Windows Weekly 355 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are here with a preview of Build and a little bit about what Microsoft might be announcing tomorrow. It's all coming up next on Windows Weekly.

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Leo: Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by Cachefly at cachefly.com.

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, episode 355, recorded March 26, 2014

Take it and Run

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It's time for Windows Weekly, the show that covers Microsoft, Windows, the entire universe of fun Microsoft projects you can do at home. Paul — (Laughs)

Mary Jo Foley: (Laughs)

Paul Thurrott: Why am I —? (Laughs)

Leo: What, Paul? What?

Paul: Don't worry, I'll fix it.

Leo: Okay.

Paul: You just —

Leo: We've moved him over. Hey, it looks good, though. Did you get a new camera?

Paul: No.

Leo: Oh, you've been working out.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Hey, I saw a picture of you and your lovely wife as teenagers —

Paul: Hmmm.

Leo: — on Throwback Thursday —

Paul: Yep.

Leo: — on that thing called Facebook.

Paul: I was a good-looking boy.

Leo: What a good-looking boy! Did you see that, Mary Jo?

Mary Jo: I did. I was like, "Wow!"

Leo: What a hottie!

Mary Jo: The dimples are the same.

Paul: (Laughs) Yeah.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: He looks — you look like — wait a minute. "Sorry to interrupt, Leo." Oh, I went over to Facebook to see this, and they've — they've interrupted me. "Sorry to interrupt, Leo."

Paul: (Laughs) Nice.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: "We've purchased Oculus Rift, and we were wondering if you'd like to play a VR version of Facebook."

Leo: Yeah. "Do you want to do this in 3D?"

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: Public.

Paul: Is that what they're doing now? That's funny.

Leo: You-- Well, it's because they —

Paul: Yep.

Leo: You know, I think they're responding well to — I guess to — "P-a-u-l, T" — you don't mind if I show this, do you, on the television?

Paul: Nope.

Leo: It's like Good Morning America. We will take anything that happened on the Internet — there he is. (Laughs) Oh, this is funny!

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: That's a funny little edit on the — on that.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: From Christian Sherman. Let me see if I can find the original. There it is. Look at them; aren't they a cute couple, ladies and gentlemen? Paul and Stephanie.

Paul: We had no idea what life was going to do to us back then. We were so innocent.

Leo: (Laughs) Was — were you high school sweethearts?

Paul: No, just after high school.

Leo: So cute. Oh, my goodness. And I — do you still have that shirt because that's nice.

Paul: (Laughs) No, no. Like the '80s, Leo, that shirt is long gone.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: That is — (Laughs) Wow. I've always thought Paul was a good-looking man, but now ... wow. And Stephanie, too. You guys look great. So cute. 1988. Ah, what a decade.

Paul: I know. I miss it. I miss it badly.

Leo: That's Paul Thurrott. He's the guy in charge of the Super — was that a Delphi Bible era? Or that predates that.

Paul: Oh, well before that.

Leo: Well before —

Paul: Well, actually, not that — well, yeah, it was before it. Yeah, ten —

Leo: Not much.

Paul: — ten years. I — this was probably — would have been, like, five years before I wrote my first book, I guess.

Leo: Wow. That's why you look so fresh. (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah, it — right, that's what I mean.

Leo: So full of hope.

Paul: I think the first two or three books I wrote, we wrote almost entirely between the hours of 2 and 6 a.m.

Leo: (Laughs) While the kids were asleep.

Mary Jo Foley's also here from ZDNET, allabmicrosoft.com. Great to have you both to talk all about Winders. Do you have any comment on the — we were talking about, before the show began, the Oculus Rift story. It's not really a Winders story.

Paul: Oh, you've got to go look at the graphic I made for that one.

Leo: Did you?

Paul: Yeah, windowsitpro.com.

Leo: I love Paul's frustrated —

Paul: This one's a little ham-handed, but it's — it's worth it.

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: I actually — I'll admit that I wrote about this story only so I could make this graphic. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) Is it Mark Zuckerberg in a virtual reality helmet? I don't know.

Paul: No, it's Fonzie jumping the shark on —

Leo: Oh, it's the classic! And he's wearing, ladies and gentlemen —

Paul: An Oculus Rift.

Leo: An Oculus Rift.

Mary Jo: Nice.

Leo: I like it! (Laughs) And a Facebook blazer. (Laughs) That's very funny.

Mary Jo and Paul: (Laugh)

Mary Jo: You worked on that one; you can tell.

Paul: Now, who jumped the shark here, Facebook or Oculus?

Paul: Well, Oculus is right to take $2 billion from anybody —

Leo: Yeah, that's the good news, yeah.

Paul: Yeah, but I don't understand Facebook's interest in it, even though I read the ostensible explanation for it, it just doesn't make sense.

Leo: You know — and I'm going to deftly turn this to Windows, watch. It strikes me — in fact, I think they said this in the call yesterday — that Facebook, like — remember Andy Grove at Intel wrote the book Only the Paranoid Survive? I think Facebook is an unusually paranoid company, particularly concerned about the future. They understand, having put MySpace out of business with just a flick of the wrist, they understand how tenuous their domination can be —

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: — and that's why they've hustled to buy Instagram and WhatsApp for outrageous valuations.

Paul: Well —

Leo: And I think he said — and I think this is telling — mobile's the thing now. They almost missed mobile, came very close to missing mobile. They caught up on that. Now it's going to be wearables. But they're really concerned — what's the next thing? And he said, "I see this is a platform," and that's the magic word. You know, that's the —

Paul: I don't know, Leo. Back in — and by the way, that was actually a nice job with the transitioning to Microsoft.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: I hadn't finished, but you understand where I'm going.

Paul: Yeah, I know, but I didn't mean — I'm sorry —

Leo: "Platform" is the key word.

Paul: No, one day Mark Zuckerberg, in public, will utter the phrase, "We're going to do everything we can to ensure that we will not be the next Microsoft." Which will, of course, ensure that they are literally going to be the next Microsoft.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: (Laughs) But Microsoft had the platform — we've said this so many times — in the '80s and the '90s.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: And kind of lost it to the cloud.

Paul: Somebody else may remember this, but in 1996 — or possibly '95 — Microsoft used to — back in the pre-broadband Internet days, would do satellite transmissions to theaters. So you could go to a movie theater in your local area and see a Microsoft presentation that would be about some topic. And so back then, they might have done something about Windows or whatever. But I — the one I remember was for what — I don't remember if it was I.E. 2 or I.E. 3, but it was for one of the early versions of Internet Explorer. You okay, Mary Jo? (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah. I was like, What just happened there? (Laughs)

Paul: What happened?

Leo: Paul Thurrott happened, baby.

Mary Jo: I don't know what happened. (Laughs)

Paul: Oh — (Laughs)

Leo: No. Do you — we didn't hear anything. Did something massive and noisy happen? Okay.

Mary Jo: It was just a video, somehow, thing.

Paul: Oh, okay.

Leo: You hear something playing?

Paul: Like, something started playing?

Mary Jo: I had something playing somehow. (Laughs)

Leo: Oh. I hope that's not coming through as —

Paul: So Joe Belfiore was one of the presenters in this. He talked about this coming — they were going to do frames and all kinds of other things better than Netscape. But one of the tools that they — or applications that they showed off then was a VR World instant messaging chat program —

Leo: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: — whose name now escapes me completely. And you would step out into this virtual world, and it would be like a — in my case, it was like a planetscape and there was wind blowing.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: And you would kind of — you would kind of walk around.

Leo: I remember that. I remember that, yeah.

