It's time for Windows weekly with
Paul Thurrott and Mary-Jo Foley.
Microsoft wants you for life,
and their ready to kill the nag screen.
Paul is excited for the new Xbox and
Mary-Jo talks about Microsoft's
bad cloud day. Window's Weekly is next.
(Pulse wave sounds)
This is Twit
Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided
by CacheFly at cachefly.com
This is Window's Weekly with Paul Thurrott
and Mary-Jo Foley. Episode 484, recorded
September 21, 2016 Microsoft for life!
Window's Weekly is literately brought to
you by Sonic, with 10 gig fiber internet
service provider. Join Sonic's internet
revolution as they bring fast affordable
internet phone and TV to homes and businesses
all over California. Visit www.sonic.com/twit
to sign up for services and receive your
first month free.
And by Audible.com to download a free
audio book of your choice go to
www.audible.com/windows
And by Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans
Rocket Mortgage brings the mortgage process
into the 21st century with a fast, easy
and completely online process.
Check out Rocket Mortgage today at
www.quickenloans.com/windows
It's time for Windows weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary-Jo Foley.
I'm Father Robert Ballecer in for Leo Laporte
who is currently looking for the answers
to life, the universe and everything
acrossed the pond. Of course Paul Thurrott
is the guru behind Thurrott.com the
previewer of news, reviews and analyzes
for tech enthusiasts. Mary-Jo Foley the
mastermind behind ZDnet All About
Microsoft blog. Together their here to
bring a light to the deep cave of
Microsoft news, like a over charged light
bulb battery exploding in the darkness.
Paul, Mary-Jo so good to have ya.
(Mary-Jo) thanks for having (Paul) It's like your introducing Bond villains there.
(Mary-Jo) I know I was like Wow!
The masterminds.
(Paul) Master of Disaster Mary-Jo Foley.
(Father Ballecer) Do you have a cat?
and can you do this with your fingers?
- I think I need that on a business card.
If I still used business cards I would.
That is one of those strange things.
At these conventions that we go to these shows
we all do the business card thing and
I've even got down the whole Asian thing
of handing like this and a bit of a bow.
But, um, those collect dust afterwards,
I almost never use them.
- No, No! I don't even have one.
- I was going to say I think I have some,
but I've never brought them anywhere.
-Wait!, You two go to shows, don't you?
It's kind of a thing, it's how you say hello, right?
-Well now people just say, "where can
I find you?" and I just day "All About
Microsoft"
- Mary-Jo and I just bump our phones
together and say "Power twins activate."
(Mary-Jo laughs)
- No, I don't know every once in a while
someone will hand me a business cards
and I have a momentary bit of confusion,
like I don't have one of these things,
or I don't have it with me.
You know I feel, it's like a weird moment.
I feel like I need to give them something
in return, it's like someone comes over
with a gift and you don't have anything to give them.
-Yeah, that's what it is. I know I'm handing
out cards like they are candy, but it's
just because I want to give you something.
It's like thank you very much for your time,
uh, here's something, and stop talking
to me now.
(laughing) yes, right!
(Paul) I've met the social obligation
(Father Ballencer) And if you actually want to see
where this is gonna be put up you can contact
ma at this other wise I'm just gonna assume
that you just don't care (Mary-Jo) Yep (laughter)
(Paul) I needed a resume for something,
you know, like a year ago or more, I. . .
Thurrott.com, what do you mean I...?
(laughing) I don't keep track of my
accomplishments, I'm not even sure what
I would do with that.
(Father Ballencer) Our Field producer,
Colene Goldstein, she's actually
really good LinkedIn. Before she hands over
her card, she'll just say can I find you on
LinkedIn and she's just building up this huge
network of all these people that she's connected
to and she says that's far more efficient
than trying to take a card and then remember
where it came from and who they
represented six weeks ago.
Because remember a lot of the people you
meet don't actually work for that company
they work for a PR company that represents
the company that you are talking to. (Paul) Right.
and you won't remember who that is unless
you actually write it on the back of that card
and even then sometimes you don't remember
- I have to look at the lower third to remember
Mary-jo's name. (laughing) you know I'm
really not good at that kind of thing.
(Mary-Jo) He's bad at this thing.
(Fa. Ballencer) I have to look down here
If I don't see that?
(Paul) Hi! I'm Fr. Rob, What does that say?
(laughing) Sir Foley, no let's not do that.
I'll right let's get away from social convention
cuz we've got some pretty spectacular windows news
who's got this first one, because eventually
Microsoft has finally "oh! that's right we're not
offering the free version anymore, maybe we
should kill that nag screen"
Mary-Jo - Yeah I can start it off a bit. Um,
Yesterday, the 20th, Microsoft put out a
KB article that said "Hey we're finally going to
push through Windows update, an update
that takes away the Windows, get Windows 10 app.
So if you remember July 29th was the actual day
the offer to get a free Windows 10 ended.
And at that time they said it might take us
a little while to faze this out because we've
so thoroughly inundated everyone with this app
and the promotion. So actually the real
day when this ended at least when the app ended
was yesterday. And it's starting to roll
through the Windows update. It replaces
the get Windows 10 app and it goes away.
But the weird complication not complication
but the weird kind of coincidence is
you can actually still get Windows 10 as free upgrade
You just have to use your existing Windows 7
or 8.1 product key and you can still unlock the free
upgrade, which is something Microsoft is not
actively advertising, but Paul has been verifying it daily.
(Paul) well weekly
(Mary-Jo) I've been asking him is it still up
(Fa. Bellencer) Cuz, I was told that if you do
the get Windows 10 thing and then you roll it
back you're always set you can always re-download it
(Paul) Oh! yeah, yeah this is for new installs.
In other words you have never done this before
you have a key you can do a clean Windows 10
right now and it would still work.
(Fa. Bellencer) Wait! What? That's not how
it's suppose to work.
(Mary-jo) Yep (Paul) I know, and by the way
one day it won't, I mean maybe this weekend
or the weekend after that, someday, I'm gonna
wake up, I'm gonna test it and it's not gonna work
you know it's just.. It's going to happen eventually.
But, um, I wrote an article about this
not working probably a month ago in anticipation
of it not working and it's just kept working
the things been sitting here at my desktop since
August. (Fa Ballencer) So you just try and
do an update everyday just to make sure it still goes?
(Paul) not everyday and least once a week.
- Now does this
(Mary-Jo) Yesterday, I said to him can you
still do it? And he's like, Yep you can!
-So does this now increase the value of the
Windows 10 upgrade, because now you can't get
it except maybe if you know this super secret,
now do people actually want it?
(Paul) I.. No.. I suppose.. I think the issue
is.. Well if you wanted to save some money
I suppose you could go buy Windows 8.1
product key and you know, well you
wouldn't actually buy Windows 8.1
I should say, it's possibly you can buy a copy of it
somewhere cheaper because nobody wants it
anymore and than you could upgrade now for less money
than buying Windows 10. Or maybe you just
had keys for some reason, maybe a company that has
keys allotted or you bought the package version
at some point, maybe you bought the Windows 7
family pack back in the day and you only used
two of the three keys and you've got an extra
one sitting around for what ever reason.
If you have a key, it will work. MSDN keys work
got them from TechNet that will work.
um, and someday it won't. So, we'll see.
-Microsoft won't say when they think
it will no longer work in fact they aren't
really publicly saying that it still works
if you ask them, they just don't answer
when you ask about this.
And I assume it's the same thing that they said
about the get Window 10 app
that it might take some time for them
to shut it off. But the other theory is they
are just leaving it open for those laggers
who didn't get around to updating by July 29th
and they can say to them "You know what, psst
by the way."
- It doesn't hurt anybody, I think that's the
point that if they are people out there in the world
with Windows 7 install that they've never done
Microsoft would much rather see them be on
Windows 10, if they're going to do a new Windows
install. Why wouldn't they want that.
- I can also see this heading off a lot of
complaints from people who said "oh man
I tried to upgrade and I totally forgot and I
did it in August and it didn't work anymore"
No that's not actually a valid excuse.
-Well that argument would work on Aug 20.
You know September 21st, October 21st,
It's starting to get to the point where
you can't pretend you've been
procrastinating and than just forgot I mean,
You know at some point it's just. . .
Their just leaving it open, its fine.
I have no problem with this.
- This is actually a huge opportunity for us
because I know Alex has been trying to
update the Tri caster to Windows 10
(Person in background) Actually Padre, Let me correct you
you shouldn't run Windows update on the
Tri caster, New Tech doesn't say you should
So I really hope that nothing. . .
Oh Crap! (Laughing)
- This is what happens, You get a nag screen
in the middle of Windows weekly
that's oddly blocking me out entirely,
that's different (Mary-Jo) It is
You know we're going to have to live with this
for the next 20 -30 minutes because
unfortunately, click the initiated and it'll
take that much time to install and
uninstall it. (Mary-Jo) They'll see us though
we're off to the sides. Not when you zoom
on us, but the big picture you can see us.
(Paul) How do I know that this graphic hasn't
been used more gleefully on Macbreak weekly
and whatever morning show I'm sure you do?
(Fa Ballencer) Uh, this weeks it's Google,
I think this is actually the new title card
for Floss Weekly. Um Floss Weekly will
never reserve your copy.
- Let me just try... - Ops there you see
Do either of you still have Windows 7, 8 & 10
Machines in your environment?
(Mary-Jo) Yes, I have 7,
(Fa Ballencer) So no 10 at all?
(Mary-Jo) Yeah I have 10 and 7, but no 8
(Fa Ballencer) Really? I have 7, 8.1 and 10
(Mary-Jo) You have all of them.
(Fa Ballencer) Well because I mean 10
does still kill some of my USB devices
so my production machines have to stay 8
and I have one laptop and that just works
better at 7.
(Mary-Jo) I just have the desktop I still
use because it's just an older machine,
the Dell that I've had for awhile I just left
it on 7, cuz I'm like Eh, when I need to
replace the machine Ill just get
Windows 10 machine.
(Paul) But what about all those gotta have it
apps you can't run?
-Um?!
(Fa Ballencer) Now a quick question,
this really did hurt Microsoft's reputation,
right? I mean Yes, That number of how
many deployments they have of Windows 10
is forever going to be asterisk.
People said "Well how many of those were
accidental upgrades or how many of those
were installs and then rollbacks almost
immediately. This. . Will people forget this
or will Windows 10 upgrade nag screen
be the butt of jokes for the next two
decades. (Paul) Honestly I think they've
irreparably harmed their reputation with
this and not just Microsoft generally but
the reputation of Windows as well.
The forced upgrade thing was a huge mistake
on their part and a very risky gamble and
the recent people aren't going to forget
it is because they came out and said we're
going to hit a billion within two to three
years and then right before Windows the
windows ten free upgrade ended they said
you know what we're not going to make that
goal and so even though they did that they
were unable to you know meet this reasonable
goal, I thought, of reaching a billion
users in that timeframe.
- You know Mary Jo there's two ways to
look at this. There's one way and this would,
I think this is where Paul lines up, there
was an executive or some marketing person
who said you know what we want to hit a
billion because it sounds like a great number.
So let's just force this on people. The
other way to think of this is that some
engineers said you know what people
will like ten if they just try it if we just
get it on the machine they will understand
what all the hoopla is about.
Which of those do you fall with?
- So I also, like Paul, think this was a
big mistake and the part that really
kind of riled me the most was when
Microsoft was taking the tack of saying
it's for users own good that were doing
this and you know I was like wait this is
so paternalistic How can you say what's
for my good or my mother's good who
accidently got Windows ten and like flipped
out when she got it you know I just think
that argument didn't work. I'm happy. They
made a free upgrade available very easily
to people but I don't think they should
have rammed it down people's throat.
But it's also, I don’t know if it qualifies
as ironic but, You know one of the kind of
contracts you enter into with Microsoft
when you do install or get Windows 10 is
you're accepting a constant stream of
upgrades and you really can't do anything
as an individual to prevent that from
happening. Least not elegantly or easily
and your introduction to this new world is
Microsoft seamlessly and inelegantly
jamming Windows 10 down your throat
you know it's it's kind of a nasty preview
of what the future holds for you when you
do this and it's just the wrong first step
you know to resent, it was a terrible mistake
- Yeah and then the hiding of the way
that you would actually accept the upgrade
where people were closing the window.
That was really bad. That made like a bad
situation worse. So yeah not a good look.
- In writing about this topic today
I decided not to go back and hit on every
single little milestone in this because
frankly it's kind of depressing.
