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time for Windows Weekly, the show where we

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cover the latest news from Microsoft. Last

1:12

show of 2023. Paul

1:16

Theron is here. Richard Campbell is

1:19

here. It's

1:21

the most wonderful time of year. Happy Poinsettia

1:23

Day, everyone. We have placed

1:25

poisonous plants around the studio. Don't

1:27

eat that, Paul. In

1:29

honor of Poinsettia Day, my ugly shirt, I

1:32

was going to wear the Microsoft one, but I wore that a couple

1:34

weeks ago, is I'm here to

1:37

delete your cookies. It's

1:39

got a little cup of coffee. You

1:41

know, I think, actually, I think Lisa made it

1:44

for me. With her

1:46

bare hands. She knitted it.

1:49

But, hello, you

1:52

two. Now, Paul, I don't want to be

1:55

that guy, but didn't you promise that there

1:57

would be something special today? Yeah,

2:00

like is Chris Capicella here or something like

2:02

that. Oh, there is something like

2:04

that one Yes

2:08

I'm ready. Yeah, you have the switch Shall

2:11

I press this is what you have the you

2:13

have the con as we say, okay. I have

2:16

I do not know It's

2:18

fader 4. Let's turn on fader 4 Mystery

2:21

guest would you sign in please?

2:23

I Say

2:28

you're for hello. This is like

2:30

a really bad sort of a dating game.

2:32

It's hello If

2:34

I press you again, will she go away? It's

2:44

so good to see you Thank

2:46

you Just

2:48

just for the record I have begged this woman for a

2:50

year to come on the show again and then the other

2:52

day she's like hey How about if I come on? Oh

2:54

my god? That's

2:57

awesome. No, I meant but then he said when you

2:59

come on though, you have to wear a Mark

3:01

Resinovich mask Probably

3:08

is a special run Yeah,

3:11

well Mary Jo, how are you?

3:14

I'm good. I've seen you So

3:16

listen since it's been a while I thought we'd go back

3:18

through all the old show notes and just talk about the

3:20

stuff that You missed you might 11

3:23

episodes ago Once

3:27

how long has it been since you've

3:29

been actually I don't remember My

3:31

last show was the last week of

3:33

October 2022 yes, it's been

3:36

more than a year. Yeah, and

3:38

how are things at your

3:41

new employer, which is a Research

3:43

firm writer an analyst right directions

3:46

on Microsoft. Yeah the best Microsoft

3:48

watching firm Very very

3:50

good. Yeah, and you're happy.

3:53

Well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I spent

3:55

a lot of the past year I was sets

3:57

Paul. I'm learning a lot about licensing. Maybe I

3:59

could do to like hidden gems

4:01

about Microsoft licensing. You know

4:04

what actually we're running some time. I'm

4:07

sorry I made a whole run as on the

4:09

topic with everybody. Nobody wants

4:12

to talk about licensing learnings this

4:14

week and Windows weekly. So

4:18

you write mostly do a podcast for them

4:20

or what do you. Yep we're doing

4:23

podcasts. We're doing a blog. We

4:25

have our own blog. Nice. And

4:28

I've been writing other content for them with

4:30

them and it's been you know I thought

4:32

I knew something about the enterprise. I didn't

4:35

until I went there. I'm like oh I

4:37

knew nothing. I knew nothing at all. Well

4:41

you were our enterprise. You were our enterprise person so

4:43

that's a little disappointing. I know. I know. But

4:46

you know what I mean I had I had

4:48

a good basis for it. Yes. Yeah.

4:52

You're selling yourself short. I'm sure you were

4:55

fully one of those things that the deeper you go

4:57

the more you thought. Well that

4:59

is a problem. Yeah it's an endless.

5:01

Indeed. It's licenses all the way down.

5:04

It sure is. How

5:06

neat. So this

5:08

is this is the podcast. You have

5:10

the blog. Really great. And

5:13

I bet you're having a lot of fun without

5:15

us. It's been

5:17

really really educational to see the

5:20

questions that come in from enterprise customers

5:22

and just the things they're

5:24

struggling with. It's just as a journalist

5:26

you're always looking for the new new

5:28

new. And then you see oh they're

5:30

stuck on like old versions of Windows.

5:32

You're trying to figure out how to

5:34

stay compliant and governance and all these

5:36

topics as a journalist. You're like oh

5:38

no I don't want to. I don't want to. Like

5:41

what do I non rudely say how boring.

5:45

But it's actually a lot there. It's

5:48

the day to day real life thing. Every

5:50

organization I've ever dealt with has

5:53

one trouble app like one app

5:55

that won't run the latest anything requires

5:57

SQL Server 2012. buyers,

6:00

Net Bui Network, like something and

6:02

it's essential to the business

6:05

and no two companies are the same.

6:07

It's impossible. It is. Well,

6:11

Mary Jo, welcome back. I guess. I'm

6:13

continuing with this. Paul, did you prepare

6:16

something special for our special games? Or

6:19

we just could do the same old same old. It's

6:21

pretty much the same old same old but it is also the last

6:23

show of the year, last live

6:26

show of the year. So I thought we should, you know,

6:28

actually Mary Jo suggested we should do the

6:30

thing we used to do, which sort of look back,

6:32

look ahead, you know. Fantastic.

6:35

Mm-hmm. I love that. She's got some

6:37

back of the book stuff. I do. As

6:40

well, so it'll be kind of fun. All right. Yes,

6:42

our back of the book looks robust today. It does.

6:44

Are we going to have beer and liquor? It's an

6:46

enterprise pick. Oh, yeah. Beer and brown liquor.

6:49

It's just like in real life. It's going to be a...

6:51

Yep. The way the Scots like to

6:53

drink it, a big beer and a little shot. It's

6:56

not like a Pennsylvania supermarket. It has beer

6:59

and hard liquor. Wow. So

7:01

we're going to go to the package store of

7:03

Windows Weeklys. The Packy. Yeah, the

7:05

Packy. So kick us

7:08

off. I

7:11

see the headline says our national

7:14

nightmare is over. Yeah, so Mary

7:16

Jo's back. I was back. Yeah,

7:19

no, no, not back. Great. Not

7:22

Mary Jo. That's not what that means. No,

7:26

I... You know, this

7:28

is sort of a side topic. Surely

7:31

you folks have noticed that the national discourse

7:34

has gotten a little extreme. And

7:37

I've noticed this spillover into our world,

7:39

right? Maybe I brought this up a

7:41

few weeks ago, but everyone is like

7:43

so like, about everything, you know?

7:46

There's been a bug in Windows 11 for over

7:48

a year. I feel like this has been

7:51

in Windows 11, I mean, Windows forever. I think

7:53

this predates Windows 11, but whatever, where

7:55

you're working in some applications on

7:57

Windows and file explorer jumps to the front.

8:01

There's only two reactions to that statement.

8:03

You say, oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

8:05

No, I have experienced that. And I

8:07

thought it was me. Like, I thought maybe I did something wrong.

8:09

Maybe I was typing and I hit some key thing and it

8:11

made, you know, I was thinking something. Yeah. But

8:13

then you have the couple of people are like, yeah, that never

8:15

happens. And it's like, I can find it for you. It

8:18

does happen. Like it actually, it's

8:21

not like something that's some configuration problem. Like it

8:23

literally is just, it's a bug in Windows. Like

8:25

it's. So anyway, they

8:28

fixed, they fixed it in a

8:30

preview update that went out the

8:32

other day. Actually it might've

8:34

been last week. And

8:36

that means it will be in the non-preview

8:39

stable version of Windows 11 starting in January.

8:41

So they've, they fixed

8:43

it. We don't all have it. But if you

8:45

are reluctant to install these

8:47

preview updates, I would say maybe give this one a

8:49

shot because this is a good one. Yep.

8:52

It's a bad problem. So what happens is you're

8:54

just working another app and suddenly File

8:56

Explorer jumps out and opens. So

8:59

I've never had that happen. I'm just going to.

9:01

You're one of those people. Windows has long

9:04

had kind of what I would call like a

9:06

focus problem, you know, where anything could happen. And

9:08

you know, you're typing is it's most annoying when

9:10

you're typing, you know, typing a password or something

9:12

that happens to me all the time. I'm in

9:15

a website. Some other thing jumps to the front.

9:17

You're like, come on. And now you don't even

9:19

know where you were. Because it's, you know, blocked

9:21

out or whatever. But

9:23

the File Explorer one is very specific. It's

9:26

a bug with File Explorer, obviously. But no,

9:28

and I've renamed a file by accident in

9:30

the process. I have deleted a file by

9:32

accident in the process, like, or

9:34

two, and you don't know which one you deleted. Like,

9:37

what? Yeah. So it's a nightmare.

9:39

Now, this will not solve all of the other

9:42

very real problems with File Explorer, including all the

9:45

performance and reliability issues, which I

9:47

also see all day long every

9:50

day because I'm doing that photo

9:52

console consolidation thing where I'm dealing with lots

9:55

of files. And like

9:58

literally between lunch and this show. I

10:01

was working on the laptop on that. It happened

10:03

twice. I had a force quit that you know

10:05

as we say in the Mac world or whatever

10:07

we could you know task manager kill explore

10:10

that easy twice in just that short

10:12

time span so that stuff that's

10:15

not getting fixed not anytime soon but I

10:17

haven't been on the show since they changed file

10:20

Explorer so I haven't had the opportunity

10:22

to rant about Marijo they've been they have

10:24

changed it twice since you've been on the

10:26

show I just

10:28

the first time I really noticed the change

10:30

you know me I never noticed visual changes

10:33

I like open file Explorer

10:35

I'm like what has happened to file

10:37

Explorer I like that

10:39

you've noticed something I did and then I

10:41

thought I can get around this by setting tabs so

10:43

I can set each of my folders as a tab

10:45

but every time I have to do something reboot or

10:47

something goes wrong and my machine crashes all the tabs

10:50

go away and then I have to do it all

10:52

over yeah so this is micro this is

10:54

kind of a Microsoft 101 they'll fix that

10:56

in a future release so remember when virtual

10:58

desktops finally arrived in I think it was

11:00

Windows 10 after being

11:03

you know a hidden feature windows for a long time

11:05

that was the same issue to reboot you like

11:07

a but my virtual desktops all disappear okay we're

11:09

gonna bring those back it's like okay we name

11:11

them yeah we'll do that too but over time

11:13

they sort of add those features so I would

11:15

imagine that with notepad you know

11:18

this because he is not that notepad does

11:20

that session state remember feature right yep

11:23

I wouldn't file Explorer do the same thing I

11:25

know so I bet it

11:27

happens by the way a great change to

11:29

notepad you don't hear me say that often the

11:31

state thing is fantastic

11:34

yeah yeah yeah I actually

11:36

turned that off but I understand why you would like

11:38

no but I know we haven't talked about notepad since

11:41

no October 2022 right about notepad it within five minutes

11:43

of right now

11:47

because one of the topics so

11:49

I'm glad I came on this

11:51

episode yeah very exciting it's the

11:53

notepad episode it is right it's

11:55

a notepad kind of Chris pads

11:57

are us a common with

11:59

your notepad had tips and we had them with the When

12:02

I shut down all my machines before I left the house because you

12:04

know the power is going to turn off that's to have them off

12:06

and I had a couple of notepads open because I pop it open

12:09

write some notes and leave it and sure

12:11

enough that hung the shutdown I said for shutdown

12:13

because I know It's gonna save

12:15

the content anyway when I can do that Well,

12:21

thank you for joining us Mary Jo Do

12:31

you want to move

12:33

on to I do.

12:35

Yes. Windows 11 and Microsoft 365.

12:38

Oh nice. Yeah

12:40

so Microsoft anyone

12:43

who kind of follows Windows probably knows that with

12:45

each new release of Windows whether it's a new

12:47

version of Windows 10 in the day or Windows

12:49

11 now Microsoft

12:51

will release a list of features that

12:53

they are deprecating and oftentimes also

12:55

released of a list of features they have removed

12:57

right from this version of Windows But

13:00

this has changed just like the updating

13:02

scheme has completely changed after Microsoft said a year ago

13:04

Hey, we're just gonna update you once a year and

13:06

then updated us 15 times in 12 months

13:10

They were actually deprecating features very

13:13

aggressively now and in a way they have not

13:15

ever really done in the past So

13:18

I have the Pacific and find the number of

13:20

this because I wrote this in here somewhere but

13:24

Rather than delay this but yes,

13:26

so last year in 2022 they

13:28

deprecated two features in 2023

13:32

actually now it's 17 when I wrote this it was 16.

13:34

They've deprecated one since I wrote this post So

13:37

they don't do that once a year thing anymore,

13:40

right? And we have theories about why this may

13:42

be I think it might actually have to do

13:44

with some of the regulation stuff that's coming In

13:47

the EU especially where they have to give people

13:49

choice over what they can do in Windows and

13:51

so forth And I think just from a support

13:54

cost perspective that like like we're gonna start chopping

13:56

this stuff up Well, and if I'm around of

13:58

our security related, right TLS one 1.1.

14:00

Yeah, although something like these

14:03

are all vulnerability things. Yeah, even WordPad

14:05

had security issues associated

14:07

with it. And you know, you just can't support

14:09

that stuff forever, right? So

14:13

yeah, it's been kind of interesting. I wrote

14:17

this because I saw something about some

14:20

with the legacy console mode was being

14:22

deprecated. I was like, they just deprecated

14:25

like, you know, well, nope, or WordPad

14:27

and tips. And then they had a

14:29

list when they released 23h2, but I'm like,

14:31

also like Cortana was deprecated. So I went and looked it

14:33

up and it's like, they deprecated

14:35

like dozens of these things. So

14:38

I think this is just going to

14:40

keep happening. I think it's the, you

14:43

know, the yang to the

14:45

updates yin and yang. I

14:48

was going to ask you if you feel like

14:51

it might be the new regime in charge of

14:53

windows who are watching out for tunes.