Paul: And I remember — and somebody out there might remember the name of it. I don't remember the name of the app. But I remember I spoke to a guy from Norway in, again, '95, '96, and it was kind of crazy. And I walked out of my office later, and my wife's like, "What's wrong with you?" And I'm like, "I just had a — I just had a conversation with a guy from Norway in some weird 3D world." Like, everyone had big heads, and —

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: — they were very strange-looking. You know, I was — you could kind of imagine that this would be the future. And Doom was the big thing at the time. It wouldn't be hard to slow down doom. Like, Doom is a really fast game. Slow it down; just have people walking around these virtual worlds. But here it is, almost 20 years later, and we — that kind of thing really doesn't happen.

Leo: Well, a couple of things. We did — we also — we had an avatar virtual reality chat on Tech TV in 1998 that we used.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: And it was kind of interesting. And of course, Second Life, kind of interesting. Got a lot of press for a while. There are things like that. I think what's happening is the technology wasn't there yet.

Paul: Right.

Leo: But we all remember very well, I think Neal Stephenson's description of the metaverse in Snow Crash —

Paul: Right.

Leo: — and that idea that you'd plug into a world that would seem real, but wasn't. So I think that there is a desire for this. And what Oculus did — and Notch pointed this out in his post in which he said, "That's it, screw you. I'm not" — (Laughs) — "not doing Minecraft for the Oculus." I'm paraphrasing, but that's the basic idea. Pointed out that all of these headsets — I used a VR headset in the '90s, early '90s, that was —

Paul: Right.

Leo: — disorienting and terrible — were just ahead of their time. And Oculus noted that the technology had finally caught up. And did they — we're able to do something with no latency, and —

Paul: But wouldn't it be interesting, though, if this — if Zuckerberg was right, that  — people have been sort of wondering about what's after mobile. You know, one of the things that Steve Ballmer just recently said was —

Leo: Right. Right.

Paul: — "We may have missed the mobile boat — it may literally be over — but we have enough money to survive" —

Leo: Exactly.

Paul: — "and hopefully we'll ride the next wave, whatever that thing is."

Leo: Exactly.

Paul: But how weird would it be if the next thing was this thing we kind of have been talking about for 25 years or longer?

Leo: Happens all the time. Happens all the time.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: What's after Mobile? SharePoint.

Leo and Paul: (Laugh)

Paul: Oh, I thought it was Hadoop.

Mary Jo: The end, guys.

Paul: VR Hadoop.

Mary Jo: Just wanted to help them.

Paul: Yeah. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: Mary Jo, you're supposed to throw your microphone down and walk off.

Leo: Boom! (Laughs)

Mary Jo: No, Mike Baz knows the program you're talking about, Paul. It's V-chat. Remember Microsoft V-chat? 1995.

Paul: That could be it.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: '95, okay.

Mary Jo: Virtual rooms with customized avatars. Yep. Good memory.

Paul: Yeah, it was — it was very interesting.

Leo: I vividly remember all of this. And it was going to be the next big thing, but technology wasn't there yet, frankly. That's really the — just like —

Paul: Yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Netcasting. How many people were doing this in the early '90s, and then the early 2000s? It just — you know, it was a little window. Remember Real and all that? And we just got better. Then — so —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: I — you know, Microsoft has — I don't know if you have this in your notes, but Microsoft is apparently doing a helmet, a VR helmet for the Xbox, right?

Mary Jo: They're doing the Fortaleza glasses, we know.

Leo: That's — is that what Fortaleza is? Okay.

Mary Jo: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: Why didn't Microsoft get in on this? That would have been more of an obvious fit, wouldn't it?

Leo: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Paul: V-chat, yeah. I'm looking at pictures of this. I think that might be it, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think that was it.

Leo: It was a planet; I remember that very well.

Mary Jo: Yeah, why didn't Microsoft get in on this?

Leo: Or Google or somebody else.

Mary Jo: Maybe they're making their own.

Leo: Well —

Mary Jo: Maybe they're making their own equivalent.

Leo: That's the strong rumor, isn't it, that they are?

Mary Jo: Yeah, Sony and Microsoft both may be doing their own equivalent, right?

Leo: Sony, too, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: And what better thing to attach it — if you've got a game console, that's a peripheral you've got to do. IGN on March 18, a week ago, said, "Microsoft reportedly working on a VR headset for Xbox 1 and 360. That was before the Oculus acquisition. Seems like Oculus — well, I guess it's very possible that the scientists at Microsoft looked at what Oculus VR was doing and said, "Yeah, we got that. We don't need to buy that." Facebook surely was not developing it. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: I — yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah, they're not even saying Microsoft bid on it in the reports I read.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: They're not saying they were even in it, so —

Leo: Didn't they say that Google was?

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think they did say Google was.

Leo: Yeah.

Leo: Fortaleza, I think is a very —

Paul: They were looking for a way to make Google Glasses bigger.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: This is the patent application for the Fortaleza glasses. (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs) That's awesome.

Mary Jo: (Laughs) Okay.

Leo: I mean, that really makes you want to do it, doesn't it?

Paul: See Jack. See Jack fence.

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: See Jill talk on a smartphone.

Leo: [unintelligible], swordfighting; Jane Smith, the queen, she's dancing.

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: Yeah. Yeah. But I do think that the — I would like to talk to people who were at GDC because I suspect that GDC had a number of these devices at the Game Developers Conference last week.

But we're not here to talk about that.

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: I just —

Paul: Well, it is interesting and odd. I mean — I don't know. I'm just worried that VR is going to be like 3D, which is, some people really enjoy it and some people are so turned off by it.

Leo: Right. I think it's very —

Paul: You know, they just —

Leo: Right now, it's very much like that.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: I get nauseous. I was —

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: I was playing with — in fact, we had a review on Before You Buy last week — a body suit that captures motion that you can — and they were showing it at GDC. So you could do that, and then you put on the Oculus VR helmet. And you're moving around, you're looking around, you're in — it's — it was as close to a virtual world as you can get. And I immediately got sick. (Laughs) Immediately.

Paul: Actually, that's what happens to me when I walk outside, so —

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: — I completely understand.

Leo: Well it could be it was the bright sun. It burns, it burns!

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs) Right.

Leo: But it was a really cool experience, and it was a — I'll tell you, [unintelligible] console gaming, the — to be able to aim with your hands and then see your gun and then — it was really fun. I was actually — I could aim and shoot in a much more naturalistic way.

Paul: Right.

Leo: And for console gaming, it's a — I could see it as a real product.

Paul: Yeah, but Leo, I can sit here for eight hours and play Call of Duty, but if I had to run around like I was in Call of Duty, I think I'd be good for about eight minutes. You know?

Leo: Right. Well, this is more — that's a good point, too. Sometimes letting the mind do the immersion is a better idea than trying to give it too much input, right?

Paul: Like Sean Connery in The Untouchables. You know, he's like, "This running!"

Leo: (Laughs) "Too much running!"

Paul: (Laughs) And just shoots the guy.

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: I — except in my case, I would just give up. I'd just stop running and be like, "Shoot me; I don't care."

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: "I need the rest." (Laughs)

Leo: I, for one, have always wanted a VR, but more than just these helmets, you know?

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: It's the same thing with 3D glasses in movies and games and TV. It's an attempt to make the world more immersive and real.

Paul: Right.

Leo: But it is very much in the uncanny valley where it's not, and so in some ways it's worse because it's so — it's closer. And that makes it less acceptable to us.

Paul: It's like when they make graphics that are too realistic.

Leo: Right.

Paul: People start freaking out because there's something weird about it.

Leo: Yes, that's the uncanny valley.

Paul: You — you cross some weird line where —

Leo: Creepy line, yeah.

Paul: — less — yeah, less realistic is okay; photographs and videos are okay; right in the middle of that, not okay.

Leo: So I — we're going to have to go through this stage, of course, the Polar Express stage. But —

Paul: (Laughs) Yep.

Leo: At some point — at some point, maybe it'll get good enough. I'm hoping it's before I die because I plan to lie in the nursing home on my back —

Paul: Then we could bring back your character from the site. What was he called again?

Leo: Yeah, Dev Null.

Paul: Dev Null, yeah.