You know, when you go back to look at the
sheer amount of stuff that both of us I'm
sure have written about this get Windows 10
thing since last year and the various ways
they changed it silently some Windows
Update, or group of Windows Updates would
go out, some of them would prevent the
blockers from, you know or the un-blockers
I guess from you know working.
some of them would change the way the
dialog looked or worked. You know in the
past when you close the window, it would
just go away but at one point when you
close the window you silently have accepted
the upgrade and that's purposefully evil.
It's terrible.
-For me I think that hurt more than anything
else because I understand wanting to
force out the update. Especially since
they believe it's going to be much more
secure, it's going to be much more feature
rich. But the fact that they kept playing
cat and mouse with people who just didn't
want to be nagged anymore. That's the
reputation strike it's like ok if I went to
the trouble of removing that nag screen
then obviously I'm a savvy user if I can
do that. So the fact that you're trying to
work around what I did. Now I feel as if
we're playing Microsoft nanny state.
-Right -Yeah, yeah
A lot of times you know they keep saying
you know what, we're letting people get
around it, if they go in and edit the
registry settings. I'm like, wait a second
hold on, that's not something most people
should do. In fact, probably very few
should do it. And so when that was
like “Hey were giving you an alternative
to get out of it. I was like uh, that's
not a good option.
-That's not an alternative.
–No
- I mean the funny thing they get looking
back over a year of articles for this topic.
What I reminded myself of was in late June
one month before the free offer ended.
They finally added something to that
box that said I don't want this please
stop asking me. It took them eleven of
the twelve months to get to that point.
That's how it should have been on day one.
You know it's just uh, you just can't
recover from this. We don't know, we may
never know the psychological impact that
had on what may or may not have been
very good to Microsoft customers that day,
who upon looking for a new computer at
some time in the future may decide they
need, they are going to get a pro book
instead or a mac book or well probably not
a Linux computer that's crazy. But you know
what I'm saying. That they're going to look
at an iPad even or something, whatever.
And just make that decision because they
don't want to be harassed which is a
completely reasonable request. You know.
-Let's close the book on this bad chapter.
–Yeah, yeah I think so.
It's not a mulligan but it's since you say
OK you know what, you kind of hit some
of the numbers you wanted not the big one
but now actually show us that our faith in
you is not misplaced. But to be fair, we
could look at other companies in the
industry, like Google that are doing the
same sort of strong arm tactics.
Google right now is making a big push for
HTTPS, they want everything to be encypted
end to end on the internet, that's a good
goal, but some people feel that their
approach is heavy handed. Now, the new
updates to Chrome are going to automatically
mark any site that doesn't have HTTPS built
into it as insecure so that little icon is
going to pop up, warning people that maybe
they shouldn't visit the site. People think
that's heavy handed, but those looking at
it say, "well this is ultimately going to
lead to a better internet." you could make
the same call here. You could say "Look,
this was heavy handed, this was
Microsoft being the worst of the nannies,
but a more secure OS ultimately is a
better experience."
-All of the goals that Microsoft had for
this were valid right. Even the self-serving
ones you know, the notion that we would
all be better off if more of us run the
very latest version of the O. S. and we're
always updated to be on that version would
make us all more secure because it's less
work for Microsoft to do to fix the problems
you know, are going to occur down the road
Everyone benefits from that there's no. .
you can't really dispute it. But the
problem is when they say oh good, everyone
agrees? Good! Now you're all getting the
new upgrade is like whoa whoa hold on a
second, you know, you mention for example
that you have U.S.B. devices that don't
work on Windows 10. I'm sure anyone.
listening to this has some examples of
some things whatever might be, uh…
that don't work you know or some reason
whatever it may be that they couldn't
upgrade. I mean you can't. . . I don't
believe you can I mean they tried you can't
really just jam this kind of thing down
people's throats.
-And for our few fruit flans in the chat room
right now. Why is it that Microsoft trying
to force Windows 10 on people was a
boondoggle. Whereas another company's
decision to remove a standard port was brave?
(Mary-Jo laughs) Courage
(Paul) Good marketing.
(Fa. Ballencer) Maybe this was just
Microsoft’s courage, and we’re all just
misunderstanding it.
-Uhm –Ok (Laughter) -Well OK
(Paul) It was courageous of them to attempt.
(Fa. Ballencer) It was, it was. Although
I will say something I really don't like
is the fact that they've disabled something
from 8 because if you do Windows stacked
side by side it's pretty seamless but if
you do one on top of the other there's
always a hard break as you move between
screens. In 8 you used to be able to
disable that sticky window, you just move
right through it. You can do the same
registry edit in 10 but it doesn't fix it.
That never goes away and that's why I
don't understand that, Go figure. All right.
When we come back. We need to talk about
something a bit more cheery because we've
we've been hammering on Microsoft so rather
than talking about a forced Windows 10 update
I think maybe we should talk about some
Layoffs -Yeah. (laughter) -Oh boy!
–Yay let’s get pumped. But first let's go
ahead and take a moment to thank the first
sponsor of this episode of Windows weekly.
Hey folks do you worry about bandwidth
because we don't because here at the new
Eastside studio. We've got 10gig. Yeah
exactly 10gig provided to us by Sonic.
Sonics 10gig fiber internet service is what
we use to get out to the Internet and in
other words some sponsors we say the show
was brought to you by them. This was
literally brought to you by Sonic if you're
watching the show right now. You're
watching us over a sonic connection
because well we just love them.
The Internet infrastructure in the
United States needs fixing and Sonic
understands that they're not just a company
that wants to sell you something every month.
They're a company that wants to roll out
service where service doesn't exist they
deliver fast affordable internet phone and
T.V. to homes and businesses all over
California now their mission is to bring
Internet freedom to all with unlimited
and uncapped Internet they deliver
residential and business fiber to the
premise networks with gigabit connectivity
in San Francisco the North. Bay and the
East Bay They've got internet service that
includes fifteen email accounts and one
gigabyte of storage personal web hosting
with a new domain and fax line service
for those people who still need that.
Now for only $40 a month Sonic offers
you download speeds of up to one gigabit
that's one thousand megabits per second.
Compare that to whoever you have right
now a home phone connection with unlimited
local and long distance calling is included
in all of their service and switching from
your current carrier is easy and you can
keep your existing phone number just with
the flick of a button. Now by standing up
for privacy, friendly and local customer
support uncapped bandwidth an affordable
pricing for all Sonic's customer advocates
paving the way for a better state of
internet access in America. As we've seen
throughout the industry in these last few
years when you have a provider who is
willing to invest who is willing to come
into a market that was previously closed
off who is willing to will be an advocate
for customers. Everybody benefits and
that's why we just love our sonic service
Join the Internet revolution today visit
sonic.com/TWIT that’s Sonic.com/TWIT
and receive your first month of Sonic Internet
and phone service for free. Plus bundle
with Dish and save $120 off your Sonic bill
visit sonic.com/TWIT once again that's
sonic.com/TWIT. And we thank Sonic
for their support of Windows Weekly.
OK this is one of these stories that it
almost feels as if a continuation of stories
that we've already covered but who
wants to talk about the bad news for
pink slips over at Microsoft.
(Mary-Jo) Oh wait, can we talk about the Skype thing first.
(Fa Bellencer) OK sure. OK You know
what that's hold off on the super awesome
(Mary-Jo) I mean it's related but we can
we could kind of mix it up a little.
-The people getting pink slips got them over Skype. (laughter)
(Mary-Jo) That would have been interesting
(Paul) Which explains why some of them
have been home. Some of them got it seventeen times. (laughing)
(Mary-Jo) Burn, burn (Fa Bellencer) ok Skype, let’s do Skype.
-Ok so this um, Paul should the S.M.S. relate because you, I think you've
actually looked at it, right?
-No, well not exactly, so, Err, how do I explain this,
but earlier this year Microsoft announced a feature that was going to come
in the Windows 10 anniversary update called messaging everywhere
and the idea is that you have a Windows Phone or an Android phone
and you can use your computer to send text messages and receive text messages
right like you can do in a Mac if you have an iPhone as well.
And everyone was really excited about it, some insiders started testing it
and then very late in the game they said you know what.
Actually we're not going to put this in Windows 10.
This makes more sense for Skype we'll put it in the Skype preview app
but sometime later in the year they yanked it out of Windows 10
some people were disappointed you know because they were using it
but you know I think we can agree that a messaging feature makes more sense for
Microsoft's messaging solution than it does for Windows specifically so
it's going to be part of Skype. So in the most recent Windows insider build
which was released last week I think Microsoft's added this feature in for
the first time and now they're calling it S.M.S. relay actually been calling
about for some time but it's a slightly more technical and less interesting name
and the functionality is supposed to work the same way in this initial version
however you need to have the latest fast ring version of Windows 10 from
windows insiders. I think 14 9 23 or something like that. And you also need
to have that same build on Windows 10 mobile it only works on those two systems
so I have both of these things but I couldn't get it.
I'm not seeing it on my phone I don't know why.
but the idea again is that you can from the Skype preview app on Windows 10
for P.C.'s send and receive text messages and so if your phone is over the corner
charging somebody sends you a text message you get a notification on your P.C.
click on it you can reply to it right there. It sends out over your phone
as you would expect so it's coming.
And it will come as part of Skype, right? So we won't have
to wait for the next major version of Windows 10 to get it.
Which by the way is another one of the advantages of putting it on Skype.
-You know what's weird though I think I messaged you about this that I have an
Android phone. I have a Windows 10 P.C. and I am seeing my text messages
from my phone show up on my Windows 10 P.C. and I'm not on
the insider program right! –Which is really interesting.
-Yeah, So I think it's because of Cortana though because I have Cortana on both
and I believe that also gives you some of that functionality but that then
I'm like OK So is this in the future going to be taken out of Cortana?
-Yes so, right. Actually it's kind of confusing because this is hum,
I wrote a book about Windows 10 that I'm still updating for the anniversary update
and one of the things I put off literally to the very end that I will wrote right
in the last of all the new content is phone integration because it's actually a
little convoluted there are three ways right now that you can get information
back and forth from your phone through Windows 10 as I understand it. One is this
new S.M.S. relay feature in the Skype preview. One is the thing you're seeing
which is the Cortana integration but there's also like a Windows phone
integration I will get Windows Phone notifications in Action Center on
Windows 10 that are notifications that came from Windows 10 in the phone and so
they could be about anything it will be like Facebook updates.
You know different things from different apps on the phone and those things will
actually surface in Windows 10 of my P.C.
as well. So I'm still trying to kind of..
where and how all these things happen and why you know it's interesting I have
three different phones, so I have and Android phone like you do and I have the
Windows Phone and also an iPhone So the iPhone doesn't really do anything
but the expectation is that you'll have a pretty decent level of functionality
through Android if you have Windows 10 and then obviously if you have
Windows 10 mobile you would have the best experience
because those two things would be tightly integrated.
-You know that's something in a feature I actually would really like
something in Windows that shows me how the various services integrate because
it's always an crapshoot for me about what notifications I get on what devices like
you I've got I.O.'s devices I've got Windows devices I've got Android I think
Windows Mobile and it always, I’m never really sure what is syncing and what's not
-It's like a roulette wheel and I just was speaking Skype specifically, this morning
I was chatting with Brad on Skype & we're you know we're texting back and forth
he writes, I write you know five minutes goes by, 15 minutes and all of a sudden
one of my three phones in this case it was my iPhone the screen lights up and
I look over and it's a Skype notification of something. Brad had written me on Skype
about two minutes earlier. And so for some reason that one version of the app
on that one phone lit up. It was like all my devices or weight are in the back and
one of those are like I got it. I got it,
and it just kind of like I'm having an
active conversation in Skype on Windows.
You know why?
Why would these other things? You know how it is, if I go to my
Android phone and I turn them on right now and I go into Skype. You know thus
waking it up which is a mistake. It's like Jason from Friday the 13th or something
but if I do wake it up briefly it will flash those one two three conversations
that are marked unread the conversations I had earlier with Brad actually this one
from Twit and the conversations I had with Mary Jo according to this version of
the app these conversations are unread.
-I know, that happens to me too. Yet when I when I've had my Windows 10
laptop off for a while I turn on you know they all the messages filtered through
but then some show up as unread and some show up as read.
-Yep.
-So I'm not sure what makes both of those things happen.
-Yeah I ended up going into Windows 10 notification I just turning off everything
because I was so tired of receiving the same notifications 15 times
-Yep
-Actually there's something else that I do love the syncing across accounts
that actually does work nicely except for the fact that at home. I've got this
monster set up with two 4K. monitors and a bunch of little monitors around the
periphery and it tries to import those preferences into my laptop and it doesn't
matter how many times I tell it not to do that it. There's always an update in the,
the switch gets turned back on & suddenly all the text on my laptop is tiny.