14:55

Those kinds of things. Like they're like,

14:57

you know what, this is a mess. Let's clean it

14:59

up. Well, so yeah, this, back

15:02

until about a year ago, I would say

15:04

Microsoft and Apple were on the opposite extreme

15:06

of this. Like I think a lot of

15:09

people would agree, maybe Microsoft's a little too

15:11

slow getting rid of legacy, you know,

15:14

features and Apple was

15:16

maybe a little too aggressive, you know. And

15:19

so they're obviously leaning much more to the Apple side

15:21

of this fence right now. I don't know. I don't

15:23

have a problem with it. Honestly, I'm not suggesting that

15:26

it's too much. When

15:28

you look at the things they're

15:30

deprecating, typically, there's a newer, more

15:32

modern feature that replaces it for one thing. I

15:34

mean, they're not taking away functionality. They're, and again,

15:36

not of course, I've got the security hat on

15:38

here. Like they're taking away things that are. Yeah,

15:42

that's fine. I think it's fine. I think it's fine.

15:44

In fact, if anything, it's overdue. Yeah.

15:47

And maybe just be catching up here, like that they, there's a

15:49

bunch of stuff and it's kind of, the pace is going to

15:51

drop. But I'm with MJ. I do

15:53

think Windows is in this new place where it's

15:56

no longer the center of the company and any

15:58

changes to it immediately calls the CEO. and

16:00

a new team has started to assert itself and is

16:02

trying to write what they think the product should be.

16:05

Yeah, I mean, I disagree with the updating half

16:07

of this, but honestly the deprecating part, I think

16:09

this is fine. Still

16:12

some experiments going on. Yeah, and

16:15

then let's see, last week we would have talked

16:17

about I think Dev Canary, some other builds, I

16:19

don't remember, but the Windows Insider Program released its

16:21

last build of the year, probably Thursday I would

16:23

imagine, since we didn't talk about it, to

16:26

the beta channel, it is the last build

16:28

of the year, I should say. Nothing

16:31

all that surprising in here in that

16:33

most of this we've seen in other

16:36

channels, voice access, which is

16:38

an accessibility feature, which by the way, is

16:41

the replacement for one of those features

16:43

they deprecated, right, the old voice recognition

16:45

service, that's probably not the exact name.

16:48

I think it's speech recognition. Speech recognition, I get

16:50

it right, that debuted in Windows Vista. That

16:53

now will soon does in this beta

16:55

build support multiple displays. Windows

16:59

365 features we talked about before. And

17:02

then the Notepad functionality I just

17:04

alluded to, this is new to me, maybe

17:06

this is somewhere else, but I hadn't seen

17:08

this. So Notepad in this

17:10

version supports an edit with

17:12

Notepad, right click option when you're in file,

17:15

anywhere, like on the desktop, right? So

17:17

you can right click something and edit it with

17:19

Notepad directly without having to go through OpenWythe or

17:21

whatever, if it's a supported file

17:24

type. And then also that character count

17:26

display, which was not new to me, we talked about

17:28

this before. And still like, but not

17:30

a word count because that. Not a word count

17:32

because it's hard to do word count. And I

17:34

know that because I implemented it. And seriously, if

17:36

I can do it, you're Microsoft stop embarrassing yourself.

17:39

But they are doing character count, right? Character

17:41

count, yeah. They should do both, right? I mean,

17:43

it should be a. Should be side by side. Right.

17:47

You could click it and have it, you know, toggle to the other

17:49

one, it could be, there's all kinds of things you could do there.

17:52

In Discord, I see people saying they love to

17:54

have Notepad. So I'm going to tell you, I

17:56

don't love to have Notepad. Yeah, I don't either. I

17:58

wish I could turn the tabs on. I wish it was

18:00

an option. I thought I was gonna love it, but

18:03

it's you can't I don't think right Yeah,

18:05

you can't you can do like a well. I

18:07

think you can I Don't like

18:09

it either if that helps, but I think you just do

18:11

no you can't no you actually

18:13

control and opens the tab All right, so there's

18:15

another example like I bet that happens over time

18:17

right and they'll let go give you that option

18:20

Yeah, I hope so I really

18:22

did think I would use that a lot But instead

18:24

I get really confused like what tab am I in

18:26

and what then it randomly opens empty tabs? And I'm

18:29

like no I'm way over here I'm so as

18:31

a compulsive idiot I will tell you one of

18:33

this Among these stupid things that I

18:35

do while I'm using a computer is I will close

18:38

documents and files and Windows Compulsively

18:41

and then realize they need to go back to that thing

18:44

and I do this all the time and it's I'm too

18:46

late I'm not even gonna try to fix this But

18:48

I do this all the time and what I've noticed

18:50

with the new notepad is because I'm constantly opening like

18:52

a set of certain files A lot in

18:54

this case related to the book It

18:56

opens I keep opening the same files over again

18:59

So I have a notepad window that has like

19:01

eight tabs and seven of them are one file

19:03

the same It should not it

19:05

should know that it's already open and not open

19:07

that again or prompt you or

19:10

something But it doesn't and so that's kind of a weird

19:12

little and from a developer's perspective Disabling

19:14

a new feature is something you build in

19:17

on day one because yeah that anyway But

19:19

the assess that the files already open and

19:21

only open that one. That's definitely a later

19:23

feature kind of thing But

19:26

it does take some thinking. Yeah, yeah,

19:28

I I think we're gonna get that there too.

19:31

Actually, I'm not like upset about it

19:33

It's just you see it you're like, okay, you

19:35

know, how much of high development do we really

19:37

need? Yeah, you understand what happened, but it's like

19:39

my it's not it's not a huge deal But

19:41

I I do configure it

19:43

not to open not to save the session state

19:45

So if I open seven tabs of

19:48

the same document close the thing and open it, you

19:50

know They're gone. Yeah, the third of the seven will

19:52

be like hey, did you want to save the change?

19:54

Oh, I don't know, you know,

19:56

like I don't know what to do with I don't know And

20:01

then I just threw this in here because we don't really have a

20:03

formal Microsoft 365 section

20:06

today because it's the only story. But this was

20:08

just announced as the show started and it's in

20:10

this random tech community

20:13

blog post that's really about Teams extensibility,

20:15

not just via apps, but

20:17

also now, you know, copilot plugins,

20:20

right, for those people in Microsoft 365 copilot. And

20:25

they revealed in this post that Teams now has 320 million users,

20:27

right? And I think it was

20:29

300, right? Wasn't the last number we got?

20:31

Something like that, yeah. I think what we got, yeah. It was 300.

20:35

So I don't have this in front of me because,

20:37

again, it just happened, but they also revealed that there

20:39

are now over 2,000 apps in a

20:41

Teams store. And

20:45

we don't get to see these, but enterprises

20:47

have built over 145,000 custom line of business apps

20:51

for Teams as well. That's ensuring that

20:53

this thing will be with us for

20:55

the rest of our lives. They

20:57

did actually, they did say this number, I

20:59

just looked it up, during

21:02

their earnings, but I don't remember it being

21:04

a big deal. It must have just

21:06

kind of been under the radar. I might have, that's

21:08

the type of number I would have

21:10

forgotten, and also point out Serene is

21:12

the VP of product management for Teams.

21:14

Like, that's actually a very senior person

21:16

writing a blog post. So

21:19

it's worked late in the year and it's taken me

21:21

through. Well, by the way, writing a blog post to

21:23

that blog, especially because there is a Microsoft 365

21:25

blog, which is far more well

21:28

promoted and so forth. This

21:30

is a, basically support.microsoft.com. I mean,

21:32

it's kind of, it's interesting,

21:36

which is another one of my longstanding pet peeves

21:38

is Microsoft. You have too many places where you

21:41

put stuff. If you have an announcement to make

21:43

about Microsoft 365 or Teams or whatever, maybe it

21:45

should be one place. And

21:48

it's a really extensive post. Like it's really an

21:50

analysis of what they've done in the past year

21:52

as well as talking what's going to come in

21:55

the next year. Like it's, this is what I'm

21:57

a roadmap post. It's kind of important. He drove

21:59

into a. very dark Microsoft campus

22:01

yesterday, today, turned some lights

22:03

on in the building, he works and no one else was there and

22:06

he started typing. And

22:09

he's like, I think I'm going to let this take its own form

22:12

here. I'm just going to go nuts. Because

22:14

I'm pretty sure that campus is mostly empty

22:16

right now. Yeah, people are going. What

22:20

is it, like five days before Christmas, right?

22:22

Yeah, yeah. Well, and he

22:24

is in Redmond, so I

22:27

suspect he typed it from home. But

22:30

yeah, interesting. This

22:32

almost reads like an internal email about how

22:35

we did this year. Maybe

22:37

it's just been polished a little to be put

22:39

in the public. I'm not sure why, but I'm

22:41

not happy because this is good info. Like they

22:43

did a lot this year. No,

22:46

it's a great post. It would have been a

22:48

great post on the Microsoft 365 one, which is

22:50

where I look for it first. But

22:53

yeah, it's not there. Interesting.

22:57

Yep. Speaking about this is

22:59

also semi related in the sense that this

23:02

should have been promoted more widely. And

23:04

actually, now that you guys are both here, I will

23:06

ask you now publicly. We

23:08

all know the whole story about

23:10

CoPilot and the rebranding and the

23:13

extensibility story and how plugins will

23:15

work across chat GPT and CoPilot

23:17

and wherever CoPilot is. So in

23:19

Windows 11, in Bing, in Edge,

23:21

I guess in Bing, and

23:23

in Microsoft 365, you can write a

23:26

plugin that targets CoPilot and our

23:29

chat GPT and it should work

23:32

everywhere. And I believe

23:34

the last time they discussed this was Ignite

23:37

where they did not say they were

23:40

available, just that this capability is now available.

23:44

Do either of you recall Microsoft

23:49

announcing that actually those

23:53

plugins are now available or some are now available? Don't

23:57

you think that the very first one they would have said, hey, they're not

23:59

available? it is. We did it. Here's the first plugin.

24:03

Does anyone remember this? I think it was

24:05

somewhere. Maybe, you know how we

24:07

went to that September event where

24:10

Mike and I have talked about the new pilot in

24:12

New York. I think they talked a

24:14

lot about plugins there and I think

24:16

shortly after that there was a big

24:18

blog post about it. There was, okay. I don't

24:20

remember this. But I agree

24:22

with you. I didn't really notice them

24:24

until they just announced this song

24:27

one. Yeah, right. Which is

24:29

how I found this out. So before we get to

24:31

that, I just want to say real quickly when you

24:33

think about it. When you think about a platform of

24:35

any kind, whether it's Windows or Teams, which now has

24:38

thousands of apps, right? This is the legitimacy point, right?

24:41

Microsoft has super

24:43

aggressively in one year planned, announced,

24:46

orchestrated, released and rebranded twice

24:49

a co-pilot platform for AI assistance or whatever,

24:51

whatever you would call this thing. And

24:54

a big part of it being

24:56

legitimate is this extensibility bit, right? The

24:58

plugins extensions, whatever you want to call

25:00

it. So Microsoft

25:03

announced a new

25:06

capability as they described it to

25:09

create music now with co-pilot using a partnership

25:11

with a company called Suno. I had never

25:13

heard of it, but if you go to

25:15

suno.ai, you'll see what they do is

25:17

make music. And they said,

25:20

you know, the way you enable this is click

25:22

on plugins. And I'm like, wait, click on plugins?

25:24

What are you talking about? Is that a thing? And yeah,

25:26

if you go to, not bing.com, necessarily,

25:29

although maybe it's there, but go

25:31

to co-pilot.microsoft.com, preferably in Edge, which

25:33

is a sentence you will never hear me say again.

25:36

And sign in,

25:38

you have to sign in with microsoft.com.

25:40

You will see that there are several plugins

25:43

available today, including

25:45

Instacart, Kayak, Klarna,

25:47

which is a shopping service, I

25:49

guess. Open table, shop, search,

25:52

which I assume is there. So

25:54

it's probably just that one's, these

25:56

are open AI plugins. These

25:58

are open AI plugins. Oh, interesting. Okay,

26:01

so you're also co-pilot pockets which apparently

26:03

are separate Okay,

26:05

interesting. So but there are there's surface that

26:07

they mentioned there surface now here. Yeah So

26:12

I I was saying is I think

26:14

this warranted a bigger or an actual

26:16

announcement Maybe it's

26:18

because they're soft launching it. Yeah, this

26:20

feels soft launching for a reason. Yeah,

26:22

okay I know. Have you tried the

26:24

song one? Yeah, we didn't get it

26:27

to I couldn't get it to

26:29

be a soft lunch I think like it's it's

26:31

it told me it would come back in a

26:33

few minutes and it's been a day. Yeah So

26:36

I had not yeah,

26:38

right I actually asked it I

26:40

asked it to write a little song about

26:42

Windows Weekly the podcast and I should say

26:44

it wasn't Something I'd like to

26:46

share with the group It

26:52

wasn't that great Okay, no

26:54

this time I came right back. I came back

26:56

with lyrics. Okay. Yeah, it comes back with

26:58

lyrics like and then The little slider button

27:00

that's under plugins. It shuts off even though

27:02

it says it's using it which is kind

27:04

of strange, right? That's kind of funny. I think

27:07

it's not really working right? This is working a little bit

27:09

better. But where's the how do I hear it? That's

27:11

what I couldn't figure out Since

27:14

I've seen your face But every year

27:16

and in my thoughts and memories memories

27:18

the snow is falling the lights are

27:20

shining bright I can't wait to catch

27:22

up and hold you tight. Hold you

27:24

tight. Merry Joe Foley. You're finally home

27:26

for Christmas home for Now

27:30

oh and then it says I've submitted to play music

27:32

for you It says I've submitted your request to create

27:34

a song about her. It will be ready in a

27:36

few minutes So that's

27:38

what I got yesterday and it never came

27:40

back. I'm right back with okay. I like

27:42

the lyrics. I got the lyrics Yeah, okay.