Leo: I have more experience in one of these suits than many people.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: And an Emmy award to prove it.

Paul: That's true.

Leo: So — Build! Are you guys excited? First of all, you're not coming out for tomorrow's coming-out party.

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: No.

Leo: No. You're coming out —

Mary Jo: They're going to webcast that —

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: — so we're just going to watch.

Leo: And I believe Paul is going to join us on our coverage tomorrow; is that right?

Paul: Yeah, I think I can do that.

Leo: Okay.

Paul: It's right after a — I'm doing a webcast tomorrow for work, but I think I'm — I think I should be there.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: You know, I mean, I think I should be there.

Leo: Yeah. So I think it starts at 10 AM Pacific Time tomorrow, which is 1 PM Eastern, 1700UTC; and we'll be covering it live. We'll carry the stream, but we'll also get Paul's commentary, Mike's commentary, I think. We're going to get some iOS people, too, because I think we're going to see Microsoft Office for iOS.

Paul: Do you?

Leo: I don't know.

Paul and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: I'm listening — I listen to Mary Jo on these things.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: And possibly Gemini.

Mary Jo: That's — that'll be the most interesting thing, to see what else they show.

Paul: Right.

Leo: I think — here's one way to spin that, is — I'm skipping ahead and I apologize. But let's do this in chronological order.

Paul: Okay.

Leo: I think one way to sell this is, "We believe touch" —

Paul: Wait, wait, wait. If we're going to do it in chronological order, we've got to do that MSDOS 1.1 thing first.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Paul: I mean, I — if we're going to do it, you know, let's do it right.

Leo: Did you see — is this in your notes?

Mary Jo: Yeah, I have that in there somewhere. (Laughs)

Leo: The fact that they're releasing the source code for —

Paul: Yeah, yeah.

Leo: Yeah. Okay, we won't talk about it, then. We'll save it. Right. You actually have a story. I thought you were joking. You have a story that goes back that far.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Dang, you're good. So I thought that one thing that might — and I think you might — you guys might have given me this idea last week — is that they focus on, "Hey, touch forward. And we believe touch is the future. We've done this with Windows; we're now going to do it with Office. Introducing Gemini, and we're going to do it first for iOS, but very quickly thereafter for Windows." Right? Something like that?

Mary Jo: Well, Gemini isn't the code name for the iOS one.

Leo: Oh, I'm sorry. Code name — what is the code name?

Mary Jo: That's okay. Miramar. (Laughs)

Leo: No, but it's the code name for the — but it's the code name for the — and is it —

Mary Jo: The Windows suite — Office suite is Gemini, but —

Leo: Gemini.

Mary Jo: — it's different from — we think it's different from the iPad one.

Leo: Oh, it's — I thought, for some reason, it was a similar code base. It's not.

Mary Jo: We think it's probably similar —

Paul: Well, there's no way to know.

Mary Jo: — but we aren't sure.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: But I — the reason I thought they might do that is just to appease Windows users who say, "Hey, wait! What — what?"

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: "That's not fair."

Mary Jo: They have to say something tomorrow for Windows users, or people will just flip. (Laughs)

Leo: And to be honest, I don't think —

Paul: Yes, I —

Leo: — iOS users are going to get so excited anyway.

Paul: I agree with that as well. (Laughs)

Leo: So —

Paul: I — I think the way to look at this is, there has to be some differentiation. They can't — they probably won't come out and say, "Look, we've got this thing called Office on iPad, and we're going to have this thing called Office for Windows 8, or whatever we call that. And these things are going to be functionally identical." Like, I don't think they're going to do that. I think —

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: — both of them will sit somewhere between Office mobile and Office for Windows, but maybe there's kind of a scale; and I think it makes sense for the Windows version to be more powerful, if that makes sense, simply because Windows devices tend to be PC's — like, real PC's with —

Leo: Right, right.

Paul: Whereas, iPads — you know, a lot of people have them, obviously, but I — a lot of those people might use that to view documents and use the on-screen keyboard, you know, whatever.

Leo: I think they also waited so long that a lot of us have figured out workarounds and aren't —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: — going to worry about Office.

Paul: Yeah, And actually, that's the big problem.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: That they've waited so long.

Leo: Yeah. I've got Google Docs, I've got other stuff.

Paul: Yep. iWork, whatever. I mean —

Leo: iWork, yeah.

Paul: There's all kinds of stuff. So — the other thing they might do — and I don't know anything about this, but maybe the Windows version is free and works offline, and the iOS version requires a subscription. Or — there's all — there's different ways you can do it. There are restrictions around Apple's store with regards to the percentage they take when people buy things through it, and so forth, that obviously doesn't exist on Microsoft — for Microsoft. So they have some leeway there. There may be advantages to having the Windows version, but we'll have to wait and see.

Leo: Anything to say about the fact that this is Mr. Nadella's first appearance — public appearance — as CEO? Well, not — first big event as CEO.

Mary Jo: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much his first big event.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: The other thing — since we're skipping ahead to item 2, we might as well do the whole thing. (Laughs) The other thing he's supposed to unveil tomorrow is very much in kind of his profile of what he's been doing at Microsoft. Supposedly, he's going to unveil something called the Enterprise Mobility Suite as part of the announcement tomorrow, too.

Leo: And that's when we'll be breaking away to the social hour on most of the same stations.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: I'll be right back.

Leo: (Laughs) Paul — even Paul's leaving!

Mary Jo: No, it's going to be exciting!

Leo: (Laughs) Okay.

Mary Jo: It's going to be exciting. It's — it's a way for big companies to manage all the different kinds of devices they have. So iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, Android phones, Windows tablets, Windows RT, Windows phones. And they're going to talk about the whole way you can do this as a business. And you know what? Those are the customers who are going to care about Office on iPad. Those are the ones they really, really care about, right, because they're going to buy, like, tons of licenses of this thing, Microsoft hopes. So they're — this is where you're going to see Satya Nadella get into kind of his —

Leo: He loves this stuff.

Mary Jo: — enterprise cloud stuff, right? (Laughs)

Leo: Yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yep. So yeah, you're going to see — I think you're going to see that, too, tomorrow. And that's — that's going to be more — bread and butter kind of stuff.

Leo: Again, 10 AM Pacific, 1 PM Eastern time, 1700UTC tomorrow. And we'll have live coverage of that event, including the stream. Because they are going to stream that.

Mary Jo: Right. On Microsoft News Center, if anybody's looking for it.

Leo: Cool. Now we can go to next week because you guys are coming.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: You're coming to town. I'm very excited about that. We're going to talk about that in just a second.

Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley, Windows Weekly is on the air, talking about all that Microsoft stuff. Now, I want to mention something that — maybe it's not as important to you as Windows, but it ought to be, and that's your money. (Laughs) And your investments. And I want to talk about Personal Capital. Today, I want to tell you about a free, secure tool that will solve two barriers to retirement. Now, you may say, "I'm too young to worry about retirement." You're never too young; take it from an old man. Now's the time to start thinking about retirement. Because the sooner you start saving for retirement, the better off you'll be. The problem is, of course — two problems, really. You — everything's spread out. You've got your mortgage, if you have a house; you've got loans; you've got credit cards; you've got bank accounts; I hope you have savings accounts and perhaps even some investment accounts — all of those on different websites with different logins. That's a problem. That's a problem. You also may have the issue of paying too much, if you're paying somebody to manage it, or if you're buying stocks, paying too much in fees. We can rationalize all this with Personal Capital. personalcapital.com/windows to find out more. Brings all your accounts and assets into a single screen — on a tablet, on a computer, on your phone — realtime, intuitive graphs that tell you exactly how you're — how you're doing. And all of this is free. You'll even get tailored advice to optimize your investments. It's wealth management for the digital age. And how do you get that wealth? You start now with personalcapital.com. Absolutely free. personalcapital.com/windows, the smart way to grow your money. personalcapital.com/windows. Try it today for free.

Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, Windows Weekly. Next week, Build. You're coming out, you said, Tuesday?

Mary Jo: Mm-hmm.

Leo: So nice.

Mary Jo: yep.

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: The show starts Wednesday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Leo: And we will not be doing Windows Weekly at its normal time next week because we're going to let you go to Build, but you're coming Thursday — Friday, I should say.

Paul and Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: And we'll be doing it here in the Brick House. So if people want to come visit in the Brick House, we'd love to have you. Email tickets@twit.tv. I expect an overflow crowd.

Paul: Is it really at 1 PM?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: It could be anytime you want. what do you want? What do you prefer?

Paul: You might want to shoot for a little later.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: Just — just worried about getting —

Leo: We've got a window from 1 to 4.

Paul: Oh, okay.

Leo: So get here when you get here.

Paul: Okay.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: And —

Mary Jo: We'll do our best.

Leo: Yeah. No, I'm not — I understand —

Paul: That morning, I've got to go down to the airport and get a rental car, which is what I did last year, and then drive up.

Leo: Okay. We'll cover all the costs involved. Should really —

Paul: I think last — yeah, last year, my wife came out, right? And I went and picked her up —

Leo: Right, right.

Paul: — and got the car.

Leo: Well, what — you know, whatever works. We could confer offline, but ideally, sometime between 1 and 4 on Friday. And we'll arrange for some snacks.

Paul: (Laughs) Okay.

Leo: And some beer and stuff like that.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Should be fun.

Paul: Will there be corn, Leo?

Leo: (Laughs) There'll be corn, baby.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Did Ballmer really say that?

Paul: I have no idea. (Laughs) It's just in my head.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Okay. (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: What is Build? Who wants to take that?

Mary Jo: What is Build?

Leo: What is Build?

Mary Jo: That's a great question. (Laughs)

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: Build is the successor to the PDC.

Mary Jo: Yep. And also —

Paul: This time, done by the Windows guys, right, not the — Who did PDC?

Leo: Microsoft used to have PDC.

Paul: [unintelligible] yeah.

Leo: they used to have WinHEC for hardware.

Paul: That's right.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: They used to have Mix for — kind of web —

Paul: Yep, that's right.

Leo: — cloud stuff. So they had at least three regular conferences.

Paul: Yep. It got a little weird, so — I think — I think there was some conflict between the Windows guys and Visual Studio guys, and I think at the — during the Sinofsky years, they wanted to bring it in house, and —

Mary Jo: Yes, there was. (Laughs)

Paul: And so Build was the result, but —

Leo: it's the one thing of the year? It's like their big developer conference?

Paul: Well, they — yeah. They don't necessarily have one every year, although they pretty much have, right?

Mary Jo: They have. yeah. This is the fourth one.

Paul: I don't know if they've missed a year some — yeah. So the first one must have been in, like, 2008, '9, that time frame.

Leo: Because Google does this with Google IO; Apple does it with WWDC. They — this is pretty much now kind of the trend. I see this — Dropbox just had theirs, Samsung just had theirs.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: This seems to be a trend. Because every company has to reach out to developers. You want to give developers timely information and help developing, and so that makes sense that this would — that Build — is that basically what Build is? It's not a press event.

Mary Jo: No.

Paul: Right. No, it's a developer —

Mary Jo: It's usually, like, 6,000 or so developers. And what's interesting is, they're developers across all the different Microsoft platforms.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: So you get phone developers and Windows developers; you get web developers. You're going to get Xbox and Azure developers this year, too. So it's going to be —

Leo: And that makes sense because these platforms are getting closer together.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: I mean, it's —

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: So yeah. And the other thing that's different about this year's is we're hearing rumors that they're going to talk about the future more than they typically do at Build. So a lot of times, you hear kind of like what's next for the platform, but in a very short time frame window. But we're hearing — Paul and I both have heard — they're going to talk about Windows 9 to some extent —

Leo: Oooooh.

Mary Jo: — at the show.

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: So that's different because we're hearing Windows 9's not until spring 2015. So that's pretty far ahead for them to talk.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: And the part we don't know is, how deep are they going to get into that? Like, are they actually going to give time frames and features, or are they — is it going to be very high-level? I'm thinking high-level, myself, but yeah.

Leo: Cool.

Mary Jo: I think they'll probably talk about things like, you know, here's our vision for the platform and how the platforms are becoming more similar and how Phone and Windows RT are going to become more closely aligned and what that means for you, as somebody trying to develop for our stack of platforms.

Leo: Right. What does that mean for —

Paul: Yeah, Microsoft has always had kind of a loose story, where they could say, "Look, you could develop for this platform; moving over to this other Microsoft platform is pretty seamless. You can use the same language, the same developer environment, and so forth." And obviously, one of the goals moving forward is to get even beyond that, where you can have more shared code, more projects that work across different platforms, and all that kind of stuff.

Leo: You're getting Morse code, actually. (Laughs) We're getting — in your microphone —

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: What did I say?

Leo: Yeah, no, it's going, (imitates beeping sounds)

Paul: Oh, is it doing that?

Leo: Yeah. (Laughs)

Paul: I tried to move my phones away from the microphone. I —

Leo: Now you're — it's not — it's a — are you a Ham?

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs) No, I'm not. My cat is —

Leo: Oh, you're cat's a Ham.

Paul: — sat and cried by the door for 20 minutes straight so I finally let her in, and now she's bumping the microphone repeatedly as she —

Leo: (Imitates beeping sounds)

Mary Jo: Oh, no.

Paul: — has her little petting frenzy here.

Leo: I don't know if you know, but I am a Ham, and I know CW — what us Hams call Morse code — and she actually is saying, "Please feed me Friskies."

Paul: (Laughs) Yes. No, she doesn't want food; she wants attention.

Leo: Oh.

Paul: The problem is, everyone's gone today, so usually she has her little routine where she gets attention around the house at different times of the day by different people.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Oh, right. Now it's all up to you, Paul.

Paul: Today, it's just me, so it's been — it's been lackluster.

Leo: Yeah. "Daddy has to play Call of Duty."

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: "Time to go away, cat."

Okay. Sorry, didn't mean to distract; I just — I was distracted like a small animal —

Paul: (Laughs) No, it's —

Leo: — by the Morse code.

Paul: If you notice my microphone is going up and down —

Leo: That's the cat?

Paul: That's the cat.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: Mary Jo, don't you have a cat or something? Some animal of some sort?

Mary Jo: I used to have one, but no more. (Laughs)

Leo: Yeah. Aww. Now I understand. Yeah, he —

Mary Jo: Aww.

Leo: She really wants to — or he — really wants to be there. Aww. Awwww.

Okay. So do they also use Build to — they give developers code, they give them bits. It's — there's a lot of — there's a chance to see stuff in beta and so forth. For instance —

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: Windows 8.1 update — will they show that?

Mary Jo: Yeah. They're going to talk about that.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: I'd say so.

Mary Jo: Yeah. We've been reporting that, you know, supposedly, that's going to be available to MSDN customers on April 2, which is the first day of Build.

Leo: Ah.

Mary Jo: So makes sense, they'll talk about that, and probably give people a bit who don't have them.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: But the way it's going to be delivered is through Windows Update, we've heard.

Leo: Ah.

Mary Jo: So that should — you know, for everyday customers, I should say, not for MSDN customers. The one we're less certain about is what's going to happen with Windows Phone 8.1 because we had originally heard Microsoft's goal was to try to RTM that right before Build also so that they could give developers a preview build when they're at the conference. But now, it's a little iffy, it sounds like, if that's actually going to RTM in time for them to do that. So I think they'll still talk about —

Paul: That was absolutely their goal.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: That was, right? Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: That was the plan.

Leo: Okay.