Because it's adjusting with what it thinks I want to the desktop, which that's again
I want some sort of central control panel that shows all my devices and which
settings are moving between which devices. It sounds like that's an absolute
necessity now with all the different devices that we use. And with all the
syncing that Microsoft trying to build into the products. That's a necessity.
-Yeah you know obviously Microsoft doesn't have a big presence slash
any presence in Mobile and so one of the concerns that they have that maybe Apple
doesn't have and Google only has to a lesser extent say with IOS Devices is the
cross-platform stuff you know Bart W on Twitter's ask Mary-Jo and I if S.M.S.
relay is coming to the Skype apps on IOS and Android as
well and it's a reasonable expectation that it would but
you know of course on Android you have a Microsoft has a
much easier way of getting into the system and making
this more seamless whereas in IOS, if you think about how
Cortana works you kind of have to go in and run the app
for some things to happen. You know it's never going to be as. .
even though it can you know, it can sort of run in the background a little bit
you can never be sure that it will always be there. This is more easily done on
Android and Windows Phone So if you… Mary-Jo do you know off the top you head
has Microsoft ever spoke to S.M.S relay on IOS Android?
-I don't remember them saying that.
–It seems like it would have to the right?
(Mary-Jo) I know it does seemed like it would have to
-What would be the point of S.M.S relay
to Windows 10 mobile?
-Right.
- Mary Jo I've got an enterprise question
for you. Do we know how many versions of
messaging Windows has.. uh Microsoft has
because you've got Skype. You've got
Skype for business. You've got Skype for
broadcast and then you've got the link
stuff which was actually supposed to take
over for the Skype stuff but then that
seems to be flipped. Now that we've got the Dela
do you see what's in the strategy going
forward or we just keep getting fractured
off into different types of Skype and do they still have
that artificial delineation between consumer and enterprise?
-They do. They still have the delineation
there is still Skype consumer and Skype
for business are not the same product
even though they're both called Skype and you're right. Link is still kind of
hanging around for some on premises
stuff but ultimately Link, the Link name
will totally go away and link will be
completely superseded by Skype for business that will happen.
-Because that was going the other way. I mean Skype was going to go to go away and
they were going to keep Link and so now they've reversed on that.
- Yes So I think they're being pretty
consistent on length being supplanted by Skype for business.
-OK.
-I think next week which is Microsoft
ignite we might hear some new things
about Skype for business and kind of
where that's going because every time we
ask Microsoft about Skype they'll answer
Skype consumer questions but they won't
talk at all about Skype for business. And
I think next week's show because it's a
very IT pro focus show we probably will
hear some new things about Skype for
business and hopefully about how it's
going to be syncing soon with OneDrive
and OneDrive for business. That's
something people are really waiting
anxiously for and last we heard that was
going to happen in the final calendar
quarter of this year. So we're almost in the final calendar quarter.
Seems like we should get some new News on that next week.
- Wait Skype for business will sync with OneDrive?
-With OneDrive for business, yes!
-How does that.. Wait what is it syncing?
- They’ll be integration. Sorry. Am I saying OneDrive business or
am I thinking Share Point. I’m thinking about Share Point.
-OK, OK that makes sense
-Sorry I'm thinking about Share Point
when I'm saying OneDrive for business but
um, it may, Microsoft talked about Share Point and OneDrive business being able to
actually have better sync across those
two products and they said that was going
to counter Q four and I think that's what
we might hear about next week. But yeah
you know every time we ask about Skype.
You know we've heard recently that Skype
is moving to this new kind of universal
next generation client and when I asked
Microsoft you know does that also mean
Skype for businesses is going to be on
that same universal client.
They said we're not really talking about Skype for Business.
-You're like whoa.
-Don't get ahead of yourself here.
- And don't forget the upcoming Skype for
Web R.T.C. because I mean that's also
another universal client and universal, universal.
-But we should talk about this thing that
surfaced this week called Skype for life. Speaking of .
-Oh good I was just hoping we would have another Skype.
- Speaking of Jason from Friday the 13th. (laughing)
-OK what is Skype For Life?
-OK So ARS Technica Dr Pizza over there
got a tip from one of his sources or
maybe multiple sources that Microsoft was
working on a product called Skype For Life and he and a lot of us have first
kind of thought maybe this was a name for
the universal Skype client that would
work across all different platforms that
would be kind of like what Microsoft has
described as the universal Windows
platform equivalent but for the other
platforms like IOS and Android. But then
Paul dug around a little and thought it
through and he says no but that is not what that it is.
-No! No
I mean I talked to Peter about it.
Skype, ironically.
And I don't doubt that he was told this
and I don't doubt that the person who
told him saw this and thought that they
understood what they were seeing but you
know I talked to the Skype guys back in
June or July about the strategy Mary Jo
just discussed where they're moving to a
new generation clients they have updated
their back end infrastructure they
temporarily have to maintain the old
P.D.P. infrastructure for certain
applications or services but that's going
to be going away. The combination of
these two back end services explains the
Skype reliability issues that we've all
seen over the past you know several
months I was told. And I thought you
know, Skype For Life and making yet again
new, some new client that would somehow
run across all those platforms didn't
make any sense to me and if you look at
that next to their previously stated
strategy it's clear to me that Skype For
Life is just a marketing term and what
they're describing internally I think is
the culmination of that previous existing
strategy that the new infrastructures
switched over to their new clients are
all available. They all interact and all
have the new features and it's not that
it's one client's I mean obviously
Windows will have P.W.P. clients, IOS and
Android will have native apps there,
Linux will have what they have and there
will be the web version as well. And
these things will have some baseline of
functionality that works across all of
them on this new infrastructure that's the point of it.
-You know what I'm going to still be a
doubter here. OK I don't think, I think
the more I think about this the more I
think you're right that it isn't a new
totally new Skype client. I think that
would just be crazy and kind of going
back to what they just got away from but
I think Skype For Life is something else
and the reason I'm thinking that it's a
marketing slogan but, maybe it's
something like you know they call Skype
translator a feature of Skype like that.
That's how they brand that and Skype for
teams which is what they're going to be
doing to compete with Slack. I also think
they'll call that a feature of Skype. I
don't think they'll call of a new version
of Skype. So I'm thinking Skype For Life
might be something like using Skype to
improve your life in some way. So maybe
it's like I don't know I'm just I'm
totally reaching here but Skype like
maybe Skype and the Microsoft Health
platforms somehow connected or you know
Skype being used for some specific thing
that's more about health and welfare and
maybe a very specific almost like a
vertical I'm just guessing here again but
I think it's something else.
-I mean that seems very far reaching. It
might be simpler that you know it's funny
we were just kind of joking around and
slash complaining about how you know
Skype will ring on various devices and
whatever because we have various devices
because we're nerds and so Skype For Life
could be as simple as what I think of a
Skype everywhere this this feature you
know that a normal person with a computer
and a phone or a tablet and a phone would
want to get messages everywhere and
that's the For Life. In other words.
Whatever your life is whatever your
habits are whatever devices you choose to use Skype will be there. You know.
-That could be
-I just you know regardless of what it is
I mean I think it's mostly a marketing
term. Right. Not so much a product. And
it's almost just a way to describe functionality to normal people.
-I'd be down with the marketing term. I spoke with a rep a Microsoft rep over at
IFA in Berlin last month and or no this
month and of course didn't want to talk
about it but what he was describing was
that this is Skype UC this is the unified
communication promised the idea of we
don't want Skype to be an app. It
shouldn't be something you start up it
should be something that is just
everywhere. They're using Microsoft
products. You should be able to say
Cortana call Paul Thurrott and it will
automatically kick out Skype and it
doesn't even call a Skype it just
connects. Hum, and I can see that I mean
that UC promises has been something
that's been around for ten years maybe
this is Microsoft finally saying let's do.
- Or saying we finally have enough pieces
in place for it makes sense right. I mean
even the things like integrating Skype
into Outlook.com and OneDrive.com on the
web or the Outlook 2016 Mail clients in
office 2016 which you know depending on
your view of things you might find
incredibly useful or incredibly annoying
because it certainly on the web, they
don't do a good job with that but
I think that these things are all part of
… how do you describe a bunch of little
things? It's a.. what's the theme? You
know universal communications is how we
would say it in the enterprise and maybe
Skype For Life is how they want to say it to people.
-You know what Padre just gave me a crazy idea another crazy idea.
-Oh good
-What if Skype For Life is a bot?
-Oh
-Now they’re intergrading more bots into
Skype right and there's been all this
talk about a concierge bot that Bing was
working on for a while to be kind of like
your personal assistant for life. You
know somebody who you could say hey what
movies are playing can you get me some
tickets. Maybe this is Skype For Life?
-But then Skype for life would have to fight Cortana to the death.
-I know. Yeah. BOTS and Cortana they...
I think they're siblings I think they're friends but yeah
-Their twins, Skype For Life is the twin
they kept in the closet until he was a
teenager so he’s a little stunted.
We've actually got people in the chat
room, we've got ‘hey it's Todd’ who
suggested that Skype For Life is actually
the name of a new form of judicial
punishment and then you see the really
really bad, you only get to use Skype (Laughing)
-It sounds like a big punishment.
-And a guy could be like oh I’ve been Skyped.
-Should it just be Skype 10? I mean,
cause that was the whole idea of Windows 10. It is the last Windows you will ever
own is this Skype 10 is it like look it will always be this way.
-And what you're supposed to do
everything to ensure it. That’s windows. God bless
-The ultimate Skype.
-Honestly Windows 10 is a terrible name
right. That should have just been Windows
I don't think we need to go 10 I think if
anything we should be stripping the
numbers off of the products that still have numbers.
-Maybe they really want it to be Windows X.
-Apple's doing that right? Apple's changing back
-They've kind of moved to the right
because they still have version numbers
obviously you have to have the stuff
behind the scenes but you know they talk
about the new version MacOS as Sierra.
You know and they've been doing that for
years. I guess but they really they
emphasize that you know it's a friendly
name and I think that's a nicer approach
than some godly book like H.P. product
names or version or just not version
numbers because numbers or even using the
version number the name is just it's just
it's I think that's just old fashioned
-Yeah
-Yeah it's kind of I mean because you have to…
-I know especially if its the last right
last version of something, supposedly
-It should have just been Windows ultimate,
Oh wait, we've already used that. Never mind!
-Calling something the last version of
this product is like the worst way to
market something ever invented. You know
this is the last version we're ever going
to make a Windows. Oh know we’re gonna
keep updating it, but this is the last one.
–There’ll be some serious updates to it but no, this is it.
-So it really is just not smart mart. (Sigh) I'm going to be…
I'm going to change my name to Padre 10. I will be the last Padre, you’ll ever know
-Actually if you can change it to 10.01.
-There'll be updates to Padre, but this is really the final version.
(Paul) There will always be that little hidden miss.
(Mary-Jo) Padre Hena-versary.
-Don't we… the Padre anniversary edition.
It's ten pounds lighter but has all the features. (laughing)
All right, we're going to bog down a bit
too much and it is a fun story, but there
is one more story that has so much fun it
has to be dispelled. Paul. There were
people screaming all over the Internet
that Microsoft is being the big bad by
trying to lock Linux out of new P.C.'s Is this true?
–No! And that's all we need to say about
that. If I could somehow make a career
out of just debunking stupidity. Right. I mean I just… you get into these
conversations of people on Twitter who
see these stories and they.. I think it's
the way conspiracy theories work right.
It's.. it hits on your internal beliefs
and so you instantly throw common sense
to the wind and say oh course their doing
this. Microsoft is evil. It's like guys
it's not 1998 anymore it could be maybe
upgrade the way we think about Microsoft
and their relationship with Linux in
particular. The topic and if you don't
know what it is I guess we should
probably step back a second and say that
somebody had discovered that a Lenovo
P.C. bought from the Microsoft store so
it's a signature P.C. and thus is running
something called Windows 10 signature
edition which doesn't exist. Somehow has
the magic capability of preventing Linux
from ever being installed in that
computer. That's not a capability of an
operating system that’s something that
would have to be built into the firmware
I guess of the computer I mean I
obviously there's always going to be some
way to brute stall anything on there but
you know, read it happens. There’s one of
the guys from ZD Net wrote a very calm
and collected article but anyway I
appreciated that. But here's the thing,
signature P.C. is as I describe it.
I think the smallest province of the
windows empire that exists in Microsoft.
They have no power at all the very notion
that they could require a P.C. maker to
do anything is ludicrous. Let alone the
world's number one P.C. maker. Microsoft
is not the business of blocking Linux.
They never really were. But it's one of
those things like a lot of people kind of
like want to believe is the case. Some
guy supposedly from Lenovo got into a
support forum somewhere and said Yeah.