27:44

This says you need to click on the

27:46

audio icon below the lyrics to listen to

27:48

it But I tried

27:51

to I don't have an audience. Wait, wait, wait, I see

27:53

it. It was a big Thing

27:56

that's just an emoji. Oh,

27:59

yeah nothing It opens the

28:01

lyrics and visits Suno and play the

28:03

song there. Well, we're just waiting. You

28:05

might have to join Suno. How

28:07

long will it take to create the song? I'm

28:10

asking. That was one of the buttons. Searching.

28:14

The time

28:16

depends on the genre, the style, the complexity, the

28:18

skill of the producer. According to

28:21

web sources, they take four to five days.

28:23

Four to five days? Wow.

28:25

However, oh no, they're talking about a regular song. However,

28:28

Suno is a powerful tool that uses

28:30

artificial intelligence to generate songs in minutes.

28:33

You can expect your song to

28:35

be ready in less than ten minutes. Oh, okay. By

28:38

the way, so interestingly, when I signed into my account

28:40

on Suno.ai, my Microsoft account, the songs

28:42

I tried to create yesterday are now there. Ah,

28:46

so it did render them eventually. But

28:48

the one I just made is not here. It's been a

28:50

while. I like this one for Mary Jo Foley. It's

28:54

going to be a wonderful holiday tune. Excellent.

28:57

Everyone will be missing something. I

29:00

don't believe you can create an instrumental song, which is

29:02

kind of what I would really want to use this

29:05

far out lyrics. It was supposed to be, right? Wasn't

29:07

it? I don't know, but my first

29:09

attempts were all instrumental songs and one of them

29:11

has an opera lady singing in it, which is

29:13

terrible. Opera lady! You know

29:16

what I'm looking for. Yeah, I

29:18

stand by my point. I think it's a

29:20

soft launch because it's not really written. Yeah.

29:24

Well, anyway, it's nice they turn on the

29:26

plugins, but you're right, Richard. These look like

29:28

the open AI plugins. Well, there's clearly two

29:30

sets. There's a co-pilot plugins

29:32

and there's open AI plugins. They've

29:35

also thrown into the category teams

29:37

extensions. Like there's... Right.

29:40

They've always... That

29:43

would be a stretch. Notice that you

29:45

can enable three at a time. Oh,

29:48

that's a good limit. Oh,

29:50

really? Oh. Well,

29:53

hey, this is free. I paid 20 bucks a month

29:55

for this one. I paid 20 bucks a month for

29:57

open AI's chat GPT. So free, you know. And

30:01

it is, we are going with the holiday season and

30:03

this time last year, everyone's getting an amort of chat

30:06

GPT. I know. I think it's important

30:08

to line up the tools for people to get existential

30:10

with software and over another holiday season. Am I crazy

30:12

to think that the real future of AI is going

30:14

to be running it locally on your system? Maybe

30:17

not. But I just feel like, I think it's

30:19

hybrid, but yes, I think running it local, this

30:21

is, honestly, this is Apple's one

30:23

contribution to this space was built in.

30:26

That matters a lot and the more you can do

30:28

locally, the better it's going to be. And

30:31

well, I don't know if it'll be better, but it'll be better

30:33

for them. I mean, I don't think it will be better. Just

30:36

from a latency perspective, right? Assuming

30:38

that stuff is local, what you need. Yeah,

30:41

except for that part where the guys, the

30:43

folks that are leading this are all cloud

30:45

companies, right? Yeah. There's some

30:47

motivation. Well, but you know, okay, but

30:49

here's an interesting thing that may be

30:51

true of Apple eventually, but it's true today

30:54

of Google and Microsoft. They're both building AI

30:56

processors. Yeah. We're both spaces,

30:58

right? And the tensor processor

31:00

that Google has on their

31:02

phones is related in

31:05

some way to the tensor processes, right?

31:07

They have the data center. I mean,

31:09

I bet there's some interesting overlap there.

31:11

Yeah. And I think there's

31:13

going to be a race for standard interfaces so

31:15

that your code runs well on that device as

31:17

well. But at least initially it's going to be

31:19

the vendors who runs

31:22

tensor best on Android, Google. Yeah.

31:25

I have to say though, when I bought

31:27

my new laptop, I bought it with as

31:29

much like four terabytes of storage and the

31:31

fastest NPU. This is the Apple M3 Max

31:34

and a fast NPU because I think I hope

31:36

it's my dream to run these models locally. By

31:38

the way, right now I think that's what you

31:40

told she must be obeyed anyway. I

31:44

think that the

31:46

problem of course is going to be these models are ginormous

31:49

and they're not open,

31:52

many of them. So the one LMs

31:54

are, there are many other models that

31:56

aren't. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point too.

31:58

And it may not be LMs that win. There's lots

32:00

of local, especially open source, like lots

32:03

of local. I'm using Llama, which is

32:05

Facebook, which was initially leaked, and

32:07

I think they opened it. Is

32:10

it Microsoft Fi 2? I

32:12

guess you should look at the models I have

32:14

on here. I'm using something called Chat GPT for

32:17

All. You should be

32:19

using Windows AI Studio. Or I

32:21

could use that if I had been to use

32:23

a Windows machine. You do have a Windows machine

32:25

in your hands with an MPU in it. It's

32:27

called a Mac. Oh,

32:29

that's true. In fact, it

32:31

runs Windows quite nicely. So I could do it

32:34

all in the... It's a

32:36

Visual Studio... Actually, yes. It's a

32:38

Visual Studio Code extension or

32:41

plugin, whatever they call it there. For some reason, every product

32:43

has to have a different name for this. Yeah.

32:48

Brad was bugging me about this today.

32:51

I've never even looked at it yet,

32:53

but yeah. You can try that. Open

32:56

source may, in a way, be the

32:58

future of all of this. Right? Or

33:01

no. It's hard to know. Yeah. At

33:03

the same time, you do have... How are people using

33:05

this? What

33:08

tools do you want to put in the hands

33:10

of anybody versus doing a little geek keeping

33:12

for safety? Right. Yeah.

33:16

These are the models. We could try to keep the

33:18

porn at bay, Leo. That's all it is, trying to

33:21

keep the porn at bay. You can do AI porn

33:23

now when we're talking. Yeah.

33:26

So, this has quite a few available

33:29

models. Mistral Open Orca, Mistral

33:31

Instruct. Some of the differences are... What

33:33

is this thing? What is this? It's

33:36

called GPT4ALL. It's an open source

33:40

client for a local model. Falcon

33:42

Turbo Chat GPT 3.5, Turbo Chat GPT4.

33:47

That actually, you don't run locally. You actually have to have

33:50

an API key for that. Right. So,

33:52

I've installed some models. But 3.5

33:54

Turbo is local. Is

33:57

it? Let's see. I didn't pay

33:59

for it. It's a new API here, but I

34:01

so those are neither of the chat GPTs are local

34:03

a lot of these Orca 2

34:06

is trained by Microsoft can be run locally

34:08

cannot be used commercially and

34:11

Orca 2 full is 6.86 gigabytes.

34:13

They're pretty big But

34:16

filmed a lot like big yeah, that's

34:18

my hair bites are big Once

34:21

you got to get up to call of duty size before

34:23

we start calling it big Gigabyte on

34:25

the gigabyte, but these are all models. These

34:27

are all Most know but that

34:29

gives you what you need just to the least kind

34:31

of experiment and figure it was all Falcon and then

34:33

I'm adding To it. I'm

34:36

adding Documents because this I'm

34:38

trying to make create my list expert

34:40

on this thing Don't

34:43

let you know when you laugh at me it hurts

34:45

me it hurts my soul Hey,

34:48

you're the one that brought it back on Windows Weekly, buddy And

34:52

list just saying always has to be one

34:55

And we've talked about this before but it's

34:57

like this is the return of the expert

34:59

system. It is funny. Yeah, it's so weird

35:01

It's sort of a block the path. I

35:03

have a new friend who works at an

35:06

AI companies kind of me AI genius And

35:08

I was working Google and Microsoft and

35:10

I asked him I said well if I wanted to learn how to

35:12

code Some of my own he uses

35:15

Python, but he but he studied LISP in

35:17

college and scheme I said

35:20

can I do it in LISP says nobody's writing code anymore

35:22

Leo Yeah, let the you

35:24

let the AI write the code. It's

35:26

all about the prompts you right?

35:28

Yeah, your code is now his prompt shape

35:31

Yeah, he did not he said don't bother learning

35:33

the the code fundamentals He said just get better at prompting

35:35

and of course you have to be able to read the

35:37

code and you know I had rated

35:39

but basically you're more of an editor.

35:41

You're an editor That doesn't mean I don't want to get you

35:43

another one of those old symbolics machines from the 1980 You

35:47

know how slow they are compared to this It's

35:51

really sad so any who We

35:56

practice I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just gonna turn

35:58

off my mic now It's okay.

36:00

No, no, I don't I just okay do

36:03

an AI on a Mac and I I don't

36:05

know what happened anymore I put on my to

36:07

go home So

36:12

I think we talked about the inter Intel meteor lake

36:14

stuff last week, right? I think yeah, and I don't

36:16

know if I brought this up but since the show

36:19

I did write an article about this because I talked

36:21

to an old friend from actually from Microsoft

36:23

who now works at Intel and he told me a Bunch

36:27

of things the big deal with meteor lake was

36:29

they did the mobile chipset first, right? That was

36:31

the thing It was the

36:33

thing but actually there's no desktop chipset. So

36:35

it's not that it at first This is all earth. So

36:38

the 14th gen which they're not calling it really

36:40

although it is the 14th gen There

36:43

will only be mobile chipsets. They

36:45

consolidated down from three

36:47

kind of skew families U

36:50

P and H and now have Two

36:53

so P is gone P was that one they

36:55

only had for the 12th and 13th gen when

36:57

they started doing hybrid chipsets there's

37:00

a new GPU

37:03

arc GPU, which by the way is actually Optional

37:07

so you can ship yeah meteor lakes With

37:11

the old whatever the iris XE graphics you

37:13

could also do a dedicated GPU But

37:15

arc is their version of kind of what Apple and Qualcomm

37:17

do where this is all and die together And

37:20

so this chip has CPU

37:22

section GPU section and pew section center,

37:24

right? They're emulating the M1 Yeah,

37:27

right exactly. But yeah, I

37:30

was very interested because remember I brought this up a

37:32

couple times. It was curious to me they were gonna

37:34

do Mobile

37:36

first but it's mobile only and in the point here is

37:38

they want to get and pews up into the world and

37:41

Anticipation I would also argue listen

37:43

you use the mobile chipset Obviously

37:45

for for for ultra books, but

37:48

you also use them for all the mini PCs, too

37:50

Yep, yeah, right and I don't have this in front

37:52

of me But actually I had

37:55

kind of forgotten this but all of

37:57

Intel's chipset families UH, whatever have

38:00

multiple derivatives and

38:02

there was a, I think it, no

38:04

it's not this one, there was an all-in-one computer I got this year that

38:06

had a, I think it was a

38:08

K processor, I had to look it up, what is this

38:10

thing? It's a

38:12

desktop chipset, it may not, they skip generations

38:15

I think, but it was designed specifically for

38:17

small form factor computers where, you know, thermals

38:20

are an issue, but it is a desktop class

38:22

chip. But anyway,

38:26

they announced UNH

38:29

series, media-like chips this past week

38:31

or whenever that was, most, for the most part

38:33

it's actually the H series, which are the higher

38:35

end ones. So these are

38:37

going to be kind of high-end premium computers,

38:39

gaming computers. I mean for first-gen, for first

38:41

of any generation set, you go high-end because

38:43

they're the people who wanted the people who

38:45

pay the premium, this is how you pay

38:47

off the die sets. Yeah,

38:50

right. So the other thing, and I have to

38:52

follow up on this, the guy I talked to

38:54

told me that they were

38:56

also updating the Evo brand, which I don't think

38:59

people understand, but Evo started

39:01

as a brand for Intel. It's another way you

39:03

can have a sticker on your computer, right?

39:05

You can have an Evo sticker, everyone loves those.

39:07

Oh boy, yeah. So the Evo brand started as

39:10

a way to kind of certify that the computer

39:12

met certain qualifications, you know,

39:14

performance, battery life, instant

39:16

wake, speed, etc., etc. And

39:18

it came about, not coincidentally, right after Apple

39:20

announced the M1 because they wanted something they

39:23

could show people and say, look, this will

39:25

give you the best possible experience. Right. I

39:28

don't believe it has updated, has been updated

39:30

since then, but now it has been updated.

39:32

This guy told me it really hadn't been,

39:34

but there's a whole set of specifications

39:37

now related to the MPU

39:40

and some other factors. So there's a kind of

39:42

a more stringent set

39:45

of specifications or qualifications that PC makers

39:47

have to make or meet

39:50

to have their computer be qualified as Evo now.

