talked about Harlem, Harlem, Harlem, the Netherlands. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I was ripping into SharePoint, really? Har bad, badly. And the guy leaned into me, the guy next to me, and he said, you know, I, I think there were a lot, actually, a lot of people here who do SharePoint in the audience, <laugh>. And I said, I said, how many of you guys are actually in SharePoint? And it was like 90% of the world,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:24:13):
Those all using it. At
Paul Thurrott (00:24:14):
That time, it was like a Rodney Danville, like, Ooh, you know,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:24:17):
<Laugh>. So SharePoint, I got, forgive me at my stupidity. Sharepoint does have a user facing interface. What does it look like? Yeah. Well, it's, looks,
Paul Thurrott (00:24:26):
It's most OneDrive related for most people.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:24:28):
Yeah. No,
Paul Thurrott (00:24:29):
No, it's, it's, it's OneDrive. They have a feed, you know.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:24:32):
Okay, so it's file, it's a file storage system. No, it's more about sharing, I would think things, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> doctors
Paul Thurrott (00:24:40):
File, it's file storage permissions. Yeah. It's, you know, years
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:24:44):
Ago gathering stuff as projects. It's, you know what I'm saying? So it's a back end. Yeah. But you could, but there's a front end that you could use mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But that would probably mostly be, well,
Paul Thurrott (00:24:55):
For most people, the front end.
(00:24:57):
Well, so the front end could be anything. So a lot of people, if you're in an organization and you're working on a project with people, you might be using Word, Excel part, whatever. Yeah. The, the, the documents you're creating are store in SharePoint, you don't really thinking about it that way, but you have a, they've set up a project with permissions and who's in there and who can do things. If you go to the web version of SharePoint, there are social media feeds both directly in SharePoint and through Yammer. Although I haven't looked at millionaires, so that's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:25:22):
Probably, but, and now you're, you're speaking to the schism that was SharePoint, like, right? Is it a web portal or is it a document and project management tool?
Paul Thurrott (00:25:30):
Actually, I, yeah, I didn't even mention that part of it. So it did also start as as sort of an advanced version of front page. Hmm. Right. This way in an internet to share information Oh, wow. With people in the company.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:25:40):
But there were folks that made publicly facing SharePoint sites. Yes. I'm not saying it was a good idea, but they really did do it. <Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:25:49):
And if you have any problems with that, I recommend you contact Todd Clint, I'll give you his email address. <Laugh> he's really into this stuff.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:25:59):
But when SharePoint moved to the cloud to become SharePoint online, yeah. They left a lot of that behind they things up. They, gottle Wood, a lot of the customizations that had been made, you know, didn't move forward. They, they went very much more JavaScript focused, like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they got rid of a lot of the pain people over customized
Paul Thurrott (00:26:18):
Sharepoint
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:26:18):
And the point where it was a trap.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:20):
Now there's always the old school people who, you know, when that was happening, wouldn't move to online. Yeah. Because they relied on features that were only in on-prem. Yep. I think the feature app
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:26:29):
Kind of feature just built, right? Yeah. Like that was the thing. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:32):
But you know, that, that day, and no, that day passed and then I, I think at some point they became functionally equivalent and they were able to move forward with a cleaner
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:26:40):
Chrome base. Yeah. You, you can, you could create a solution, I mean, and can go back through the run as catalog, and you'll see all of these stories about what does it take to migrate to Cloud and what's the right way to do that, and leaving some of that stuff behind. And, you know, getting 80, 90, we, I did a show once, I think it was Carol Moon who was moving Microsoft SharePoint sites Yeah. The cloud, right. And talking about like, 90% of the stuff just went the 10 that didn't really wasn't gonna <laugh> <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:27:07):
Yeah. No, SharePoint was a much harder transition than something like, say, exchange, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which was pretty straightforward, I would imagine for most people,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:27:15):
Comparatively, depending on how you used Exchange, there were folks that used Exchange as their file store. Right? Right. Like, they kept everything there. And, you know, that was a running gag about, you know, folks that had multi gigabyte mul, you know, nearly terabyte mailboxes because it was actually file storage for
Paul Thurrott (00:27:31):
Well, based on Jet. Yes. So I <laugh> the, I I, Leo asks kind of what this thing is. I, I think that that what this thing is the way it is, the backend for so many front ends. So way, you know, again, working the way you wanna work, if you're working and worried, you don't really think about what's, you don't really care where you know where things are, but you're, you know, you can get to 'em. Some people think in terms of file systems could use literally OneDrive or go to SharePoint and have a OneDrive like experience where you go into folders and you can see, you know, locations and things. You can do that. And I think that's, that those abilities are what makes Loop make sense mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as a front end. Cuz we really don't, right now, we don't have any idea where this thing is stored or what, you know, but
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:28:10):
It, but you're addressing the core problem, which is that a, an employee makes a Word document. Yeah. Where did they put it?
Paul Thurrott (00:28:16):
Right.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:28:17):
Right. And how do you make sure other people can get to it? And this is really was the original, one of the key missions of SharePoint from the very beginning was that management piece of put these things into place where other people can get them know they exist and so forth. I mean, it's the cla it's a credible problem.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:31):
It's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:28:32):
The fact that we put all these front ends on, it just increases the likelihood that you're gonna find that darn document.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:39):
We mentioned outlook is kind of an old fashioned type tool, and people are sh round robining on documents. You get so many different versions, Bob mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, Mary, everyone you know, edits a different version of it. And at some point you have to kind of figure out what, yeah, okay. What's the thing? I mean, there are ways to outlook to do that where it's a SharePoint based document and you're all actually editing the same document. Right? So we're, we're moving forward, you know from a functionality and reliability kind of a standpoint. Right.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:29:06):
And, and you could set that up under the hood when you, once you got into Share, when you got into Exchange online, you'd literally, you could attach a document to, to a an email. Right. It would recognize it as a SharePoint document and replace it as a link. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:29:18):
Yeah. Exactly. So then
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:29:19):
We, we did the circumvent that problem.
Paul Thurrott (00:29:21):
The thi So the, the, so why does this exist? Say if we can do that with Word, like why, or OneNote or whatever it might be, why does this exist? And the reason is when Google came out with Google Docs and started adding real-time collaboration, th it was the one thing that was really hard to do with traditional Microsoft Office apps at that time. And Google Docs new, they obviously lacked functionality. Those things weren't as powerful as the Microsoft tools, but they did have that one thing because they were, they were new. And Microsoft has added those capabilities to classic office over the years. It's, you know, the reason we don't still use OneNote is because realtime collaboration never worked properly. In one note, it's the reason we got off of it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> about a year and a half ago, whenever that was, a year ago.
(00:30:05):
And this is Microsoft's attempt to address that. You know, that in some, sometimes to do that modern thing, it, you can't just build on the old thing anymore. At some point we've reached the conclusion of what we can do on top of this other thing. We wanna start out with something that's clean and new and modern has those capabilities that we need today. Built right in from the beginning. And we talked about the the cross not cross platform, the ability to go back and forth between new and old, which is, I think what puts us over the top Right. It's not just something new. A notion is something new. Yeah. But this is something new that integrates with something old that billions of people are using.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:30:43):
You know, it occurs to me, we know Loop has got it nailed because it's almost impossible to explain <laugh>. That's the measure.
Paul Thurrott (00:30:49):
It's the perfect Microsoft product. Yes. It's a, it's not a floor wax, it's a floor wax and a dessert top. It's a Yeah, it is. It's a platform. You know, and that's the thing, cuz I, I want to use it like this app mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but a lot of organizations and people are gonna use it like that platform Right. Where you're working with those components in other places,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:10):
Teams. Well, and this is something that an IT person isn't going to dread because it doesn't add new stuff for me to back up. Okay. And new accounts to create and new permissions to a sign.
Paul Thurrott (00:31:21):
Correct. Yes. Okay.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:22):
Yes. All of those things are done. It's on the existing now. I have gone through the list of what it takes to activate it in M 365 mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and that sucks.
Paul Thurrott (00:31:31):
Yeah. That, that
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:32):
Drag. But it's, it sucks for a day. Right? Right. Where a new platform sucks
Paul Thurrott (00:31:37):
Forever. It's like a root canal.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:41):
Come
Paul Thurrott (00:31:41):
On. You'll be happy when it's over
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:43):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm excited. I I look forward to using this. I think it's gonna be
Paul Thurrott (00:31:49):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:50):
I just love that you are the, the SharePoint admin that makes me really happy. Oh,
Paul Thurrott (00:31:55):
No, you
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:55):
Are SharePoint admin. You're
Paul Thurrott (00:31:57):
Sharepoint
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:31:57):
Admin. You don't want me to be the SharePoint admin, trust me. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:02):
Well share
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:32:04):
Your personal account, but I just,
Paul Thurrott (00:32:05):
Microsoft is the SharePoint admin that, that's the thing.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:32:07):
Oh, that's good actually.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:09):
Yeah. If you're a person, I mean for, you know a consumer of Microsoft 365
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:32:13):
Account. Right. Yeah. Cool.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:17):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:32:18):
Yeah. All right. Well, that's exciting. We can all sign up and start playing with it.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:22):
Guys. I'll text you up with you guys next week and
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:32:25):
What, what do you what, what's your time? I mean, invite me, I guess. I, I don't know
Paul Thurrott (00:32:31):
How you would, well, okay. I need to, so I'm try, you know, flying tomorrow, I need to, what I need you to do is get home, look at this thing, you know, figure that out. Yeah. So, I, it may not be next week, but I, I, what I, what I will say is this year, probably first half of this year, we'll, we'll at least experiment with it right. First, and we'll make
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:32:46):
Sure. Yeah. Probably keep the old one and start the new one. Of course. At the same
Paul Thurrott (00:32:50):
Time. Course. Make sure, make sure it is what we think it is. Make sure it works the way we want it to work.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:32:54):
Yeah. Yeah. But will you migrate the old shows
Paul Thurrott (00:32:56):
Over this? See, no. No, I don't see, this is the act. Well, here's, well, Richard raised issue with me. Of
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:33:02):
Course I did
Paul Thurrott (00:33:03):
Offline. Well, no, it's not just the shows. I, I, like I said earlier, I use Notion for lots of things. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So we have active collaborative things that we're doing right now, like I said, around the house, the apartment here, whatever it is, other things going on in our lives. And we can't, you know, I can't put that in a, it's probably gonna work, honey. You know, <laugh>, we gotta, we gotta make sure. So, so we'll get there. I mean, we'll see,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:33:26):
For me, it's gonna be, will this move me off of OneNote because I have decades worth of stuff in
Paul Thurrott (00:33:31):
Onenote. I do too. They
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:33:32):
Should have a, some sort of exploit, ex
Paul Thurrott (00:33:36):
Exploit,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:33:37):
Exploit, export.
Paul Thurrott (00:33:39):
It's exploit. It's when you export and exploit, it's an exploit.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:33:44):
Exploit. yeah. They should have some way to do that, I'm sure. Yes. Is one note I also on SharePoint?
Paul Thurrott (00:33:53):
Yes.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:33:54):
Okay. So this would be trivial. It's not a hard computer science. No.
Paul Thurrott (00:33:59):
I mean we'll see, we'll see. I I, I'm guessing that's not there today. Yeah. I think, like we said, I, I think the, the reason for the delay is making sure it does integrate with all those backend systems correctly, that you as an organization create this thing at does the permissions. Right. you know, we've seen all kinds of examples of that going wrong. Chat G GT G P T just this week had a little screw up where people were seeing other people's histories and their creations and, you know, so you gotta be careful with that stuff. Especially in enterprises, right? This is commercial for Microsoft isn't just big business, right? It's governments, educational institutions, you know, this thing has to, it has to work. So, yeah. We'll see.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:34:40):
Okay. I did find the SharePoint migration tool for OneNote folders in that much. It took him no time at all.
Paul Thurrott (00:34:48):
21,000 words of it. Policy. Goodness.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:34:52):
Ask chat g Ask chat g p t to do it. Yes. Could figure that out.
Paul Thurrott (00:34:58):
That's right.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:34:59):
That's right. This is actually kind of a timely sponsor for all this our show today brought to you by Miro and Miro, it's interesting. Miro is a whiteboard that can be anything you want it to be. And I have to say, if you're a team, if you're working on a product, I'm just logging into our murro right now. If you are if you are doing anything from meetings to planning to projects, Miro is one online place that everybody on the team, no matter, you know whether they're you know, in office or at home or hybrid can participate in, can work with, it's really incredible. A can ban, a mind map, a retrospective, a flow chart. Actually the best thing to do, cuz it's hard to describe cause it's so, so open to be anything you want.
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Paul Thurrott (00:39:48):
I've heard of that. I think I moved it all the loop while you were talking, man.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:39:51):
<Laugh> tell us all what is new in 11? Anything.
Paul Thurrott (00:40:00):
Yesterday Microsoft released a new build of Windows 11 to the inside of preview release preview channel. Right? So you know that now they have four channels, right? Canary dev beta and release preview. Release preview. I should probably just read the description is where you can go to preview fixes and certain key features plus get optional access to the next version of Windows before it's generally available to the world. That description is kind of inaccurate now because release preview is not testing features that will appear in the next version of Windows. The next version of Windows is coming out in October-ish, right? 23 H two. But they have these moment things that are happening in the interim. They, they're also just adding features, right? So these new features are probably gonna appear in April or May or June, something like that. And they're not gonna come as part of a thing that has a name. It's gonna be a cumulative update of some kind. It's just a a
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:40:54):
You don't even think they'll make another moment.
Paul Thurrott (00:40:56):
I'm not saying they won't, I'm saying that these features aren't gonna wait for that moment, right? That's, yeah. So it, it
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:41:01):
Gets, and I'm not opposed to this idea of, you know, just trying stuff in the, in the wild too as long as you signed up. Like, don't try it on folks who have no idea.
Paul Thurrott (00:41:09):
Yeah. So let's talk about the the gradient scale on that one. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative> people are familiar of, are familiar with rather that last November or December, depending on when you chose to accept the update, Microsoft released what we call the search pill, right? They just, it wasn't tested in the insider preview program at all. Just appeared one day. And if you rely on the search icon in this task bar, you will know that it lost a feature. It has a regression, you can't muss over it and get a jump list of all your previous searches like you could or, and still can with the search icon. So in late February, and then in the second week of March, Microsoft released moment two, which has a new search experience. You can choose between the icon, the pill as we call it, the box, the search box. And we could argue that that's what maybe what they should have done from the beginning, but that at least they tested the insider preview burn.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:42:04):
Right?
Paul Thurrott (00:42:05):
All right, so here's the second level of gradient <laugh>. So the second is what you're supposed to do if you're, you have any kind of knowledge of how these things work is push features through the insider program in turn, start with Canary, go to dev, go to beta mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then go to release preview, and then go to stable.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:42:22):
Seems very logical.
Paul Thurrott (00:42:24):
Thank you <laugh>. So this new release preview build has four new features in it that have never been tested elsewhere in the insider program. That's why I believe they're gonna appear soon. Right? They're in release preview. They're not big features for the most part. One of them is something I would call a bug fix <laugh>. Right? none of them are super, super important. So for example, no one ever does this, but if you're opening a start menu now and you click on your profile picture, you will see a list of options related to locking the computer, signing out, changing to another profile on the computer. If you have more than one profile and accessing your account settings, Microsoft is gonna use that as a space to advertise the fact that you can back up your special folders with OneDrive. Now they're gonna start using it as a place for suggestions. So that's something they're testing. Hmm. yeah, I know it's like a whatever. There's going to be a new Bing chat button in the search box on the task bar. Apparently that was something they forgot to add a notion to. So there's gonna be another
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:43:24):
And they don't have enough Bing logos yet.
Paul Thurrott (00:43:26):
Exactly. So they're adding another one. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. If you click on that, instead of just doing a normal search, it will open Microsoft Edge regardless of your browser choice and we'll bring you to the Bing chat experience so you can
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:43:37):
Right. Enjoy that. The thing you can accidentally hover over on edge Yeah. With the big B and have it Yes. Right on every single browser Wi window you currently have open
Paul Thurrott (00:43:48):
Windows 11 has a rich history of accidental ui. The widgets was like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, you could mouse over it by, and then all of a sudden this thing would pop up and you're like, I didn't mean to do that. They finally fixed, you know, fixed her, you know, added the feature to get rid of mouseover. But the one that is a, what I call a bug fix is if you do use the search box and you have customized the Windows 11 and color mode, there's a lot of weird language in here because Microsoft doesn't use the same language as the rest of the world when it comes to like dark and light mode, that kinda stuff. But you could have a dark Windows mode where the system is dark, but a light app mode so that the floating windows and the apps are light.