This might this is part of our agreement
with Microsoft. That's not true. By the
way because Lenovo came out with a
statement and said no that's not what's
happening. It's one of those things like
you don't actually have to know the
answer to know the answer. It's a little
bit like the Skype For Life thing like if
you think it through. It's like this is
not what's happening and so I ... I'm not
the one that got the statement so
I think it's Tech Republic. They've got the
statement but I did a write up about it and uh debating it…
-This is just secure boot on the UEFI right?. I mean that's all it is.
-It's not exactly but it's that exact
kind of topic yes but Lenovo has a one
of, it's probably just one Lenovo
computer actually but there is a Lenovo
computer that has a very strange raid
S.S.D. configuration and as people are
discovering if they try to clean install
Windows 10 on that computer it won't work
either. It's. It's a very unique
configuration. It's not part of a secret
cabal with Microsoft to screw Linux users
out of their new computer but you know I
think I said this to Mary Jo privately or
maybe Brad we were I was chatting with
somebody earlier today and so consider
the market out there for people who are
going to buy a Windows based computer and
install Linux on it right and there is
some number it's a small number but the
some group of people do that. And now
let's consider the subset of those people
who are going to drive to a Microsoft
store pick it lovingly pick out their…
you know favorite signature P.C.
configuration from the store, buy it from
Microsoft. You know their favorite
company. And then put Linux on it. I mean
like I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm
not saying it's not going to happen but
c'mon. I mean and this is Microsoft's.
Path to world domination we're going to
do it through the signature pieces that
nobody even knows exists at the stores
and you can't even find there where you
live. It's just the whole thing is loaded
it's just typical. Watching this cascade
across the Internet today. It's just as
depressing. That's just so typical. You know
- It destroys your faith in humanity
-Or reconfirms my belief that we're all idiots. I mean it's just it's sad.
-And he thought Lenovo did show. I mean I
can't remember what they call it it's
like software services but then on boot
up you actually get the option of what
packages you want to install. So you could make it a signature…
-You mean..?
-All the crapware.
-That’s interesting. So Lenovo not the
only P.C. makers starting to do that kind
of a thing and I really like this
approach it's because it's something P.C.
makers are not familiar with called customer centricity.
You know H.P.’s newer machines will do
the same thing and in the past you get a
bunch of utilities and things running in
the tray and whatever was. Now you have
to seek out those applications and at the
time that you run it. It says hey we have
this tray thing we can put it and you
want to use it and if you say no that's
in the end of it you know and that's the
way things should be you know don't you think. Yeah so.
-Well it sure beats me having to spend the
first thirty minutes of my new P.C.’s life
uninstalling everything that came pre-installed.
-Yes right. Actually we will never be
deemed intelligent beings by future
civilizations because of things like this.
It's like when you buy an electronic
device and spend the first thirty minutes
updating the software or when you buy a
smartphone and you install apps and you
spend the next seven days removing or
changing notifications or like what you
just said you buy a new P.C. and the
first thing you do is take things away
from it. It's like this is so counter
intuitive and counterproductive and
yet we just sort of sort of accept that
this is the way it is you know.
-That's what makes me so sad that
signature seems to be kind of not an
emphasis anymore because I
remember when I got my Acer S7 it
came to me as a signature device and I
didn't even know it was going to and it
was such a different experience.
-Oh yes by the way. So let's see four
years ago this month. Microsoft opened
their store in Boston and I bought the
very first computer that was sold at that
store which is a fifteen inch Samsung Ultra Book.
It was one of the last Windows 7 computers
they sold right because Windows 8 came out.
Thirty or forty five days later and to this day
when I restore that thing and it goes back
to that clean Windows 7 signature edition
thing with beautiful wallpaper and you
know no crap anywhere it's still like this
calming almost transcendental moment like
you open the thing up And you’re like nice!
You know and that's not the reaction
typically happen with P.C. right? It's too bad
-I mean seriously there is something about
having to do a hard restore where you to
go back to the factory disks and you know
yeah when any time you do that there's
going to be hours and hours if not days of
updates it's going to have to go through
round & round & round but that's not
the infuriating part for me because that I
can just leave off in the corner.
The infuriating part is I know I'm already
going to have an anti-virus it's going to
take five restarts to fully get rid of
because it just sticks in there and you
have to do a little bit of registry editing
to get rid of the stuff that doesn't uninstall at all.
-I know we've talked about this on the pod
cast whatever. You know some months ago
but as part of the Windows 10 anniversary
update there's a new tool it's not actually
included in the O. S. but it's linked to
from the O. S. And so I think people are
probably familiar with the reset your P.C.
functionality of that they viewed in Windows 8
also available in Windows 10. Thing is if
you use that on a P.C. that came from a
P.C. maker which is you know most P.C.'s.
The P.C. maker can edit that image that's
installed so the crap all comes back right
when you reset the P.C. you get the crap.
But there's a separate tool called refresh
Windows it's linked to from the same place
in the settings up in Windows 10 with the
anniversary update. You download the tool
it downloads Windows 10 it's a clean version
of Windows 10 and then you can install
that and then so instead of getting the
crapware laden version you might get from
say whatever peace maker Dell, HP, Lenovo
whatever you get Microsoft's clean image
right. And so the pro there is you don't
get the stuff you're talking about like the Anti-Virus
whatever stupid utilities people put on there.
The minus side is you may not get the
driver you know Lenovo, HPNO and probably
Dell have decent utilities for keeping
that particular machine up to date with
drivers for example you don't get that thing.
And so you might have to do a little bit
of extra work if you want some of that
stuff or if you need it you know if you
look in device manager and some of your
stuff hasn't been recognized you know you
might find yourself going to the HP
or Dell or Lenovo or whatever website and
downloading the drivers but at least you
have that option now. And so I think that's
lot closer to a signature P.C. type experience
except that it's not fine tuned for YOUR
exact computer which was the
point of signature.
-If anyone wants an almost Signature Series
just buy the retail version of the
operating system and that's what you get
and yeah it sounds stupid but it really
there is something that is so nice about
starting the P.C. and realizing the only
thing on here is the bare O. S. everything
that gets added on is my choice.
-And that's by the way another thing I
think we all do with these devices doesn't
matter what you're talking about a phone,
tablet, computer. That first day you
install the things you know you need right
Just the absolute necessity.
-Yeah for example I need to install chrome.
-Yes exactly which I believe it’s the only
reason it exist. Over time as you use the
device whatever it is you know P.C. tablet
whatever you realize oh wait I need this
thing too and it spirals right so over
time you fill the thing up and you. You
know there's a bunch of junk on there but
those first couple days are wonderful.
It's like the. You know the out of box
thing is kind of like it should be. I mean
it's not always with the P.C. If you get
the wrong kind but you know that's what it is.
And we kind of try to recapture that magic
every once in a while. Let's reset it back a little.
-But we do have to talk about the layoffs
at some point because it is a big story
and it's not it's not it's not totally unexpected right?
–Right! -We saw this.
-Yeah we did and you know I think a lot of
people forgot but in July Microsoft
announced during S.E.C. filing that they're
going to be laying off. Almost 3,000
more people this fiscal year which is
their fiscal 2017. Over the weekend there
was a report by the Financial Times that
Microsoft was closing Skype London and I
saw some people report this says and
laying off 400 people but actually the
number that Microsoft is laying off is
closer to 230, I think?! I called them and
asked them how many people is it and they
said it's about 230 and that's a combination
of people who work for both Skype and Yammer in London.
Some people be moved to the Paddington
office some are just going to be let go.
They also last week. Paul and I kinda were
catching bits and pieces of this through
Facebook because we saw different people
we knew posting to Facebook that they had
been cut but they cut another 300 people
on top of that mostly from the Puget Sound
Redmond area and a few people from other
geographies around the world. These 500+
layoffs that happened last week are part
of that 2850 that they announced in July.
This isn't a new group of people who
didn't you know who Microsoft said and
we’re adding another 500. These are people
all different divisions not all concentrated
in one division. Except for the Skype and
yammer part that are being let go across
the company. Microsoft's definitely
continuing to tighten, you know belt
tight, doing belt tightening across the
company getting rid of people before the
layoffs were largely Windows phone related
and Windows Mobile these new ones are not
because they pretty much laid off all of
those people originally it was a bunch of
the Microsoft sales people because they
had a sales reorg this year when Kevin
Turner left. Now we're getting into the
product areas some people in Windows,
some in Office , people across different parts of
the company. So if you hear about layoffs that
happened recently that is what happened.
-Yeah a lot of my Microsoft contacts are
heads down right now. Not necessarily
because they're fearing this round but
because they realize you know what
Microsoft is actually, they're not doing
the cutthroat competition anymore but they
are looking to the various departments and
finding out “Do you have any personnel
that have not really contributed anything
in the last five years?”
-I think the H.R. term for these people is dead wood?!
-Yeah and it's always difficult to talk
about someone like that but if you've been
at a company for twenty years. And you
haven't really been challenged or maybe
you've become really really cynical it
might be time to move on. I've seen that.
-In over the past year or two as we talk
about layoffs obviously there's the human
side to it. It's always very tragic people
to lose their jobs but looking at the
company from sort of a Microsoft watching
perspective I think Mary Jo would agree
this is a very big and in some ways still
bloated company with lots of levels of
hierarchy and management so forth and…
You know the people I know personally for
Microsoft are to one very smart people
they do want to change the world but I
think the system they're in might be a
little too big and complex. You know for
things to happen so it's possible that the
Dell is making these changes like many of
the changes is made to speed response time
make sure they're focusing on the right
things and all that kind of stuff so.
-SCR 1 in the chat room is saying how all
their downsizing their way to success and
I know it's very easy to see it that way
but there's another view and if you take a
step back. You can actually see it. I know
Mary Jo and Paul you've both seen this is
because you cover Microsoft so deeply but
especially during the Bomber years. There
were little fiefdoms that developed in
Microsoft and the fiefdoms were all about
how many employees were under your
thumb and so you had these… (Paul) That was awesome wasn’t it?
You had these little princes who are
accumulating kingdoms not really caring
about the productivity they were getting
out of people they were just cared about
how many people they were in charge of and ..
-There's actually another side to this
with power comes the ability to influence
direction and I always think back to this
one example. I'm not saying that this
product would have been successful but at
the time when Steven Sinofsky was running
the Office group there was a project that
came up from I don't remember what group
it was but it was in Office but it was basically
an attempt to put Office in the Cloud at
the time they didn’t it called the cloud
but it's called Net docs and he killed it
because it competed with Office right and
the theory here is that Microsoft might
have come out with something that was
Google Docs and all that stuff years earlier.
If they just hadn't been so or if the people
in power hadn't been so concerned about
protecting their products. You know that
you couldn't compete with something like
Windows or Office if you did that you were
out you had to support that right. Now,
it's possible and probable that Net Docs
was a joke that it was based on Active-X.
that it was stupid. Whatever I don't know
but you know but that's the type of thing
that happens in that kind of organization.
-Plus you know we've talked about this a
lot but the emphasis of Microsoft these
days is very different from the old Microsoft you know
Windows was the main cash cow of
Microsoft for years now everything has to
be about the Cloud for them and the
shareholders want that, The Wall Street
analysts want that. So if you're working
in a group that's Windows related. You
know they're definitely kind of putting
the squeeze to you. I think. And if you're
doing something that's more Cloud focus
Enterprise focused. Something that's about
collaboration teamwork that kind of gives
you an edge and I think it's also just about
job kind of… not restructuring but more
just like changing of the emphasis set at
about what matters. And what's going to
make the money for Microsoft right.
So some of that's a play too.
-You know I think we talked about this on
Windows weekly. The notion you know the
new newer surface devices say Microsoft on
the right. And this one Microsoft notion
that we're moving forward as one company
not as the you know the guns pointed at
each other all the little fiefdoms that we
were just talking about you know it's a new way for
Microsoft. You know a new way of doing things
-Right and that's why I actually still I'm
very bullish on Microsoft I love what
Nadella has done that idea of taking down
the ramparts and making the little princes
actually work with one another. Yeah it
doesn't work any other way. Although…
(Paul) Change is hard though because you
know externally. I agree with you right.
I think this stuff is necessary. It's exciting for Microsoft as
a company that in many ways to become so
calcified you know for to see them reacting
to things quickly and moving quickly as it
it's very exciting in hitting that the right
products and things but I know from
personal experience with different people
that this change is very hard for some of
the people there's. And not just the ones
who've been let go now. But just people
who see projects just disappearing.
-But then there's some other people who
the opposites true like they've been
chomping at the bit for ever to like work
with teams across teams and they're like
oh finally they're letting us talk to each
other before and that wasn't really
encouraged or even allowed right.