39:52

And this, I think it's third, probably third gen,

39:54

they don't really call it that, but I think

39:56

it is a new spec for these ultra core

39:59

ultra chip sets. So

40:01

now you start thinking about what would this look like plugged

40:03

into an ATX board? Anybody who's using

40:06

a desktop PC for the most part, either

40:08

it's archaic or you're a custom, you like

40:10

building your own machines and you want to

40:12

pick a high-end cooler, you want the extra

40:14

space, maybe you're into the blinky lights inside

40:16

your case, like you do you. And

40:20

these larger chips lend themselves to like

40:22

a daughterboard mount and a big cooler,

40:24

which then says, hey, now use your

40:26

smart firmware to crank the gigahertz. I'm

40:28

actually wondering if they won't, in fact,

40:30

the module is not a great word,

40:33

but let's just say modular in this

40:35

sense that just like you could add

40:37

a math coprocessor back in the 386s

40:39

days or whatever, that maybe it's going

40:41

to be like that. I'm also, I

40:43

should say part of the whole schedule thing is that next

40:45

year when we wrap around the fall next year, they're

40:47

going to be back on schedule. So the 15th

40:49

gen, we'll have both types of chips and

40:52

we'll see. So there won't be a desktop version of

40:54

this. And I've gotten questions from people who said, well,

40:56

I mean, what about us? Like we use

40:58

desktop chips. Like what if we wanted to do this? I've

41:01

never seen this out in the world, but there are essentially

41:04

what you're saying, like these kind of daughter cards

41:06

for MPUs you can

41:08

add to 13th gen desktop

41:10

Intel CPUs, but you have to have

41:12

a motherboard that supports, you have to have all this stuff.

41:15

I'm not, I don't even know how you would get one, but

41:17

it is a thing. The computer Richard

41:19

that you just bought is notable because

41:21

it is the only, I believe 13th

41:24

gen Intel mobile CPU that has an

41:26

MPU and that's an add-on. It's an

41:29

add-on. And a daughter board.

41:31

Yeah. Yeah. So

41:34

I just wonder if the motherboards are going to evolve

41:36

to a, like ATX and ATX

41:38

mini are all you need. There

41:40

are macro, like giant ATX boards, but from

41:42

what? Like it's kind of insane. Yeah.

41:46

Well, maybe for this now, right? Who knows? Well,

41:49

I almost wonder like this flashes to me like

41:51

S 100 bus. Like

41:54

what if the chip set was on

41:56

the bus? Everything was on the bus.

41:58

Yes. Yeah, I

42:00

express what you know, three point whatever

42:02

or something could be yes, this was

42:04

the whole computer, right? Yeah, and

42:07

then switching, you know, and

42:09

we talk about sustainable machines, right?

42:11

What if that backplane is sufficient and now

42:13

you're changing chips? That's interesting.

42:16

You could even replace the backplane and put it plug in

42:18

everything else. I'm still work that would be good to move

42:20

it over to a new backplane. Exactly. So if

42:23

you really want it right now, you know, reality for me

42:25

as a guy who builds a lot of his own machines

42:27

is once I've seated RAM

42:29

and a CPU on that

42:31

motherboard, that's it for that motherboard. After

42:34

two years moving anything

42:37

on that, it's going to break.

42:39

It's going to become less reliable. Like,

42:41

oh yeah, I mean, my God, I who I mean,

42:44

other than they, well, I would guess you could add

42:46

RAM assuming you didn't even I'm really

42:48

careful playing with pins whatsoever. So all often

42:50

when I read upgrade a machine, I'll take

42:52

that entire assembly out. I'll build it around

42:54

a new chassis

42:57

or a neighbor. Here you go. And I'll actually, I had

42:59

the kid build the machine, right?

43:02

So we'll change out the fans

43:04

because they wear, but the cooler stays on

43:06

RAM. I always max the RAM anyway, so

43:08

that's nothing to do there. So given new

43:10

power supply and you drive in a new

43:12

case, they've got their own machine, three, you

43:14

know, a couple of gens old. Because

43:18

as soon as you unseat any of that stuff, see

43:20

if you play with it all, it's wrecked. You're at

43:22

the machine will never be reliable. Right.

43:25

And, and I just wonder if we can't

43:27

get to this sort of long duration machine

43:29

where you just change out parts

43:31

and you know, as long as they're actually

43:34

changeable. I was

43:36

just looking at framework. I was just

43:38

thinking about they have bigger, I think

43:40

a 16 inch device now. I'm like,

43:42

maybe, but why not a desktop, right?

43:44

Same, same idea. Well,

43:46

and it really comes down to

43:48

will the manufacturers make us the

43:50

backplane board? Like that whole mindset

43:52

is interesting. And it's, it's

43:55

sort of the, it falls into the right

43:57

to repair. It falls into, you know, sustainability.

44:00

replacing minimum necessary for future

44:02

features. It's interesting. You

44:05

know what you're reminding me of? Surface hub.

44:07

Remember when they were gonna have the chassis

44:09

able to be pulled out and replaced? And

44:11

then the pandemic happened and just kidding.

44:14

Yeah. Was it gonna, yeah. I

44:16

mean, Surface hubs exist, but they did not

44:18

sell the way, they did not become the

44:20

product that Microsoft expected, right? No. Surface

44:23

hub, but you know, replacement for projector. What

44:25

she, yeah, what she's describing is something that

44:28

could be applied to all in one computers

44:30

too, because the important, well, not a PC's

44:32

case, but the important part is the screen,

44:34

right? If the rest of it was a

44:37

plugin, kind of a module, you

44:39

could replace all the guts and still take use, you

44:41

know, make use of the screen. Which is what we

44:43

do with many PCs mounted on VESA 100 mounts, right?

44:46

Yeah. It's like, that's pretty normal.

44:48

You pick your screen and some interface pieces

44:50

and what some machine just bolts onto the

44:52

back of that in on that with four

44:54

screws and you hear, this

44:57

thing behind my head is a HP-old

44:59

one that you can kind of carry around like

45:01

a briefcase because, you know, and,

45:03

but. That was

45:06

that 20 inch, I remember it. Yeah, and

45:08

it's interesting because you can use, if the

45:10

computer fails or whatever, it works as a display

45:12

too, right? You can, which is something all in

45:14

one should at least do. That should be the

45:16

fail back, you know, if the iMac dies,

45:18

you can at least use it as a beautiful screen. Yeah,

45:21

unfortunately you can't. I think, I'm

45:23

just, I have to say you should, but. You should. I

45:26

think I'm testing. Let's play

45:28

this right now. Okay.

45:34

Not if that more accurate. It's not going. This

45:53

is almost a spoken word. Everybody. Hold

46:00

on, I'm gonna hold up my light up keyboard. Can

46:12

I bring us the concerts, people hate that. I

46:18

would say this is great. Or

46:24

maybe needs to continue. That's

46:28

too bad. It's

46:31

a gen one. That's exactly what

46:33

we've done in 1980. In 1980 and

46:35

then throw it in the trash.

46:39

It sounds exactly what in 1980 we

46:41

would have thought AI music would

46:43

sound like in 2023. Exactly. Is

46:46

this new age music, is that what I'm listening to? I

46:49

have tweeted it if you want a copy for

46:51

yourself. I

46:53

only tweet once every 20 years, but this

46:56

is my holiday tweet to all of you.

46:58

Love it. Since you've

47:00

been gone, they don't call them tweets anymore by the

47:02

way. I also refuse to acknowledge that. I actually unshit

47:04

her. That's

47:09

it. Nailed it.

47:12

So you do know the new terminology. I know the

47:14

new terminology. I choose not to use it.

47:18

Just don't care, exactly. So

47:20

it worked. I mean, I

47:22

guess it's pretty cool, right? The capabilities

47:26

called that song

47:28

in particular. Plus, you can't really,

47:31

what you want to do is have a conversation with the

47:33

thing where you say, okay, now turn up the tempo a

47:35

little bit. Well, I can't. I'm

47:38

going to go back. Oh, sure. I'm

47:42

going to go back and make it jazzy.

47:44

Okay, let's do that. Let's do

47:46

it. You know

47:48

how you do that with the images? You can be like,

47:50

okay, change the background, change this, change that. Can

47:53

you make that song jazzy? No, make

47:55

it jazzy. And up, right? We want a little more

47:57

jazzy. I like it, but more jazz hands. Okay,

48:01

I missed out on like a little industrial

48:03

electronics. That would be fun. A

48:06

disco, I want to EDM. We get a rap

48:08

song. Rap Christmas song. Okay, you know, I can

48:11

only do one thing every 10 minutes. So just,

48:13

you know... Right, exactly. You're lucky I'm taking that

48:15

little amount of time. I mean... Oh,

48:18

that's awesome. They ask, why didn't you post

48:20

a message? I would have, but I didn't

48:22

get... Wait a minute. I'm sorry, but I

48:24

can't change the parameters of your song once it's submitted.

48:28

Oh, see if it's started over. That's what I'm talking about.

48:30

I have to do start over. I like it. Okay.

48:33

I know. But then the lyrics are all going to be different. That's

48:35

good, maybe. That might be a plus.

48:37

Mary Jo Foley, we missed you.

48:40

All right. All right. Yeah,

48:43

they didn't offer Mastodon. I would have

48:45

shared it on Mastodon. I

48:48

was just trying to do the thing. And

48:50

some OnlyFans, Horn offered to me on Mastodon

48:52

the other day, by the way. Well, we'll

48:54

fix that. I deleted every... every time. Just

48:56

report it, Paul. Not good. Just report it.

48:58

I deleted it. Of course I

49:00

did. I killed a bunch of accounts. They all came

49:02

from Mastodon Social, where they don't have

49:05

a whole lot of moderation, but we fixed

49:07

it. Oh, good. Oh, good. I

49:09

wasn't complaining. I was just... Oh,

49:12

you mean... Sorry. I'm

49:15

just wondering... Can

49:18

we do some live customer service? Yeah. Right

49:20

now. Yeah. No, I just thought

49:22

of it because you said that. Okay. I'm going to

49:24

fix this. So I'm going to copy that prompt and add

49:27

it. Make it jazzy and upbeat. You

49:31

want rap? Would you prefer rap? No, I would

49:33

not. Yeah, do a rap. Do a rap

49:35

Christmas. Kill off. Do it.

49:38

And who do you like? It's the

49:40

50th anniversary of hip-hop, isn't

49:42

it? It is, yeah. I wanted to do like

49:44

that Run DMC song that's in the beginning. Yeah,

49:46

the MC. Die Hard. But have it be about

49:48

Mary Jo. All right. I just said, but do

49:50

it in the rap style of Run DMC. So

49:53

I'll get back to you in 10 minutes. Yeah.

49:57

Mary Jo, do you have a Twitter handle anymore?

50:00

I couldn't find you. Yeah, I'm still at

50:02

Mary Jo Foley on Twitter. Okay. Yeah.

50:05

I'm sorry, I didn't. No, it's okay. I'm

50:08

also on threads, but I

50:10

still feel like threads isn't quite

50:12

ready. Yeah, none of

50:15

this is ready. It's not even slightly ready. They

50:17

don't have an AP. I can't auto post to

50:19

it. Yeah. So it doesn't exist.

50:21

I mean, I know. They

50:23

are going to do some things I like on

50:25

threads, like supposedly make it easy to import your

50:28

followers and things like that if they get away

50:30

with it. So it'll be good. That would be

50:32

good. I know. That's the problem.

50:34

Starting over from scratch is a nightmare.

50:36

Yeah, I know. Yeah.

50:39

And nobody wants to build a social graph anymore.

50:41

I mean, that's the one thing threads got right,

50:43

was you could import your graph from Instagram. So

50:45

one thing they got wrong is they spam it

50:47

all over Facebook and Instagram now and I get

50:50

threads posts in between my photos and Instagram. It's

50:52

like, guys, it's already bad enough with the ads.

50:54

Like what? I wanted to look at text. I'd

50:56

be somewhere else. Well, at least

50:58

it becomes pre-insuredified.

51:01

Yes, exactly. For

51:03

your enjoyment. Okay. Anyway,

51:06

to wrap up the hardware bit, I

51:08

was surprised to discover there is already an

51:12

Intel or Ultra based

51:15

Chromebook. Yeah, I'd call

51:17

it that. Chromebooks, isn't it?

51:19

Well, but Chromebook has this new Chromebook Plus

51:21

spec, right, which are the premium devices, which in

51:23

the Chromebook space means like 500, 700 bucks.

51:26

Like they're not that bad. I

51:28

don't know the pricing of this one. It's an Asus. But

51:31

it has a very high performance machine that won't run

51:33

any software. This is good. Oh, so

51:35

you're a Chromebook creator. This is, I am now going

51:37

to dedicate the rest of the year. All I had

51:39

to do was own one to Litter. Well

51:42

except it's gotten better. They've actually gotten quite a

51:44

bit better. Anyway. Yeah.

51:47

You're not going to get this? Good processor,

51:49

fast RAM, lots of high speed M2 SSD

51:51

storage, high resolution screen, DCI P3

51:54

color space. How much? We don't know. We

51:56

don't know yet, but it will be under a thousand. And that's the

51:58

thing, like this computer and the PC space would probably be 13,

52:01

1500 bucks. You know, eight

52:05

megapixel front-facing webcam, right? You can

52:07

run Windows on it. You

52:10

can run it in... There is

52:12

a Parallels experience, it's not as good as

52:14

on the Mac. You don't get

52:16

all that kind of fun stuff to

52:18

get on the Mac like coherence and

52:20

whatnot, but yeah, you can run it

52:22

that way. You can run Windows 365.

52:24

There you go. Anyway,

52:27

just throwing it out there. It's not gonna be just PCs.

52:30

Okay, I believe you. I'm surprised.

52:34

Alright, so now at Mary Joe's request

52:37

and it was a good idea. I'm not sure

52:39

I would have thought of this this explicitly, but

52:41

this is the last show, last live show, right?