(00:44:24):
Right? Right. If you do that today, apparently the search box is hard to see or hard to read against. It's like they didn't test it or something. So when the, whenever this thing hits stable, they fix that, that will actually, the search box will now be a lighter color, will make more sense for this combination of color modes, whatever that is. And then there's something called Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, which is only for worker school accounts. Yeah. And if your organization is using one, apparently there are an incredibly long list of new features in that product. I haven't looked at it for more than two seconds. I don't really care too much, but if you do sign in with that kind of account, you will see improvements or at least additions <laugh> to Microsoft Defender friend point.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:45:05):
I think once again, it's like, why are we putting new security features depending on what account you have. Exactly.
Paul Thurrott (00:45:10):
Done. Please don't get me started. <Laugh>, <laugh>, I'm already ranting enough to yes. I, yeah, I, I I got into an argument with a guy who was on the one care team from Microsoft back in the day where I made the, my original observation that Microsoft charging to fix problems that it creates in Windows doesn't seem ethical to me.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:45:27):
Yeah. To bit of a slippery slope.
Paul Thurrott (00:45:29):
Yeah. So they're doing that again in a way and yeah, I'm not, I'm not a fan, but anyway, so there's that. So that's whatever, but at least they're testing them, I guess, you know I,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:45:42):
If they're, it does feel like they've been experimenting with how to test things and the experiments
Paul Thurrott (00:45:46):
Over whether to test things. Yeah. Yes. So I'll, I'm gonna give them this little, I'm gonna give them this out, I guess. Yeah. I will say, I
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:45:53):
Mean, to be clear, everything gets tested. It's just a question of do you test on your customers,
Paul Thurrott (00:45:58):
Which I don't think you should do unless you,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:46:00):
Unless you ask their permission first.
Paul Thurrott (00:46:02):
Yep. So they're at least testing us. These are small features. If they're the type of thing they think they can ship quickly, is it better to put it through the release preview then, you know, do nothing at all. Of course. Right? Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's, is it enough? I don't know. It's better than nothing. So I I at least they're doing it. The start button thing or the search button. They did big problem with that. And they, it was bu
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:46:26):
Not just that it messed up all your screenshots.
Paul Thurrott (00:46:29):
Yeah, well,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:46:30):
<Laugh>,
Paul Thurrott (00:46:30):
There was a personal element <laugh> to it for sure.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:46:34):
Well, I think it's part of the reason you noticed right away was
Paul Thurrott (00:46:37):
Like, wait. Yeah. It's like, come on,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:46:38):
But what? Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:46:39):
Well actually, so you weren't, you, you weren't on the show at this time. What I, what I noticed was that it, that button appeared on one computer. I said, well, that's interesting. So I went to a different computer and I installed updates and I looked for, it didn't happen. I went to a different one. I installed updates. I compared the build numbers. They were the same. I like, this is very strange. And it was the inconsistency Yeah. Of its application. That was another problem actually. I, I was gonna call
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:47:03):
The, which, which I, that feels like a feature flag testing model, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> where it's like, maybe we'll turn it, we're gonna turn this on for 10%.
Paul Thurrott (00:47:10):
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't appreciate that. So that was one I, I decided for the book. I'm not changing any screenshots to address this. I, right. I don't feel that this is the final UI and I was lucky enough to be right on
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:47:21):
That. There is no final UI there. The next ui
Paul Thurrott (00:47:25):
This is I, I, you know, I didn't intend for this show to be like this. <Laugh>, neither did I have another for what it's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:47:32):
Worth. But you know, those regrets are 20 years in the past now. <Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:47:37):
Geez. All right. Well Leo, someday
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:47:40):
We'll be sitting on the porch
Paul Thurrott (00:47:42):
Reminiscing.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:47:43):
Think we're doing right now, isn't it? All we need is a pickle barrel and I have a checkerboard and we're set
Paul Thurrott (00:47:50):
While we're complaining about Windows 11 <laugh>. Yeah. I just wanted, wanted to remind everyone, in case you forgot about this little bit, bit of terribleness, if you're in Windows 10 and you go into the apps interface and settings, there's this notion of default apps, right? It's kind of a neat thing. You can say, I want this app to be my default viewer for photos, right? Right. I want this app to be my default for email. And you could customize it beyond that. You could go in and specify specific file types that it's gonna open, or protocols that it will handle, et cetera, et cetera. It's a nice interface. It's good. So flash forward to Windows 11 and one of the many regressions in Windows 11 is that interface did not exist when it first shipped. There is a default apps interface. It is hilarious.
(00:48:31):
And what you have to go is you, what you have to do is open an app list. All, all of, you can see all of the file types and protocols that can handle and one by one laboriously. Go through each one and say, I want this app to open it. Now no one's gonna do that. So what you really do is you just open something on your desktop or whatever, right? Click open with, and then say, yeah, I want to do this all the time with these habits. It's, it's tedious. They've just made something that was, that worked really well. Difficult. Right? The one thing that's changed since the initial release was they did add a default, make this default for web browsers only. And off the top of my head, I wanna say it changes, http, https, s htm, html, maybe one other thing.
(00:49:12):
It's kind of what people want, but of course, Microsoft, I'm sorry, windows 11 also ignores your choice when it comes to opening things from widgets, from search highlights you know, et cetera, et cetera. Task mart based search as well. So, okay. I challenge anyone in the room, anyone listening to this at home, go and find the original Microsoft blog post explaining how they now have a principled approach to app pinning and app defaults and windows. I have read articles where people explain Microsoft is gonna dramatically improve how default apps work in Windows going forward. I ref that is not true. <Laugh>, that is not what this says. They're doing next to nothing. This is not gonna fix the big problems with this stuff. I e there is no default apps interface for anything but browsers and they ignore it anyway. Right? Right. And I'm just, I don't wanna beat this one to death because the language is so obtuse. I, I don't, I think most people who read this won't even understand what it means for one thing. And I, I just, I just wanna point it out. I almost don't wanna spend time with this because it's ludicrous. A and we don't have it in the, well, actually, we sort of do. So the next thing that's in this list is we got a dev channel build just today.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:50:29):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:29):
So I haven't had the chance to test it, it just came out. But this is the first build to implement the changes they're describing in that other blog post. The
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:50:39):
Principled approach.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:40):
The principle just for default apps, not for the app pinning thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I guess the idea here is that if you install an app and it wants to pin itself to your task bar start menu, it should have to ask you, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it should just do it. And I, yeah. Okay. That's fine. That's, yeah. So that's neat. But that's not here. This is the the default app thing, and I don't know what that means. So we'll have to see. We'll have to wait and see what that looks like. Or I'll have to wait and see. Cause I don't, I don't have access to a Deb box here, so that will happen. But here's the big thing that's in this bill that I think will excite everybody. There's going to be an option in Windows 11. I don't even know how this wasn't the top story that will put the seconds in the system clock.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:51:25):
Wow. John. Oh, oh my God.
Paul Thurrott (00:51:29):
Hold on. Hold on guys. Hold on. Finally. Two caveat. Two caveats. Yes. Two caveats. This existed in previous versions of Windows. So this is also a regression, but here's the best one. If you display the seconds in your system clock, yeah. You'll use more power.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:51:45):
Oh, how much more power, Paul? A lot more power.
Paul Thurrott (00:51:49):
I don't know.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:51:50):
I don't know. Can you measure that power? I don't know. That's bizarre. Well, it just means the CPU is has to wake up every second. Sure. But I mean,
Paul Thurrott (00:52:00):
So I'm calling for Microsoft to make a dedicated processor specifically designed to display the seconds in the clock without, so that my G and CPU are not overwhelmed.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:52:10):
There you go. The s sp maybe they're using the gpu, maybe. Yeah. Seconds. Processing seconds process. Maybe they're using the gpu. Maybe there's a big graphic rendering penalty that said, yeah, they have to re draw the whole thing. The scaler compute of seconds. I'm gonna guess.
Paul Thurrott (00:52:26):
So I'm, I'll just look. I'm gonna, I'm, I'm being critical. This whole show for let's just not stop. Here's my guess. This UI that they're using is so inefficient. Yeah. That it co it uses more power. It, the way they used to render the task bar was this classic win 32 something, something that has been around forever and always worked great. And they reimplemented it in Windows 11. Cuz everything has looked cute and perfect and like pandas and zebras and stuff. And it's just not capable. It's just, it just, it's a Fisher Price thing.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:52:56):
I am so excited to have seconds on my task bar.
Paul Thurrott (00:52:58):
I can't wait. Tell you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna upgrade to the dev channel just to see it
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:53:02):
<Laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We have a clock. So, as you know, I have a clock here that does show seconds. We have a clock on the set in the other studio for Asthe Tech guys that does not show seconds. And my team to make people crazy set. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because they said, well, that's our time code. Of course. <Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:53:21):
Well, you're also, so you're surrounded by technical people. <Laugh> and I honestly, I, I believe the real problem is it's different.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:53:27):
Yeah. Yeah. Right. I agree. Yeah. That's, and and if you really, if they're really geeky people, it should be a binary clock anyway. I agree. Actually, I ordered, in response to this, I ordered a seven color E ink display, which I'm going to hand program.
Paul Thurrott (00:53:44):
I desperately wanna see color E ink. I
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:53:47):
Need this. Oh, it's out. And well,
Paul Thurrott (00:53:49):
I need it to be out on a Kindle <laugh>. Oh, wow.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:53:52):
That's, but this is Kindle sized and I can drive it with a pie zero or something like that. I have a raspberry pie three.
Paul Thurrott (00:54:00):
So what I wanna see is obviously quality, but refresh, you know, page turn type stuff.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:54:05):
Well, that's why the seconds may be a significant battery train. <Laugh>. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative> <laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:54:10):
Don't put, you're not gonna put it on that thing. Right. That's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:54:12):
Gonna return. No, I won't have seconds on that, but I thought I could have other stuff, you know, like club memberships and, I don't know, weather forecast. And
Paul Thurrott (00:54:20):
It also has the benefit of, it's not gonna have that weird flicker and reflective type things. You get the screens. I think
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:54:26):
They're getting better and better and be Oh, you mean on tv? Yeah. Yeah. There's no
Paul Thurrott (00:54:29):
Refresh. Yeah. Compared to Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:54:31):
There's no refresh rate. Yeah. Effectively no fresh rate. We've, we've solved that in, in the modern times. Boy, that was a big deal though. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> tech TV 20 years ago. Oh, we had to all sort unlocking
Paul Thurrott (00:54:41):
Stuff. Yeah, you got that. Yeah. You get that refresh, you know, banner on the, you
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:54:45):
Get this thing going. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and oh man. The things we did, we actually, cuz you couldn't do a screen capture for some reason, which we do routinely now all the time. Look, I could, I could do it right now. Oh, very nice. But in the old days, by the way, this is hysterical. Thank you Taku. But in the old days, we actually had to put a camera point, had a TV and pointed a camera at it. That's incredible. And you couldn't pull a zoom because you'd have horrible morays. You had to get the camera just right. So there was no more aing. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. Don't move anything. Don't move anything. It's kind of amazing Times have changed. Now we don't, I mean these are all these screens, I guess they're LCDs now, so it's not as big a deal. Right, right. They're not CRTs. I guess if we still had CRTs, maybe. I bet
Paul Thurrott (00:55:30):
If you put a crt it would
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:55:31):
Flicker away. I mean, you know, what is St. Strobing is the nixi clock behind me has been doing that ever since we put that It's did the little throb. Yeah, the little throb. And that's in, that's a Yeah. Cuz the frame rate of the cameras is different than the
Paul Thurrott (00:55:41):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:55:43):
Or the refresh rate. Isn't that interesting? Fascinating. Back to back to windows.
Paul Thurrott (00:55:49):
Yeah. So seconds. Leo will recall last, last summer, I'll call it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I had this growing body of evidence that there was something wrong with the 12th generation.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:56:01):
I still have this, I have, and I have it on Linux. It stalls on my
Paul Thurrott (00:56:06):
12Th. Something wrong that
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:56:07):
Dell 15.
Paul Thurrott (00:56:09):
We need dock it.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:56:10):
No, no, I'm not docked. I'm not dock. It just pauses
Paul Thurrott (00:56:14):
My experience of the docking. So Yeah. Yeah. There's something wrong. Something
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:56:17):
I thought we'd figured out, but maybe not.
Paul Thurrott (00:56:19):
Well, yeah. So here, what we know this type of thing in general, just, and I honestly, this only entered it onto my radar because of Microsoft and Surface and Surface Gate, when they released Surface Pro Four and Surface Book one, and they had all kinds of hot bagging issues and, and, you know, firmware type issues power management issues. What you, what I learned at that time was that every microprocessor ship from any manufacturer ships with all kinds of flaws. Yeah. And it is the responsibility of the PC maker to fix those flaws through firmer updates. It's not Intel's responsibility. Microsoft was so upset with the, it was the first, it was, this was the first time that they were first to market with any generation ship set. They were first mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And they, they were the first to discover the problems and they had all kinds of problems. They actually stopped supporting certain generation Intel chip sets in, in a fight with them, with Windows 10. As, as to show them how serious they were about this. And Intel, you know, kept coming back to them and saying, guys, this is your problem. You have to, you have
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:57:19):
To fix this. This is how this is. Yeah. The, one of the few times you finally have a company large enough that's right. To express an opinion to Intel.
Paul Thurrott (00:57:27):
Well, because everyone else understands. That's how it works. Right. I talked to you
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:57:30):
Also don't have a choice. That's how Intel does
Paul Thurrott (00:57:32):
Things. I, I talked on the record and off the record with friends from Lenovo and HP who both tell me the same thing because I asked the question, I said, so you guys, it's ma massive problems with this. Right? And they're like, what are you talking about? And I said, well, you know, my, and they're electron, like, yeah, that's them. They, they don't know what they're doing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is the, you know, they just don't know what they're doing. They're new with this. And no. Those, they, they never had problems with that. But I think it was the sixth gen sky, sky lake, sky lake, I think. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And anyway, flash forward to today or to yesterday, I guess last year, 12th gen came out and I started experiencing this issue across multiple machines. H u SB hubs.
(00:58:08):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Thunderbolt. Three and four docs, same thing. Huge performance issues. It o often expressed itself when you had lots of browser tabs open, didn't matter what browser it was, it didn't matter if it was Chromium or Firefox, by the way. But you see it in other ways. I was, I see it in Microsoft worded. It's a big problem. Anyway, the point is Intel not Intel HP and Lenovo both issued a flurry of firmer updates last year for their various PCs. And they've not confirmed this, this is my theory, but my, my belief is that they were trying to fix this issue. That that's what we were seeing there. Right. So flash forward one year, I just got my first, first 13th gen, intel core based pc. It, it's very interesting because the difference between this PC and the previous one, because I tested the other one last year.
(00:58:55):
In fact, the other one last year was the one that, the first one I ever saw this problem on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Literally the only difference is the processor. It's the exact same piece except now it's a, you know, a 13 OUTTA 12. It has the same number of chorus, right. The same number of each type of chorus. Everything else about this PC is 100% exactly the same as the last year's version. It has exactly the same problem. Interesting. Yep. So I've been, because of we're here, I, this company was nice enough to send me the product here so I could test it. I've already shipped it back via FedEx. That was hilarious getting that done in Spanish. But we did it <laugh> and I tested it on a Thunderbolt for Dock and on a U S B C hub, and I had the same problem. So that's not a lot of evidence. I don't want to proclaim that this problem persists. I will test other PCs this year with 13th gen chip sets and we'll see. But based on this one thing my fear is that this problem,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (00:59:51):
But I mean the, but the 12th gen and 13th Gen entailed chip sets both use the same chip sets. They both, you've the 600 and 700 series chip sets. So if it's actually, it's not the processor, it's the chip set switching, the processor's not gonna change a thing.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:06):
And it didn't. And I, so the, one of the problems I run into with this stuff is you know, if Lenovo in this case sends me a computer in, in March and I review it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I usually take a couple of months to, I I should say the product is usually my house for a couple of months before I have to ship it back. Right. So if they fixed this problem in June or August or whenever it is, I don't really see that what I, what I see are newer machines that have the same chipset, but now it see it seems to be fixed. Right. That kind of thing. Right. it is interesting to me that this particular product had the problem last year. I never got to see if it was fixed in this particular product.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:00:38):
Right. And I, and I wonder if it's specific to chipset, like the, you could have been six 90 for both could have been six 90 for the twelfths and 13th. And it's addressed with the seven 90 s I mine, the new machine I built for she, you must be obeyed and, and I built one for me as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> was 13th gen seven 90 chip set.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:56):
Now that I should we should also differentiate here. You're using a desktop chip set,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:01:00):
Desktop chip sets. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:01:01):
So it's possible that this problem is only in the mobile chip. That's, that's, I have, I've not hmm. Well, maybe once I, I have, I think I have had one 12th gen desktop chip set in, but I never put a doc on it. Right. Because why would I, you know, it already has all the expansion you need. So anyway, I I, again, I don't want to present this as it's back, baby. I, I, but I, it probably is. Right. I, I, I was thinking
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:01:28):
That this would, the fact that they were using the same chip says for 12 and 13 mean Okay. It, it probably was never addressed by the processor at all. Especially when you talk about that particular problem, like Thunderbolt so forth. Yeah. Like that's Northbridge stuff. That's not the processor.