Paul: I think Windows Phone 8.1 was not as well-defined or not as far along as Windows 8.1 Update 1, and I'd heard they had brought over guys from the Windows team to help out over there; and that it was coming in — the phrase was it was coming in "hot," was what  I was told. But this was a month ago, and now it looks like they're not going to make it. So that's frustrating.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: But you don't have to be there, as you point out, to get it, so — they'll talk — presumably, they'll talk about it.

Paul: I — yeah.

Mary Jo: I think they'll still talk about it.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Because I think RTM is close. Even if they don't actually hit it, then I think they'll still disclose the features, or at least some of them.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Or the majority of them. They have to.

Leo: Do they talk about it in terms of, "Okay, developers. Here's what you need to know about Update 1; here's what's changed"; or do they talk about more generally in the way that we as users and journalists would be interested?

Paul: Well, both, right? I mean —

Leo: They do. So they know that they —

Paul: — at keynote events —

Leo: They know that people are paying attention besides just developers.

Paul: Yeah. Because they'll — I'm — if they announce this, I'm sure they'll webcast the keynotes.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: Yeah, they're going to.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Okay.

Paul: and that will be general news, and that's where they would talk about the features and so forth. And then, of course, over the course of the couple of days at the — at the — I almost called it a concert. — of the event —

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: — the conference — that's like a concert.

Mary Jo: It is.

Paul: You could — obviously, there'll be Windows Phone sessions. You could learn how those new features impact you as a developer.

Leo: All right. Okay.

Mary Jo: Yeah, the sessions go deep. Like, they code onstage and laugh at angle bracket jokes and things like that.

Leo and Paul: (Laugh)

Paul: Yep.

Leo: That's what I like.

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: Yeah. (Laughs) I always kind of sit there, like, Okay. (Laughs)

Leo: "Have you heard the one about 'go to fail'?" (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: That's fun. I like developer jokes.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: No, developer shows are awesome.

Leo: Yes.

Mary Jo: Because it gives you so many kind of good clues about where things are going, right?

Leo: Sure.

Mary Jo: Even if you can't, like me, completely follow all the code and everything, you kind of can — well, you talk to a lot of developers, plus you get the gist from what they're emphasizing in these keynotes. Like, "This is where we're going to put a lot of attention."

Leo: And it's fun if you've — if you — they throw up a slide with some angle brackets, and everybody goes, (Gasps.)

Mary Jo: Yeah, yeah.

Leo: Then you kind of go, "What happened? What happened? What happened?"

Mary Jo: (Laughs) Exactly.

Paul: No, the best part is when they make a simple coding error up on the screen, and then everyone in the audience is yelling out what they should be doing to fix it. You know, that's just — hilarity ensues.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah. (Laughs)

Leo: "You forgot the semicolon!" I'd love to go to something like that.

Mary Jo: Oh! Here's a — here's an interesting little tweet from Daniel Rubino, who was on the show recently.

Leo: Love Dan, yes.

Mary Jo: He just put a very cryptic tweet, and says, "Congrats to the Windows Phone team." That's all it says.

Leo: What would that — could that possibly mean?

Mary Jo: RTM, perhaps?

Leo: Ah.

Mary Jo: It was just a few minutes ago, so —

Leo: Congrats. Dan, you're being very cryptic. Call us now.

Mary Jo: Yeah, Dan. What's going on? (Laughs)

Leo: Come on.

Mary Jo: It would be great if they RTM'D. It would be perfect.

Leo: Hmmmm.

Mary Jo: So yeah. Matthew [unintelligible] just told me that through Twitter.

Paul: Actually, they do have a post. It says, "Windows Phone 8.1 core is finished today."

Leo: Ah. That's it.

Mary Jo: That's good.

Paul: Still not technically RTM.

Mary Jo: Not technically RTM, right, but —

Paul: That will happen over the next couple weeks.

Mary Jo: They're close. (Laughs)

Leo: Very good. All right.

Mary Jo: That's good.

Yeah, so what else are we thinking? There's also going to be a Nokia announcement at Build. They put out a very cryptic invitation, and — Leo, you gave us some guidance about decrypting these, so we — I actually posted a piece of the invitation on this one. (Laughs)

Leo: Oh, good. All right.

Mary Jo: Yep. So it says, "Join us for more." This is on the first of Build.

Leo: Aha! You see? You see? I'm sorry. I'll calm down.

Mary Jo and Paul: (Laugh)

Mary Jo: This is on April 2 in the evening in San Francisco. They're inviting the press, and it's an invite that says, "Join us for more," and the hashtag is #morelumia. But then —

Leo: In case you weren't sure.

Paul: Yeah. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs) I know. Yeah.

Paul: Oh, is that what they do?

Leo: Oh!

Mary Jo: Oh, right!

Leo: Lumia!

Mary Jo: But — okay. Here's what makes this little invite confusing. See the little smiley guy in the middle?

Leo: It's upside down headphones.

Mary Jo: Right. It's — that implies Nokia Mix Radio, not a phone.

Paul: Okay. Well — okay, don't get too excited about that.

Mary Jo: Why?

Paul: If you go to conversations by Nokia —

Mary Jo: Oh, right. They have a different —

Paul: — that graphic animates and it goes through various Nokia logos.

Mary Jo: Okay. Okay.

Paul: Including Here and whatever.

Mary Jo: That's right.

Paul: So it's not specifically related to music.

Mary Jo: It's not just that. Okay.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Good, good.

Leo: So that's a limitation of the paper invitation.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Yes. That we don't see on the Internet.

Mary Jo: Yeah, so —

Leo: "If you build it, they will come," says the blog post.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah, we don't know what this is. There's three different — supposedly, three different new Nokia phones in development that all could be running Windows Phone 8.1. They're code-named Moneypenny, Goldfinger, and Martini.

Leo: Ooh. Shaken, not stirred.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Leo: Yes. Mmmm.

Mary Jo: But we don't — beyond that, everybody's kind of guessing. I saw Ina Fried over at Re/code was guessing maybe it's a wearable, something like a wearable device.

Leo: Ahh. That would be timely.

Mary Jo: It would. But then why would Windows Phone —

Paul: (Laughs) Based on the build quality of Lumia devices, it could be like a brass knuckles.

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs) You know?

Mary Jo: (Laughs) It could, yep.

Paul: Every time you run into an iPhone jerk, you can just give them a smash.

Leo: Now, they're still not Microsoft.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: And in fact, it's a little delayed, I think, this closing. They won't be Microsoft by the time Build happens.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: And so that really limits them as — to my knowledge of how these acquisitions happen, it very much limits them on how much they can converse.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: They can't act as if they're Microsoft.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: I mean, I have no idea what the problem there is, to be honest, legally, or whatever.

Leo: It's China, and it's Google —

Mary Jo: And India, too.

Leo: And India.

Paul: No, no, I mean, why they can't just start working together and stuff. I mean —

Leo: Oh, because then it would be —

Mary Jo: Legal.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: Why? I mean, what's the difference?

Mary Jo: Not allowed. Because that might not be approved.

Leo: If it falls through, yeah.

Paul: You guys started — but they're already the closest partners on earth. I mean —

Mary Jo: I know. But technically, they can't. They can't do it. So yeah.

Paul: That's just like telling a couple they can't go away for the weekend before they get married.

Leo: "You're not married yet."

Paul: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah, pretty much.

Leo: "Separate rooms!"

Paul: Very strange.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: "Paul and Stephanie, separate rooms!"

Mary Jo: (Laughs) Yep.

Paul: I used to —

Leo: You two look like you're very into each other. I don't know.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Actually — so since you're on this topic and since we just showed a picture in 1988, I will tell you in that year, we used to go up to Vermont for these weekends. And one day, with her dad, I'm out — I'm actually cleaning the dishes with him. And he says, "Must be really expensive going up to Vermont." And I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "You know, having to pay for two rooms every night like that."

Leo: Oh! (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: What a — was that — now that — was he joking, or was he fishing?

Paul: Yeah, that's the way he jokes.

Leo: (Laughs) That's pretty funny.