So those people are really happy.
- Not to hammer on Steven Sinofsky
but what the heck. You know when they did
Windows 8, right. They went to the Windows
Phone team and said show us the Metro
stuff and they say here you go and for the
Windows Phone perspectives thought great!
We're going to collaborate with these guys
we're going to come out with this cohesive
system. Nope they never talked again you
know the Windows Phone guys are always
the B. team to the Windows guys now in
Windows 10 with him gone and you know
different people in place that is what's
happening but it happens. Three to five years too late.
This is stuff that should have happened
on day one. These thing should have
evolved together. You know you could have
made the case back in I guess we're
talking 2010 -2011, 2012 certainly that
Windows Phone had been in market at
mature to some point. If you're going to
go to market with an R. T. style tablet device.
It should have been Windows Phone O.S.
it was already there. It had to Apps. It
was all there but no they started over
from scratch. They created another Windows
system that ran out arm. Instead of you
know basing it on the thing they really had very strange.
-About ten years ago I had a contact in
the Xbox division and a contact in the
Windows division and we had a weird
exchange of the course of six weeks where
basically they were using me as an
intermediary to pass messages. I was like
you work literally 400 yards away from each other
What's going on here?
-Oh by the way if they're still there and
on same teams they all work for the same
guy I know -Exactly, exactly.
-That's one organization now.
-That's why they were emailing through me.
They're like we can't be seen to be emailing
one another. Someone will see it and get
really upset I was thinking that is so
dysfunctional. That is the worst kind of triangulation ever.
-Even you know like Ray Ozzie remember
when he was the chief scientist or whatever
to the chief software architect.
You know he allowed teams to compete on
you know file sync technologies and things
like that and instead of determining you
know that you're the best ideas from each
group let's make one thing you know you
allow this internal competition to occur
and what happens on the outside is you see
that they have three different file sync
solutions at the time or four and which
one do I take a bet on and why are there
so many and doesn't the show a lack of
leadership. You know and I'm sure there
are management strategies or theories that
this is a good way to do things but we
know from experience with this particular
subject that you know that didn't go very
well. And eventually it all became OneDrive
you know but for several years there were
many, many different solutions.
-There were. I remember when all those
think engines were out there and it was
like it was a time I should think you like
which one are they talking about right now
-I'm not going to remember all of them.
-No there are a lot
-I mean now there is Windows Live Sync, and uhh..
-There’s a Sequel one, Sequel team was
doing a whole different sync thing.
-You know it's like a mosh pits theory of
management like let them fight it out
-I prefer the days of active sync where
there was active sync and then active sync
for mobile and active scene for enterprise
active sync for exchange because that really
made it. You know very easy to understand.
-What do you call it when you reuse an
acronym? What is that called? Uh, You
double it up or whatever it's like they
did that with active sync was which is
over used. You know as a term.
-Someone just thought it sounded like a
really cool name so they wanted to use it
on as many products as possible and it
took me a while to realize that two products
that were called Active Sync actually
had… it was no sharing of the code base between them
-Those guys probably hated each other.
-Yes. Well because it was the exchange
side and then it was the mobile side and they didn't,
I mean, they were competing with each other.
-I remember the spinning green circle
very well I still have nightmares about it. (Laughing)
And that's what happens when you build a
dysfunctional company. All right. When we
come back. What's going to be? Wearables?
Ignite?. What do we want to talk about?
- Ignite? You mean like the Note 7?
-Yeah (Laughing) It's too soon, too soon man.
- I think, let's do wearables because
everybody wants to know what's going on with the Band
-Of course. So we'll be banding up in
just a bit but first let's go and take
another break. Because we need to thank
another sponsor of Windows Weekly.
Hey folks, do you read? Of course you
read but you probably don't read as much
as you want to. I know I don't.
There came a time when my schedule just
got so full that I don't have those free
evenings to curl up with a book I can't
do that hour of reading in the mid-day.
I don't have the breaks. I'd like to, to
pick up my favorite pieces of fiction and
nonfiction. Well there's a new way to
read with your ears. That's right, it's
called Audible. Now I spend a lot of time
in the car probably about two hours every
day coming up and down from San Francisco
to Petaluma and I spend a lot of time in
the air in fact I just spent 27 hours in
the air coming going to and from IFA in Berlin.
I'm going to spend another 30 hours
going over to Rome at the end of this month.
It's nice to have my favorite books,
the books that I want to read that are on
my wish list ready to go with a touch
of a button. Well that's exactly
what you get with Audible.
Audible is a leading provider of audio
books across all types of literature
including fiction nonfiction and
periodicals they offer a language
instruction in foreign language course in
audio book format so you can always be
improving yourself no matter what you're
doing. No matter where you're going no
matter how busy your schedule might be.
For listeners of Windows Weekly Audible
is offering a free audio book to give you
a chance to try out their service.
One audio book that I absolutely
recommend, I recommended to everybody, in
fact I've been recommending it since it
first came out and that is The Martian by
Andy Weir. This book is absolutely
fantastic. If you liked the movie you
will love the audio book. I'm actually
addicted to this. I do a lot of trips
over the last Vegas and this is just
about the right length to get me from
here to there. It's all about a man
trying to survive on his own with nothing
but his wits and his biology skills.
If you want to find out what it's like to
live on the red planet, if you want to
listen to a premise that is fresh that is
not based off of a comic book that is not
based off of a series. You've got to try
The Martian it's free. Because you're a
listener of Windows Weekly. Now to
download this audio book for free or
another one of your choice you can go to audible.com/windows.
That's audible.com/windows, of course,
I don't want to give you just my pick.
I know this is supposed to come later
in the show but Paul, you're a big
audio book listener as well, Yes?
(Paul) Maybe?! (Fa Bellencer) Maybe?!
You were teasing me with a pick that was
going to change my life.
-Well you know I liked, uh, I like
personal tech industry picks from
possible there really aren't that many
really good ones. We talked about Masters of Doom,
which is story about the ID software
guys read by Wil Wheaton, which is fantastic.
I had recommended that one sometime ago.
Someone who listened to it loved it, and
recommended one back to me, I bought it.
I haven't actually started it yet but
this is the next book it's called Console Wars.
Sega, Nintendo and the battle that
to find a generation and if you think
back to the history of video games in
particular I think the, I think, I mean
maybe I'm wrong here but the Nintendo
Sega stuff of the late 80’s, early 90's
is kind of the second major generation of
video games you know Atari, Odyssey,
Intellivision, Coleco Vision, etc being
the first generation. And so it's the
story of these companies and you know how
Nintendo and then eventually, uh, Sega
and assume Sony you know kind of just
changed things through the early 90’s.
- Well there you have it. You've got an
older fiction pick for me. You've got a
nonfiction pick for Paul you can pretty
much find everything in between at Audible.com.
Now this offer works for one credit
books there are very few that are two
credit that won't work with the software
but if you want to try out Paul's book,
if you want to try out mine. You need to
try Audible.com and we thank Audible for
their support of Windows Weekly.
OK, So we've got some Wearables I did see
a few of these in Berlin and they looked,
they looked wearable, they looked
interesting. But should I be excited Mary Jo?
- I you know I still I'm, I don't have a
smart watch. I did use the Microsoft band
for a bit of time and I thought it was
OK, I use the band too but I'm I still
haven't really seen any wearable device
and I'm like, Yes, I would pay that, I
would wear that. And now if you are a fan
of Microsoft band. We talked last week on
the show that we had heard some rumors
that Microsoft may be no longer making
the band after band two. Right after the
show ended, a day later we found out that
Microsoft was rebranding the Microsoft
Health application to Band. So people who
are downloading the Microsoft updates to
the Microsoft Health application for IOS,
Android and Windows, were seeing suddenly
that it was called Band instead of
Health. Microsoft hasn't really said
what's going on with that but my sources
said to me that what they think is that
Microsoft's rebranding Health to Band
because right now Microsoft, the
Microsoft health app that exists really
just is meant to sync with the Band. It's
supposed to work with Microsoft band.
I think what they're going to do is come out
with another new app that will be called
Microsoft Health. And that will work with
the Microsoft Health Service on all
different kinds of devices not just the
Band. They'll be able to work with.
Android devices different kinds of phone
platforms and all, all different kinds of
things and I think the reason they're
doing this is Microsoft's priority going
forward in the space is the health, the
health service and the health
applications and not so much the actual
band hardware which has been something
that a lot of people love but has had
kind of mixed success. And in fact the
Band 2 a lot of people have had problems
with it splitting and they've had to
return it and I just, I just think
Microsoft's kind of in a place right now
where maybe they're thinking about a new
wearable at some point maybe it'll be
another kind of a fitness band that'll be
branded Surface someday but I think the
Band line as we know it is done and now
we're going to see them talk about how
the health service and the help app and
not so much the Band.
(Fa Bellencer) I think are going to call it Band For Life. I think is…
-No don't give them any ideas please.
(Paul) How did you find out about our secret plans?
-Actually, maybe Mary Jo is right. Maybe
that Band is now called Skype For Life.
You're going to wear Skype. Because that makes sense.
Do either of you wear a band? I like the
band, I did try it out. But do you wear it on a daily basis?
(Mary Jo) No
(Paul) I mean well I switched to Fit Bit
three months ago ish. I mean you know I
really I like the Microsoft Band for what
it is I think it makes a great
compromise. Compromise? Is the wrong
phrase. It's a nice middle ground between
an expensive and complex smartwatch and
in a lower end kind of fitness tracker
right it I think it's got the right mix
of functionality. I think the thing that
really kills it be on the reliability
issues which you know came to light over
time is just you looking at one day
battery life. That's the problem with the
Apple Watch, it's a problem with a lot of
these devices. You know a FitBit, Ulta.
I think is the one I have the thing lasts
for seven or eight days on a charge it's
incredible and. It accomplishes the same
basic things that I like the most about
wearables today which is somebody texts
you and you can see what it is you get
you know reminders to get up and move
around. It's it does the fitness tracking
kind of stuff so I think I think they
just running into a marketing issue and
on the one hand where you know no one
even knew this thing existed they didn't
do good job of selling it and just a
battery life limitation you know an
Apple. I know wanted to put solar kind of
activity on the new Apple Watch and they
didn't because of the battery life stuff
there was no way to cram a thing in there make it work.
Well let's, let's not say that because
Samsung did. So Samsung’s got their new
Gear S3, which does have a cell radio in
it, and Bluetooth and WiFi and it runs
for four days. So it’s posssible
(Paul) What I meant was Apple couldn't do it.
- Apple couldn’t do it, Right!
- So uhm, one of the things that
Microsoft did with the original Microsoft
Band that was pretty impressive was just
put that much in there in a sensor sense
I think there were eleven sensors in the
first device. You know the second one
added one or two other sensors you know
they were Barometer for altitude and so
forth you know that kind of data
collection is really exciting you know
let's see what we can do with that,
promise. They never really did much with
it. You know and of course we don't do a
good job of selling it and then as
Mary Jo pointed out sadly the second one
at the same exact reliability issues as
the first and that's if there was this
kind of the end of it right there.
-They also at least at some point were at
kind of contemplating the idea of putting
Windows, some variant of Windows 10
inside the Band.
The Bands, the Band on and two both had
firmware inside. It was not Windows
inside. And right before..
(Paul) It’s basically Linux by the way.
-Is it really? (Paul) Yeah
Um right before we get all these tips
about Microsoft, maybe ceasing work on
the Band I had heard from one of my
contacts that they are the team that was
put to try to get Windows 10 to work on
the Band had been disbanded. So I think.
So yeah I think I think you know that the
idea was let's make this part of the
Windows 10 family right. Like everything
else has everything else is running what
the core of Windows 10 the Common Core.
So why not have the band do that too but
for whatever reasons they decided that
was going to work not feasible. And so
maybe it's they go back to the drawing
board. Now come up with a new wearable
that is Windows 10 core from the get go.
(Paul) Yeah I was thinking as you were
talking about other wearables which Brad
who I work with has heard as well. I was
thinking you know they have to be looking
at Window 10 this is the point you know
the universal platform that they can add
that to the list of targets you can have
as a developer. I think that has to…
(Mary Jo) Me too!
- I'm just I'm still not really sold on
the wearable tech and I've covered it
extensively. I’ve had a bunch of really
good pieces of tech in my lab but
ultimately I don't want anything on my
wrist in fact this is you mentioned
battery life this is the problem with
the technology that was
generously donated by Leo Laporte.
Basically because I waited for him to
remove things from his office to go on
the free table and I just followed ‘em
and I got myself a modem 360. It's a
fantastic piece of tech but because I
take it off and because you have to
charge it on that little awkward docking
station. I sometimes forget it on my lap table.