Paul Thurrott (01:01:43):
Yeah. I just, right. I, I I should say this does not happen on Qualcomm, does not happen on a M d, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, whatever version of Verizon you're on only happens. I I it does not happen on 11th gen or earlier Intel either.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:01:56):
Yeah. I'm convinced it's the processor or the system on the chip because it, it's happening in Windows and Linux on this same machine. Yeah. I think it's in the chip set, not the processor. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:04):
Okay. Okay. I would agree with that. I mean, okay. As I was, I don't know if Leo heard me earlier, but I, I just, I wanna be really clear. I'm not a hundred percent. I, this is one computer, so, well, I have
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:02:14):
One too. So that's two computers.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:16):
Yeah. Well, this, no, 13. Oh, you have a 13 Chad?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:02:18):
No, I have twelfths.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:20):
Yeah. No, I, I, oh, I had a dozen 12th. Jen. I, that one was adequately tested.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:02:24):
Oh, you're saying the 13th is the only one?
Paul Thurrott (01:02:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Same problem.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:02:27):
Same problem.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:28):
So we'll see, the year's gonna go on. I'll have more computers to look at and we'll see if I have the same problem
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:02:32):
Or another. Here, here's another question then. Paul, that 13th gen unit you had, was it DDR four or DDR five?
Paul Thurrott (01:02:38):
DDR five.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:02:39):
DDR five. Because that would be the newer chip set then.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:42):
Yes. Yep. Yeah. Interesting. Although that hasn't, DDR five has been around for a year or two, and I think, I believe that No, I I know that the, the last one had D DDR five as well.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:02:53):
Okay. Yep. Yeah. And, and then so then you wonder would the DDR four implementation be better? Like, although again, that's, that's separate from the actual interface stuff that would affect Thunderbolt, so forth.
Paul Thurrott (01:03:05):
Right. I leave I have a computer that I leave here just in case mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and it happens to be a computer that I use for screenshots for the book, which works out really well doing that stuff here. Whatever. It's a, I don't remember what the gen is. It's a 10th or 11th gen intel, whatever. It's just a basic U series laptop. It is the most reliable, wonderful workhorse. It got rained on when I was in Mexico a year and a half ago. It has survived that. It continues to, it, it comes right up. It works on the dock. It's, you know, so when I, if, if all goes south here, I know I will have this thing and I will be able to get work done and be able to do shows and whatever
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:03:41):
Else. You know, I mean, I like having multiple workstations and the, this particular workstation for the streaming stuff, this is an eighth, Jen. Yeah. And it's, I, I mean, it's so good. I changed out all the spinning hardware. Like when I was doing, building a new machine with the 13th, Jen, I'm like, there's nothing wrong with this. I'm not gonna build another one. I'm just gonna switch out all the fans. So, which gives it another four years. Right. Like, that's, that's the only thing it's
Paul Thurrott (01:04:02):
Gonna fail. Yeah. I should, now that I'm kind of walking through this, I should also mention these problems, I believe are exclusive to the P series, which was new with the 12th gen and is carried forward. Right. And P series sits between you and H and whatever else they have. It's 28 watt part as opposed to five to 15 for you, and then mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, maybe three to 15, whatever that is. And then I think I wanna say 54, 56, something like that for age. There's something about it. You know, it's, it's, and oh, and, and I should say the 12th gen was the first where they moved to the hybrid architecture. Right. Where they had performant an efficient course. And I, you know, it's like when you buy a Volkswagen, don't buy the first gen of anything, it's, they're gonna screw a lot of stuff up. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative> give 'em a couple of years to, you know, kind of iron out those things. And I think that's what we're seeing what whatev, wherever the blame lies. Right.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:04:52):
Well, it reminds me of the early hyperthreading models where Yes. Certain workflows would look like the process presume it could go through the, the lighter way hyper threaded lies. And then it realized it couldn't, and it would bonk to go back to the primary line or
Paul Thurrott (01:05:07):
Worse, it thought it actually had a multiprocessor Yeah. CPU or multiple CPUs. And what it really had was threads. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That, yeah, exactly. This. And
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:05:16):
Again, those were, those were solved by firmware. Right. Like you learned at the minimum. I remember in the early days when that, that first generation hybrid that he came along, you shut off the hyper threading in BAAs.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:28):
Well, I'll tell you where you don't get firmware from Intel, for the most part, Amy, if you have an Intel nuc or something, obviously they have firmware and, and they have, they have software updates for hardware. I mean, obviously they do for drivers and so forth, but your firmware for Dell or HP or Lenovo, whatever company comes from them mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Right. It's not a rebranded intel thing. It's, it comes from
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:05:49):
Them. Well, and I hope the guys that at Intel that are building out that hardware go beat Thenot on the chip chat, people like, they know where they live. Right. Like that, that's one way.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:59):
It's, I don't wanna excuse it, but like, it, it's such a major architectural change that maybe we shouldn't be surprised if something like this happened. In fact, we maybe we should be happy. This was the only problem because most of
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:06:09):
People, and, and that they are chasing it around. Yeah. It just quietly in the dark. Like they're not telling us, Hey, we know this is there and we're working on it.
Paul Thurrott (01:06:17):
I was lucky to notice it. Honestly, if this had happened a couple years ago, I would've been working on a desktop PC and I wouldn't never have docked these things. I, it just so happened that this happened during a time the previous year, it switched to a doc laptop. Yeah. So I started swapping out the laptop and only noticed it on 12 and 13 now, 13, I should say. And but if I was just using it out in the world, I probably, I'm not sure I would, probably would've drawn this. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:06:40):
Don't think, you know, in here you talked about the other whole issue on this, which is that think about all the different things we expect to just work here. These different combinations of hardware. Like the idea that you're gonna inter you're gonna introduce in new interfaces, live to a machine, plugging it into a
Paul Thurrott (01:06:55):
Dot. This is the miracle of the pc. I I, in the 1990s, I was at a party in San Francisco and I got into an argument with people from Apple who were convinced that they had better engineers than Microsoft. Right. And I said, there's absolutely no chance. That's true. Right? They said, what are you talking about? And I said, listen, you guys make five pieces of hardware. It's easy. Microsoft has to account for like millions and millions of combination of different hardware, you know, plug-in cards and whatever. I said, it's a miracle that windows get works every day. <Laugh>. I said, you guys, you guys have
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:07:25):
Easy living in your walled garden. Yeah. You've got it so easy. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:07:30):
What are you talking about?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:07:31):
I feel like if, if this really were a universal problem, we'd know about it. Right. I mean,
Paul Thurrott (01:07:36):
This is the pro, so this is my problem. Right. Exactly.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:07:39):
Yeah. I, it's a niche problem.
Paul Thurrott (01:07:40):
I don't normally follow, like, I don't read other reviews that much. I certainly don't read reviews before I write my own reviews. But when this started happening, I started paying attention. I said, how is no one noticing this? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think the reason no one notices this is because most reviews are kind of superficial. You, the peop they bring 'em in, use 'em for a couple days, run benchmarks, and then they use a boil plate thing to pump out some review. I don't think people actually use the damn things. Like not real world. Not, not usually. Yeah. I use these things for at least a month. Yeah. I, I, I, that's the
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:08:12):
Difference.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:12):
Yeah, I agree. I really do. I, I'm not trying to be critical of whole industry or whatever, but there are, I will say I get overwhelmed by reviews cuz there's too many to do and I have to go, sometimes I have to say, look, I can't, I just can't. I'm so far behind. I can't take more of these into my house. You know? And I think those, I think other people just have no compunction whatsoever of run the benchmarks. Yeah. So yeah, this one's 17% faster than last year with some random
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:08:37):
Looks nice. Like the buttons. Yeah. Feels good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> set it back, moving on
Paul Thurrott (01:08:41):
And then to send it back and there's no real,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:08:44):
They not work with it on a day to day basis. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:47):
I mean the the thing and then you wouldn't notice cause they couldn't travel, but
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:08:50):
I would think end users would be complaining this, they were doing this. It doesn't happen all the time. Well see, it's not happening to me with a doc. It's just happening
Paul Thurrott (01:08:59):
To me. You know what the, the ultimate example of this problem was, was the note five. What people, everyone remembers that this thing exploded Right. Caught on fire. What people don't remember is that reviewers had the device for one week. Everyone gave it five stars. The best phone ever released. Everyone do. You can't find a negative review of this thing. No one had it long enough to notice this thing didn't work. Right. Yeah. You know, cuz they're all tripping over each other to be first. Yeah. And that's what this world is. It's not, it's not their fault. Well, and
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:09:26):
And it serves and it serves the manufacturer well. That they're gonna, they, they, that's right. The rush to be out quickly means you
Paul Thurrott (01:09:32):
Don't, and then you can say, you can say, look, it's not my fault. They gave us one week with it. I, everyone else public, I had to be there with everyone else. That's what everyone's doing. I'm sorry, your plane exploded. It's not my fault, but is
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:09:44):
There anybody who in your opinion, does good, reliable, long-term laptop reviews? Or,
Paul Thurrott (01:09:51):
I've never seen anyone do any l anything
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:09:54):
Notebook check seems to really get deep into the weeds with it.
Paul Thurrott (01:09:57):
There are sites that are really good for specifications. Yeah. G GSM Marina I think it's called is really good that
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:10:03):
Yeah. They're great for specs. Yes. They don't even
Paul Thurrott (01:10:05):
Review site really. There's a, you know, I, I mean, I hate to, so I think the, lemme see. I can find this one. I don't, in the same way that I, I, I don't wanna, I don't have complaints about specific individuals.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:10:18):
Right. We also know there's no money in it because look at DP review, which did the best camera review reviews for 25 years. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Amazon Bottom just killed them. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:10:31):
I'm trying, I'm trying to find the, the one person I really like, but Yeah. It's, I can, I'm sorry. I don't know. I, I, no, no one leaves that. I, I do, I do I trust any of that. I, I don't, I try not to read reviews. That's the thing. Like, I, I, well, I don't wanna, the influence, you need
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:10:50):
To keep your head clear. Yeah. Yeah. I understand that. I
Paul Thurrott (01:10:53):
Would assume the bigger publications, the pc, mags, PC world, those guys are probably Okay. I, you know, the, the pro I, even at Main I don't know, like even mainstream publications, I feel like it's just, it's kids now. It's younger people. They put the, the intern types on it because it's exciting to get a free product, you know, for a little while and show it off and, and write it. You know, it's, and to me it's like, yeah, okay, but I <laugh> I wanna make sure this thing works. And plus, you know,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:11:24):
I mean, I would also argue not every laptop deserves a long-term review.
Paul Thurrott (01:11:28):
Yeah. That's for sure.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:11:29):
Like, it's, is you also gonna make this excessive? Is this a laptop someone's gonna keep for a good long mm-hmm.
Paul Thurrott (01:11:33):
<Affirmative>, I like to focus on what I would call premium business class computers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because they tend to last longer. Obviously high quality. They tend to have less crap wear and stupid stuff going on. You know? If you buy a consumer device, it doesn't matter what the company is, my God. The amount of cleaning you have to do Yeah. To get the, the amount of popups and Oh my God, did you know, you, you have to start paying for Machay. I just opened the thing. I how was my, how was my subscription not valid for some amount of time?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:12:00):
You know, I, yeah. I, I built out a, a daughter's machine with a fresh copy of WIN 11 mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Consumer Edition.
Paul Thurrott (01:12:07):
Right.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:12:08):
I was horrified.
Paul Thurrott (01:12:09):
It's just Windows. Right. What I often write in my reviews is in addition to the crap provided by Windows Levin Home, you know, <laugh> because it does ship with crap.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:12:19):
Well, and, and, and it, it's seizure inducing. Like it literally spazzed out at you. Just like, don't click me, click me. Don't click here, click here.
Paul Thurrott (01:12:29):
All right. I'm gonna, I'm actually, I'm gonna sort of read this. I I, I don't mean I, Lenovo makes high quality computers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I that they put this stuff in this particular computer is surprising to me. If you look at the list of stuff in the start menu, you won't see a lot of what looks like crap wear. What happens instead is that you're using the computer. I was, I was yelling, I was in the room yelling, and my wife came in and she's like, what is, what are you doing <laugh>? What is wrong with you <laugh>? This is what I wrote about that day. So I'm not happy to see Mcna, McAffee, LiveSafe, Amazon, sorry, menu. But the incredible number of pop-ups that occurred when I was working was even more alarming. An app called Lenova Welcome, tried to get me to buy Premium Care plus support for $75 and 90 cents, install former crap apps, pimp a a Dropbox promotion, and manage my games using something called Legion Arena, despite the fact that this is not a gaming laptop.
(01:13:25):
Then Lenovo Smart Key popped up, me, popped up so I could get quick access to Lenovo applications and services and add a superfluous new floating toolbar to my desktop. Then Lenovo Vantage popped up to help me maintain my PC and proactively fix any issues for just 29 99 per year. Then it popped up again and offered me theft, theft protection. And then it popped up again to activate something called Smart Lock for 49 99 per year. And then it popped up again to see if I wanted to extend my warranty coverage <laugh> with something called Sealed Battery Warranty. What the, I bet
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:14:01):
If you bought everything, it'd be more than you spent for the laptop.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:05):
I just got, the damn thing I could have used was,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:14:08):
Was this a think pad just outta curiosity?
Paul Thurrott (01:14:10):
No, it was a yoga.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:14:11):
Ah, yeah. I think
Paul Thurrott (01:14:13):
It, which is No, it's, it's, no, but it's a, you, this thing starts at 15.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:14:16):
No, I know. I have a, I had a yoga. Yeah, that
Paul Thurrott (01:14:18):
Is, that's crazy.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:14:20):
Yeah. This is hundreds of dollars worth of stuff they threw at you.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:23):
Right? Yeah. No, I wanna be clear. I I, I have great respect for Lenovo's products. I especially think Deadline, but yoga those two, I would say their premium stuff is fantastic. And I, and this is out of character. I, I don't, I have not seen this before. But, you know, PC makers are under a lot of pressure to make money on a, you know, on per unit. And it's hard in the PC space. It's a low margin business. And man, they have gone down a dark path. I have never seen anything like what I just described that ne these are things I wanna be clear. They po I was working and they, I, and they popped up to interrupt me. Right. With dollar signs, what,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:15:02):
Generally speaking, when you pay for a product, stop interrupting me for what I wanted to do with the product. Like that's Yeah. Rule number one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shifting my focus, like I'm mid typing and you've popped something, so I'm not typing to that. Well, by the way, it's never
Paul Thurrott (01:15:15):
Correct. Microsoft Word and teams both do exactly what you just described right now they both do it. Yeah. I, multiple times I've been in a meeting on teams and something has popped up and said, first it was Excel. I don't remember the other one. Say, Hey, did you know that you could sell an, you could say share an Excel spreadsheet with your work buddies, you know, blah, blah, you know, did you know I'm in the middle of a fricking meeting? You idiot. Yeah. <laugh>, like you like, what are you doing? I'm literally in a meeting, you know? And the other one is, word pops up, these things like hey, you know, you could get this thing on mobile, click here to get the QR code, dude. Yeah, no. Or, Hey, did you know you could use OneDrive and, you know, protect, blah, blah, blah. Did you know the document I'm editing right now is saved in? Wait for it. Onedrive. Are you kidding me? <Laugh>? No, I mean, the, these things are stupid. I, I word popped up something to Remi say, Hey, you know, just so you know, you can click here to save this document at any time. Thanks. I've been using this product for 30 years. Are you kidding me?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:16:11):
I'm pretty sure I know.
Paul Thurrott (01:16:13):
Are you kidding me? Like, that's how dumb this has become. I'm sure. Ao I'm sure their AI is fantastic. Anyway, <laugh>, sorry. There's, you know, or, or their AI will fix this problem. I don't know.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:16:27):
I don't know. Well, this is why I use Linux. I'll be honest. <Laugh> never bothers me for that stuff.