52:43

We're doing this year. So

52:46

maybe we should take a look back and take

52:48

a look forward. Like what do we expect

52:50

to see next year? Yeah. Next

52:54

year is implementation year. Yes. We

52:57

have been hand waving the snot out of co-pilot

52:59

for the past nine months. Cory Doctorow, who coined

53:01

that term in certification, has been in the news

53:03

a lot this past year. Not just for that.

53:06

He's written another book, right? But he was talking

53:08

about AI and he described it as a bubble

53:10

and I saw this in a headline. I said,

53:12

oh, is he gonna jump the shark here? But

53:14

no. So he's a smart guy and

53:17

the way he kind of described this is that I think

53:19

bubble, I think a bubble is crap. Like everyone moves to

53:21

this one area and then it crashes and it goes away,

53:23

but he says, no, sometimes bubble, bubbles

53:26

leave useful things behind. Yes. And AI will be

53:28

that kind of bubble, right? And the question is

53:30

gonna be what degree will AI

53:33

actually impact us all? Whether it's productivity or,

53:35

you know, creativity, like Leo's trying to do

53:37

with the sun or programming,

53:39

like whatever, like what's the actual impact? It's gonna, there's

53:42

gonna be a some delta between

53:44

the hype and the reality, right? What's

53:46

the phrase you always use? The

53:48

the trough of despair. Yes. Well,

53:50

the gardener, you know, peek of

53:52

over-plated expectations. But maybe it

53:54

could be like the recession where we're heading for that,

53:57

but it actually evens out we're okay. You know, I

53:59

would argue that. every one of

54:01

the AI winters left behind useful

54:03

residuals. Just the

54:05

folks that created that AI moment, which were

54:08

mostly scientists getting funding, the winter came when

54:10

they could get money anymore because they'd run

54:12

their course. Yeah. For

54:14

what was available. And then the engineers came in behind. So

54:18

look, this has been the year the engineer tried to

54:20

get their hand around. But the scientists

54:22

are done, right? They're around. Yeah,

54:24

hinted has already said, like generative

54:26

AI has run its course. If

54:29

we're gonna do, we're gonna go somewhere else. But

54:32

that's just like, oh, well, look, the cement works.

54:34

There's nothing new to do in this cement. So

54:36

let's move on. The folks who actually build

54:38

bridges with it. Oh my God, I was gonna say, hold on a

54:40

second. That's like a Isaac

54:43

Asimov Foundation moment because the truth is

54:45

there was cement that was made by the Romans

54:47

that is actually better than the cement we're using

54:49

today. And this is something we

54:51

lost. Now we now

54:53

know that it's only because it interacts with

54:55

salt water creates internal

54:58

crystallization. Yeah. But that's, you know,

55:00

we're getting too far off on the metaphor here. But you know what? You

55:03

know what, we do. But let's apply this AI, right? No,

55:05

we do. Yeah. Is a rap

55:07

song dedicated

55:09

to Mary Jo Foley. I

55:12

like to think of it as Christmas

55:14

with you. Oh,

55:18

falling down in this merry little town.

55:22

I'm sipping high, cause I'm watching for

55:24

you. This is the brightest raps I've ever made. Which

55:27

is ironic. Oh, you're like

55:29

the ghost of the slippers. You're

55:32

so weird, you be hooked on high. Yeah, wow.

55:35

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This one

55:37

is really, really, really good. I'm actually much better. This

55:40

one is more aggressively worse. Um. Oh,

55:43

yeah. Oh,

55:48

yeah. Oh, yeah.

55:52

Oh, yeah. Oh,

55:56

yeah. Gene

56:00

made that. Yeah, I love

56:02

like it the auto tuning a feature

56:05

like how do you auto tune it's like a Song

56:08

by the Jets from the 1980s, you know those guys Or

56:13

like um the guy what are those

56:15

bands cut dot cut? Um, that's terrible

56:17

terrible bands all the boys It

56:21

sounds like in excess no not in You

56:23

know, you think it in sync in sync Yeah, yeah,

56:26

yeah, yeah, the backstreet boys

56:28

like those guys did the style run dmc.

56:30

I think it missed a little bit I

56:35

put that one on unmasked it on for

56:37

those who Some

56:42

are twit dot social I

56:44

am leo at leo on If

56:47

you if you want to you know add it to your collection Which

56:50

I really think you should I mean this

56:52

is turning into the worst k-tel album ever

56:54

made Yeah Like

57:01

we couldn't get licenses to any of the

57:03

music We

57:05

got this stuff instead and it's like oh god what's

57:07

happening? I think if

57:09

you listen to it i'm just thinking four or five

57:11

times It'll

57:13

become It'll

57:15

become this would be construed as a war crime

57:17

under the um We'll

57:21

cry back over and over at a pie

57:23

volume They played this their

57:25

way. Go didn't they drive them out of the building? When

57:28

the u.s. Military was in nicaragua, and they

57:31

played it to nori All

57:40

right, so that's not just something to look forward to

57:43

going in the next year All

57:45

right, but i'm sorry I

57:47

want to say something on co-pilots because I I was

57:49

talking to richard about this I'm like

57:51

so burnt out on them. So I

57:56

almost feel like their pr strategy worked

57:58

against them as it time

58:00

went on. So they started out by pre-announcing

58:02

a million copilots like a couple of them

58:04

ship, most of them didn't ship,

58:07

even this like Microsoft 365 copilot

58:09

being generally available. It's not really generally

58:11

available. Security

58:16

copilot never shipped, OneDrive copilot

58:18

never shipped, SharePoint copilot never shipped. Richard did you

58:20

tell her what we were told about all the

58:24

copilots inside of Microsoft? There's hundreds right?

58:26

There's hundreds of them. There's 117 was

58:28

the count we got. So

58:30

that tells you how many are going to

58:33

get announced next year? No. So that

58:35

was the thing. Yeah there

58:37

was an agreement that maybe we needed to

58:39

slow this down and reverse a little bit.

58:41

Good. You

58:44

know this was Uncle Satche telling

58:46

his entire company every team look at

58:49

this technology and see how you did.

58:51

Every team responded. But

58:53

they had to respond right? It

58:55

was a requirement. On the eve

58:57

of Ignite, one of

58:59

the teams, I can't really say it was, it was a matter of one of the teams,

59:02

finally someone complained up

59:04

the chain and said guys we

59:06

are about to announce two copilots

59:08

that are literally identical. We

59:11

cannot do this. Stop.

59:13

And someone pulled it, you said you're right

59:15

actually let's not do this. But this thing

59:18

existed through the chain all year long and it was

59:20

they had the announcement right there, the product name, they

59:23

had everything and they were like stop. We

59:26

really need to think about it. It hadn't

59:28

hit that top tier yet. Each product team

59:30

went inward and this was a really good

59:32

idea from Satche's perspective too because everybody did

59:35

something a little bit different. Like you're

59:37

discovering what these things are capable of in

59:40

all these different islands of creativity. Now whether

59:42

or not you put it into a product

59:44

and put it in front of people, that's

59:46

a different conversation entirely. And the answer

59:48

is generally no. It's consolidate the innovation, see

59:50

where we've got big. Where can we have

59:52

the most value? Why in the world

59:55

would you have a SharePoint co-pilot when you have them 365? there

1:00:00

will be good news for you because the, well,

1:00:02

I would even say even as recently as Ignite

1:00:04

though, that final branding consolidation where,

1:00:06

remember you would actually ask me, I think

1:00:08

it was after September, I had written something

1:00:11

and you said, where did you get this?

1:00:14

And it was, I found something he wrote and

1:00:16

I'm like, okay, I want to know where you got that

1:00:18

from. I'm not saying you plagiarized it. I'm trying to figure

1:00:20

out where did you find that wording? They

1:00:22

eventually explicitly announced it at Ignite,

1:00:24

which was that, not

1:00:26

the naming part, but you know, Microsoft Co-Pilot

1:00:29

is the foundation. This is where the extensibility

1:00:31

model starts. You build off

1:00:33

of that with Bing and Microsoft 365,

1:00:35

Windows, whatever, and compatible

1:00:38

with open AI. And she's like, wait, what

1:00:40

did you see this? And I'm like, they say, it was

1:00:42

at the September event. I don't remember. It

1:00:45

was. But then here's the other problem. I know

1:00:47

this because I write a lot about the enterprise

1:00:49

in my job. All the

1:00:51

enterprise co-pilots have nothing to do with

1:00:53

that, right? Like the co-pilots and dynamics

1:00:55

are not the same at all as

1:00:57

the co-pilots in Microsoft I

1:01:00

think it's notable. They've never. Fabric co-pilots,

1:01:03

not the same at all. Because you don't necessarily,

1:01:05

honestly, I think that, well, aside from the general

1:01:07

use of the internet, I'm out in the world

1:01:09

doing whatever stuff. When you think

1:01:11

about it from a company perspective, you're inside of an organization,

1:01:13

whatever it is, and you're doing on some project, whatever it

1:01:15

might be. You really

1:01:17

want it to be that cut down model that

1:01:19

we've been talking about. We want that part of

1:01:21

the Microsoft Graph that matters to what we're doing

1:01:24

right now. We don't want the whole internet. I

1:01:27

feel like the smaller you make it and the

1:01:29

more finite that data

1:01:31

set is. I mean, they're all

1:01:33

finite technically, but the

1:01:36

more accurate it's going to be, right? AI

1:01:39

will work better for you in an organization or

1:01:41

maybe someday as an individual because

1:01:43

of the smaller data set. What

1:01:46

you want from an internal co-pilot to

1:01:48

the company data is with, say, I

1:01:50

don't know when it doesn't know. You

1:01:53

have to only derive information from the

1:01:55

sources that it has. Yes. The

1:01:57

way I described AI to a guy at the gym. asked

1:02:00

me about this and about Microsoft and how they were going

1:02:02

to do in the future, I said, AI is

1:02:05

wonderful for summarizing things, but if you ask it

1:02:07

what one plus one is, it might respond with

1:02:09

G. Right. You

1:02:12

know, it's just, it's weirdly bad at

1:02:14

certain things. It is. The

1:02:16

one I did for the

1:02:18

Rotary Club was I asked chat.com

1:02:20

to write me the compare and

1:02:23

contrast and omelet made with chicken

1:02:25

eggs and with caramel eggs. But

1:02:27

yikes. And it just went right down.

1:02:30

I recommended the second one and you're like,

1:02:32

I'm a leg omelet. Very

1:02:35

special. Yeah. Yeah.

1:02:38

It's a little gamey. Yeah. So

1:02:42

I think next year there's going to be a lot

1:02:44

of people buying co-pilots. Like I think Microsoft's earnings are

1:02:46

going to be super interesting next year to see how

1:02:48

fast that grows, but also they're going to have to

1:02:50

start shipping some of these things and now it's been

1:02:53

like making them real. Where I specialize

1:02:55

them. Yeah. I mean, Microsoft

1:02:57

365 co-pilot alone needs to expand pretty

1:02:59

dramatically as far as it goes. Well,

1:03:02

the small businesses and consumers. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

1:03:06

But only if it's useful. Like I think they got to cook it for

1:03:08

a while. I mean, you're also waiting

1:03:10

for, you know, just like we have with chat

1:03:12

GPT with the lawyers abusing it and getting in

1:03:15

front of the court, you're going to have somebody

1:03:17

be able to make business failure on the software.

1:03:19

So both of

1:03:21

you will know that I have spoken

1:03:23

about how hard it has been over

1:03:25

the years to keep track of

1:03:27

Microsoft 365 because every month it would come up

1:03:29

with this giant blog post. And

1:03:31

if you just look at something simple like Microsoft Word,

1:03:34

which is funny to describe as simple, but

1:03:36

there are multiple versions of it and then

1:03:38

there's thousands and thousands of features. And

1:03:41

then there's this matrix of where those features kind

1:03:43

of are. So web, mobile, desktop, two versions of

1:03:45

desktop. And they'll

1:03:47

announce a new feature for Microsoft Word in November

1:03:49

2021, whatever year. And

1:03:52

it's dictation and the

1:03:54

ability to take an audio recording

1:03:56

and make a script from it.

1:04:00

It's still only in the web version. It's

1:04:02

kind of a weird problem. When

1:04:04

I look at the

1:04:07

Microsoft Co-Pilot features, they have

1:04:09

announced for Microsoft 365, I guess. I'm

1:04:12

not sure how to say this. And you look at the

1:04:14

individual apps, like here are the features we're doing in Word,

1:04:16

here are the features in Excel. They kind of read like

1:04:18

that feature, don't they? They're like

1:04:20

a bundle of things that they would

1:04:22

have maybe released anyway. Yes. Right?

1:04:25

So it makes it kind of hard. So

1:04:27

now you're saying, hold on a second. You

1:04:30

have a standalone Microsoft Office product, which you don't even want to

1:04:32

sell, but you kind of have to. You've

1:04:34

got the Microsoft 365 subscriptions where all

1:04:37

the new features go. But

1:04:39

no, not all the new features, right? Because now we have

1:04:41

this other subscription that sits on top of it. And

1:04:43

now what you're saying is to get these other

1:04:46

new features, I need this second subscription, right? Like

1:04:48

we're kind of, they are

1:04:50

kind of bifurcating

1:04:53

the market even further. And

1:04:55

it makes it harder to know where features are.

1:04:58

Because that feature, the AI feature, maybe is only

1:05:00

going to be on a Windows

1:05:02

computer when you have two subscriptions and you have

1:05:04

an MPM or something, right? It's

1:05:07

gotten even harder. It is. But

1:05:10

it's also a new product that's going to

1:05:12

be billed separately for the foreseeable future, eventually

1:05:15

it gets bundled in. Eventually

1:05:18

language understanding and software becomes a normal

1:05:20

part of software. I mean, stop calling

1:05:22

it a separate feature. It's just software.