Paul: Awkward.

Leo: Awkward!

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: And here's a somewhat less romantic image of you guys from that era with your roommates.

Paul: Yeah, yeah.

Leo: Who's the guy in the wife beater?

Paul: (Laughs) Lou — my friend, Lou.

Leo: Lou.

Paul: Yeah. I went to high school with him, actually.

Leo: And then one guy's not even wearing a shirt at all.

Paul: Actually, every — every guy on that couch, not including the baby, are all guys I went to high school with.

Leo: Oh, that's nice.

Paul: All friends of mine from seventh, eighth grade.

Leo: Stephanie doesn't look really happy about the whole thing, I've got to tell you.

Mary Jo: No.

Paul and Leo:: (Laugh)

Paul: That baby — his name is Crispin. Of course, now he's 25 or something.

Leo: Yeah, I know.

Paul: But he used to sit on my lap while I played Doom on the computer.

Leo: Awww.

Paul: And he used to say, "Bad guy go down! Bad guy go down!" (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) Okay. What was he — what's he thinking for a career?

Paul: I don't know; he's probably in jail. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) "Bad guy go down!"

Paul: Yeah, it's weird. He turned out really violent; I don't know why. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) No, I think you can use him as proof positive that violent video games do not create violent children, just terrified, scared —

Paul: Right, just lots of nightmares.

Leo: Yeah.

Okay. So Nokia's going to be there announcing something, we don't know what. Yeah, I hope it's more than headphones.

Mary Jo: You know what? I, more and more, think — Julien K's saying there's also a watch face as one of the rotating logos.

Leo: I think the watch makes a lot of sense, to be honest with you.

Mary Jo: It kind of does, right?

Leo: It's what everybody's doing.

Paul: Well, okay. So the thing to do, though, would be to go look at Nokia's apps, and — I was — I actually sort of thought about doing this. Because you can look at each of those images that cycles through. Do they all equate to a Nokia tile design or icon or whatever for an app today? I don't know. Because there's a couple in there I didn't recognize.

Leo: Yeah. See, you guys would be terrible Apple journalists. You don't obsess enough.

Paul: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: We would.

Paul: Yeah, it's — it's just not —

Mary Jo: Yeah, we don't. We don't obsess anywhere near enough.

Leo: We need more obsession. So there's a clock; there's a — camera?

Paul: Yeah, [unintelligible] that —

Leo: — there's a map —

Paul: That planet thing, I don't know what that is.

Leo: — there's a radio —

Mary Jo: What's that checkmark thing, the backwards checkmark thing?

Leo: — there's chat. That's a clock.

Mary Jo: Oh, no, it's — that's the clock. That's not a backwards checkmark. (Laughs)

Leo: Backwards checkmark., AKA big hand and little hand.

Paul: And so one — all right. Since we're — all right. I can't believe we're doing this. But the one that looks like a planet, does anyone know what that is?

Leo: Maps.

Paul: No, I know — no, that's not their map — that's not their maps icon.

Leo: That's not their maps because here comes the map, here's the icon, yeah.

Mary Jo: Not the Here Maps logo.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Oh, so there's a globe. I'm telling you, this is a watch, every one of these things. Is that the camera, the thing that looks camera-ish?

Paul: Yes, that's the Pro camera or whatever they're calling it now. Nokia camera.

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: I think — I think the — if you read the tea leaves carefully —

Paul: Yep.

Leo: — these — this could very well be a watch. And who hasn't done a watch at this point, you know?

Paul: Right.

Leo: In fact, Intel just bought Basis, which was one of the top independent sport watches out there, so this is a very —

Paul: Yep.

Leo: — this category is as hot as can be. Wearables are very hot.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised.

Mary Jo: And a lot of people who have Windows phones are like, "Hey!"

Leo: You're out in the cold.

Mary Jo: "We want a wearable for us." Right?

Leo: Right. Even the Pebble doesn't work with Windows Phone, right?

Mary Jo: I think it does, actually.

Leo: Oh, it does. Okay.

Mary Jo: Yeah. But not — it's not, like, a first-class citizen, I don't think.

Leo: Right.

Paul: We're so lonely, Leo. It's — (Laughs) it's just — it's just sad.

Leo: (Laughs) Just stare at these rotating icons a little longer.

Mary Jo: But you know what? If it — if it is a watch, how cool would that be if that's one of the giveaways at Build?

Leo: Oh.

Paul: Wow.

Leo: Now you're talking like a Google developer.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: "What do we get for free?"

Paul: Right, right.

Mary Jo: No, that's for you — because you've got all your developers sitting there —

Paul: "I hope they give us a ChromeBook!"

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah. "Everyone gets a ChromeBook and a Nokia watch." (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) Wow.

Mary Jo: Yeah. No.

Leo: Other possible dev announcements? You say TypeScript 1.0.

Mary Jo: Yeah. I — I've been thinking through, like, What else is close to announcement that could be good at Build?

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: So maybe TypeScript, right? Because —

Leo: What's that?

Mary Jo: That's the superset of JavaScript that Anders Hejlsberg's building.

Leo: Oh, right.

Paul: He compiled, right? The compiled version.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: Oh, that would be cool. Okay. I'd be —

Mary Jo: That would be cool.

Paul: What about — where is Visual Studio at? They must be close to a second beta or whatever.

Mary Jo: Yep. Super close to update 2 for Visual Studio 2013.

Paul: Well, I mean, what about the next version? They could show off —

Mary Jo: Oh, 2014? I think they're still just going in quarterly increments, so I think they'll just talk pretty short-term on that, maybe.

Paul: Okay.

Mary Jo: And then there's been rumors about Microsoft — well, we do know Microsoft is doing another version of WINDOWS Presentation Foundation, and that would be a good show to talk about that, even in — at a high level.

Leo: That's —

Paul: I wonder who got to dust that thing off. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Can you imagine?

Mary Jo: But you know what? They need — because I think that makes sense. They need a story for their line of business developers —

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: — who are still working with .net, who aren't still on the HTML JavaScript bandwagon. They've got to tell them something, Right? So that would be a good story. And then, there's also this thing called Project N that I've written about, which is technology that Microsoft has for taking .net applications for the Windows store and letting them be natively compiled so that they perform better. That would be interesting if they talk about it there, Project N. But the big one everyone's waiting — is Microsoft going to buy Xamarin? That's, like, the big announcement everybody's saying, "Oh, my God, are they going to do that at Build?" That would be big.

Leo: Miguel de Icaza will be there, I'm sure, right?

Mary Jo: He's definitely going to be there. He's coming to the Blogger Bash, I hear.

Leo: That's right. And this time Paul will recognize him, which is a good thing.

Mary Jo: (Laughs) Maybe.

Leo: He'll know who he is.

Mary Jo: Maybe he will.

Leo: (Laughs) "Oh, Miguel, I — yeah, we met."

Paul: I'm never going to live that one down.

Leo: "And you would be ..." (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: So Xamarin is the — is it open-source? It's the .net for — for the rest of the world, basically.

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: Right. They do tools so that if you're a C-sharp developer, you can develop for iOS and Android.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: So that would be a very interesting thing for Microsoft to own, or at least to invest heavily in. That was the rumor from a couple weeks ago, from CRN, that they —

Paul: By the way —

Leo: — they're either going to buy them or invest.

Paul: One thought I had about Miguel the other day was that, if you think back to 2003 and to that video we played at the rooftop in L.A. when Don Box was serenading him and Microsoft wanted him to join —

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: At the — at that time, he worked for the company that did Gnome and —

Leo: He created Gnome, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Right. But what was the — what was the company called? It wasn't Xamarin; it was Ximian, or — Ximian. Does that sound right?

Leo: That — yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah, he's had a couple names for his company. (Laughs)

Paul: But it was a small — you know, it was a small — it was obviously very heavily involved in open-source world.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Right around that time, they were bought by Nouvelle.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: And he worked at Nouvelle for many, many years.