Paul Thurrott (01:16:34):
Listen, my psychiatrist loves that.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:16:36):
I use Windows
Paul Thurrott (01:16:37):
<Laugh> and I, I,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:16:39):
You know,
Paul Thurrott (01:16:41):
Has literally asked me, I saying, I don't know if you intend to retire someday, but I, I recommend you just keep going. <Laugh>. I don't see any end to this. In fact,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:16:49):
I gotta put my kids through college. Yeah,
Paul Thurrott (01:16:51):
Yeah. Right. I have a boat. I'm, I have my eye on a boat, you know?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:16:56):
All right, let's take a little break so Paul could get, you're coming home this tomorrow. I'm sorry to hear that. And then what? Yeah, I thought you were gonna be there forever,
Paul Thurrott (01:17:07):
Leo. I want to be here forever. We have kids and cats
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:17:11):
And we kids and cats. I know.
Paul Thurrott (01:17:13):
Fricking real life now. I
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:17:14):
Know. I get that <laugh>. I know. You gotta finish the sale. So how long are you gonna stay in the States? And then when do you go back?
Paul Thurrott (01:17:21):
I don't, we don't know. Yeah, we're gonna see, we're gonna see
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:17:27):
Tonight. I go up to coast, right? Like, once you get there, it's,
Paul Thurrott (01:17:30):
You're like, why am I going home? Like, why am I leaving this
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:17:32):
Place? Yeah. Well never retire cuz. Or take time off cuz then Yeah, you have to go back to work. We're going on a three week trip to Lisbon and Rome in about a week. Oh, lovely. If I don't come back, you'll know why.
Paul Thurrott (01:17:49):
Lisbon and Rome and anywhere else. I'm
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:17:50):
Sorry. Lots of places. We go to Lisbon for a few days. We get on a, a boat that goes mm-hmm. <Affirmative> kind of around Spain and Morocco and Monaco
Paul Thurrott (01:17:59):
Away there.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:18:00):
Yeah. Yeah. We, I love Malta. We didn't, we're not doing Malta this time. Yeah. But I love Malta. And then we end up in Rome. We're spend a week in Rome and visit with Padres. Nice. See the sites? Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I can't wait. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:18:11):
He'll give you a behind the scene store. That's gonna be great.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:18:13):
I think he said he would. Yep. I think he said he would. So I won't be back. Nice knowing you <laugh>. Thanks for playing so long. But I will be here next week, so you'll be your last chance to abuse me then. <Laugh>. It's outta here, right? I'll be back, unfortunately. Nice. I won't wanna come back though. I know how you feel. Our show today brought to you by Coli, K o l i d e A device trust solution that, that fills this little missing hole in the, in zero trust architecture device compliance. See if you're an Octa user for example, coli can get your entire fleet to a hundred percent compliance because it fills that hole in a zero Trust architecture, your identity provider only lets known devices log into apps. Right? But how do you know that that known device is secure?
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So when a user logs in with Okta collide alerts them to compliance issues and prevents them, if they're insecure from logging in, it's security you could feel good about because Collide puts transparency and respect for users at the center of their product. To sum it up, collides method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, most importantly, 100% fleet compliance. Visit K o l i d e collide.com/ww Okay. Collide.Com/Ww to learn more, to book a demo. It's just, it's just obvious this is the right way to do it. And just think you know, the risk you face collide.com/ww. We thank 'em so much for supporting Windows Weekly and you support of course when you go to that address. So make sure you don't just go to collide.com. I know you could, you know, you could, but if you add the slash ww makes all the difference to us. All right. Back to the Loop template. <Laugh>, if only, lemme tell you something else that can't stand <laugh>. I I'm excited that we've got AI down as the third bull. Oh yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:09):
We're making progress.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:23:10):
Yeah. It's not after a month of it being number one, it's not gonna stay there. Uhuh.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:15):
It's going. No. Okay. Hold on, hold on. <Laugh>. We can, we can. None of this deserves a lot of attention, but I think it all deserves to be noted. Right? So I mean this is, this is what we're, you know, this is like our new pandemic <laugh>. It's this like all there is,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:23:30):
But this is a good thing. You do you hate this or do you just, you're tired of the subject or
Paul Thurrott (01:23:36):
You think it's it's a good thing. It's snake
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:23:37):
Wheel.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:38):
No, no, no, no, no. It's real. It's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:23:40):
A, it's so much more fun to talk about than NFTs. Thank you. Thank God we don't talk about that anymore, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:47):
Yeah. So,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:23:47):
But this ist I, well, and that's the question I always am asking everybody is, is this like that or, you know, is this the next VR metaverse thing or
Paul Thurrott (01:23:56):
Is it Gates real? Bill Gates described it as the next g i, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and whatever one thinks of Bill Gates, I certainly have my opinions. I would say this is worth reading. You know, he certainly has had his influence over the industry and
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:24:12):
And he rarely talks about technology. What's, you know, normally what you'd find on Gates notes is stuff about vaccines. That That's right. And, and you know, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:24:23):
That alone is, that's right. And so my, my write up about this was very short and I tried to focus mostly on the tech stuff, specifically how it impacts Microsoft. And he, his original article is worth reading because he talks about, you know, he's been involved with the open AI guys and he, he talks about some of the things he says, come back and tell me when it can do this. And they came back a, a month or two later and he's like, yikes, <laugh>, you know, and, and he's, he, his basic premise here is this is I've only seen two transformative things happen in our industry. And one was the G I and
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:24:55):
The other one he talks about Charles Simon showing him the Kue in 1980. Wow. Mm-hmm.
Paul Thurrott (01:25:00):
<Affirmative>. That's right. Yeah. Mr. Hungarian notation,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:25:02):
Right? Yeah. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:25:03):
So I, I was talking about this with my wife this morning cuz Sue's the only one I know here. And she
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:25:11):
<Laugh> and she speaks English. English, yes.
Paul Thurrott (01:25:12):
And she speak English. So the thing I, the, the way I described this was you know, the internet was such an enormous thing and it gave you access to all the information of the world. You know, if you think about five years before you were online in that fashion, you wanted to know something simple, something that was historic. Like who was the 37th president or, you know, whatever, 17th president, you know, you could go find an encyclopedia and lock that up if you wanted to find out something about a very specific part for a car and whether it was reliable. You know, you get into weird areas where most knowledge was out there, but it was inaccessible. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So the inter made it accessible. I think that AI is the thing that's gonna be the fabric that pulls together all of that information that's out there and makes it useful to you. And it will do it through obvious methods like, you know, productivity tools that we're familiar with all these AI-based image creation, utilities, everyone's, you know, so excited about it. And and I think this is gonna be in obvious things, but I think it's gonna permeate basically everything in the same way that the internet did. You know,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:26:15):
I think it's a little odd that Bill's comparing it to Gooeys, which is a user interface revolution. I think you maybe compare it more to the internet or something like that.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:23):
Right? No, that's been one.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:26:24):
It is, but it is an interface because it is a way to communicate with the machine. Yeah, that's fair. Referencing Road ahead again, he talked about the smart agent. That's right. Right. This may be the, the first manifestation of the smart agent. And this I think you and I are both cynical for the same reason. We are in, in, we're on the climb of the hype cycle right now, and we know it's a hype cycle.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:47):
I also feel like this is the whatever number of stages of brief, you know, it's like you ha you, you have to, you have to cope with this thing over time and you're, you're, you kind of shift, I don't mean you one kind of shifts where they stand on it and, and how they perceive it and what they, you know, think it's going to do to the world. And it's, you know, it's important to remember that there are ethical issues here. There are pros and cons. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there are very real world issues around jobs, you know. Yeah. where some people's jobs are gonna get very easy, are gonna get easier. Some people are gonna lose their jobs. <Laugh>, you know, and it's there's a lot of, there's a lot. It's, there's a lot here. And of course a lot of it doesn't have anything to do with Windows of Microsoft. Like
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:27:29):
Of course. But we are still on the way up to the peak of an inflated expectations.
Paul Thurrott (01:27:34):
Yeah. Yep. I, I'll just say un until about a month ago, two months ago, Microsoft would pop out some nonsense claim about ai. You know, they would say something like you know, now with AI powered, you know, whatever spell check. It's like, yeah, what, okay, whatever. Now everyone is making this claim, which makes it hard to understand what's truly good and whatever. Actually, by the way, to give my wife some credit, now you guys both know she's incredibly intelligent, but I, I had, I made that case like I did about the internet, and I said, you know, it's kinda like the internet except now it's giving us the, you know, the ability to understand all that data that we have. And she goes, yeah, but wait until Quantum computing gets involved. <Laugh>, I was like,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:28:11):
<Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:12):
I was like, okay, that's pretty good <laugh>. That's the, you know, then we just hit the singularity, I guess. I don't know.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:28:17):
Mm. Yeah. That's different, different hype cycle for a different set of problems.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:21):
Yep. Yep. And I, yep. I hope to be long retired before we have to deal with that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> based the lifetime
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:28:26):
Brief on it, I paid, yeah. I pay attention to it, but you know, it's a super computing problem space. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a common user interface. Most people will never touch a quantum.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:34):
Are you suggesting that the iPhone, you know, 17 won't have a chip set in it that enables quantum computing? Come on,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:28:40):
I'm, I would love that. That might be true, <laugh>. I just see, you know, yeah. It's brave if you, I'm getting out of the prediction business because Sure. I couldn't
Paul Thurrott (01:28:48):
Have, oh my God. It's impossible
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:28:49):
Now, isn't it? I could've never seen where we are. Yep. Today. Just, you know, when copilot, when co-pilot get up, co-pilot started, you know, there's a lot of mockery about it. Now developers are like saying 50 bucks a month for this. Wow, this is great. I can fire five developers. <Laugh> no, I you know, staple, there's
Paul Thurrott (01:29:10):
The job, there's the job angle right there. Exactly. Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:29:13):
Do, when Dolly first came out, it was like, yeah, those are, those are pretty terrible now. Mid Journey version five indistinguishable for, for photography. In fact, there are people making a living selling stock photography that they generate in mid journey. It's, I think things are happening in a way that I think we're unpredictable or sounded like sci-fi.
Paul Thurrott (01:29:38):
It has accelerated. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know GitHub announced co-pilot last year, sometime probably mid-year. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and it, it, it was met with skepticism, like I'm sorry, are you scraping the web and then Yeah. Providing Stack Overflow answers. It's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:29:55):
Like, it's cut and paste from GitHub Public. Yeah. repositories.
Paul Thurrott (01:29:59):
Well let's take a look at the next gen Leo because they just announced something called co-Pilot X, because I guess we're back to an X again. Does voice?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:30:07):
It does. I mean it's kind of amazing. By the way, co-pilot is two years old. It came out in
Paul Thurrott (01:30:11):
21. Oh is it two years old? Okay. Excuse
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:30:13):
Me. Wow.
Paul Thurrott (01:30:14):
So visual Studio and Visual Studio Code will include an integrated chat G P t like chat experience Right. In the code editor. It'll recognize the code, any type of code you're writing, display any, any displayed error messages provide in-depth analysis and explanation of what the code blocks are supposed to do. It'll generate unit tests, it will propose bug fixes.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:30:34):
I think generating unit tests is a really interesting, for instance Yeah. Use of this. Cuz nobody wants to write unit tests and when they do, they honestly, they lie and they're not complete and they're, you know, like, well see I got a test, but if chat G P T does it, I think that's really interesting. Or, or co-pilot, which is a branded chat G P t
Paul Thurrott (01:30:56):
You guys use get hub by assume to some Oh yeah. Degree.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:30:59):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:31:00):
So one of the things you're supposed to do with a pull request is write descriptions.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:31:04):
What you're doing is, this is fascinating. It's writing poll requests.
Paul Thurrott (01:31:08):
It's gonna pull request document now for your
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:31:11):
<Laugh> and I bet it'll do a great job. This is the kind there's nothing's good at mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I mean the main thing it does is at least gets you past the blank screen syndrome. Right, exactly. It does remind you of all the things you've done cuz it's parsed the code. This is, it'll probably cleaned up the copy a bit. I hope maybe, maybe it will
Paul Thurrott (01:31:27):
Probably be more thorough. So one of the problems I have is you stare at that and you think I do what I do in comments in code, which is just state the obvious Right. Made an improvement to the for loop
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:31:38):
<Laugh> not so good,
Paul Thurrott (01:31:39):
You know, useless, you know, use useless. But it'll know
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:31:42):
Difference. And, and, and it's you know, it solves the hallucination problem too cuz I mean, the kind of general use of being for a search is risky. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because it could tell you you're dead, for instance. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:31:56):
Well, or something you don't know is not Yeah. Which is actually the bigger
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:32:00):
Problem, right? Yeah. And you believe, but this, because it's operating and whenever it's doing a summarization mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or it's operating, it's doing a new pull request, it's pulling from facts that are on the page. Right. I'm gonna presume it's not making stuff up at that point. And, and
Paul Thurrott (01:32:14):
So I won't, I yeah, I'm not, I won't go through every single item I have in this list of like, AI that has occurred since we last talked. But what you just said,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:32:22):
This has been a week. One week, it feels like I look at the year, one week.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:27):
So opera right. Obviously makes a web browser. They're, they're adding more a, they actually have some AI stuff already. So they're adding chat G P T to the sidebar, which I think is, you know, in browser. Right. Which is what, what Microsoft is doing with being an edge, but they're also adding AI prompts. And this is very, very interesting. This is something that appears up in the address bar. So it will do such things as you're reading something complex and you don't understand it, it will shorten or just explain it to you. You can learn more about the topic that you're looking at. You can generate a tweet based on the text you're looking at. It's all kind of from the address part, right. So it's interprets, it summarizes and it helps you ex learn and explore more right. Directly in the browser. And I gotta say, you know for all of the kind of nonsense around ai that sounds useful to me. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like this is, this is an actual productivity tool.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:33:17):
T T L D R generators.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:19):
Yeah. I mean, I listen, I sometimes things are just too long. <Laugh>. Yeah. You know, I want to get to the point, what is he, what is, what are they trying to say here?
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:33:29):
Yeah's, can it do a change log? That would be fascinating too, right?
Paul Thurrott (01:33:33):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:33:34):
I mean, just think all the things that you, that are really grunt work.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:38):
Oh my god, yes. Every once in a while, like, I'll publish a book update and I have to figure out what I did.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:33:43):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Well, you hire, hire somebody. I imagine I, I know many authors do to do an index.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:49):
Oh my god. Indexes. Geez. Yes. Thank you. Index.Ai, you know.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:33:55):
Perfect. We, we spent a lot of money on transcripts for just a handful of shows. Whisper AI now can do it on your desktop. And it does a pretty credible job. It's got a little ways to go, but at this point, that's probably next week. I mean,
Paul Thurrott (01:34:12):
Next week it's probably, dude, tomorrow you said it, it's gonna happen before we're done. It's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:34:16):
Incredible. I mean, it's mind boggling being is now generating images. Right. And I think
Paul Thurrott (01:34:24):
Everyone, everyone's doing images,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:34:26):
But these are good. This
Paul Thurrott (01:34:27):
Is good. Everyone's doing images.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:34:28):
These are good. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:34:29):
So I will, I will put, so the image at the top of the document we have in Notion here is from Adobe. Right. So Adobe has an, an interesting approach I think is gonna resonate with content creators, especially the, you know, professional content creators, right. Who pay for the Adobe suite of apps and all that stuff. The idea here is that they're gonna generate AI based on your description, like a lot of tools do, but the competitive edge, so to speak, is that this stuff is all legally safe to use and ethically sound because it's created within their, they, they're not grabbing copyright, they're their learning models. They're not describing everything that's out in the world, no matter who made it. And whatever the rights are, they're grabbing stuff that they know they have the rights to, and you have the rights to as an Adobe customer because you're licensing their products.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:35:10):
So this is all under creative cloud for Adobe.
Paul Thurrott (01:35:13):
It's not just the creative cloud, but yes, it's a document cloud, experience Cloud and Adobe Express. And I've only heard of two of those <laugh>, but Right. But yeah, so Creative Cloud, you know, professional Adobe Express for the rest of us is how I think of it. And then the, you know, documents,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:35:27):
What's a smart angle for them to take? Yeah. But it might be a very short term angle because Hmm. The courts have yet to rule on, you know, all of these illustrators who have, who are suing you know, right. Getty Images is suing. Yeah. But the courts of course, and I've heard experts say the courts are not, are not gonna, this is, this is gonna end up being transformative, fair use. The courts are gonna rule too bad, tough luck. That's,
Paul Thurrott (01:35:56):
I think you just explained how Microsoft made the loop. AI that loop ui, they used ai,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:36:01):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:36:02):
And Notion was the learning model.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:36:04):
So if the courts come back and say, you know what, this this, you have no, this suits have no merit and I think there's a good chance, then Microsoft, then Adobe's done something unnecessary. It's like, go ahead, steal all
Paul Thurrott (01:36:15):
Images. So there's a, the, the pro, so imagine you have a copyrighted set of images right there. You cannot use these for commercial use without paying for them. And then, and then there's some series of steps and then you arrive at some image out here that looks nothing like any of those things. Like how many, how far away does it have to be from is from
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:36:32):
Work. Yeah. Right. And you know, this and one not Deriv, the Supreme Court's ruling on right now is gonna be germane in that. That's all about fair use and it's mildly transformed from the original.