1:05:25

That's right. And then the new Microsoft support was

1:05:27

special. Like, you know, once upon a time it

1:05:29

was, it was on the box. It

1:05:31

actually said, this software support is nice.

1:05:34

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, actually

1:05:36

what you're also describing is the standalone version

1:05:38

of Office, right? So there will be an

1:05:40

Office 20, 20, or whatever, 25, whatever the next

1:05:42

version is. And

1:05:45

it will be some level set that before was features

1:05:47

that were part of the subscription and aren't in 2019

1:05:49

or whatever the new one is. And

1:05:52

that's the new normal billed pattern, as you test

1:05:54

the features as part of the cloud subscription and

1:05:56

then you cut a version. And honestly, given the

1:05:58

churning, we see

1:06:00

today? I mean I'm fairly

1:06:02

technical, I'm a technology enthusiast, even I'm getting kind of

1:06:05

burned out on all the churn. It's like guys, can

1:06:07

we slow down for a second? I mean at some

1:06:09

point I need to get work done with this product

1:06:11

too. I'm not playing a video game. I need to...

1:06:14

Right. You know. And

1:06:16

you're speaking truth out there. The .NET people are

1:06:18

struggling with so many versions every year. It turns

1:06:21

out to be a lot. I know. And

1:06:23

does it warrant it? Is a great... I mean

1:06:26

a platform like .NET, you could make a very

1:06:28

good argument for maybe it's every other year guys,

1:06:30

you know? Well, that's what a lot of

1:06:32

people, you know, then they made these LTS versions

1:06:34

long before. I know. And it's like... Which is three years.

1:06:37

Why couldn't they just all be like that? Just do one in

1:06:39

three years and have it be LTS. You know, whatever. With

1:06:42

you. And it's again, I think we're all learning

1:06:44

here. It's an experimentation. Remember when we got a

1:06:46

new version of Windows 10 every 15 minutes? Yeah.

1:06:51

And we bound it to software features too. Like

1:06:53

I had developers trying to tell IT folks, I

1:06:55

need you to upgrade our version of Windows 10

1:06:57

so I can deploy my app. Why is there

1:06:59

a window there? Why is there

1:07:02

a 3D objects entry in my file manager I can't

1:07:04

get rid of? Why is there a photo

1:07:06

gallery entry today that I can't... But you can't get

1:07:08

rid of both, but not in the

1:07:11

UI. Yeah. We

1:07:13

keep presuming there's a plan when they're just

1:07:16

trying to figure stuff out, right? Yeah. I

1:07:18

said I'm thinking there was a plan about eight months ago. That

1:07:21

was fine. That was going to go a line. It's like we're

1:07:23

not organized enough to be as evil as you want it to

1:07:25

be. Right. I bet if we could call

1:07:27

that office, the phone would just ring. There's no... Dunno.

1:07:33

Really, Dunno. I don't

1:07:35

see the hardware following seriously until

1:07:37

the killer app exists. We

1:07:40

talked about this, right? This notion that maybe the killer app

1:07:43

wasn't a killer app, but was rather... Did we talk about

1:07:45

this? It ended up being a host of many capabilities. Different

1:07:48

people. Different people latch onto the one thing. But

1:07:51

I always think of normal, contact people,

1:07:53

my mother, my wife, whatever. And I

1:07:56

think not that they would ever be caught dead

1:07:58

in the computer section of a Best Buy, but I'm... again,

1:08:00

I'm imagining it. What would it

1:08:02

take for someone like that to

1:08:05

want to upgrade? And

1:08:08

it's got to be this competitive advantage. Like

1:08:10

one of the arguments here is those original

1:08:12

companies that jumped that were able to get

1:08:14

the early bits of M365 and their logos

1:08:16

are plastered all over Ignite. They're

1:08:19

going to be spitting out these case studies

1:08:21

that say 30% performance improvement,

1:08:25

more work done. I've certainly seen this

1:08:27

in software development, right? Like

1:08:29

the numbers are now coming back for PMs

1:08:31

I know that are showing these folks are

1:08:34

checking in more code and they're fixing it.

1:08:36

They need to fix it less often when

1:08:38

they work with GitHub Compilot. Like these are

1:08:40

real productivity gains. Well, we're

1:08:42

going to, this is what you expected 24 that for office

1:08:46

folks, for info workers. Yeah,

1:08:48

there you go. Yeah, it has

1:08:50

to be real, right? I mean, it's a little bit of a

1:08:52

measure. It might be a little harder for the

1:08:55

office stuff just because everyone

1:08:57

does different types of work and they have

1:08:59

little specialties or whatever, you know, we

1:09:02

might have to screen test this like

1:09:04

immediately way. It's like, let them go

1:09:06

for six months and shut it off

1:09:08

and listen. That might

1:09:10

be the only way to know for sure is when people will

1:09:12

refuse to do they miss it when it's done. Yeah, that's a

1:09:14

great test by the way. You know what? Sometimes I'll go back

1:09:17

to a previous version of a product and

1:09:19

do I miss stuff? And if you don't, someone

1:09:21

wrong there. Yeah. And I said, in IT, we

1:09:23

call it the screen test. It's like, anybody use

1:09:25

this report, shut it off and listen to the

1:09:28

screen. No, no, it's okay. Leave it off. At

1:09:31

Microsoft, the screen test is we just randomly

1:09:33

deliver software. Don't tell anybody. You

1:09:36

have three computers that all have different configurations,

1:09:38

even though you did them exactly the same. Yeah,

1:09:40

I decide. Don't think this is going to

1:09:42

happen as quickly as we hope. But

1:09:46

until the moment you have that competitive advantage,

1:09:49

right? Yeah, I would say I don't know.

1:09:52

In my case, and Mary Jo probably

1:09:54

agree, I think she kind of expressed this earlier,

1:09:56

I would be okay if it slowed down. Right.

1:09:58

Yeah. I

1:10:01

think we were on a runaway train this year. Well,

1:10:04

Microsoft wanted to get into the Gestalt. Let's

1:10:07

face it, everybody knows what Copilot

1:10:09

means now. They've hijacked that word,

1:10:11

especially. I think Satche

1:10:14

has taken this very personally. This

1:10:16

is his first really leading a

1:10:18

brand new product by Microsoft. This

1:10:21

is so high profile. I mean,

1:10:23

it's by choice. They've chosen to

1:10:25

make it this high profile. I

1:10:29

think them waking up to

1:10:31

be this aggressive is more impressive

1:10:33

than if someday they actually start doing Ignite

1:10:35

again with tens of

1:10:37

thousands of people. It's

1:10:40

just as unexpected. It's neat. As

1:10:44

following Microsoft as long as we all have, I mean,

1:10:46

it's been a while. We'll

1:10:49

see what happens with events in 2024. That's

1:10:51

a whole other conversation. No, I'm

1:10:53

just comparing it. Things that kind of

1:10:55

went by the wayside there for a little while. But

1:10:59

are we going to give you a new version of Windows

1:11:01

next year? At least they're going to say, admit this is

1:11:04

going to be so. I would say that Intel releasing these

1:11:06

chips the way they did says yes to that question. The

1:11:08

only question is whether what we call it. Right. I

1:11:11

don't think they can call it Windows 12. I

1:11:13

agree. It makes no sense. After spending this

1:11:15

whole year waiting for Windows 12 and then

1:11:17

reading what Zach wrote a few weeks

1:11:19

ago, I thought, you know, this debate makes sense. It's

1:11:22

rebranding now after

1:11:25

you've talked to AI incessantly for a year

1:11:27

and added it to Windows

1:11:29

11 and then say, OK, now we're moving on to the

1:11:31

next thing. It's like now you've got like three versions of

1:11:33

Windows to support. And where

1:11:35

do you cut off the AI features that you

1:11:37

just call it for it? Co-pilot. I

1:11:40

know. Right. That's

1:11:42

the thing. That would really confuse things if

1:11:44

they did that. But I can see them

1:11:46

doing it. Well, I mean, that's

1:11:48

what Stevie Batiste compared it

1:11:50

to. Right. The orchestra did this

1:11:53

kind of AI everywhere notion where the great

1:11:56

example of an orchestra that we have today is the

1:11:58

Windows shell. You know, and it's like, well. And

1:12:01

Sachin Dela didn't mean this literally, but he said, you know, what

1:12:03

if, what he said, call by

1:12:05

it will become like the start,

1:12:07

but right the place where we start to do everything, you

1:12:09

start with this problem. No.

1:12:12

To me, I'd be being pedantic about that. I think,

1:12:14

oh yeah, we're going to go back to MS-DOS and

1:12:16

start typing again. That's what we're going to do. But

1:12:20

he didn't really mean it that way. But, yeah.

1:12:22

E-max, baby, it's the future. Make sure it's a

1:12:24

forward slash, not a backward slash. Did

1:12:28

you just run F-disk? What are you

1:12:31

doing? But

1:12:35

I think the point was simply that everything's

1:12:37

going to change, right? So we, you know, the

1:12:39

apps have been changing for a long time. I

1:12:41

mean, I think in a lot of ways, AI

1:12:44

will cobble together that whatever services and apps are

1:12:46

necessary to achieve this thing you're doing. And

1:12:49

that becomes like an app, but it's not the app

1:12:52

that we could think of today, right? It's not

1:12:54

that anybody wrote a book on the future of

1:12:56

Microsoft. He described

1:12:58

this concept of an intelligent agent a

1:13:00

long time ago. So we've got software

1:13:02

that can understand language and it's looking

1:13:04

at what's in your inbox and what's

1:13:06

on your schedule. It

1:13:09

should be preparing information for you as

1:13:11

you sit down to work that. What's

1:13:13

that software called, Gmail, man? I

1:13:15

miss him. Yeah,

1:13:19

I think it has to be

1:13:21

called Windows 11 something

1:13:24

or definitely not 12, especially because

1:13:26

they just announced extended security update

1:13:28

availability for Windows 11. I

1:13:31

mean, Windows 10 to go to Windows 11. Yeah,

1:13:35

I just don't think they're going to. And of course, now that

1:13:37

I've said that they will. But you know what they could

1:13:39

do? They could have Windows

1:13:41

11 side by side with some new Windows

1:13:43

thing called Windows something. And

1:13:45

if you get the new hardware with the

1:13:48

new AI processors in it, you get that

1:13:50

version. But everybody else doing normal work and

1:13:52

who's like regular people keeps running Windows 11.

1:13:54

One of the arguments I made a million years

1:13:56

ago was that Microsoft could have shipped two versions

1:13:58

of Windows 11. for consumers one

1:14:00

for businesses that ran exactly the same software

1:14:03

but had very different UIs with a super

1:14:05

version could be very friendly and you know

1:14:07

simple and whatever and they

1:14:09

never did that and I and honestly I think

1:14:12

one of the and they and the reason they

1:14:15

don't do stuff like that is because training

1:14:17

right you want you don't want somebody to be sitting there

1:14:19

at work and they've learned how this is the works they

1:14:21

go home and like what is this is completely different like

1:14:23

and didn't want it either 10 to 11 is

1:14:26

to me is not a big deal but for some it's

1:14:28

a bridge too far right and they get to do that

1:14:30

again right you know yeah

1:14:33

it'll be interesting to see how the brand

1:14:35

it what it looks like right

1:14:40

I think it definitely is going to be a

1:14:42

version some new windows in 2024 and how if

1:14:45

they call it new windows or don't call it

1:14:47

new windows whatever but I don't think which

1:14:50

I and you have both of these products

1:14:52

listed in the notes but dear god Microsoft

1:14:54

can I help you with something don't call

1:14:56

anything new yeah you can't

1:14:58

put new in the name it's not new

1:15:00

outlook it's not new teams it's

1:15:02

just teams just just please stop I know there

1:15:04

are too many outlooks I get that I'm

1:15:07

at the lead of the charge on that complaint

1:15:09

but seriously this thing that is new now will

1:15:11

not be new in two months and

1:15:13

stop you know I think 12 is

1:15:15

a fine name you're not gonna be able to use

1:15:17

13 just like you couldn't use 9 right so

1:15:20

I think they're gonna go 12 before they really

1:15:22

do or you say just the

1:15:24

thing we talked about with 10 just call it Windows

1:15:27

just go over to the numbers they almost did

1:15:29

that right what 10 was supposed to be and

1:15:31

then Apple got all uppity with a new version

1:15:33

number and all of a sudden they got to

1:15:36

do something I think the

1:15:38

version number thing and the routine release

1:15:40

of new product is a requirement I

1:15:42

think if the customer expects it the

1:15:44

shareholder expects it OEMs want it for

1:15:46

sure no OEM wants it so there

1:15:48

needs to be a call something you

1:15:50

can work in the market yeah yep

1:15:52

remember the new surface pro that

1:15:55

product that was not called surface pro

1:15:57

5 right and they learned that lesson

1:15:59

very quickly There has not been another one

1:16:01

of those. I mean, because it actually hurts

1:16:03

sales. Yeah. Stupid.

1:16:05

Yeah. I don't know. I'm

1:16:07

going to go on the side of it. I think it's going to be Windows 12. You do.

1:16:10

Wow. I mean, it might be AI edition. Sure.

1:16:13

Yeah. Oh yeah. Windows

1:16:16

11 AI edition. There we go. I

1:16:18

like it. And we'll all call it 12 because it's

1:16:20

left letters to get it. The

1:16:23

word AI might scare some people off.

1:16:25

I mean, yeah. Or is there a

1:16:27

reason? Yeah. Turn them off,

1:16:29

right? Because of all the hype. Yeah. Yeah.

1:16:33

And remember, there are still companies who ban

1:16:35

chat GPT. I mean, because of the loss

1:16:37

of data. So I think that's

1:16:39

maybe not going to be in the name. Yeah.