- So you were just saying do you have a
band and I went upstairs and change I
actually took the FitBit off and left it
up to my bedroom. So I actually normally
have it on but right now it's not.
That's just a coincidence but the problem
I have with that exact advice you're
talking about. I have one as well. The
Moto 360 or the Apple Watch is that these
are you would get you would get used to
it because if you just use the one device
but it's as a kind of a strap that you
have. Kind of connected everything it's a
fairly you know you balance the thing on
your wrist and you turn to try and not
you know it it's because I test different
devices like I sometimes don't spend
enough time with any one device like the
Fitbit is very simple to class the Apple
Watch I find in the Moto 360. You know
you have to get used to it right. It's
kind of like tying shoes you have to do
it a bunch of times you know so you can get good at it.
-I have to think adventurously I would
get used to it because I wore a watch for
the first 20 years of my life but since
then I just I don't want to hitting on my
wrist it just feels weird even, even
after a couple of hours of it being on my
wrist I still feel it there. I still want to take it off.
-I wear regular watch still and I feel
weird when I don't have it.
(Paul) What do you do with that?
- I actually use it to tell time. I know what a thought.
-And I thought watches only do things
like give you really abbreviated versions
of the text messages so that you have to
reach in your pocket to take out your phone
(Mary Jo) And that’s why I don’t need one
- I used to, you know. When people got
laptops and then smart phones. You know
you get into that kind of meeting joke
where like people are sitting there doing
their own thing on their devices and not
paying attention to whatever the person
is speaking or saying. And that's
considered rude it might be
unprofessional whatever and so you know
one of the big defenses about a wearable
is like you know if you're a smart watch
you can casually glance down at your
watch it’s not as obvious or as terrible
as looking at like a phone screen or
tablet or a P.C. or whatever but you know
I think nothing signals to the people
you're talking to that your not attention
more than when you do this kind of thing,
like really. And now you know I mean it's just…
- Or it looks like you're bored right and
you're like ugh is this over yet?
-We almost done here? We'll wrap this up soon.
- I do. I love sitting at a table when
someone's wearing a smartwatch and I
think, you could tell they don't want to
be rude but their eyes keep going down in
their wrists like this, you know like I
know what you're doing just take out your phone man.
-You should just start asking Siri
questions. (laughing)
-Siri delete that e-mail.
-Yeah. As my daughter once did she walked
into my office and she said Xbox off. (laughing)
-And actually across the Internet there
are cries of anguish because people are
watching Windows Weekly while playing Gears Of War.
(Paul) Cortana, What’s the weather? (laughing)
-Oh, no! You know, I don’t know.
I understand that wearables have a bright
future I understand that it's a big
profit center. I understand it has to be
a part of any cloud strategy because it's
a great way to get data metrics but I'm
still not completely sold. Go figure!
Anything else about wearables or should
move on to Cloud?
(Paul) Sorry I was just looking at my
smart watch I missed what you just said. (laughing)
- That's about right. Are we done with wearables?
-Yeah, let's talk cloud
-Let's talk cloud because this actually
is exciting interesting and worthy of a
post-mortem. What happened?. Microsoft
suffered a major cloud hic up and a few
people picked up on it quickly and
actually Mary Jo, you were one of the
very first who was able to confirm that
there was outages of various Azure
services. What happened?
- Yeah I didn't, it wasn't any kind of a
great, great thing that I did. Also I
came on Twitter last Thursday morning and
everybody was tweeting to me like as
Azure is down. It's a huge outage so I
looked at the status page and they were
having a giant D.M.S. outage for Azure So
that took down ended up taking down like
almost every Azure service or at least
limiting service on it. I mean everything
was going down as Azure media services,
Azure search HDInsight, everything,
everything was it was like a cascading
thing and then there were no workarounds
being posted and people were just saying
I can’t do anything. I'm like totally
stuck. I cannot do anything. I'm just
sitting here twiddling my thumbs. So
after a couple of hours. Microsoft got
DNS back up but then in the central part
of the United States. People were still
having sequel outages. Then after
everything seemed to be solved. I started
getting people tweeting me about OneDrive
being down and I don't know if the
OneDrive part was connected to the
original DNS outage because parts of
OneDrive do run on Azure. I never could
confirm that was connected but it seemed
to be right around the same time and that
outage hit a number of people in Europe
and the US, I think also India for
number, a number of hours and Microsoft
wouldn't say anything about that one and
I couldn't get anything just that we know
some customers are experiencing problems
and we're working on it. That's it. So if
you if you want to know more about the
specifics about what happened and what
Microsoft saying they're going to do
going forward to try to prevent this. If
you go to the as Azure status page that
you could you could just search for that
as your status page and you look up in
the history September 15th. You'll be
able to see the whole poll postmortem and
dissection of what went wrong and what
they intend to do to try to sure that up
going forward. It wasn't a good day.
- It wasn't a good day and I think the
official position was that it was a spike
in Network traffic that brought down DNS
which I mean suspiciously sounds like
it's was attacked and that's what
especially some people thought.
-Some people thought that. Some people
were like it must be a denial service?
I’m like well I don't know if it is but
they're not saying it that's what it is
but who knows?
- I'm with you at the far more
interesting part of the story is not that
there could have been a denial of service
against Microsoft DNS because that could
happen anywhere. The more interesting
part is the services that are actually
linked together by Azure.
-Yeah
-It does give you a sneak peek into some
of the inner workings that Microsoft
has been very recalcitrant to explain.
(Mary Jo) Right. We know there are tons
of services available on Azure if you go
on at the Azure page you can see they
have so many different products now
working on Azure plus a bunch of other
services that are parts of things like not
all of Xbox Live runs on Azure but some
pieces of it do to so when Azure has a
major problem. It affects pretty much
everything. Office 365. I mean they're
connected in there too, so you know when
you have something like a DNS outage
pretty dire and something they needed to
fix as quickly as possible. I will give
them credit that they were giving people
very regular updates but the updates
weren't very encouraging. It's like yeah
we know this is down and we're trying
to fix it. That was kind of it. Least, at
least they were acknowledging they knew
and they were working on it because
sometimes the health dashboard goes down
to in Azure then you, it looks, when you
look at it like everything's good. But
nothing's working so at least this time.
That was not the case.
-Right and the thing about Azure is, it
is a self healing network and it should
be able to route around problems and the
fact that it did come back up relatively
quickly for such a large network that is
a testament to the technology but there
is no such thing as a network that cannot
be brought down. There's always going to
be and as long as it's using the
networking protocols that we have today.
You can take it down, if you want if you
had enough resources but, but Paul let me
ask you about this. There was a saying in
the early days of cloud computing in the
early days of say like the Google
Chromebook that. Oh this sounds like a
good idea to move everything into the
cloud until you lose internet
connectivity and then that one bad day
makes the entire investment worthless.
This was the bad day. This was business
in the middle of the workday not being
able to access Office 365, their OneDrive
to different degrees. Does this, did this
kill it, did this make it an incredibly
bad day and now it makes the investment useless?
-No I, you know the thing that's always
lost in these discussions is that. Cloud
computing is not an all or nothing affair
when you talk about things like e-mail or
obviously if it's cloud hosted I mean it
is Cloud Hosted, even before we had a
cloud. If that thing is down, its down.
There’s nothing to do about that but you
know your data should be synced to your
client, your application should be
running on your P.C. I mean as an Office 365
user you should have access to
functionality and so it's not that it's
not all or nothing. You know and I still
think that the promise of the cloud is
met by today's infrastructure you know
but that it can only get better with more
pervasive contact of it sort of course
but I don't know. Honestly for all of the
kind of Chicken Little stuff that goes on
with cloud computing even today these
things are kind of rare aren't they. I
mean we don't really have weekly Office 365
or Gmail outages it doesn't really work that way.
-No. I think one thing the bug a bunch of
people in Europe about this one last week
was the week before that there had been a
pretty not, not as pervasive but another
outage that affected Azure and people
like wow twice and two weeks what the
heck Microsoft you know come on. So I
agree it isn't something happens every
day and I don't think it's a reason to
just abandon cloud computing or say oh
that's why I'm not doing the cloud
because you know your own company's
servers go down to it if you're running
your own servers. But I think I think the
fact that those two things happen back to
back got some of the people especially in
Europe kind of agitated and
understandably so. Yeah.
-You know this is why you've got a
company like VMware which has admittedly
had some bad years as they've, as people
been moving away from virtual machines
into containers. But they're betting
everything on their N S X platform and
the NSX platform ensures a way for
enterprises to be able to do hybrid
deployment so On-Premise and not just
On-Premise and cloud but On-Premise and
in multi cloud in other words they want
to make it as easy to run in Azure and
AWS and Google Web services and the
premise at the same time so that
theoretically as long as your network is
up has some sort of connectivity. You
should still be able to continue working
and I, you know I think we're going to
see more of the big players including
Microsoft who will take that that view of
we will let you run your Azure services
on another web service to give you that
measure of security that you will always
be able to get to it even if one of these
services goes, goes down. I see that
being becoming popular. Or no?
-Yeah, I hadn’t heard about that actually
so that's kind of an interesting thing
something to listen for next week. See if
Microsoft talks about that at Ignited at all.
-Yeah it will be uh. It will be a brave,
brave new world. Speaking of a brave new
world. There was a story that we actually
talked about the last time I stepped in
for Leo I think it was back in June of
Microsoft announcing a new Azure service
that was in Germany and the big news
about that was it would be entirely in
Germany. So all the data would be stored
in Germany they would never allow any of
the data to go to a data center that was
not in Germany because Germany has really
good privacy laws and Microsoft is saying
we will not even have access to it. We're
going to give everything to a caretaker
third party in Germany.
-Can I say Ick bin ein Berliner
-Ick bin ein.. yeah if you were a citizen
of the cloud you were a citizen of
Germany and I say to you, Ick bin ein Azurler.
-Azulier (laughing)
-But Paul what's…what’s this all about. It's finally out?
- This is..oh I don't, I have no idea
what this is. This is Mary
-Yeah this is me.
(Paul) I’ve heard of Germany
-So right. You've heard of Germany.
(Laughing) So today is the day that this
new Microsoft region in Germany. There's
two data centers that and that it
actually was turned on an open for
business. So um, yeah it's a big data
sovereignty story like you just said
Padre it's something you know Microsoft
hasn't been able to completely block
access to customer's data from
governments when requested and that's
what their whole Ireland case is about
that they've been fighting there but
they're trying to kind of get around this
in different ways and this German data
center idea where T. systems which is a
Deutsche Telecom subsidiary is acting as
the data trustee in this data center is
coming to play. So if you, you can decide
you want Microsoft to be the one
accessing the data there or you can say
no I don't even want Microsoft in here. I
want, I want T systems to be my
administration here in Germany. So any
Azure service that can run in these data
centers is going to have the same
protection. So for example IOT. IOT is
running in these data centers I believe
Office 365 also so you'll still have that
benefit an offer of having an external
trustee be the one administering your
data and the data will stay on premises
there in Germany. So kind of cool, kind
of like a workaround for Microsoft to try
to say you know what we're taking your
privacy seriously people and here's what
we're trying to do to get to kind of. Not
get around the law but find another
creative way to ensure data sovereignty.
- I don't think they're getting around
the law. I think they're trying to fill
in the void where the law has not caught up
(Mary Jo) Exactly!
- The great some very high profile cases
involving Microsoft and data security
that the most high profile of them would
be the case in Ireland about whether or
not a U.S. court could compel Microsoft
to give them information that was stored
on a server that was on the land of
another sovereign country. And Ireland
was a little bit iffy because they were
going back and forth about what was
allowed by treaty and what was not but
with Germany. It's very clear. You cannot
step onto German sovereign soil and
demand something from a data center and
that's why Microsoft's set this up. But
who's going to, who's going to buy this?
Who's, who's going to want the service?
Who's going to demand the service?
- I think a lot of customers in Europe,
right? For sure. I've even had people
asking me if I'm not based in Germany
could I transfer my data from another
data center to this one and I don't know
the answer to that I think I did ask
Microsoft that but I haven't heard back.
So people, I think people are very
interested and curious about
how that's going to work.
- I'd be surprised a lot.
(Mary Jo) I would too but, yeah we’ll see
- Actually P.S. chops in the chat room
has an interesting point. He says as the
law catches up. We could have a data
privacy Cold War you have different
countries saying well I mean if you let
them into the data for our citizens we’ll
let them into the data for your citizens.
- Oh I would say right. It will also have
a situation where who's going to be the
Cayman Islands of or the Switzerland of
you know data storage
(Fa Bellencer) Data’s the new curtsey.