Paul Thurrott (01:36:43):
So I told you, I what I I used I think it was Dali to make, you know, Frito Kalo style oil painting of Mexico City to create a logo for our YouTube channel. Right. And then I'm nervous that this thing was stolen. Somehow I cropped pieces of it and I did a reverse image search to see it. Is this somewhere out there? Is this a thing? And I couldn't find it. No. It's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:37:07):
Transformative. And, and so here's I think what legal people are saying, the arguments I've read every artist bases their art on previous art. Right. You don't, to some degree Yeah. You don't learn in a vacuum. Yeah. so the really interesting case is the Getty case, because you do see Getty watermarks yet, well, sort of Right. Kind of mangled water.
Paul Thurrott (01:37:28):
Well, Getty, Getty has historically all, I'm sorry, has always been incredibly aggressive going
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:37:33):
Yeah. But they may lose this case. It's very risky. Yeah. Because if they lose it stock photo libraries and libraries like Getty are suddenly mm-hmm. <Affirmative> in a lot of trouble. Sure. And, and I think it's fair to say, look, it looks like kalo because it was trained on kalo like images, but that's not kalo. And you know,
Paul Thurrott (01:37:56):
PA never painted a picture of Mexico City <laugh>. Right. Actually, right. To my
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:38:00):
Knowledge. So it's, it's, it's, I don't think you can say Kalo or any other artist, just cuz it's my style. Where'd you get your style from, you know? Right. it was not generated in a vacuum. So we'll see.
Paul Thurrott (01:38:11):
Everyone, everyone stands on the backs of greatness. And when you are a writer, an artist, or whatever you
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:38:16):
Are, you copy
Paul Thurrott (01:38:17):
First. You know, we're, we, we have, well we have influences as I would say mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But we first
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:38:21):
10 years of any creator, it's all copies. Then you, you, you know, you've refined, you have your own
Paul Thurrott (01:38:27):
Thing,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:38:27):
But it's, it's derivative from all of that work. So I That's fair. Now Adobe's probably smart because they're business is with creators. So to do something that's procreator is probably a smart thing to do. But I can guarantee you if the, these court cases are lost by all the artists, everybody's gonna go back to. But Adobe also becomes a talking point for the court. It is possible to make a copyright free version of this.
Paul Thurrott (01:38:51):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:38:53):
But if you need to the argument, it's impossible not to. Yeah. As long as you ra massively expand the concept of fair use, then you don't need to. The point being the argument, there's no way around this because Adobe showed there is a way,
Paul Thurrott (01:39:07):
What we're really saying is, does fair use still make sense in this current form, in this new environment? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it may, the like, so many other things. Maybe this needs to evolve to account for what's happening in technology.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:39:20):
Yeah, sure. As, as it usually does. Right. Copyright was not all that interesting till we had the printing press in the first place. Right,
Paul Thurrott (01:39:27):
Right. Here you go. Yeah, good
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:39:30):
Point. I, I am interested to see how this goes. I would be surprised at the expanded fair use that much.
Paul Thurrott (01:39:36):
No, I don't think they're going to either. <Laugh>, but, but, but we'll see. Yeah, we'll see.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:39:39):
Yeah. And, and the fact is like, because Adobe does show show alternative, the real trade here is, is the Adobe stuff any good given the limited training set that it has? Can it make the things you want? Oh, I'm sure it can, but maybe not as good as mid journey. And certainly it can't do a Frida kalo styled picture of Mexico City. Cuz
Paul Thurrott (01:40:00):
Actually that's what's at the top.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:40:01):
<Laugh>. Is that from, is that from yeah, that's Adobe. Adobe, yeah. Oh, that's interesting. But, and you
Paul Thurrott (01:40:06):
Gave it what's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:40:07):
Frida kalo prompt?
Paul Thurrott (01:40:08):
Yeah, I gave it exactly the prompt I gave to Dolly. So is it
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:40:10):
As good as, it's interesting.
Paul Thurrott (01:40:12):
It's completely different. So the the one from the ones from Dolly and I, I used one of those for like I said, for that logo, which I, I prefer are much more impressionistic, I guess, you know, less realistic. This one looks like it's a li it almost looks like a painting of a real thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, a real place. Even though there's no,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:40:30):
And and you can see the Breaststrokes. It's beautiful.
Paul Thurrott (01:40:33):
Yeah. Yeah. It's good. It, it's it's more detailed mm-hmm. I would say than the other ones. And I said saying
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:40:42):
This came from licensed material, right?
Paul Thurrott (01:40:47):
Yes.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:40:47):
Okay.
Paul Thurrott (01:40:49):
Yep. And how much was it now? For now, because, well, it's free right now. It, it's on, it's in Bayer. So you have to have, you have to be part of one of their paid service plan, like Adobe creative Cloud or whatever. And you can see the logo, the little watermark
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:41:01):
In the corner. Yeah. At the bottom. This is Firefly. This is,
Paul Thurrott (01:41:03):
Well, it also says you can't use this for commercial use. Right.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:41:05):
So Oh, yeah. Not for commercial
Paul Thurrott (01:41:07):
Use. We're just having, because it's, it's not out yet. This is just a preview. So I got into the preview. I was just curious, you know, like I'm, I'm interested in all of these things. I often feed them the same prompt cuz I'm, you know, it's kind of a, a good way to test these things against each other. I mean, I, I feel like this satisfies my request and, and, and I should say there were seven other of these Right. That I created that it, it, sorry. It created and they're all roughly the same style. You know, it's, it's okay. Yeah, it's fine. I don't know that I would've used this in the background of a logo like I wanted to, but I also like the, they have more options about aspect ratio and things like that, which
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:41:46):
So people may use this, not because they have to, but because they'll feel better about it. I'm sure
Paul Thurrott (01:41:52):
You do. Well yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. You don't want someone to come back. Last thing you want is an ugly email from a lawyer. Said, Hey, nice logo there. That's a good, rich on your, you owe us money stupid free. Yeah, exactly. This YouTube channel that you make no money from we've, it looks like you've had x number of reviews. So that's that many violations and you owe us $11,000, you
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:42:12):
Know, well, it would be prudent to wait to, for commercial use mm-hmm. <Affirmative> until these cases, and there are a number of them are undecided.
Paul Thurrott (01:42:18):
So I don't know if you've might be a few years I met the world, but I don't think anyone's waiting. <Laugh>, you know, this the problem. It's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:42:24):
Not a lot of waiting lately.
Paul Thurrott (01:42:25):
Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem. Yeah. Anyhow, I, we don't have to go through the list. I, I just quickly will mention Google did launch Bard, so if you have a Google account, you might wanna go check that out, see how it,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:42:35):
You have to apply still haven't been accept accepted. Mm-Hmm. I haven't pulled
Paul Thurrott (01:42:40):
That, but Opera, I don't use opera, the browser. But if you, I would be worth looking at it just to look at the AI prompts and the chat G p T stuff. That's built into this sidebar now, you know there's a lot going on. So if you are one of those Bing Chat bot enthusiasts like we said, you can generate images now from text. So that's cool. And I believe that that's broadly available. I think that, you know, there was a wait list on that. I think it's just kind of out there. I still notice I can pretty much access it with Edge and not elsewhere <laugh>. So I don't know if that's gonna be a thing forever, but your best results, at least my best results have been with Edge. So, and I wouldn't use it otherwise. I'd flush that thing right down the toilet if I could. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But anyway you know, if you wanna look at Bing, you gotta do that.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:43:24):
Very interesting. We live in interesting times, don't we? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Paul Thurrott (01:43:28):
We sure do. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's nice. You know, cuz it's it was kind of a lull, left the pandemic, and now it's interesting again. Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:43:36):
I, I do, I I am seeing more people starting to use the phrase large language model
Paul Thurrott (01:43:40):
And less, which is crazy, right? Yeah. Just like yeah. As if this is just out in the norm, like mainstream language here. But
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:43:46):
It's it's also that fits with that basic idea that artificial intelligence is what you call something that doesn't work. As soon as it does work, it gets a new name. It becomes vision systems. Object recognition, sentiment analysis, large language model.
Paul Thurrott (01:43:59):
This is the very beginning of the Gates article. He basically defines AI and then generative, no, no, no, sorry. What do you call it? Artificial agi, which is what? Artificial
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:44:09):
Generalized intelligence. General the thing intelligence. The thing that we don't have, the thing we don't have
Paul Thurrott (01:44:13):
Already. He thinks we will not have.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:44:15):
Yeah. I I think he's right. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:44:17):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:44:18):
There, there's a great book I read called Algorithms Are Not Enough. That just gets into how complex a thing you're talking about here. It's like we're not even close. We're nowhere.
Paul Thurrott (01:44:30):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's maybe that's the quantum computing bridge <laugh> that we need. Yeah. You know, to get
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:44:36):
There. Jeff Hawkins, you know, the guy who created a graffitis and neuroscientist wrote a very good book on the subject about 15 years ago. His opinion is that the human brain just isn't a Von Noman machine. It's not the same architecture. So a Von Noman machine, which is what all our computers currently are, can't possibly oh boy, do general intelligence. But that's why he founded Numenta, which is the theory was create ships that worked in a massively parallel way like the human brain does because our brains are, are
Paul Thurrott (01:45:06):
Fast. They said that Qualcomm chips couldn't emulate X 86. And they do that all
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:45:10):
The time. <Laugh>. I like the, this is impossible, but if you give me enough money, I'll make it possible. Yeah, exactly. I don't know if they've solved the the thing, but I think his point is probably well taken that you're trying to duplicate a, a process that happens in a very different kind of machine. Yeah,
Paul Thurrott (01:45:27):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:45:29):
But which is not to say you can't make it look like the same process is happening. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Paul Thurrott (01:45:34):
Well, that's what's happening here.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:45:35):
Yeah. It looks like it. Thinking. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:45:37):
Hey, listen, we think dogs understand us. Of course we're gonna believe this baloney.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:45:41):
We we're, we're we're going like, we're gonna take advantage of your anthropomorphization to create a a, a product. Right. Right. Right. I had someone try to tell me how chat G P t knew something, and I'm like, right. Jack GP knew nothing. No.
Paul Thurrott (01:45:55):
Lemme see if I can, I don't want to Thomas Friedman today. Chime
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:45:59):
In. Oh, that was a good op-ed, I thought. What'd you think of that?
Paul Thurrott (01:46:01):
It was, but I thought it was good. But he said one thing where I was like, Nope. I, I I no misunderstand. Yeah. He, he doesn't get it because, you know, he is not, this is not his space, but he, I, I'll just paraphrase cuz I, I'm not gonna be able to find it quickly, but he basically said something like, I was amazed at what this thing was able to create for me, ah, out of, or invent or something. And I was like, no, that's not what it's doing. Like, you don't understand what's happening. It is amazing that it's able to pull in all this stuff and then present something to you. But don't, don't,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:46:30):
It's not, it. Well, it is clear. I mean, but
Paul Thurrott (01:46:33):
No, that's not the right word. I'll use the wrong word. Yeah. It, it, it, someone will find it. But he, I I was, I'm like, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, oh no, not exactly. You realize that it's kind of a layman's view of what's happening. And, and that's the problem. People are gonna think that these things are authoritative and intelligent.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:46:49):
It is a little overblown to call it our new Promethean moment. I don't know <laugh> Sure. I don't know if he wrote that headline though. So, yeah. Let's see.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:00):
It's probably somewhere in the first third
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:01):
Yeah. Craig Mundy is giving him. Yeah. So Craig
Paul Thurrott (01:47:03):
Mundy former Microsoft. Right,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:06):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:07):
Gives him the demo.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:09):
And I real, let's see. He asked Craig, Craig asked chat g p t four to summarize Planet
Paul Thurrott (01:47:16):
Words, things
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:16):
Submission,
Paul Thurrott (01:47:17):
Hundred words. Kinda says, I was amazed,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:18):
Did so perfectly that 200 words in a few seconds, then it did it in Arabic, then it did it in a ABC Darien verse, which is his hysterical I could barely sleep that night. Rights Friedman to observe an AI system. It's software microchips and connectivity produce that level of originality in multiple language
Paul Thurrott (01:47:38):
Originality. There was level of originality. Nope.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:40):
The seconds each time. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:41):
It's like, no, there's no originality.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:43):
Well, there is some, wait a minute though. I doubt anybody has ever done an A, B, C, D Arian version.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:50):
It doesn't matter. The point was you were fed these different things. Know what I mean? It's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:47:53):
Original. It's it's original.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:55):
It's <laugh>. I, okay. Well, I <laugh> all, all I can do is based on what it was fed. You know, it's just, it, it's there are only so many notes in the world. You know, you've heard every song eventually, that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, it's just, okay. You know, somebody monkeys with typewriters are gonna do, say Shakespeare, whatever.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:48:16):
I don't know. I don't, I don't think it's unfair to say this is, it's synthesizing data together. Yeah. But it's a, the creation is something that's never existed before. We're
Paul Thurrott (01:48:27):
Humanizing what we're seeing, just like we do with animals, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:48:30):
We see. Yeah. We should definitely should not lio
Paul Thurrott (01:48:32):
No, the dog does the little thing with the eyebrow and you're like, he knows you should
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:48:35):
Not answer Prophies obviously. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:48:37):
That's what we're doing. But we are doing, I mean, it's normal. It's human. It's just, I'm not, it, it's not, it's normal. That's, it's kind of the problem. Like, we're gonna make the these mistakes.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:48:46):
Yeah. There the, I I have now I've heard inside of Microsoft, there's a lecture going around in encouraging Microsoft people to resist Anthony Mars and the products. Right, right. For exactly that reason. It's like, don't be part of overhyping this.
Paul Thurrott (01:49:03):
Right. Well, geez, Microsoft invented the overhype of this. Oh no.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:49:07):
They're, they're pring the snot out of it. But they, they, they're trying to do is get their people to not promise things beyond what's possible. Here. Here I have asked chat g p t four to write a description of SharePoint and A B C D Arian. Okay.
Paul Thurrott (01:49:22):
Well that would be easy to understand than the English language version. Honestly,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:49:26):
<Laugh> actually it didn't do it. I properly, but maybe this isn't Bing chat. This is chat BT four, I don't know. Astonishingly brilliant. There's an AB SharePoint could caters to diverse enterprises. There's a de facilitating grandiose handling of important jobs. Oh, wow. It is alphabet order, knowledgeable, lean, and mighty. The network optimizes productivity quickly revolutionizing seamless. I'm sorry. Team utilization S is nonsense. Where webpages
Paul Thurrott (01:49:58):
Network optimizes productivity.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:50:01):
<Laugh>. Well, no, Xeno do, which I've never even heard of, but it does have an X. Yet zippy <laugh> allow businesses to create dynamic environments for enhanced collaboration. That was pretty impressive.
Paul Thurrott (01:50:14):
That's pretty good. It did it in
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:50:15):
Alphabetical, it did it by the alphabet,
Paul Thurrott (01:50:17):
But all it did was it was just fed a dictionary. <Laugh>, you know, it's just, I'm
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:50:22):
Not it, Dr. It dropped Zendo on it, which is friendly to strangers. Huh? It's Zed, yet zippy. Sure. All right. Let me see. <Laugh>, what, what should, let me ask it something else just to see. I mean, look at That's original. That sentence has never been said before in the history of time. I guarantee you probably shouldn't be said again. Okay. So, but it is original. It's a creation. Well, right. But, but I token every moment of every day is something
Paul Thurrott (01:50:52):
Original. Yeah. I don't know. Yes.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:50:56):
Something special into being original of
Paul Thurrott (01:50:58):
Everything is original. There's too much to ask.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:50:59):
Yeah. I could barely sleep that night, that level of originality in multiple languages in seconds. I would ask it to describe Paul th rotten Arabic, but I wouldn't know if it's accurate. Mm-Hmm.