1:16:42

In fact, I think it's probably going to be

1:16:44

an option. You got to keep them simple. I

1:16:46

honestly, I don't even home in pro or at

1:16:49

least they kind of pro is a weird

1:16:51

word, honestly. But yeah,

1:16:53

too complicated. Windows Vista, they went off

1:16:55

the rails. Remember with all the profit

1:16:58

editions. Windows 3, come on.

1:17:00

What about that one? Windows Home Basic. Like

1:17:03

I'm a home user, but I'm even more basic than

1:17:05

that. Thanks. Great. You

1:17:07

want basic? Windows for idiots. Windows for

1:17:10

dummies. Yeah. I was

1:17:15

in the licensing section

1:17:17

for the repository that

1:17:19

as an MVP you have access to. And

1:17:22

they literally have every variation of every version

1:17:24

available to you. Right. And

1:17:26

she must be, we was looking over the shoulder because it was

1:17:28

actually for her machine and she's like, why, why

1:17:31

are there so many? It says, well,

1:17:33

these three were made by the EU.

1:17:35

Yeah, exactly. These ones are made by

1:17:37

the Korean versions. There's the N

1:17:39

versions in Europe. And KN. And

1:17:42

there's a version we don't see out in the

1:17:44

world. I mean, there's a whole set of education

1:17:46

SKUs and the kiosks SKUs and it's a lot.

1:17:51

Yep. It is. Oh, I

1:17:53

don't know. I can't imagine them changing it. But it

1:17:55

doesn't compare to Microsoft 365. Just

1:17:57

saying. But there are a lot of them. Yeah,

1:18:01

but speaking of new teams and new outlook

1:18:06

I'm gonna guess the consensus is the same for everybody

1:18:08

here the new outlook not great for businesses yet But

1:18:10

they'll you know, they'll get it there the

1:18:12

new team seems like it's kind of a Great,

1:18:15

right? Like it's been pretty Yeah,

1:18:17

well received right be well solves the problems. Yeah,

1:18:19

it's got a lot of problems still Well,

1:18:22

yeah So we we use

1:18:24

it internally at directions on Microsoft and

1:18:26

we've had all these weird things about

1:18:29

sharing screens Come up where if someone's

1:18:31

sharing a screen other people see a

1:18:33

black box Or they can't

1:18:35

share their screen and it only is happening in the

1:18:37

new teams And if you go into the forums, you

1:18:39

see other people are having this So there's still some

1:18:42

things that need to be what I'm popping up ads

1:18:44

in front of your face as much as they

1:18:46

used to I really like that That's it looks

1:18:48

almost the same as the other ear. Okay. All

1:18:50

right one of my workstations now When

1:18:53

I run the teams new teams client,

1:18:55

yeah, all windows are just caught black

1:18:57

whether it's a share Okay, okay. That's

1:18:59

what's the letter client works, but the

1:19:01

magnified and it's like I've done nothing

1:19:04

It must have up to itself the

1:19:06

three things seems to be uninstall it and

1:19:08

install it again. Really? Turn

1:19:11

it out. Yeah, the new teams,

1:19:13

you know significantly fewer resources used

1:19:15

which is great better performance electron

1:19:18

they The big

1:19:20

thing to me is it remembers my AV settings,

1:19:23

right? Which would the old teams every almost

1:19:25

not every morning three times a week. I'd have to you know Yeah,

1:19:27

you're on the wrong mic, you know, it's like I

1:19:29

haven't changed anything. Like why does anything keep changing? They

1:19:32

seem to have gotten on top of that. So to me that's

1:19:34

that's a big deal Yeah,

1:19:36

that was because of updates like a seven up

1:19:39

to you trash all the detail almost like we're

1:19:41

back to Yeah, the initial state that could be

1:19:43

yeah No outlook though. I've

1:19:45

been using it. I've been forcing myself to use it

1:19:47

and It's

1:19:50

good problems to like I

1:19:52

think it's fine for consumers

1:19:54

today Yeah, it I don't think

1:19:57

you'll hear any business users are like, oh, yeah. No, that's it.

1:19:59

I can't wait Those are like running, screaming

1:20:01

from this, like scared. And it's not ready,

1:20:03

and Microsoft knows it's not ready. They're going

1:20:05

to do a very gradual cut over from

1:20:07

the old outlook for Windows. You

1:20:10

seem to be the whole methodology these days,

1:20:12

right? With the whole toggle between you and

1:20:15

old is, you know, are you

1:20:17

fine with this or does it frighten you? And

1:20:19

then they instant the snot out of it. There's

1:20:21

a lot of people are switching. I don't think

1:20:23

it was ignited. It was before Ignite, but there

1:20:25

was a, the Outlook team did like a chat

1:20:27

thing online where they talked about the bar they

1:20:29

need to meet before they'll even consider, you know,

1:20:32

forcing, uh, you know, business users to

1:20:34

do this. It's years away, but they have a list of

1:20:36

this is like, we got all the feedback. The only thing

1:20:38

we can't do is that old kind of calm plugin thing

1:20:41

is not happening. You're never going to do that. Never

1:20:43

getting that. But I mean, basically all the features people

1:20:45

are asking for, yeah, we're going to do all those

1:20:47

things and then we'll give you at least a year

1:20:49

and then we'll make it optional.

1:20:51

Is it, I'm going to support someone there.

1:20:53

No, it's there. It is there now. Okay. It

1:20:56

wasn't until. There wasn't, that's right. That's right.

1:20:58

We really are hitting the, you know, dice

1:21:00

and ask. It was easier to put wifi

1:21:02

everywhere than it was to have make a

1:21:04

good offline client. You

1:21:09

sit down in the airplane, have wifi,

1:21:11

even if it isn't working, that's fine.

1:21:13

You can still write your email. It

1:21:15

looks vaguely connectish. And

1:21:17

we'll get there eventually. Yeah.

1:21:21

So those two things, I think we're going to have a lot. What's

1:21:25

the state of loop? I

1:21:29

know I finally got my tenant configured so

1:21:31

that loop shows up as an option to

1:21:33

install, but actually installing loop is still a

1:21:36

nuisance. You get to the client side of

1:21:38

the loop, the browser version of loop easy

1:21:40

enough. Right. There's a Microsoft

1:21:42

store version of loop that appeared without

1:21:44

any announcement to this day, months ago,

1:21:47

right? And I assume

1:21:49

you could connect it to a business or an MSA. I

1:21:51

kind of have to, you have to set it up

1:21:53

into your tenant. And if you, and

1:21:55

it is properly configured, then the loop will just

1:21:57

work. And, and by the way, they. You

1:22:00

probably can figure it means setting a series

1:22:02

of group policies with that

1:22:05

are assigned to a group that you then put

1:22:07

members into and it's disturbing that I memorize this because

1:22:09

I've been at like six times to try and

1:22:11

make it work. That's how that works, yeah. That

1:22:14

they should be a button, give people

1:22:16

loop. Frank,

1:22:18

it's just enable loop, exactly. And

1:22:21

why does it, you know, I don't have to

1:22:23

enable word, why do I have to enable loop?

1:22:25

I mean, you feel like this is going to

1:22:27

happen eventually, but I know it's like out, it's released,

1:22:31

but it still feels very incomplete to me.

1:22:33

Yeah, a pretty raw product, really. You know,

1:22:35

we use Notion, you know, as we're doing

1:22:37

some notes, it's mature, works great,

1:22:40

it seems to really fit in light to

1:22:43

me. The syncing capability, this thing is almost

1:22:45

magical, like it blows my mind how well

1:22:47

that works. Yeah. I

1:22:50

know it's a high bar. In fact, yeah, I'm

1:22:52

now try hitting between Notion

1:22:54

with you, OneNote, which is all my

1:22:56

old note stuff, right? Loop, which is

1:22:58

my new note stuff. But I've now

1:23:00

consciously like moved all the whiskey

1:23:02

notes over to Loop. Yes, to keep, get

1:23:04

used to the interface and the one thing

1:23:07

I do, I limit it regularly, right? One

1:23:09

of the things I would really like about Loop, one of

1:23:11

the reasons I would want to go to it other than,

1:23:13

you know, I also have the OneDrive stores in the back

1:23:16

end, yada yada, and all the things that come with Microsoft

1:23:18

365 is it uses Microsoft

1:23:20

Word style keyboard shortcuts for applying

1:23:22

styles to text. You know,

1:23:24

in Loop, Notion is a

1:23:26

very different thing. You kind of have to do a

1:23:28

slash command and then after the fact, there's kind of

1:23:30

a bulky menu you can use to change things. But

1:23:33

I just, I've been using it for a little time

1:23:35

with the Loop mobile client. It'll make you hate yourself.

1:23:37

Oh no, I can't use it. I literally deleted it

1:23:39

from my phone. It would never, all I had was

1:23:41

a list of, it was one page of text. It

1:23:43

was just waits for, you know, the machines

1:23:45

at the gym. It's like, guys, there's nothing to sync.

1:23:47

It's been sitting there for months, but it's like something

1:23:49

went wrong. You know, you're

1:23:51

playing office tenant problems. So now the

1:23:53

software won't go. But I'm talking like

1:23:56

I look at my phone. Okay. This

1:23:59

is the way I need for this machine. I do my whatever

1:24:01

thing, go to the next, I look at it, go, something went

1:24:03

wrong. You're like, what? How

1:24:05

did anything go wrong? You would, I could have taken

1:24:08

a screenshot and it would have been fine. Like guarantee

1:24:10

you it's a tenant handshake problem. Like that is terrible.

1:24:12

And this is the same problem that Outlook struggles with,

1:24:14

right? It's like the, there's a

1:24:16

set of rules living inside of the

1:24:18

operating system related to security and authentication.

1:24:21

That's overrides everything. This is the, the,

1:24:23

the slow boil that led to Loop

1:24:25

was a, they created yet another platform.

1:24:27

You know, we just talked about teams

1:24:30

and co-pilot is other examples of that.

1:24:33

And this had to be right. You know, there's

1:24:35

a, there's a whole model of components and whatever

1:24:38

it got two way. Right. And yeah,

1:24:41

I think of it as this goofy

1:24:43

little note-taking app basically, but it's a

1:24:45

much bigger thing than that. And if

1:24:47

this thing works out, this is what

1:24:50

will obsolete, you know, word processing

1:24:52

and note-taking, dedicated note-taking apps, et

1:24:54

cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot

1:24:56

riding on it, but man, it's been years. Isn't

1:24:58

it like three years? Is it three years? I

1:25:00

remember we first were talking about using it. Yeah.

1:25:04

It's like two or three years. I'd have to go look it up,

1:25:06

but I, I remember using like a really, really early version

1:25:08

of it with almost no UI and just being like, I

1:25:10

don't understand what this thing is, but it was so, you

1:25:12

know, so basic. Oh, and it's got the same problem

1:25:14

as teams and a bunch of other products, which is,

1:25:17

I think it's actually trying to be three different products

1:25:19

of one. So one of them is a notion competitor.

1:25:21

Yeah. And it was very disappointing

1:25:23

when we first got the kind of end

1:25:26

user UI. Like this is, this

1:25:28

is notion like you made notion like, dear God, do

1:25:30

we need another notion? That's what this is. It's an

1:25:32

ocean and it is more than that,

1:25:34

right? To be fair again, but, uh,

1:25:36

and user, if we were all team

1:25:38

centric, then you'd be using loop components

1:25:40

inside of team. And now their interface

1:25:42

approach, right? Yep. And I'll give you

1:25:44

a downside of luck if you wanted to

1:25:47

exact that. I don't know.

1:25:49

This is, this is 21st century, uh, object

1:25:51

linking and embedding. That's what this is. Someday

1:25:54

I will open Microsoft word and it will

1:25:56

say, would you like to change the default

1:25:58

document format to be a loop component or

1:26:00

something? something and it's like, and

1:26:02

they won't tell you, you just will be able to. What

1:26:05

is weird? Something different

1:26:07

somehow. Is it the same

1:26:09

format? I mean is it? No,

1:26:11

no, it isn't. And this

1:26:13

is something that Microsoft has had problems with over the

1:26:15

years. The notable

1:26:18

example being OneNote, which you

1:26:20

know, when you, it has styles like Microsoft Word

1:26:22

and if you copy and paste it into a Word

1:26:24

document elsewhere, the thing you get

1:26:26

looks very different from what it would look like if you

1:26:28

had Word. If you started with Word, like even though they

1:26:30

kind of look the same, it's not the same thing. It's

1:26:33

not rendered the same way. Even Word on the web

1:26:36

versus Word on a native app on your

1:26:38

desktop is different. Like it's, I don't think

1:26:41

it's a .x, etc., etc., but that

1:26:43

thing you're looking at, the thing you're working in, it's

1:26:45

very different. Let

1:26:51

me take a little break. You want to talk about Activision

1:26:53

Blizzard? Yes. I think a break

1:26:55

before Activision Blizzard because that will give people

1:26:57

a chance to gear up, put themselves in

1:26:59

the proper mindset and all

1:27:01

of that. So

1:27:05

good news, Activision Blizzard is next.

1:27:07

Mary Jo, you missed the entire

1:27:09

drama from beginning to end. I wouldn't say

1:27:11

she missed it. I can't believe I missed it. She

1:27:13

told me privately, I was like, it said something about

1:27:15

Activision Blizzard. She goes, who? She would

1:27:17

have hated it. That's been the best

1:27:19

part of my new job is we

1:27:21

never ever write about gaming. It would

1:27:23

have been a nightmare for you. It

1:27:26

would have. You said you've expanded,

1:27:28

you do more gaming news. I'm like, no,

1:27:31

I don't. But it's been all active.

1:27:33

It's been like this year has been like an insane year of

1:27:35

Activision Blizzard. No, I know. For you, it's

1:27:37

been a big story this year. For me, it's been a big

1:27:39

relief not to worry about it.