Leo: Oh.

Paul: At least seven or eight years, I bet. And then he started Xamarin.

Leo: Huh.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: I'm wondering if that experience at Nouvelle wouldn't work in his favor a little bit about — along the lines of coming to Microsoft. Because he kind of already went through it, and whereas Microsoft might have been too big and crazy for him ten years ago or whatever, maybe today, it's not that big of a deal.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Maybe, yeah. He even was a Microsoft MBP at one point, I think; so he's very tight with the Microsoft dev community.

Paul: Sure.

Leo: Mono. It was Mono originally.

Mary Jo: Mono, yep, and then —

Leo: In 2001.

Mary Jo: Right. He did Moonlight, which was a Linux port that they ended up not continuing.

Leo: And you're right; it was Ximian, X-i-m-i-a-n, in 1999.

Paul: Ximian, yeah.

Leo: Ximian. Hmm.

Paul: But I think that company was the one that was bought — that was sold to Nouvelle.

Leo: So just so you know, Paul, this is — this is what he looks like. Just so —

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: — just — if you see him —

Paul: Thanks. I can assure you, I will never forget what he looks like again.

Mary Jo and Leo: (Laugh)

Leo: I'm just teasing you. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Oh, man.

Leo: Do you want to see the other members of the management team in case you see them?

Mary Jo: (Laughs) Nat Friedman, he's around, too.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: (Laughs) No, thanks. Future members of the Microsoft board.

Leo: Yeah, yeah. He wants a board seat; that's what he's holding out for.

Mary Jo: (Laughs) Everyone wants a board seat.

Leo: Everybody wants a board seat. It's a small board; they've got room. There's chairs.

Paul: I just have a little hint for him: First meeting, you've got to ask where the corn is.

Leo: (Laughs) Will there be corn?

Paul: Ballmer's going to take it all.

Leo: (Laughs) And so they do give stuff — I mean, Google is famous for — and in fact, I think that's a big mistake because now you just can't get into Google IO — famous for putting a ton of stuff under the seat. So does —

Paul: (Laughs) Yeah, spend 2500 bucks coming to —

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: — San Francisco so I can get $800 worth of goodies under my seat.

Leo: Yeah. Will there be something — do they do giveaways at Builds, and will there be something, you think?

Paul: They often do, right?

Mary Jo: There has to be. (Laughs) Yeah, they do. Yeah.

Leo: Remember they had that line last year for, like, you get a Surface for a hundred bucks and people got in line for that? That is not what I call a giveaway. I want something — I want something big.

Mary Jo: Now, did — what did they give people last year? I think they gave the attendees a Surface, didn't they?

Paul: They — going back to PDC, they had netbook giveaways, they had ultrabook giveaways —

Leo: A watch would be nice. But see, that'd be Nokia. I don't think they can do that.

Mary Jo: Oh, yeah, they could do it —

Paul: Well, Nokia could do it.

Leo: Nokia could say —

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: — "Hey, Microsoft, I don't know you, but" —

Paul: (Laughs) "I'm not saying you're going to be the ones that are going to write this off in about three months, but" —

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: "Can we give these away?" Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: And then, Surface Mini, that's one of the rumors. That's an interesting rumor.

Mary Jo: Oh, man. I saw that rumor today, and I had actually heard that, too. So they're — we've been hearing Microsoft's got this eight-inch Surface tablet in the wings, just kind of waiting —

Leo: Why not? Dell's got one, Lenovo's got one —

Mary Jo: I know.

Leo: I mean, this is — you know.

Mary Jo: I just — I don't — I'm just doubtful on that one because the Surface team is going at a very slow pace in terms of introducing new products; and I just would be surprised if there'd been no leaks at all, and suddenly they show up with, like, 6,000 Surface Minis at the show. But you never know.

Leo: That would be funny, wouldn't it?

Mary Jo: It would. And you know why it would be cool, is one of the features we've heard rumored for Windows 8.1 update 1 is that it can work on smaller, cheaper tablet-sized devices. So this would be a great example. Like, "Hey, you guys, here's your Surface Mini" —

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: Make sure it works on this.

Mary Jo: — "preloaded with update 1."

Leo: Yeah. Well, if you're going to do a form factor like that, it's probably a good idea to say, "Hey, take this," so that you can make sure it works.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah, your software works.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: I like that idea.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: I know. So — but we don't know. It's been very surprising. There's been — I haven't heard a single leak about what they're giving away this year. There's been rumors about Nokia phones and this and that, but I haven't heard any credible leaks about what the giveaways are.

Leo: How about they'll give away the Lumia X?

Mary Jo: Oh, geez.

Leo: Give the Android phone away.

Mary Jo: That would not be popular at this show. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: And the headline would be, "They can't even give away the Nokia X."

Leo: (Laughs) Yeah, I bet you there'll be very little mention of Android at Build.

Paul: Well, I — well — I don't know. You know?

Mary Jo: I wonder —

Paul: If Microsoft does announce the — the iPad version of Office tomorrow as expected, what about an Android version? And what about an Android developer story, a cross-platform developer story? That could be part of the Xamarin thing?

Leo: Xamarin. Xamarin, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: I mean —

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think at this Build, you're going to hear a lot about Android and iOS, and not maybe — which would be very odd. And also, of course, Windows and Windows Phone, and —

Paul: There's going to be a lot of grump and crying at this show, Leo. It's going to be ugly.

Leo: Well, this is the — but you're — come to think of it, this is the time you need to kind of get developers to gear up for the notion that you're going to be in a platform-agnostic world. This is all about the cloud, devices and services —

Paul: And they can point to their own collection of apps and say, "Look, we're already doing this."

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: "This is how it works."

Leo: Yeah. "And we're going to help you do it" is the — is the important piece of the puzzle.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah, I would hope so.

Mary Jo: Right. Especially Azure, right? Because they already do Azure Mobile Services, which address all these cross-platform developers. So that would be a natural fit for them to talk about this.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: So I get people saying, "Last year" —

Paul: They're going to start saying things like [unintelligible] and —

Mary Jo: Last year they gave away the Acer W3 and a Surface Pro to everybody.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: That's right. That's right.

Leo: Wow, the Iconia.

Mary Jo: Yep. That was a pretty nice set of giveaways. And the — I think you also got — did you get a year of Adobe Cloud or something, too?

Paul: Yeah, that's true. Yep.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: Adobe Cloud?

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Oh.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: Hmm.

Paul: I think there might have been — what was there, some SkyDrive storage or something, too, probably in there, and —

Mary Jo: Yeah. Right. They gave away a lot last year.

Leo: Well, I'll tell you what. If you come see the show on Friday, Mary Jo and Paul will be sporting that new Nokia watch; they'll be driving the new Microsoft car; it's going to be wonderful.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: It's going to be exciting.

Paul: It's the world of the future, Leo.

Mary Jo: We'll have our Oculus Rift equivalents on.

Leo: Yeah, your — my Fortaleza glasses.

Paul: Microluxe Rift, or whatever.

Leo: Your autographed pictures of Satya Nadella. It's going to be a bananza.

Mary Jo: It is. Going to be crazy.

Leo: Crazy!

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: And you all get a ham.

Paul: Somehow, you — don't you sort of suspect Satya Nadella has an iPhone, just looking at this guy?

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Come on.

Paul: Doesn't he just look like an iPhone user?

Leo: I always — I would always ask the — the CEO of Ford what he was driving. It was never a Ford. But he —

Paul: Really?

Leo: Well, yeah, because he said, "I know — I know all about Ford cars. I need to drive the competition."

Paul: I see. "Why would I want to drive one of those?" (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) Yeah, really. Those are dangerous!

Paul: Yeah, wait until I tell you about this hilarious ignition problem you're going to find out about" —

Leo: (Laughs) Oh, no. No, he'd say, "I drive a different — I drive all the competition because I need to see the competition."