Paul Thurrott (01:51:12):
<Laugh> Plus, I don't wanna start a jihad here. So
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:51:15):
<Laugh>, I,
Paul Thurrott (01:51:16):
Well, you know, my son, like, I keep saying, I, you know, when he was very young, said they shouldn't invent a thing to get answer any question. I said, mark, you're gonna be very excited to know he
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:51:24):
Didn't invent that thing
Paul Thurrott (01:51:24):
<Laugh>. But I, but you know, this to me, brings that kind of home. It's the, like I said, the internet is all the data and this thing is the, you know, the filtering or the the combining of that, you know, the making sense of that data mm-hmm.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:51:40):
<Affirmative>. And, and I think that's the most interesting part about these large language models is that they provide, they could provide an interface for do doing the thing that a lot of people struggle with, which is dealing with all of the information available on the internet. I think that's exactly what this is saying, but I'm not sure. I, I, I would hope that someone will take on the problem of only show me quality information. Yeah. You know, one of the problems we have with, with GitHub co-pilot is Right. You can't ask for secure code Okay. To code that respects security principles. Right. And then by that same token, you can't ask for accurate information of being chat <laugh>. Sure.
Paul Thurrott (01:52:21):
Hey, I wanna know the answer to the question, but be truthful.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:52:23):
Yeah. The Windows Weekly Show is an online radio program that discusses latest news updates and features of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The program is hosted by, I'm sorry, Richard, Leo LaPorte, Mary Jo Foley <laugh> Sure. Discuss developments provide their analysis. Oh, I can correct it. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:52:42):
Just put, I mean Richard, just put a wig on. No one will even notice.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:52:44):
Yeah. <laugh>. That's it. I have to start drinking more beer <laugh>. I'm just gonna help it.
Paul Thurrott (01:52:51):
Oh, there you go. You're feeding the demonn. What are you doing,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:52:54):
<Laugh>? Well, I'm just trying to be helpful. Thank you for the update. Here is the revised description. There you go. See, it's fixing it. I could see how people would kind of like go, wow, I I'm gonna be impressive. It how she takes Mary Jo Foley out and puts me in. It did. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it did. And it did it in Arabic first. <Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (01:53:19):
Well, we think, you think <laugh>, right? I mean, I don't think any of us read it, so I'm sure it is. I'm not, I
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:53:26):
Mean, I'm sure it's, well, let me see. I I maybe we can see functionality. You see Microsoft, and by the way, the French version still has Richard Campbell in it. There you go. There you
Paul Thurrott (01:53:46):
Go. Context matters. But it's, but it's Ard Campbell.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:53:49):
There you go. Reshow <laugh> Campbell. And we haven't, we haven't run the ca the, the token cash out yet. That's right. I'm still in the same yeah. Token cash. Sure, sure. That's right. I don't know. I, you know, look, I don't, I agree with you Richard. Richard. I don't want to be horn snuggled. And I don't want to anthropomorphize mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so I, I won't do either, but it's a pretty impressive thing, whatever it is. Well, and, and the the thing you remember about the hype cycle is eventually we get to the realistic expectation part. Right. Right. Right. So, so I think we're starting to, I think that's why co-pilot, for instance, now is being accepted because it's genera it's not it's not working in a vacuum. It's the same reason the text to or speech to text with generalized speech isn't as good as it is in a narrower vocabulary.
(01:54:47):
It's very good in medical and law because it's, it's a narrowed field. Right. And then field largely based on memorization. Yeah. And that too, the machine does a good job. That too. Right. yeah. When you have exams based on memorization, this stuff kills when you have, it's got better based on score score than I do. Sure. But if you have a me, if you have an exam based on comprehension Right. Doesn't do so well. Right. Yeah. Well, it's not comprehending at all. I guess that's the point. Exactly. Yeah. Except when we answer Hofi, right? <Laugh>,
Paul Thurrott (01:55:18):
Or is he
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:55:20):
Time four? The Xbox segment, Mr. Paul Throt will probably take the lead.
Paul Thurrott (01:55:25):
Yeah. So Phil Spencer told the Financial Times this past week that as soon as Europe passed its Digital Markets Act. Next year it's gonna open up a mobile game store, an iPhone, and Android and solve the, you know, the problem that it has, which is that it's not on mobile. And that's the thing I the what this, aside from how exciting that is, if it happens the thing we've lost sight of everyone is so focused on Call of Duty because Sony will not let this not be the conversation, right. That the Activision Blizzard acquisition is primarily about the future of Xbox, which is mobile. Right. Which is getting Xbox into the biggest part of the gaming industry. The part it's not in at all, which is mobile. And I think it's important just to kind of put that in perspective. Not that Call of Duty is not expensive or not important, rather, but rather that and, and, and is obviously about Bo bolstering it you know, it's game studios and so forth.
(01:56:20):
But the notion that Microsoft would pull Call of Duty off its most successful platform is ludicrous. It's always been ludicrous. And this is what Microsoft keeps saying categorically, objectively stupid. But the big hole in Microsoft's strategy, and I I have to say is, is mobile. Right? there's a couple of weird things to that. One, they are basically waiting for regulators to kind of fall in line on two different things. One, that the EU will implement this new law that's supposed to come, I think, into effect next May, if I'm not mistaken. Cuz you know, everything happens super slow. But also that regulators are gonna approve this acquisition, which we'll get to in a moment. But that looks increasingly likely, by the way. But you know what, Microsoft isn't completely innocent here. Microsoft has had years to enter the mobile market.
(01:57:14):
If you look across their many studios, I I ask yourself, how on earth have they not made mobile versions of some of these games? Many of which would run great on modern iPhones and iPads, which have incredible processors and graphics and high-end Android phones as well. It, it's I hope they're not just relying on regulators to make this happen or not just relying on the ac Activision Blizzard acquisition to occur, but this is something maybe Microsoft could have worked on a little harder over the years. Right. They've been a couple of Halo light games. But Halo would run fine on mobile <laugh>. It would, it would run beautifully. So we'll see.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:57:56):
So that, I mean, in Activision Blizzard making more money off mobile than console souls and PCs combined, right?
Paul Thurrott (01:58:03):
I mean Yep.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:58:04):
It does make a lot of sense for Microsoft to buy it for that purpose, because it, it has been wildly successful. Yeah. I
Paul Thurrott (01:58:09):
I, I could be wrong. I hate to say this out loud, but I feel like they make more money off Call of Duty mobile than they do off of Oh, it's probably true. Call duty elsewhere too. Yeah, I think
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:58:17):
So. I mean, look what, look
Paul Thurrott (01:58:18):
At Fort, which sounds crazy.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:58:19):
I think Fortnite is a really good example. I'm sure the bulk of the billions they've haul made. But then let's go to the counter-argument. How much money does Sony make on mobile games?
Paul Thurrott (01:58:28):
None. almost. And so that, but that's the thing. These guys are very comfortable in their own little markets. But, you know,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:58:35):
But aren't we getting to the point then that that Sony's complaint about this acquisition is about trying to delay Microsoft in the mobile market in a meaningful way?
Paul Thurrott (01:58:45):
Yeah. This is literally, I just, we just don't want this to happen. Right. We don't want a competitor <laugh>. We well, we, we like them as they are now. We,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:58:52):
Yes. We don't want them to go get into a market that we've never been able to get into or never really tried
Paul Thurrott (01:58:57):
To get into. Yes. And then I would add, by the way, cloud streaming to that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they don't, they've just kind of failed at that. And so, you know, we'll see. In fact let, let us not forget, I don't remember when this was, it might have been pre pandemic for all I remember, but Sony partnered with Microsoft on a future game streaming service. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, remember they were gonna use Azure
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (01:59:16):
Right. They, because they don't have their own cloud. Right. So they gotta use somebody's.
Paul Thurrott (01:59:21):
So, I don't know we'll see what happens there. I didn't write this up. I really enjoy Foss patents as a site. And he has written something really interesting today about the Microsoft acquisition of AC Activision Blizzard. And his basic point is that this is very incre. Increasingly it's become obvious that this is gonna happen. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that we've moved into a new phase where it's not just about complaining about it. It's like, well, how are we gonna fix this? Like, what do we do to make this go through? And that this is, when you look at what regulators are now talking about some of the ideas are dumb, you know, <laugh> for sure. But I, someone, some I think the UK said, well, what if you, what if you offered Call of Duty to Sony for more than 10 years? Like, 10 years is enough, guys. Okay. Yeah. Come on. I mean,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:00:11):
Didn't Microsoft point out in 10 years, Sony, you could make your own call of freaking duty?
Paul Thurrott (02:00:16):
Yeah, exactly. You could just make something. And by the way, Sony has an had incredible success with game franchises, including some that are first person shooters. I mean, there's no reason they couldn't do a military shooter that Yeah. You know, if they wanted to. I, they don't. That's all they want. That's I the point I, Richard made the point, it, it's, this isn't really about Call of Duty. It's really not. It, it's just keeping Microsoft down. That's what it's about. And
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:00:42):
Whatever language you can use, that'll, that'll work.
Paul Thurrott (02:00:44):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yep. And it's, it's just increasingly, it's getting stride and tithing.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:00:48):
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting to see the more organizations like Epic coming out on the other side of this going, I, this is a good deal
Paul Thurrott (02:00:55):
Org by the way, epic, literally, the and Tim Sweeney incredibly critical of Microsoft and their Windows eight app store. And the fear that this is somehow it was gonna take over, you know for app stores on windows mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And obviously that never happened. But it's interesting to seeing him come around to what Microsoft is trying to do today, because those guys were bitter enemies back. And at that, you know, about 10 years ago today, he's singing a completely different tune, which is kind of interesting. And he, you know, and of course he wants the same thing. He wants to put his game store on iOS and Android as well. Of course.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:01:29):
Right. And that's, you made an interesting point. Should, should Mobil become the primary platform even for Triple A?
Paul Thurrott (02:01:40):
Yep. Yeah. I think so. That's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:01:41):
A really interesting point. Well, it gets to the point that the primary device for most people is a, is a phone. Right? Right. That is the general
Paul Thurrott (02:01:49):
Purpose computer. You're powerful enough to do it. And it, what it really is, is about numbers. Right? This is unit, it's like the number of unit. There are
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:01:55):
Billions of phones and only hundreds of millions of PCs.
Paul Thurrott (02:01:58):
Yeah. I mean, and symbols in a fu like, imagine the future in which cons console gaming disappears. Let's just pretend it disappears. Right? People are playing games on mobile and they're playing games on PCs. The PC guys are gonna be the same jerks they are today. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. But if you want to run in, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever, you have to, you know, you can, we, we can build a PC that will always be better. It's like, yeah. Yeah. You'll always have that <laugh>,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:02:18):
But thousands of dollars and a limited market. And yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:02:22):
No, I know. But they'll always have that like, that, that will always be yours. That will always be there. It's fine. It's good. Yeah. You don't
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:02:27):
Take it away.
Paul Thurrott (02:02:29):
No, of
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:02:29):
Course not. In fact, I presume well see the problem with well, the mobile is you iOS dominates mobile, and that means you can't use the Unreal Engine, so you're gonna be using Unity. So it's, it's gonna hamper your desktop development.
Paul Thurrott (02:02:47):
This is, but I think, see, I think desktop is always gonna be important, even if it's a tiny share, because
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:02:51):
No, I
Paul Thurrott (02:02:51):
Agree. Cloud gaming, cloud gaming will be based on pc. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it'll be
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:02:55):
Based on, but it means that can't use, or you won't want to use the same engine for mobile as desktop. And that's a kind of a non-starter for some people, I think. But I think interfaces are so different. You're gonna need to anyway. You would want to. Yeah. It's, the screen's only so big. Unity. The interfaces are so limited. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Right.
Paul Thurrott (02:03:12):
My building just gave a little shimmy shake, little shot.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:03:16):
Well, you are in fact, on a fault zone famously.
Paul Thurrott (02:03:19):
That's the first time I've experienced it. That was a little weird.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:03:21):
Yeah. Mexico, Mexico City has had some pretty horrific earthquakes. I'll tell you what, if we go dark again, <laugh> I'll send my drone down your way and maybe you can dig you out. I don't know.
Paul Thurrott (02:03:32):
I'm on the sixth floor of a building here. I don't wanna <laugh> done anything bad out.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:03:38):
Anyhow. No it's
Paul Thurrott (02:03:40):
Good. You
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:03:40):
Think, anyway, these little bls as releasing the pressure so that you don't have to worry about the big one.
Paul Thurrott (02:03:44):
Surprised my wife hasn't come running out of the room. No, it's interesting. Okay. This building is designed for earthquakes, obviously. Okay. And, but one of the, but one of the weird things is like, if a big enough truck goes by, you get a little side to side. It's kinda like we, you know, we were on the boat last year, right? And you be sleeping. It was
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:04:00):
Kinda weird. Those
Paul Thurrott (02:04:01):
That weird sashaying back and forth. Yeah. It's a little bit. It was like that. And but this
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:04:06):
Was, by the way, I started a new chat with Bard and it retained the correction and knows that you are now the host of Windows Weekly. Congratulations. Richard Campbell. Even I feel special. Even the ai
Paul Thurrott (02:04:17):
The Matrix appreciates your contribution.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:04:19):
Hmm. <affirmative>, <laugh> you know, it's wild. This is wild. What else is what else is yes, going on in the Xbox?
Paul Thurrott (02:04:30):
Netflix. I don't know if anyone's noticed this. They're starting to do games. I'm a, I'm I keep bringing up this in certification thing with mobile, especially. I'm not a big fan. The, you guys will appreciate this. My wife didn't appreciate this when I border with it the other day. But there's this thing when you think about apps, wherever they might be, mobile apps are like Unix programs. So usually like they do a thing and that's it. You know, and I, I, and I think that's the normal way. I think that's how we think of apps. You go in into an app, you do this thing, you go into this setup app, you do this other thing. There are exceptions. You know, Microsoft Outlook on mobile obviously has calendar and email and contact, you know, blah, whatever. But I don't like podcasts in music apps. Right. And I don't like games in streaming video apps. <Laugh>. I don't, this is a, a a, a company putting their own corporate aims over common sense and over what its users want or need.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:05:20):
Right. This is net, this is Netflix trying to survive. Yeah. Every other streaming service is bound to a studio. Right. And in the end, Disney's gonna win it all. And so the only way they, you know, yeah. Wow. I guess,
Paul Thurrott (02:05:33):
Well, except for one. Okay. But hold on a second. I to just to kind of point that net, Netflix, to me is the modern version of HBO o meaning that they have mm-hmm. <Affirmative> their most original content, and it's usually pretty high quality. And, and I, I, I'd like to see that form of competition.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:05:48):
Yes. Except the Dow they're struggling with that, right? Yeah. Like No, I know, I know. They've made some duds. They've figured out that duds are expensive. Yeah. they're not sure how to do the right thing.
Paul Thurrott (02:05:58):
Right. You know, so, well, I, I, it's easy to know how to do the right thing. Don't say yes to everything. There, there was a, there was a point where if it was original on Netflix, it was gonna be good. But once you get burned by that enough times, cuz there's enough garbage. And it's not just shows, by the way, it's movies too.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:06:13):
Did did, did you watch 1899?
Paul Thurrott (02:06:16):
Not yet. It's in my
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:06:17):
Queue. Okay. Well, and, and then, so 1899 is an interesting show and I, I I could argue about that.
Paul Thurrott (02:06:24):
The time travel kind of a thing.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:06:26):
Yeah. It's weirder than that. Yeah. and they had a very strong setup at the end of the show for a second season. Okay. Which they did not get. Oh. Netflix announced they didn't get, and then it, then it came out that the reason they didn't get it was that they, that the first season didn't have strong enough watch through that. Not enough people watched the entire thing to the end. Oh, interesting. Okay. And it brought up this whole conversation about how many great series mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's not the first season. That was great. Right, right. They mentioned things like Breaking Bad. Right. Where, you know, breaking Bad
Paul Thurrott (02:07:01):
Became Seinfeld is a great example that
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:07:02):
Absolutely. When it launched. And so we, again, speaking to this whole idea of Netflix isn't necessarily a great producer of shows.
Paul Thurrott (02:07:12):
Oh.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:07:13):
You know, they're, they're struggling with that particular issue and a lot of that knowledge exists in other places. Yeah. In, you know, I, I oh, they just produced the money that pays the producers of the shows. Right. I mean, but they, I think the same model for Netflix with games as it is with shows. Right. They write a check.