–They not gonna let anyone in.
-And then you'll have, you'll have the
country saying well if we didn't do this.
Another country would so we're just
providing a service that's necessary .
Wait did we just come up with a new data
laundering scheme?
-Yeah -I think we did
-Will I have to declare my data for a,
for tax purposes? Is this is how this is going to work?
-They may. -I don't like this. All right.
You know what we talked enough about
enterprise I want to get into some gaming
and only, if only there was a member of
this panel who knew something about gaming.
-I'm ready. Let's go.
– Go, Mary Jo I understand you're
a big uh, Gears of War fan right Mary Jo?
- Oh yes I am
-You're all about the shooting and
what weapons do they have in
Gears of War? I don't even know this game.
(Paul) What weapons? -I'm assuming
there's some guns and some knifes right?
(Mary Jo) Cats. I think there are cats.
-I get Cats. Cats are ultimate weapon. No but Paul...
(Paul) And some chainsaws.
-Can you tell me a little bit about the
Xbox S and their Minecraft bundle because
Microsoft has been conquering the world with Minecraft.
-Mine.. Yes they are. You know since the
Xbox One S. came out in early August
they've been kind of bulking out the
lineup with different bundles you know
they have a Gears of War 4 bundle for
example which is ridiculous looking but
the Minecraft one looks really good
actually. Especially if you haven't
bought into this yet in the Microsoft
ecosystem because it's no much. It's no
more expensive than the normal console.
But you get the game for free. Obviously
an Xbox 1, you get the game for free on
Windows 10 and then you get a bunch of
favorites and builders packs just you
know downloadable content that you
normally would have to pay for. All
bundled into this thing and so for $300
bucks I mean this is actually it's a
great deals and then Minecraft is amazing
and so if you've never experienced
Minecraft I mean this is a great way to
get into it. So that's kind of a cool
one. And then the Gears of War 4 news is
that the game was completed this week. So
it's gone gold. It's being released in
October and if you preorder it. You can
play it. I think it's four days early so
I believe it comes out on October 11th
and those who preordered it. I don't know
if probably digitally obviously. Can
start playing it on the 7th and so this
is a new kind of a rejiggering of the
story you know so there was a trilogy of
Gears of War games that came out on
Xbox 360 was made by a third party
developer Who, why can’t I think of the
name of the company? That's crazy!
It doesn't matter they sold it to Microsoft
and so now Microsoft and using this. Say again?
–Oh Mojang
-No Gears of War – Oh Gears of War, Oh!
Wasn’t that just 360 studios?
–No it was the Cliff Bleszinski guys.
Uh it kills me when I can’t think of stuff
(Mary Jo) Bungee?
–No, Bungee’s Halo
–I’m just guessing.
–Oh, um was it the same studio that did Bio Shock?
- Nope. (laughing) this is embarrassing.
So anyway whoever it was.
(Mary Jo) Let’s just keep guessing.
(Fa Bellencer) Atari?
(Mary Jo) Epic games?
(Paul) Wow! Epic Games. So they did the
original trilogy on the 360, it was a 360 exclusive.
Well it was a Microsoft, it's a, the first
Gears of War game actually shipped on
Windows and then they did the 360 version
and so now on the Xbox 1, we have the
original game is available remastered the
other games are available backwards
compatibility and now we're getting a new
Forth game which takes place you know 20
years later there's you know, you know
the story. All hell breaks loose etc, etc
So it's a pretty big deal because
you know exclusives kind of drive console
sells and so forth so Microsoft has had
Halo and Gears two and so Gears have a
new series of Gears games coming out for
the Xbox 1 is kind of a big deal. So we
shall see. Someone included with us in
software. Nope!
- It's kind of interesting that's October 11th
because that's also a big day for
Dynamics 365. I’m just saying. -Yikes.
Yeah I'm sure that's not coincidental.
- I'm sure it's not. (laughing)
-Well I mean dynamics is one of the most
profitable division in Microsoft
currently has. So, I mean naturally. ou
You see the tie in, right? Well let me ask
you this we're thinking about doing a
little Gears of War thing here at the
studio because Lee has got his Xbox. I've
actually got an Xbox 1S on its way along
with Gears of War when it comes out but I
will be in Rome. So it's shipping to me
in Rome. We're all going to have our
little Kingston Gears of War branded
headsets. I think we need a death match.
-Yeah OK. I'm not great at death match I
will say um.. Gears of War, those games,
the single player stuff has been really
good, a story has been good for the most
part. The death match stuff, if you're
really used to the fast moving kind of
twitchy. You know Call of Duty type stuff
it's a little more grounded. They've got
it a little bit more vertical over the
years but you know especially the first
game, you kinda crouch low to the ground
and that was pretty much where you stayed
so I'm not I'm not great at it but.
-Well I mean if you play with us. I'll
try to get Pope Francis on the
controller. I've heard that he can frag like nobody else.
-I just want to hear him swear like a
sailor. That will be the best part.
-Gears of War is pretty good but the one
that I was most impressed with at E3 and
the one that I really, really want to
play is Cup Head because that looks
fantastic. And I know, I know Paul that
you love that game.
- Well actually I will say even Mary Jo
is looking forward to it.
- I was curious about that one, actually.
- I kind of you know like forty style
animation. Things like that.
- It's steam boat Willy. –Yeah
- There were a few. There was the ship of
thieves or ship of, yeah ship of,
Ship of Thieves or Sea of Thieves?!
(Paul) I’m not sure.
-There were a few at E3 that
actually were kind of interesting.
(Paul) -3D Realms. No it wasn't 3D Realms, sorry. (laughing)
-Are we back to just naming off studios?
–Yeah I don’t know
-All right, well when we come back it's
time for tips and picks to close out the
show but first let's go ahead and thank
another sponsor of this episode of Windows Weekly.
Now let me ask a question. Do you need
money? of course you need money. Everyone
needs money maybe it's to buy a new
house. Maybe it's to start a business and
the way that you normally get that is by
leveraging what you already own with a
mortgage. Now a mortgage is the most fun
you will ever have No I'm just kidding it
is a horrible process. The idea of
gathering together all your receipts, all
you little financial transactions. So
that you could bring them into a bank lay
them out on a desk and try to prove to a
passionate bank manager that you're a
good investment that you're worthy of a
mortgage that's probably the worst
possible thing that you could do with a
weekend. Well folks don't do that anymore
because there's a new way and that way is
Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Now
Rocket Mortgage brings the mortgage
approval process into the 21st century.
First of all, it's fast, it's powerful
and it's completely online I mean this is
the way that it should be Rocket Mortgages
taken all of the complicated time
consuming parts of applying for a
mortgage out of the equation. Do you hate
searching for those stacks of old files
and paperwork? You don't have to do with
Rocket mortgage you can easily share your
bank statements and your pay stubs a
touch of a button. It helps you get
approval in minutes instead of days,
weeks and months that gives you a custom
mortgage solution that's been tailored
for you. No longer do you have to fit
into this cookie cutter template of what
a mortgage will be. Rocket Mortgage looks
at your finances and helps you find the
mortgage that works for you. Now even
better with Rocket Mortgage you can do
all of this on your phone or your tablet
so you get to work where you want to
work. It's a quick online process that
you can manage from the convenience of
your couch. If you are looking at doing a
mortgage and you're not using Rocket
Mortgage, you're working too hard. Folks
if you need to refinance your mortgage or
buy a home check out Rocket Mortgage
today at QuickenLoans.com/windows
that's QuickenLoans.com/windows
Equal Housing Lender, licensed in all 50 states
NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 30 30
and we thank Rock Mortgage by Quicken Loans
for their support of Windows Weekly.
Alright. I always get confused by the Q. and A
who's the Q. and who does the A.?
- I don't even know if we need to do a Q. and A today
because we have so much in the picks.
- Oh yeah actually I love your picks this
was an interesting one. I saw this and I
was wondering where we were going to go
with it but let’s just find out. D. Apple
find your iPhone, I don't even know what that means.
- Oh well let me explain. I'm a Microsoft guy
obviously right? I’ve been writing
about Microsoft technology products for
20 something years. I approached things
from kind of a Microsoft standpoint but I
think it's fair to say that in the mobile world.
Things have gone in a slightly
different direction and so like Microsoft
itself you know we kind of have to adapt
and you know before Microsoft shipped
Windows Phone I was an iPhone user
because Windows Mobile was so terrible.
I used Windows phone for several years
obviously things have kind of fallen
apart over the past couple years and so
I've spent a lot of time looking at
Android and iPhone and I would say to
people who are Microsoft people you know
Microsoft fans, or Microsoft users,
customers whatever. Android is probably
the closest thing you're going to get to
a Microsoft type experience but more
important because the system can be, you
know adapted and customize so much you
can change the lock screen, the launcher
screen. I mean it basically everything
about it. It affords you the opportunity
to have a real Microsoft experience
because Microsoft makes lock screens and
launchers and you know keyboards and all
kinds of things for Android so you can
have a real Microsoft experience on the
internet but people who use iPhones do so
for a reason. There are good reasons to
own an iPhone you might get one from
work, you might have to have one and so
I've been using an iPhone for years
really. In fact I've owned I've owned
almost every iPhone model that Apple has
ever ship I've only didn't purchase two
of them but I've always worked very hard
to kind of keep the distance from some of
the Apple products and services. I don't
use things like Apple music or iCloud or
Siri or any of that kind of stuff and so
I wrote an article about this but I've
been doing a series of tips about using
Android from kind of the perspective of a
Microsoft guy. I have written a few
articles like this for iPhone but not
nearly as many and so recently I kind of
summarized a bunch of thoughts around
what it's like to use an iPhone from a
Windows or Microsoft user perspective and
you know again you can't, there's not
much, you can't change the launcher
screen, you can't, you know there's no
Microsoft lock screen that you can
install you kind of stuck with some
aspects of it because that's you know
what Apple does but actually iOS is open
up you can change the keyboard you can do
swift key which Microsoft owns you want
to do that and Microsoft, all of
Microsoft's high profile apps are on
iPhone as well. And so the point of this
is just that you don't have to give up
your soul. Per se to use an iPhone.
-No I think buying an iPhone you kind of
gave it up already. But I’m just saying.
-Actually, so by the way that's more fair
than ever because with this version of
the iPhone the availability was so
limited that I had to get a gold version
and uh I can tell you that was not a
proud moment.
-Rose gold or just plain gold?
-No I didn’t go rose gold but I do end up buying gold.
-Isn’t that actually part of the price?
You do give your credit card and a piece of your soul.
–And a piece of your soul, yeah I guess.
Literally one pound you know.
-How much does the human soul weigh?
(Paul) One pound. – Is it one pound? Well
good because I know I can give away a
couple of grams and still be good.
-Yeah mine's a little fatty. But it's good eating.
-Actually I just got all my
blood work back and I am surprisingly in
good health and I didn't expect that.
(Mary Jo) That's good.
-Except for my triglycerides I guess
pork rinds are really bad for you.
(Paul) I'm somewhat surprised by that.
Do you eat them in like a cheese bath or ?
– No, I bathe in them. (Paul) Oh,yes!
- I sleep in a bed of pork rinds. (laughing)
(Paul) That's it's good for the skin.
-It's for that fresh pork smell you know.
All right so we've got a D. Apple find
your iPhone. We've got an app pick of the
week. Who's got fire watch?
(Paul) I do. So, I have a bunch of epics.
So the big one is yes fire watch. So fire
watch is a game that ship like I think
last year on PlayStation 4 and also in
P.C. through Steam. I played through day
one on Raphael’s PlayStation just to kind
of give it a shot. I really, really enjoy
this game and so just today. Literally it
shipped on Xbox 1 you can get it now on
Microsoft's platform and so same exact
game it's a wonderful game it's kind of a
it's kind of a like interactive adventure
basically it is there's a mystery and
it's got beautiful graphics and you know
immersive sound and all that kind of
stuff but it's I mention that when I
talked about this on the podcast just a
few weeks ago I said I'm going to try to
get my wife and daughter to play this I
think this is a game that would, is
compelling to people who don't play video
games in the same way that a you know a
mystery series or something which is
interesting to people I think people can
get into this. So it's a great, great
story. It's a really neat game and the
Xbox One version has some unique stuff as
an audio tour and when you finish the
game you can actually free roam around
the environment you can see the whole
world that they created for the game.
(Fa. Bellencer) This looks a little like
mist. It's got, it's looks like it's got
that same sort of artistic.
(Paul) Don't ever compare this to mist again.