1:27:42

She knew. I'm glad we both enjoyed it

1:27:44

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1:31:23

to the panel and the subject

1:31:25

that Mary Jo Foley did not want to

1:31:27

talk about, but sorry, you've got

1:31:30

to talk about it. Activision

1:31:32

Blizzard. Do it. Can you

1:31:35

keep it short for her, please, guys? No.

1:31:39

No, no, no, this is just kind of

1:31:41

a question for that look back, look ahead

1:31:43

thing. Obviously look back, this is big year,

1:31:45

but the Activision Blizzard controversy and

1:31:48

drama and final approval and all that

1:31:50

stuff. But how do you guys see

1:31:53

this impacting Microsoft Xbox, I guess specifically like next

1:31:55

year? Like what changes with the business? I mean,

1:31:57

this is just more games. I

1:32:00

don't think it's going to be a lot in the

1:32:02

first year just because that's the nature of acquisitions, especially

1:32:04

ones like this, Meg. Well,

1:32:06

it's going to take a while. I

1:32:09

mean, if you think about the major

1:32:11

properties, like do they move World

1:32:13

of Warcraft to Azure? Does that even make

1:32:15

sense? Like Blizzard has actually built their own

1:32:17

cloud infrastructure at this point. Oh

1:32:20

my God, you just reminded me, LinkedIn. Yeah.

1:32:23

I was just going to bring that up. Just canceled

1:32:25

their migration to, is it Azure? Probably.

1:32:27

It'd have to be Azure. Yeah. In

1:32:30

2019, LinkedIn announced, okay, we evaluated all

1:32:33

our options. Like they had a choice,

1:32:35

right? Exactly. And it turns

1:32:37

out the people who own us want to see this. Yeah.

1:32:42

But now, CNBC had the

1:32:44

scoop on this. They

1:32:46

contacted them. They said, hey, how's that migration going?

1:32:48

And they're like, yeah, you know what? We're not

1:32:50

doing it now because this is great, the reason

1:32:52

they gave. There are so

1:32:54

many other customers that want to get on

1:32:56

Azure and we're letting them have priority access.

1:32:59

Well, they claim they're not, they

1:33:01

think they claim they didn't cancel it, but they're just moved to

1:33:03

the back of the line. Oh, and that's

1:33:05

legit. If you have working infrastructure right now, you

1:33:07

think about how much Azure

1:33:09

is under because of open AI.

1:33:12

I agree, but come on, this is just

1:33:14

an excuse for not moving. So here's, this

1:33:16

is for you guys, are uniquely positioned by

1:33:18

which I mean, are old enough to remember

1:33:20

this one. It's like the

1:33:23

Microsoft announced when they bought Hotmail, they were going to

1:33:26

move it off of FreeBSD and never

1:33:28

did. They had to rebuild that thing from scratch.

1:33:30

You know, they couldn't stop that. It's just not

1:33:32

as simple as the, and it's just no protocol.

1:33:34

Also not simple. Right. Yeah. They've

1:33:37

been using all kinds of open source tech

1:33:39

at LinkedIn their whole lives, even before Microsoft

1:33:41

bought them. Right. So to

1:33:43

suddenly just switch to Azure, it's not that simple. Right.

1:33:46

The way you're going to, the way it's going to

1:33:48

come around is as LinkedIn's

1:33:51

own and Blizzard's own infrastructure

1:33:53

starts to age out. Right.

1:33:56

They're looking at replacing millions of dollars

1:33:58

worth of equipment. Bobby

1:36:00

Kay called him and said, you know, maybe we should

1:36:02

talk about some things, you know, and

1:36:04

that turned into talk about my golden

1:36:06

parachute yeah, so I

1:36:09

actually kind of forgot about this a little

1:36:12

in some small way, but just

1:36:14

the other day Activision Blizzard settled

1:36:16

that suit and You

1:36:20

know this money going out the door at Center Center, but

1:36:22

I made there You know, we knew he was leaving by

1:36:24

the end of the year, but I was like conveniently This will

1:36:26

be just in time for Bobby Kotick to take off and

1:36:29

that's exactly what aka he gets away He

1:36:33

is gonna get to walk away with a

1:36:35

giant pile of money. That's right and And

1:36:39

Microsoft is paying everybody else

1:36:42

Yeah, but they're doing yeah, this was I'm

1:36:45

sure was a Known

1:36:49

the cost-hearted the fear yeah, we're gonna

1:36:51

have to do this, right? But

1:36:53

you know and one would argue there were challenges in

1:36:55

the culture at github as well and they've been trying

1:36:57

to address those and that's an interesting problem because at

1:36:59

the same time it's like it's a lot of the

1:37:01

same people and And

1:37:04

it's also you make a certain product a certain

1:37:07

way like culture changes slowly. It's not a trivial

1:37:09

thing to do but

1:37:12

Not allowing criminal behavior Shouldn't

1:37:14

be a cultural conversation Right

1:37:17

and I'm and the one thing I can count on Microsoft

1:37:20

over the past few years is they do not

1:37:22

allow criminal behavior Yeah,

1:37:25

although I mean they've certainly had their own

1:37:27

high-profile versions of this with gauges and What's

1:37:31

the name Alex? Kipman was a kind of a problem

1:37:33

like this. They're also all out They're

1:37:36

gone now right like the the bigger thing

1:37:38

here is it's not continuing Yes,

1:37:41

oh yeah for sure. Yep. Yep Your

1:37:44

sense didn't have the problem that such it

1:37:46

just has zero tolerance for that kind of

1:37:48

stuff and it's just yeah well he Tolerated

1:37:50

it for some number of years. I mean,

1:37:52

you know, I don't think the Was

1:37:56

under and let me know this is not

1:37:58

an epiphany by our corporation trying

1:38:00

to be kinder gentler. This

1:38:04

stuff wrecks the share price. Get

1:38:06

rid of it. This is not

1:38:08

what current society tolerates. It has to

1:38:10

go. You cannot hide it. You

1:38:13

will always get caught. You will always have

1:38:15

a PR disaster. Just be on top of

1:38:17

it. It's simpler and it's cheaper. I'd

1:38:20

like to think they're doing it for the right reasons,

1:38:22

but they don't need to be doing it for the

1:38:24

right reasons. It's actually economically wise. Good

1:38:27

for business. Yeah, good for business to

1:38:29

just cut them because

1:38:31

covering it up doesn't work. You always get

1:38:33

caught. It's inevitable. Yeah, right. And

1:38:36

God, the whole way that they

1:38:40

really rode the cloud to such big success,

1:38:43

stock price wise, market

1:38:46

capitalized, etc. You don't

1:38:48

screw that up. Well, and therein lies

1:38:50

the point. There is no single individual,

1:38:53

even Bill Gates, so valuable that it's

1:38:55

worth covering it up. Yes, exactly right.

1:38:57

So such thing. We have piles of

1:39:00

money. We can afford it.

1:39:02

Just get rid of it. Just do the

1:39:04

right thing. Continue. Well,

1:39:06

the right thing happens to be good for the

1:39:08

share price, right? I don't even know if I

1:39:10

can feel right about any of that. I would

1:39:12

say it's even good for business. If your

1:39:14

business, no, it's an unhealthy climate for

1:39:16

women, you're

1:39:20

missing out on 50% of the population.

1:39:22

You're losing so much

1:39:24

brain power, so much quality. It's

1:39:26

even worse than that because this

1:39:29

culture extends out into the games themselves. People

1:39:31

are being harassed online. In fact, and AI.

1:39:33

And AI. And AI. You make the whole

1:39:35

thing horrible. I watch a great study of how

1:39:37

the camera angles are different from

1:39:43

a female, from a female character

1:39:45

and following a male character. It's like literally

1:39:48

embedded in the software. Yeah, good stuff.

1:39:51

And we would talk about armor. That's all.

1:39:56

You can tell whether it was drawn

1:39:58

by a man or a woman usually. Putting the

1:40:00

breast back in the breastplate, I

1:40:02

think that's the... Yeah. That

1:40:04

would be the first... It just seems to me

1:40:07

this is, you know, it's easy to say, well,

1:40:09

the culture's changed or it's good for the stock

1:40:11

price, but it's just the right thing to do

1:40:13

also, right? You would hope that that was sufficient.

1:40:15

I don't know that it is, but it doesn't

1:40:17

matter. We created

1:40:19

sufficient economic incentives today

1:40:21

without the... If you

1:40:23

get one... If it's an happy

1:40:25

coincidence, we'll take it, you know, at least

1:40:27

they're doing the right thing. I'm

1:40:30

not going to hope that hard. I'm just liking

1:40:32

that this seems to be the policy and they

1:40:34

seem to follow it really well. Right?

1:40:37

So, as I know, it's I think,

1:40:39

right? Yeah. So,

1:40:42

semi-related to this, Microsoft

1:40:44

confirmed that Bobby Kay will be

1:40:46

leaving the company on

1:40:49

December 29th. And I think they had said Britt

1:40:51

Begley before it would be the end of the year. So

1:40:54

he'll get his platinum parachute or whatever.

1:40:58

This piece of cumin garbage, he

1:41:01

has been there since the early 90s, I want to say, like

1:41:03

30, like very early on. It's hard

1:41:06

to company, right? But he... No,

1:41:08

no, that was like Dave Crane and those guys from Atari, but

1:41:10

this was the second gen of... But he's

1:41:12

been there ever since. I mean, he's got to be the

1:41:15

longest. He's the last man standing

1:41:17

of that crew that took it from the

1:41:19

Atari folks and grew it here. In Boston,

1:41:21

we have things like the oldest continually operated

1:41:23

restaurant in America and the oldest continually operated

1:41:25

bar. That's what he

1:41:28

is. He was the continually operating CEO of a

1:41:30

video game company. Yeah,

1:41:34

and like those places, a little musty. Yeah.

1:41:38

So, as part of this announcement, they

1:41:40

also confirmed, and this is

1:41:42

actually very interesting, and actually Mary Jo, you

1:41:45

would find this interesting, I'll fall asleep,

1:41:47

is they are not keeping

1:41:50

this place open as a separate subsidiary

1:41:53

like they do with some businesses like

1:41:55

Mojang and GitHub and

1:41:57

etc. Including some...

1:41:59

LinkedIn and also some game studios like Bethesda,

1:42:01

right? This is gonna be, these

1:42:04

things are gonna be integrated into Xbox, like this will

1:42:06

become part of the company. Yeah, so. And

1:42:08

they're in line, it's the question mark, which is, is

1:42:10

this because of culture? Because they didn't do it for

1:42:12

Bethesda. That's right, I don't know. That's

1:42:14

a good question. Is it so they can lay people off?

1:42:19

Oh, well, okay, so as part of this, that

1:42:21

means that the existing executive staff is coming to

1:42:23

Microsoft. One of those people they had already announced,

1:42:25

remember they did like a leadership change announcement

1:42:28

a month or two ago, whatever. One

1:42:30

of the women from Activision,

1:42:34

I believe, was part of that, but anyway, they're

1:42:37

gonna roll these people in. Lulu

1:42:40

Maservi, the chief communications

1:42:42

officer is leaving. Okay.

1:42:46

Yeah, but we'll see, we're gonna have to look at that.

1:42:49

The vice chairman of Blizzard and King is deporting a

1:42:51

number of Activision Blizzard executives to important

1:42:53

march. But yeah, otherwise, it's

1:42:55

gonna be the same. Like employees though, right? So

1:42:58

we'll see, because this is, I don't know how

1:43:00

many employees Activision Blizzard has, but I'm guessing it's

1:43:02

more than a dozen. And they're probably

1:43:04

all over the world. And how

1:43:06

do you, I don't know, we'll see. There

1:43:08

probably will be further cuts. This is actually one of the

1:43:11

things we should have talked about this past year, was all

1:43:13

the layoffs, right? Here's Microsoft. Microsoft has

1:43:16

moved from a model that

1:43:18

was very partner-centric. They were not unique, but I

1:43:20

think they were one of the biggest examples of

1:43:23

kind of the partner culture, the antithesis

1:43:25

of Apple, right? And

1:43:28

by the time they moved to what became Microsoft

1:43:31

365, a

1:43:33

lot of those partners were no longer needed really,

1:43:35

right? And so Microsoft tried to accommodate the people

1:43:37

who used to service those customers out in the

1:43:39

world to some degree. But

1:43:41

at some point it became, well, Microsoft is

1:43:44

administering your exchange server. Isn't that better than

1:43:46

third party? We're not sure about, you know,

1:43:48

are it doing it in-house? Yeah, okay. But

1:43:51

a lot of their, you know, there's

1:43:53

high profile people who know about Microsoft kind of indiscriminately

1:43:56

laid off this year, but also their

1:43:58

whole like sale, this. sales and

1:44:00

the product support people. I know a bunch of people

1:44:02

who were laid off this year. And

1:44:05

it's, it's, it's, it's a remarkably random. It

1:44:08

seems incredibly random. Yeah. And,

1:44:11

and that's what's weird about it, because

1:44:13

that was the argument I made in my own little

1:44:15

part of Penton when they were laying off everybody, which

1:44:17

is I went, I finally went over the heads of three people to

1:44:20

go to this vice president. So you just laid off the guy who

1:44:22

was the liaison we had with

1:44:25

Microsoft and the person responsible

1:44:27

for us doing best of TechEd every year. He

1:44:29

said, I had no idea. And I said, I know that's the problem. You're

1:44:32

just looking at a spreadsheet and laying people off.

1:44:35

Yeah. You know, and I

1:44:37

got in trouble for this, but, you know, the, but

1:44:40

the point was they, it was so arbitrary. It was

1:44:42

also like one of the two people

1:44:44