Paul Thurrott (02:07:30):
Well, okay. I I, I don't mind Netflix doing, I would like there to be a Netflix games app that I can choose. It's weird.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:07:39):
I I haven't even have you tried to? I mean, what do you, do you go to
Paul Thurrott (02:07:42):
Netflix? No, I will never. It's in Netflix. Yeah. It's just in new, it's in the little list of things that you can watch. It's and what happens. Yeah. You know, we make games. I don't know. I've never done it. I it's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:07:50):
So weird. But the barrier to installing another piece of software is so
Paul Thurrott (02:07:55):
Hot. Oh, I hear you. I, I, look, I know, I, I just, I don't know. It's Facebook and Facebook Messenger, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, these are two different things, sort of. They should be two different apps. They're going to be again, apparently.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:08:07):
Yeah. It's too weird. Yeah, I agree.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:08):
I agree. I don't, I just don't like, I, to me, mobile makes sense because it's simple. And part of being simple is that we don't have Outlook style apps on Mobile <laugh>, you know? Except that we do have
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:08:21):
No do ever anything. Apps there are simple. You got peanut butter in my chocolate.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:26):
Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I mean, the office app is a good example, or I guess it's called the Microsoft 365 app is No, that works. And by the way, outlook Mobile works. I, there, I'm sure there are millions of people that use it and love it. And it, it's fine. I don't know. I think, I think complexity is the problem. And I, I just, and I, I especially don't like complexity that has to do, like I said, with corporate Ames. Hey, did you feel the, I think we just had an earthquake.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:08:52):
<Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:54):
It was a try. She tells me it was a truck.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:08:55):
Yeah. There you go. It's
Paul Thurrott (02:08:56):
Easy to, well, that went on for a while. I've never felt that before. That was,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:08:59):
It's a big truck, like, like, like an earthquake. Only it has a beep when it backs up <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (02:09:04):
No. Well, we get, we get No, no. There, there are stupid big trucks. Trucks here, but I've, that one went on for a long time. There's
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:09:11):
A lot of
Paul Thurrott (02:09:11):
Trucks. Yeah. Okay.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:09:14):
What else? Any what? Yes.
Paul Thurrott (02:09:16):
What else? Yes. What else? I, I, I had my, I mentioned this probably a show or two ago, but based on the timing of the release of games for through Xbox and PC Game Pass, I was like, I think this is gonna be a month where they have three sets of releases. And they confirmed that this month by releasing or announcing Mo b the show 23 we're in version 23 is coming on March 20th. So it's only, well, it's two games, I'm sorry. And also something called Infinite Guitars. So the, there's two more games coming in March. We, here we are on the 22nd. And they're announcing two more that will pop up by the end of the month. So this has been kind of a big month for our Xbox Game pass across the board, so that's cool.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:09:55):
Awesome.
Paul Thurrott (02:09:56):
Yeah. And this isn't such a great deal, per se, but it is the steam deck's first anniversary. And so Val is having a sale and they're 10% off actually until tomorrow. So you gotta move quick on that one. Sorry. As March 23rd is the end of that.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:10:11):
Harold, you listen to this stream to it. I saw my first Steam deck out in the wild and I have some friends who worked on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At Steve. So I immediately pinged them Sure. From the plane and said, Hey, I saw a Steve, it
Paul Thurrott (02:10:21):
Was on and it was on a plane. Right. Because that's where I've
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:10:23):
Seen on a plane. That's where you use them, right?
Paul Thurrott (02:10:25):
Yep. That's where I saw it too. Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:10:28):
It's an impressive device. It's substantial. It's not a, you could kill
Paul Thurrott (02:10:32):
A small, small, it's a, not a little, you know, it's a Yeah, yeah. It's a tray table.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:10:36):
<Laugh>. Yeah. It is a, it is a tray table. Yep. It doesn't unfold like a laptop, but everything. But yeah, I've played with it for a little while and I said, I said, you know, I haven't attended a switch. I don't need a steam deck.
Paul Thurrott (02:10:47):
Okay. Yeah. There you go. The
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:10:48):
Switch is le is a much more SELT machine than the Steam. Oh yeah. Steam. And the games are designed for that form factor. And that's the big problem with Steam
Paul Thurrott (02:10:56):
Deck. That's my big problem. I can't, I can't look at a pc, the text from a PC game on a tiny screen. I just could never, I'd have to have, you know, coat bottle glasses on and be right on top of it.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:11:06):
Yeah. It's not, it's not a good experience, but I guess it's, we're always comfortable with it. Nintendo's ability to remake games on a new platform Yeah. And just mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and to just make, it's not just that they have a walled garden. It's that they have like six of them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even Porter on
Paul Thurrott (02:11:21):
The Switch, the Disney radio games.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:11:22):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know it's, yeah, why not? Why
Paul Thurrott (02:11:25):
Not? Hey, we're gonna get Call of Duty on the switch. You know, <laugh> Wow. Again, I should say people forget this, but Call of Duty three was on the, we and you used a little nunchuck thing to throw the grenades. <Laugh> <laugh>, which I have to say is, is was, it was cool in a way, but it's also hard not to let go of it.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:11:41):
Cause Yeah. Game. There goes, there goes the controller.
Paul Thurrott (02:11:44):
You're throwing a grenade, you know, you wanna, you get one
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:11:46):
Of your controllers who
Paul Thurrott (02:11:46):
Explode. Yeah. Yep. It worked
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:11:49):
Fine. Are you ready for the back of the book? Sure. I'm ready for the back of the book and some brown liquor. You know, this show brought to you? As it always is, as it has been for more than a decade by Cash Fly. We love Cash Fly. It's our content delivery network. We know, as I think, you know, if you have a website or a game or, or video, the customers aren't gonna hang around for your content to load. They will leave within a seconds. So don't give 'em a reason to leave Dramatically. Increase your sites and your apps speed over long distances for global audiences with cash flow. With over 3,500 clients in over 80 countries around the world, organizations like twit consistently use cash fly for scalability, reliability, and unrivaled performance. Some markets are more challenging than others in content delivery costs can vary drastically.
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Paul Thurrott (02:15:50):
Okay,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:15:51):
Go ahead.
Paul Thurrott (02:15:52):
Well, I'm, I'm, I, I know that most people think of me as Microsoft Windows, whatever, but honestly I feel like a lot of my kind of professional life, it's been more around like productivity and efficiency kind of stuff. And I'm fascinated by things that can help me be more productive. Right. I am not a fan of meetings. I don't like scheduled events. I don't like alarms, you know? And I was thinking through all this kind of stuff and over the holidays I decided I was gonna try to go down this inbox zero route because it, my inbox becomes a source of great stress <laugh>. And you know, depending on what it is, I wanna make sure I'm dealing with email in some fashion. So if it's an individual writing man, I wanna make sure I got back to that person, right?
(02:16:34):
If it's a PR person, something going on in the world with an NDA or something, I wanna make sure I'm on top of that. If it's garbage, I wanna make sure I deal with that correctly. So my instances of reported phishing and spam email to Google workspace have gone up approximately 1400% since January 1st. I keep getting emails about it. I cannot believe how many things you're reporting to us. Why do you keep doing this? But I've been trying to triage email and I would say inbox zero is not something you set and forget. You have to keep working at it. It's also inbox zero with an asterisk because there's usually three to five emails sitting in there because I keep things that are pending NDA type, you know, embargo things until those things pass. But I gotta say, I, I've been very, it's been very successful for me. And in a weird coincidence, I mentioned this to my wife this was a month or two ago, but she's doing the same thing and she does something I don't do, which is she actually snooze his email so that they come back again. I'm like, no, I wanna, I want that thing to go away, <laugh>. I don't wanna, I don't want it to be like a little mole coming up under the ground or whatever.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:17:37):
I was always careful with being the path of lease resistance for certain subjects. Yeah. So there's, I've, I've, I've had a 24 hour tickle folder for a long time Oh, interesting. Which is, I'm just gonna drop that in the 24 hour folder. Yeah. And then, because you'll probably answer, revisit this before I get there, after 24 hours, if you still don't have an answer, fine, I'll do it. But I don't want to be the, do not put energy to things you don't want more of. Right. And if you're the path of lease resistance for something, you're just gonna keep getting
Paul Thurrott (02:18:06):
Yeah. I, it's, I would've hoped by this point email it would've become less important. But in my life it's incredibly important and it's the
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:18:16):
Primary way I can Well, you could change tools, right? Like, it's a question of are you gonna move?
Paul Thurrott (02:18:21):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the big advantages today too is that email is very easily searchable. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I have a rather ridiculous folder structure that I maintained for my, the documents that I write. But when it comes to email, I don't do any sort of filtering or sorting or anything like that. And if I need to find something, you know, whatever it is, if Leo wrote me an email, I gotta find it. Or if some PR person did in two
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:18:43):
Years ago, six explains a lot. Paul <laugh>, I
Paul Thurrott (02:18:46):
Know Underst understand. No email search works great.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:18:48):
Okay. But you have to search you to know, to search for it.
Paul Thurrott (02:18:52):
Yeah. No, I mean, if I'm literally, it's like I need to find this thing. I can't remember when it was, but I remember maybe the name of the person who sent it to the company. It's very easy to find. Yeah. there's no reason to, you know, overthink that stuff. Anyway, it's worked out for me.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:19:08):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (02:19:08):
I am not paid by the company. I am just a happy user. It's not a company, it's just a way of doing things. Anyway, <laugh>. Yeah. I almost forgot. I al I almost forgot to mention this, which is ridiculous cuz this is the biggest thing that has consumed me in a long, long time. Last week I completed windows everywhere. The book. It's available now at Pub.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:19:27):
Oh. everything everywhere. All at Lean all the time. Yeah. Yeah. All at once. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:19:33):
Nice. So,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:19:34):
Congratulations friend. Yeah. Thank you. Well done. Let me make a note. This book is
Paul Thurrott (02:19:38):
Quite big. And it's gonna get bigger cuz I'm gonna write, I'm writing, I'm already working on new content for it. But for now I'm, I I'm gonna kind of let it sit for a little while. It is complete. Right. So the neat thing about this book is that unlike the Windows 11 field guide, which is ongoing, and I keep adding to it, this book as it stands, is com a complete work. It's the history of Windows over 30 years from 1985 to 2015. The second half of the, that history is considerably bigger than the first half cuz I was involved with it personally, <laugh>. And so I have stories and internal things I got and whatever. And so there's a lot of pictures and blah, blah, blah, whatever. So
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:20:16):
Windows everywhere, Paul Thoro. So don't be fooled by the 90% complete thing. That's just
Paul Thurrott (02:20:25):
Sam adding content to it. Yeah. Well this, so there's a few things that are missing. I want to do like a Microsoft Code word list. That's from the book. I wanna do a terminology list. And I have that new content I'm gonna add as well. But it is a complete work. Yeah.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:20:37):
Isn't, and of course you get the updates automatically, right. Or free or somehow
Paul Thurrott (02:20:41):
Yep. You got it for free. Yep, that's right. It's about 930 something pages
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:20:45):
Monthly. You've been working hard. Yes. It's, wow. All right. And you set your price windows everywhere. Lean pub.com. It's actually lean pub.com/windows everywhere. If you want to go there direct directly. Yep. And you used, what did you use stable diffusion for the cover?
Paul Thurrott (02:21:06):
No, actually. So I <laugh> I doing masking in. Yes. So doing masking in Photoshop is very difficult and I, I, I do it so infrequently and I always forget. So every time I have to do it, I look it up online and I, I was having a hard time getting it work and I thought, I wonder if Affinity Photo does this Wicked easy. So I did this cover in Affinity photo. In the background image is a li it's a api, bay Pixel Bay Pixel Bay Bay Pixel Bay image. It's freely licensed for commercial use. It is not the Bliss wallpaper. Sure
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:21:34):
Looks. Oh yeah, it sure does. Yeah. <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (02:21:37):
Well, no it's not, it's a license free, it's free to use. So it's a smart, it's like the bliss wallpaper, right?
Paul Thurrott (02:21:43):
Yeah. So nice. From Windows X.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:21:46):
Very, very nice Windows everywhere. The rise and fall, the most important software platform of all time. And it's available Lean Pub dot
Paul Thurrott (02:21:55):
Somebody by the way, questioned that subtitle said, are you kidding me? The most important software platform of all time? I said, sure. So tell me another software platform that had 95 plus percent market share. And I'll, we can talk <laugh>. I mean Yeah. You know, I, I agree. I mean, from that perspective it's absolutely, it's not even close.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:22:11):
Yeah. app pick of the week. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,
Paul Thurrott (02:22:18):
Yes. Visual Studio
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:22:19):
Card. That's said, that's what you said right here in the, in the show. That's
Paul Thurrott (02:22:23):
What scripture No, it's in there. Yeah. Yeah. So here's the thing. <Laugh>, I when it comes to books, I rely on Raphael Rivera for a lot of the backend stuff cuz he's just a genius programmer technical, he's just genius. And so one of the issues with Windows anywhere, everywhere is I was having EUB publishing issues that I I, there was nothing I could do to solve them. And I was also having lean pub system errors that had nothing. That was, I was positive. I had troubleshoot it for days. And he figured out in both cases what it was. And it was not something I could fix myself. It was this backend technical stuff that I don't even understand. So in the process of this I said to him, I said, you know, one of the challenges with this book is it's like almost a thousand pages long and it's too long and I have to do stuff, stuff for the images.
(02:23:08):
I have to reduce the, I have to, you know, do whatever. And he said, well, you've using Visual Studio Code for this, aren't you? And I said, no, <laugh>. So I used Visual Studio Code for like web dev and for Flutter stuff. I've looked at it in the past writing like markdown type stuff. And by the way, I might be moving in that direction soon. That's a different story. But Visual Studio Code. So when, when you're at like a web dev, one of the things that you do with that is you open a folder. This is a central feature of this product. It opens a folder and then you can do stuff with the files in the folder. You can you can create new files, obviously you can compile those files. You can do whatever you want. So what, what you can do, because the, the book is in GitHub, so you open it in Visual Studio Code and then you can do a, a search and replace.
(02:23:55):
So for all the images that were a hundred percent, I don't rem thousands, I mean thousands and thousands of instances. Just if, let me look at the thing to give you the exact number here for the, the, this book, the, the Markdown, the number of markdown files that make up this book is 157, each of which contains from one to 15 images. Right. Wow. So do the math, whatever that is. So I need to, they're all a hundred percent. I'm like, this is taking up too much space. I need to make them what I did in the Windows of 11 field guide, make them 75%. Do you have any idea how long that would take <laugh>? If I went, opened every one of those files and did that manually? You could do a global search and replaced in the folder. Did it in one second.
(02:24:39):
It fixed the entire book. The book went from 1000 pages down to 938 pages in one second, because it's not just that page size. I also did things like correctly formatting image code. There were things like m dashes and smart quotes and whatever else. I, I bang every one of these things. One second, one second. The entire book Get everything formatted. Exactly right. So what I can tell you right now is this book is the cleanest book from a code sense perhaps that has ever been created. It is absolutely the cleanest book that I have ever created. And it's because of Visual Studio Code and it's because Raphael recommended that to me. Good.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:25:16):
Wow. As has Mr. Campbell owed more than once isis. Oh, no. Big. I'm a big believer. It, it serves
Paul Thurrott (02:25:22):
Me well. Yeah. Yeah. It is an incredibly versatile tool. And I'll just mention real quick you can use it for, to write in markdown and I, I, there's a couple fun. There's a Microsoft Office theme extension you can get to make it look like Word, which is hilarious. <Laugh>, there are spell checking and all that kind of stuff. There is an output to html, which is critical for me because I need to output clean code to WordPress. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> so I can use this thing. It has a what's it called? A doc a command. Not a command prop. It, there's a thing, it's like control shift. P brings up this thing, export, it exports the cleanest H TML in the world. It's perfect. This might be, this may be turning into the thing I used to write as well. Visual Studio. Visual Studio Code is a, is possibly the greatest single application that's ever been written. <Laugh>. It's, it's kind of unbelievable. And a large part of it's cuz the extensibility model Yeah. That allows you to,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:26:23):
And the community that's grown up around building those extensions, it's tremendous. Yes. And it's electron. Ah, who thought
Paul Thurrott (02:26:32):
It? Yeah. You know. Well, yeah. But you know something, this thing is not a big fat heavy anything. Yeah. It is very lightweight. I don't know what to tell you. I know, I know. What we were talking about somehow coding challenges some time ago I was using Visual Studio Code. I never have to, had to leave the environment. You can compile, if you're compiling, if you're using JavaScript, you can just run it, it runs from the internal terminal. It, it's like every, you don't never leave. Like it just works. It's rather incredible. I dunno. It's just Visual Studio Code is,
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:27:03):
It's impressive.
Paul Thurrott (02:27:04):
It is impressive. It's great to
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:27:05):
Really, okay. I'm getting nauset with all this romance. I'm just gonna move on here.