(laughing) No it’s a.. OK well I guess
what I would say is, you know mist for
the day was seemed photo realistic
I guess I'm sure we would look at the quite
same way today. This obviously has a bit
of a I don't want to say cartoon but it's
clearly graphics like they don't attempt
to pull you into thinking that this is
you know real photograph quality graphics
but that the graphics are beautiful. It's
a beautiful game. You know really really
well done the whole thing, the whole
presentation is great .
(Fa. Bellencer) It's not a horror game is it?
(Paul ) No but this is a mystery. It's
like, it's the type of thing where you
know you show up at your new job out in
the woods and you go investigate what's
going on when you come back. Someone has
ransacked the tower that you live in and
you know the music kind of kicks in like
tick, tick, tick, you know. You can tell
it's like it's getting a little stressful
like what's going on here. And so it's
just it's a mystery that you uncover.
(Fa Bellencer) As long as the Slender man
doesn’t jump out.
-Well it's sort of, sort of does.
-Oh really? (Paul laughs) Not exactly.
Just a few other things I want to throw
out for apps because a bunch of stuff
happened this week. I do an app race and
mobile app pick of the week, and a Skype
preview app. We’ve already talked about
this but if you're on the insider program
it's certainly worth looking at. I
haven't gotten it to work but I know
people have if you're interested in the
SMS relay stuff that is available if you
have both Windows 10 and Windows 10
mobile. Microsoft has also updated a
bunch of its mobile apps on the Internet
IOS and so on Android, Word, Excel and
Power Point, the kind of the core apps
have much simpler sharing capabilities
now and also I can’t … here and
collaboration features and in OneDrive.
I don't actually, it's funny I read the
description of the new OneDrive app on
IOS and I don't think the graph. I don't
think graphically looks any different.
That they're calling it a file centric
U.I. or whatever but it looks the same to
me but there's a new me tab and a U.I.
that lets you access all of your account
information and a bunch of other stuff
that was just hidden away before so
that's kind of cool and then the new
Outlook.com which by the way I still
don't have I think I'm on what are we on
the day 457 or something. If you have it.
I know Mary Jo does. They've added
integrated support for a Google Drive and
Facebook photos meaning that if you're
going to, if you're sending out an e-mail
“Hey I just went on this great vacation.
Here are some photos.” You can pull those
photos in from other services now include
you know the Google Drive and Facebook
photo. I'd love to test that feature
Microsoft. If you're listening.
-They're calling it OneDrive For Life.
-Yep. (laughing)
(Mary Jo) You're going to be the last one
the very, very last one to get the new Outlook.
- Now that you've asked for it, that's
how that works. Sorry it's a rule.
(Mary Jo) Yep
(Paul) I observed on Twitter, the other
day that hearing that other people have
the new Outlook.com is like when you're
at war and you find out that the buddy
you're in a foxhole with is going home
and you're happy for him and in one way
but you're also like you're really upset
with him you know because he's leaving
and you're not you know I mean it's the
same kind of weird mixed feeling.
-So what Paul is telling us is if any of
you get the new outlook. He will
(Paul and Fa Bellencer) Shoot you in the back.
(Mary Jo) He wants to know immediately.
-This is good. This is good to know good
information. Mary Jo fully your
enterprise picks of the week.
-OK so my enterprise pick is going to be
what to think about and look for next
week at the Ignite show that Microsoft's
having in Atlanta. Paul and I are going
to be there a lot of other journalists
will be there but looking ahead I'll tell
you what I think we're going to hear a
lot about. So it's very interesting to,
at Ignite this year, there is only one
day of keynotes. The morning keynote
starts at 9:00 A.M. on Monday September 26th.
It goes till 10:30. Microsoft's
going to be webcasting that and then
there's an afternoon keynote which is
4 to 5 on the same day. That's it for
keynotes. So there's going to be a lot of
recording of all the different sessions
of Ignite and it'll be up on Channel Nine
Microsoft Channel Nine. I think we're
going to hear this is this is kind of a
no brainer. A lot about Windows Server 2016
there because that's where
Microsoft's going to quote launch the
product. It won't be available that week,
which is next week but right after it.
I think you know first second week of
October. You'll see it starting to be
generally available. So expect a lot of
Windows Server 2016 all the new stuff
that's happening with containers in
Windows 7 2016 we’ll hear a lot. We’ll
probably also hear a lot about nano
server which is a new role for a stripped
down role in Windows 7 2016 next week.
We're going to hear a lot about Azure
stack. Azure stack is basically Azure
that you can run in your own data center
or that your club provider can run in
their data center for you. I think maybe
we'll hear about Technical Preview two of
Azure stack next week it will be around
the right time and Microsoft said
recently that Azure stack won't actually
be available until mid-2017. So it's
running late. But I think, I think they
do want to get the Technical Preview out
there there's a lot of sessions about
Azure stack. I think there's going to be
some meet ups and they'll be a big
representation for Azure stack. Also we
haven't said this word on Windows Weekly
lately, Data Lake's I know every wanted
to hear it. So I think next week.
Exactly. You're going to hear a lot about
Data Lakes. Everyone drink! Data Lake is
the big data repository technology that
Microsoft had in previews since last
September. I think maybe at Ignite we're
going to hear them talk about Data Lake
technologies being generally available so
we'll hear a lot of big data talk a lot
of Hadoop talk probably will be tied in
with some of the data summit
presentations that are happening
simultaneously with that Ignite in
Atlanta next week. More probably more
about Microsoft's data scientists degree
program which they gave a little sneak
peek of at the world wide Partner
Conference. I think the first class they
graduated from that degree program is
going to be announced or somehow
represented at Ignite. That's my guess,
because Microsoft said that that group of
people would be graduating in September.
So we're in September. Still I think that
could happen next week and then there's a
thing that I've talked about before in
the show called open mind studio which I
think is kind of like Visual Studio
except for machine learning. I would be
very surprised if we don't hear about
that next week too. So all of these
things and more. I'm sure. Probably a lot
of office Content Officer 365, Office
Crack, Share Point all your favorite
Office topics will be there as well and
we've said this before. Paul and I are
doing Windows Weekly live next week with
Padre from Ignite at our usual time 2:00 P.M.
on September 28th, 2:00 P.M. Eastern
and then we finally know a better meet up
or meet up is going to be held on the
28th right after the show. It's going to
be 5:00 to 8:00 P.M. It's at a bar craft
beer bar called Argosy A R G O S Y in
Atlanta. And I guess it's the Argosy East
version of Argosy So if even if you
aren't at Ignite and you don't have a
badge you can still come to our meet up
at 5:00 to 8:00 P.M We've tweeted out
about it a couple times more about it. So
definitely if you're an Atlanta or near.
You can come and join us there. And while
I'm talking about events. I want to throw
one more Paul and I also are going to be
in Las Vegas the last week of October. At
a couple of shows that are held together
called DEVintersection and IT
intersection. We're going to be speaking
there too and probably will have a meet
up there. If you want to know more about
that there's a lot of really good
Microsoft speakers. Stephen Guggenheim is
going to be there. Scott Hanselman and
who else. Brad Anderson a lot of big
Microsoft names plus a lot of the
M.V.P.'s and big well known speakers in
the community there. DVEintersection.com
You can find out more there. So that's my
mega enterprise pick for the week.
- That is a lot of picks. Of course we've
got Ignite coming up. So that's expected.
And it close us out we've got the code
name Pick of the week and the beer pick
of the week which I'm actually looking
forward to because we're going to be
doing a beer episode of know how. I may
not drink beer but I do like the smell.
(laughing) OK so, should I do the code name now?
-Do it
-Code name pick of the week is Project Bletchley
and yes it is named after that Bletchley
if you know what I'm talking
about here. Let's see the one in
Bletchley Park in England. So this, what
project Bletchley is… is Microsoft's code
name for Azure block chain as a service
middleware. So, since last year,
Microsoft's been trying to work out a way
to make Azure blocked, Azure block chain
as a service be something that people
might use in various industries not just
for bitcoin mining and all but also in a
lot of enterprises especially banking and
finance because what is blocked chain
it's actually a distributed Ledger
technology so that makes sense in a lot
of different enterprise type
applications. What they decided to do was
to try to use Azure technologies to make
it easier for people to build
applications that could take advantage of
block chain as a service. So they came up
with this idea of project Bletchley in
July. They put out a white paper and said
“This is how we think this might work.”
This week they actually put out what they
are calling version one of project
Bletchley. What it is…is a template. So
version one's just a template basically,
but it's a pretty powerful template. It's
a template that is made to help people
figure out how to kind of on board into
Project Bletchley. I wrote a blog post
about this. I have a whole bunch of links
with different things about The Cryptlets
technology that's part of the Project
Bletchley, how that works and
architectural diagrams for people like
that stuff. And Microsoft has a
walk-through of how to use this template
so if you want to just start kicking the
tires now and seeing what is this thing
as you're blotching as a service. You can
start doing that now through this
template that is available through the
Azure Resource Manager portal.
That's the code name.
- Whoot, fantastic. And of course we got
to do the beer pick of the week right?
- Yeah so this is a very interesting bear
pick. Stone Brewing, San Diego area,
makes a lot of excellent beers of all
kinds. They have a very famous series of
beers that they've done called the
Vertical Epic series. So every year like
on February second. The second of
February which is 2/2/2002 they put out a
beer. That was called the Stone Vertical
Epic series 2/22 they did one in 3/33,
4/44 and these are huge collector's items
like people pay hundreds of dollars to
try to get these old very rare beers from
Stone so that they can have different
taste from the Vertical Epic series so
stone being the smart burgers that they
are decided on their 20th anniversary to
remake some of these famous beers that
they've brewed over the years and one of
the first that they remade is the 2/22
Vertical Epic. So they call this the
stone 20th anniversary encore series this
is 2/22 and 2/22 I've had it a couple of
times I've had the original and I've also
had this remake. It's really good Paul
would love this. I know strong Belgian
Golden Ale like all the things you love
in a Belgian beer. It's almost like a
strong wheat beer.
(Paul) It’s pretty much all the things I love. Period.
(Mary Jo) It is pretty much, right?
Orange flavoring very effervescent, very it's
not light like a lot of wheats because
it's a strong Belgian but around 7%,
really good really, really good and the
remake I can tell you is equally good. So
if you see this Vertical Epic. Series
called The Encore Series, definitely give
it a try and know 88/8 is also available
now and I think will be others coming out.
-There you have it. All the news that's
worth having if you're a Microsoft fan.
Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley, thank you
very much for making this an entertaining
enjoyable and very informative two hours.
Paul Thurrott of course again behind
thurrott.com. Paul, what are you working
on, what should people be heading over
thurrott.com to find?
(Paul) What am I working on? I can't
tell you that. (laughing) (Fa Bellencer) Can you hint?
(Paul) No I mean I… No. (laughing)
(Fa Bellencer) Your silence says it all.
(Paul) We’re in the middle of a… we're rolling out like a
premium service on the site and so I've
been a little preoccupied with a bunch of
that stuff lately so it's coming soon. That's all I can say.
(Fa Bellencer) So just go to thurrott.com
and find everything there is to know
about the man who writes the book.
And that would be a slogan.
If I were making slogans that would be
the slogan I would come up for you.
(Paul) Not quite as good as the Man With No Name but yeah.
- A woman who does have a name is Mary Jo Foley
of course of the “All About…” always
say Android but it really is Windows
“All About Windows” blog over at Z.D.Net.
Mary Jo you always are my source
for Microsoft happenings in the
enterprise anything interesting going on
your side that you're particularly jazzed about?
-I'm just I'm like really jazzed about
Ignite next week because I think they'll
be some pretty cool enterprise
announcements. And it's going to be great
that we're right there on the ground with
all the big guys like Mark Russinovich,
and Snover all the who's who. So I think
we'll have some really good news stories next week.
-Fantastic! Again thank you for making my
job that much easier by being absolutely
brilliant and entertaining hosts. Don't
forget that we do Windows Weekly here on
Twit T.V. every Wednesday at
11:00 o'clock P.M. Pacific. 1:00, no 2:00 Eastern.
I'm not good at this Leo does
all the time zones. All I know is come to
live.twit.tv and you can watch and as
long as you're watching live why not jump
into the chat room at irc.twit.tv
It's a good way to talk to the host,
talk to me and just enjoy the experiment
that is Twit T.V. Also don't forget that
you can find us at our show page
twit.tv/ww In case you want to download
some back episodes check the show notes
or maybe even subscribe. If you want to
support the show that really is the best
way to do it. Of course you can also find
Windows Weekly wherever fine podcasts are
aggregated till next time and Father
Robert Bellencer in for Leo Laporte we're
going to be coming to you live from
Microsoft Ignite next week but until then take your with Newsweek.