Paul Thurrott (02:27:08):
Well, listen, we started the show with a bunch of ranting. I wanted to end it on a high note.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:27:12):
I, I can't come on this show and say emax is the second coming. I'm not gonna do that, but, okay. Okay. You wrote your book and Visual Studio code. Okay. Fine. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (02:27:24):
Don't be a hater, man.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:27:26):
<Laugh>, I think you're, I think you're Harshing is mellow actually. The fact that vs. Code's free and available on every platform is pretty, it is really amazing. I It's powerful. Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible.
(02:27:37):
Let us get the run as radio update from Mr. Rich Campbell right here. Ah, had a chance to talk to our friend Ned Pile, who, who, who mostly tweets about his dogs these days, but he still works very much at the storage pace at, at Microsoft. And a great thinker. He's been the guy leading the campaign to end SMB one, at least in the Windows world, but preferably everywhere because it's so insecure. You know, SMB three being vastly superior. And we did a show a while back, published today about SMB over Quick, which is a protocol for doing secur secure file communications over the internet. So just getting rid of, of you know, VPN connections or having to store in the cloud. You know, cloud's great if it works for you. If you want to use Dropbox or OneDrive and so forth, that's awesome.
(02:28:30):
But if you have a file server and you now have worked from home folks, you're probably making them VPN in, and that's can be problematic for performance re resourcing. It's tough. And so, modern versions of SMB with modern Windows, windows Server 2022, you could set up these QuickBase file servers really efficient. And they protect things like U N C path. So if you've got software dependent on a n c path, like OneDrive's not gonna help you. You're, you're stuck. But you can recreate that UNC path with s and b over quick. Hmm. Hmm. So, Hmm. Very interesting. Just a modernization of this is the new way and a, an effective way to still provide files if you need to host it yourself. And a little brown liquor education. Please. are you ready for the next phase of the story, friend?
(02:29:24):
Ready? So you know, going back to the beginning, we talked about Rowan barley and malting and milling and mashing. So where, where we left off was at in the mash ton, right? We, we have now taken the grist and run water through it, and we've made wart the same stuff you'd make for beer. You've now extracted sugars using warm water, and now it's time to mix the yeast in. We're gonna ferment. And so the water extraction process fairly high temperature, comparatively speaking, we're talking 60 to even as high as 90 degrees centigrade. So that's, you know, 104, 130 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit in the measurements of the oppressors <laugh>. But yeast can't tolerate that kind of heat. <Laugh> get with the rest of the world friends. Yes. Yes. Cel Celsius is your friend. So yeast is now, yeast is going to concern these sugars and release alcohol as and, and carbon dioxide in the process.
(02:30:30):
So this is where the alcohol comes into the equation. And yeast, the, the typical yeast that they use is optimized for 34 degrees centigrade. That's what it'll be the most productive. That's about 93 degrees Fahrenheit above 35 degrees centigrade. The yeast starts to die. So you don't want to be that hot. So first problem with your warts, you gotta cool it down. They have heat exchangers to do this. And then they will immediately introduce the yeast into the wart as it's pumped into the wash back. And we'll talk about wash backs in a bit, as opposed to backwash, which we don't want, as opposed to backwash, which you don't want near as much. No. it's interesting to think that we've been making whiskey for hundreds of years, and yet we've only just started. We understanding yeast is relatively new. So when you talk about original whiskeys back pre 18 hundreds, the yeast mostly came from beer.
(02:31:24):
So we'd long ago learned that lambic yeast available in the air would, would make alcohol out of grain malted grain to be turned into beer. And the process that was used in the pre, pre 18 hundreds for making whiskey is they would stir the wart with large sticks, branches of the large tree. Huh. And the yeast would tend to stick to these sticks and survive. So as they moist, you again, stir again, they'd propagate the yeast while not knowing what yeast was. Oh, now the yeast would propagated. They didn't work, but they didn't know why. Exactly. Why in fact, they thought the yeast was a necessary, B was a unfortunate byproduct. Oh. Not recognizing it. It was actually the thing that was making the alcohol. Interesting. Now, the first, the scientific evidence that yeast was the part of the process actually comes from Louis pasture.
(02:32:19):
So pasteurization, like all of that stuff. It was Louis Pasture in 1879 who said, yeast is why fermentation exists. And started identifying strains of yeast. And in fact, shortly after that, we have sort of the base yeast that's used. The, what they call distillers yeast, which is Sacra ISIS's Seia. By the 1930s, the, there were companies working in Scotland that created a hybrid between Seia and another kind of use called Sacra Isis diastasis. That company would eventually become diagio. The, the names actually shared. We'll talk about the, the companies that own distilleries later, cuz that's a, a long conversation. And that particular hybrid, what they call dcl M strain was so popular that at that for a period, for, for 50 something years until at least 2003, it was the mandated yeast. This is the yeast at all Scottish distilleries would use. And in fact, many still do.
(02:33:21):
Although we now are have more modern, more efficient yeast that are starting to become more popular like MX and Mai and so forth. The yeast is a living creature. It's a sing. It's a, it's a large single cell and it consumes sugars and it's kept alive. It's live in a liquid form and it's typically stored in a liquid form and used steadily. It used to be common for distilleries to produce their own yeast at scale. They don't anymore. There are specialists in all of this, but the concentrated yeast paste or yeast cream as they call it is actually mixed with the wart as it's pumped into the wash back. And this is a, a kind of a race. This is a fair, that's
Paul Thurrott (02:34:01):
A, it was a fairly disgusting sentence. I know that you just Yes. Yeah. Issued I know I had a stomach issue the other night that was just like this. I
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:34:10):
I mixed, I mixed wart and yeast cream into the wash back <laugh>. Yeah. Like
Paul Thurrott (02:34:15):
Cow, don't get your wart, my wash back
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:34:18):
<Laugh>. Yes. Okay. Go now. And then fermentation takes off immediately within hours. You start, you, you, within hours, you have a alcohol concentration of alcohol. Now when I've took tours and distilleries and gotten a chance to talk to the folks that run the fermentation and then makes these very, very Scottish peoples are often difficult to understand. <Laugh> most fermentation runs for days, in fact. Hmm. And they'll study the weather very closely before they start a fermentation batch because it, the temperature matters. They don't want to overheat and they don't want it to be too cold. It's kind of a minimum of 48 hours of fermentation. The average is more like 60 to 75 hours, although some distilleries prefer much longer dis fermentations up to over a hundred hours. The gen the, the sort of general rule is that short fermentations gives you more grain flavors and long fermentations create more complex flavors as they call it.
(02:35:16):
The, the fermentation process is with rather vigorous, the concentration is high. They have a high specific gravity. And so the yeast is so active when you see these, these mesh, you see these wash backs in action and they're 25,000 to 40,000 liters. They're big, like, okay, back to the measurements of the pressure's like 9,000 gallons <laugh>. And the, so the yeast is so active, it almost looks like the liquid is boiling. Like it's that much energy and there's a lot of carbon dioxide being released. In fact, it's dangerous to get your head over top of a wash back cuz you, you cannot, you can literally knock yourself out and fall into the mixture. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, which you can't swim in because the release of carbon dioxide so rapid, you will sink to the bottom and be stuck there. Oh lord. So, and they keep lids over these wash backs for that reason, trying to keep you safe. It also generates a lot of foam. And so they have a device that sits on top of it that stirs the they call it a switcher to stir the, the foam to stop it from overflowing the wash back. Traditionally wash backs were made of larch the same sticks they used to stir in the first place. Wow. Did you say larch? The larch? Yes. Lunch wood. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:36:31):
I have alar my in the front yard. You should
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:36:34):
Be making whiskey my friend. You could be the whiskey.
Paul Thurrott (02:36:36):
It's the ugliest tree on earth.
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:36:38):
All the re more reasons
Paul Thurrott (02:36:39):
Either a pine nor a des decid situation. There go, it is a mess
Leo Laporte/Rich Campbell (02:36:43):
Now. All the more reason to cut it down, slice it into planks and make a wash back from it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Interesting. Now later generations of wash backs use Douglas fur, Oregon pine, you know, new world trees. They're generally looking for tight green, no knots, long planks. That's cuz you're making your wash baths quite big. Modern wash backs are made of stainless steel and there's a lot of conjecture about stainless steel versus wood. The first is the heat problem because stainless steel radiates heat extremely well, which means it won't overheat and kill the yeast, but it might cool down and slow the fermentation rate down woods much more insulating. But then you do have the battle of you get too warm and start injuring your yeast. You're racing to do this fermentation because there are other things that, like the wart, there's other bacteria that want to consume that sugar.
(02:37:36):
And the, one of the most difficult ones to deal with is lactobacillus. The stuff that makes yogurt. And it, the lactose vaus bacteria is particularly successful in at attacking wart because it's byproduct is acidic. So it actually raises the acidity, which cripples yeast. And so you can end up what they call a sour batch. You sour the wart because lactobacillus is, has taken the batch essentially. And it can be, it ends up being thrown away. The battle against bacteria is cleaning. And so stainless steel is popular cuz it's very easy to clean very vigorously where wood is more difficult to clean. Most distilleries that use wooden wash backs use high temperature steam and they will pump very hot steam pressurized steam into the wash back and hold it there for 30 minutes or so, essentially to kill all of the bacteria.
(02:38:30):
There's no evidence that there's flavors of the wood that enter the wart at this time as it's being fermented just because the wood is reused so much. But there is a discussion about lamb ambient bacterias that do add positive flavors, not lactobacillus. And so lots of the soldiers have gone back and forth with when they started removing these wooden wash backs and flavors stainless, that the flavor of their of the wash back changed. Typically yeast can on, when yeast ferment the wart, they only get up at about seven, 8% before the alcohol kills the yeast. In the old days, they would filter that as kind of a raw sour beer they call Joe. And certainly it's part of the tasting process to understand like how your fermentation is going detect a, a soured a a soured wash back before you put it into the stills.
(02:39:26):
And so depending on the distillery, you're finding that some distilleries have stu even new wash backs are being done in wood, not just for traditional purposes, but they believe in the flavors that come from the wood versus stainless steel. And that leads us to today's distillery and a particular version of their whiskey. This is the Ben Nevis distillery. Now Ben Nevis is located beside Ben Nevis Mountain, the largest mountain in the uk at a very high mountain. And one of the claims to fame for the benes distilleries. It takes the highest water source in Scotland at about 900 meters that it takes this very pure spring water to make their their whiskey. The location is in the very far western highlands, not far from Oban. The, the very, very western highland area is a little bit different than a lot of the other Highland areas.
(02:40:20):
Highlands quite large. It's on the site of Fort William. Fort William. That original fort was built in the 16 hundreds to manage the SCOs as the English said. It was literally named after William of Orange after the 1688 revolution. So, just a reminder, there's been people living in that part of the world for a very long time. But that's where the Ben Nevis distillery is. The original distillery was built by the McDonald family famously long John McDonald's, a six four tall man in the 18 hundreds was part of the original distillery. They built a second in 1878, although it only ran for about 30 years before it was shut down. The original distillery continued to function under the McDonald family until 1941. In 1941, it was sold to a Joseph Hobbs. And Joseph Hobbs is a Canadian who, who grew up in British colo, who was born in the uk but grew up in British Columbia.
(02:41:22):
Lots of Scotts in bc but became a millionaire by bootlegging whiskey to a, to Americans of Prohibition. The Hobbs brothers owned a shipping firm that shipped between the UK and the US and Canada. And when prohibition came on, they learned to take whiskey. Famously they bought thousands of cases of teachers highland cream and then ran it in their ships around to California where people weren't expecting whiskey to land. And the ship would lay offshore and then speedboats would come and pick up the case of whiskeys and bring it into the low to local w bootleggers. And when prohibition finally ended, this enterprise was going to, to wind down. They took that money and they started buying distilleries. And that's originally they, they've created a firm called the Associated Scottish Distillers and bought a lot of different distilleries, including Brook Latic.
(02:42:18):
And then it wasn't until that was in the thirties after prohibition was over, it wasn't until 41 that the De Nevis distillery got bought. Hobbs shut down the distillery for 14 years. He essentially rebuilt it. And this is one of the reasons I wanted to mention Ben Nevis. Cause in 1955 when he reopened, he had made concrete wash backs. It was heresy. And yet Hobbs is remembered as a fighter of the young, of the small for the small Scottish producer. But he used concrete wash backs and a coffee still. And we'll talk about stills in a later episode because distillation is a complicated process. But a coffee still is a very unusual still for Scottish whiskey. It doesn't, it doesn't make coffee the drink. It's a style of still, it does continuous distillation versus batched distillation. He also stuck to making it with his own yeast.
(02:43:10):
For a long time, he would blend brewers and distillers yeast, which was, again, considered heresy. And yet we, he did it for, for 30 years. The distillery shut down again, in se in 78 and was sold back to the McDonald family in 81. They, they took a couple of years to refit it removing the, the the nick a still and then ultimately shut down again in 86. In 1989, it was sold to the Nicki Company. This is as Sahi, this is a Japanese firm that owns a number of Japanese distilleries. And we can talk about Japanese whiskey sometime later. It's a huge story. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But this is the only Scottish distillery owned by Nicki. And of, in fact, more than half of all the whiskey that Ben Nevis makes goes into blends for Nick Hay's blends. When Nicki took it over.
(02:44:00):
And the funny thing is that Nicki, being a Japanese distiller, the Japanese distilleries use a lot of coffee stills, but for the Scottish distillery, they removed the coffee still and they removed the concrete wash backs and put in six stainless steel wash backs and two Oregon pine wash backs. So they use both as part of their process to make their particular whiskeys. The Ben Nevis 10 that I re refer to, it's a little bit hard to come by, but if you go looking for Ben Nevis whiskeys, you'll have a tough time. They do a lot of blending. There is an their own blend called the Dew of Ben Nevis is lovely and an inexpensive, it's very much like a Johnny Walker red or Johnny Walker Black. But the 10 is a classic. We is a reference version of what they call West Highland whiskeys.
(02:44:49):
It's aged in bourbon casks. And come they, they talk about coffee and chocolate and coffee notes. It's got a a lot of color, which comes from the bourbon barrels. They almost talk about a little salty texture to it because it's on the Western highlands, which gets a lot more ocean exposure. But it's a nice whiskey and it's a, like I said, a classic Highland. It's not so rich as the space with Cher's and, and ports. It's much more the, the lighter flavor. And unfortunately, this particular moment, the Ben Nevis distillery website is un maintenance <laugh> new site coming. Went to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, well. And so I linked to one of the popular sellers of, of Scottish whiskeys for the Ben Nevis 10. There are many other dish editions even this 10 depending on its edition. Like they say, the 2019 version of the 10 is better than the 2021.
(02:45:41):
But they're all great to drink if you can find them. I would typically drink a Ben Nevis while I was in Scotland, where it's easier to come by. And that, my friends, is the story of East Cream and wart mesh in a nutshell. Next week on animal husbandry, we'll take <laugh>. Wow. It does have a Wow. So there's fermentation for you. Yeah. And he, you know, now you've got an 8% alcohol solution that you now need to, you could now add some hops and make it into beer, or we can fire it through a couple of stills. What do we need next And it into and make it into whiskey? So next up will be distillation. I, you know, it's funny cuz we spent a lot of time when we were down in Oaxaca with Mike and Amira Elgan visiting Mecal Distilleries and it's a mm-hmm.
(02:46:31):
<Affirmative>. It's a much simpler process. <Laugh>. Yeah. They don't Right. You know, it's like once they got alcohol, they go, okay. That's it. That's it. We're done. We're done enough. Yep, we're done. We're close enough. <Laugh> it's pretty amazing actually. That's what and, and, and they, and the crazy part is, as whiskeys go, Scottish dis whiskey is very coherent. You should see how they make Irish whiskey. It can be madness. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of it's not Irish, which is another problem entirely. Well, they, they're, their systems a little looser. They, the SCOs are very proud of their whiskey making and they, they, and they, there's very much a culture of the way that they make things. Right. the earlier days are obviously more complicated, but you know, since the, since the early stage of 19 hundreds, it's been very consistent product and it's a fun to talk about.
(02:47:22):
Sure is. And I thank you for the lesson. Richard Campbell is the host of Run as Radio and.net Rocks. We'll find it all. Run radio.com joins us here every Wednesday, as does Mr. Paul Throt, the author of Windows Everywhere. Three Rock Now available lean pub.com, along the field, guide to Windows. Thank you. 10. Of course. Paul's website is throt.com and they join us every week no matter where in the world they are to talk. Talk about Microsoft. I think I'm gonna be in a new apartment next week. Wow. I think someday your life will get simpler. I hope <laugh> Well, that's what we're doing. That's what you're trying Simplification. Trying sometimes is temporarily complicated. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1800 utc. She's now 1900 utc. Just to visit the the live Do Twit do TV webpage that'll have audio and video streams.
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