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: And I think that's not an unfair point of view. You don't want to get caught using an iPhone, but I bet you they do sometimes.

Paul: Oh, boy.

Leo: Don't tweet with it.

Paul: Right.

Leo: Yeah. Okay, so that's pretty much it on Build. I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad you guys are coming out. We'll do a special show; it'll be a lot of fun. I want to invite you to dinner after if — I bet you Liz and Alex already got you for dinner after, but if they didn't, we'll take you out. Not you, the people listening at home.

Paul and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Mary Jo: A gigantic —

Paul: Screw you guys. No, I think, actually, I’d like to.

Leo: You can look through the window at us eating.

Paul: (Laughs) No, I'd like — actually, I think what I'd like to do this year is —

Leo: Get the hell out.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: No. Do something with everyone who comes. So if you do come up to —

Leo: Ah. Okay, we could do that.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Just do kind of a group thing.

Leo: Yeah, we could do that. They moved Taps.

Mary Jo: We heard. New Taps.

Leo: Yeah, new Taps. So we'll all go over there and have a beer. I'll buy the first round; how about that?

Mary Jo: Nice.

Paul: I would like a lemon beer as my first round, please.

 

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: "I'll take a pitcher."

Paul: I'm going to keep ten of them in the freezer.

Leo: "A pitcher of beer, please."

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: "Just for me."

ALL righty. All righty, all rooty. So we — we briefly mentioned this, but when is the Nokia/Microsoft deal going to close now?

Paul: Well ... (Laughs) Sometime in April.

Leo: Wasn't it supposed to be this month, or, like —

Paul: yeah.

Mary Jo: It was.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: By this month.

Leo: By this month?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: So now when?

Mary Jo: They're saying by the end of April, but I'm thinking they're going to go sooner rather than later in April. It's just being held up by — well, one thing it's being held up by is India because there's a dispute with the Indian Supreme Court over taxes on one of Nokia's factories.

Leo: Oh, Lord.

Mary Jo: Or two of them, I think, now.

Leo: Oh, Lord.

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: And then, China, I don't think, still has officially approved, either.

Leo: And isn't — aren't Google and other competitors lobbying the Chinese government city?

Paul: Yeah. Samsung and Google, yeah.

Leo: Saying —

Paul: Something about licensing fees. You know, because —

Mary Jo: Patents, yeah. (Laughs)

Paul: "We're afraid that" — yeah, you know, "They're going to lower prices or something in China, and that makes us nervous," I think is what it boils down to.

Mary Jo: Right. No, I think it was also about patents, which was so ironic, right?

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: Like, Microsoft and Nokia, if they become one, are going to charge us these exorbitant fees for patents.

Paul: I hope they do.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Paul: I hope they do.

Leo: That's just what the Chinese court wants to hear.

Mary Jo: Yeah. So yeah, end of April, which means they can't work together until then; and Microsoft doesn't get the $30,000+ employees or the factories or any of that until the deal closes.

Leo: Right, right. Did you get your — did you buy the S7? What did you end up getting?

Mary Jo: I did.

Leo: You did.

Mary Jo: I bought the Acer S7, yep.

Leo: And?

Mary Jo: I love it.

Leo: All right.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: It's pretty nice.

Mary Jo: It's a really nice machine.

Leo: Very thin, very light.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: I have the first generation, which I think had a little — a few issues with the keyboard and the trackpad, which —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: — they seem to have fixed nicely in the second edition.

Mary Jo: They did.

Leo: And you have Haswell 4th generation Intel, and —

Mary Jo: Yep. I got a core I7.

Leo: So it runs — it runs Notepad like a bat out of hell.

Mary Jo: Oh, you should see Notepad on this thing. It's unbelievable. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) They should give battery life for Notepad.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: The font is so unpixelated.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: It is — is it — it's a 1080. It is, it's high-res display.

Mary Jo: Yeah, it —

Paul: Oh, it's bigger than that.

Mary Jo: It's beyond 1080. I'm —

Leo: Is it? Oh, nice.

Paul: It's got to be 2560 by 1440 or something like that.

Leo: Wow. Love that.

Mary Jo: Yeah. It's — yeah, 2560 by1440. I get 8 gigs of RAM, a 256 gig SSD drive —

Leo: That makes a difference, too, doesn't it?

Paul: You know, with all that RAM, you'll be able to run three, possibly four, instances of Notepad.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: I know. It's — it's just going to change my world.

Paul: Side by — it's crazy. I don't even —

Leo: The drumbeat for Notepad tabs is really increasing now.

Mary Jo: It is. It is.

Leo: We need a tab interface on Notepad.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: So — well, good on you. And did they — Acer just gave it to you, right? You didn't have to buy that?

Mary Jo: No, I bought it, I bought it.

Leo: Oh, aren't you an — don't you have integrity?

Mary Jo: I'm not allowed to keep those things.

Leo: Yeah, no. I think that's the right way.

Mary Jo: So the way — Padre is the one who got me a loaner device.

Leo: Got it.

Mary Jo: He knew some people at Acer; they loaned me a device for a couple weeks; and then I decided to buy it after that.

Leo: Do you ever use it like this, where it's flat?

Paul: (Laughs) I was just looking at that.

Leo: And somebody's touching the screen on the other side?

Mary Jo: I know.

Paul: I would refuse to let anyone touch my computer like that.

Leo: Do you ever use it like that?

Mary Jo: No, no.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: No.

Leo: I have not — I've yet to figure out the application for that.

Paul: I would — I would use the device as a weapon —

Mary Jo: Well, there's some key combination you press, and it flips the display image to the other side; so if you want to show somebody something —

Leo: Oh. That's kind of cool.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: But no one's touching my laptop. Sorry.

Leo: No, no.

Paul: (Laughs) Let's be clear.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: No touch and show.

Mary Jo: I don't even want to touch it. I don't want to do the touch. I am using — I have been using —

Paul: It's made of glass, so Mary Jo will cut you if you try to touch the laptop.

Mary Jo: I will. Don't come near me.

Leo: What's — now, they're claiming eight-hour battery life. Are you getting anything like that?

Mary Jo: Yeah, I am.

Leo: Really?

Mary Jo: I am. And the best thing is, it's working really well in — the whole connected standby sleep thing is working very well.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: So I just shut the lid; when I come back, the battery's not dead, which is not the case with my Surface RT, sadly. But yeah.

Paul: What about the fans? Do you — do the fans kick in at all?

Mary Jo: I — you know, the first time I heard the fan was yesterday, and it was because I put my Verizon EVDO card in and it started — it kicked off the fan because I was using my card in it.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: But otherwise, I haven't heard it at all.

Leo: They're doing something called "twin air cooling," which —

Mary Jo: It stays really cool.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Like, I put it on my lap; I don't even feel any heat off that thing at all.

Leo: Yeah. So —

Paul: Nice.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: I wrote, but, you know, I wrote a post about my experience buying this machine —

Leo: Uh-oh.

Mary Jo: I'm trying to buy —

Paul: And this must have been just as good as having the machine, I would imagine.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Mary Jo: (Frustrated noise)

Leo: (Frustrated noise)

Mary Jo: I — you guys know because I've been talking about it on the show. I've been looking for months for a Windows PC, right?

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: I mean, literally. Like, maybe six months. And I've tried everything to try out models without being able to actually get my hands on them. I've gone to BestBuy, I've gone to different computer retailers here in New York; and I've been trying to get a feel for — like, what is the weight of these things? And what's the keyboard really like? And how good is Notepad on this thing? And I've just had a heck of an experience with it because it just has been a terrible, terrible retail experience, and I —

Leo: Well, why didn't you just go to the Microsoft store?

Mary Jo: Because there isn't one here.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: I knew that.

Paul: By the way —

Mary Jo: That would have solved a lot of problems.

Leo: It's the biggest city in America, and they've got a kiosk.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: 7 million people, one kiosk.

Paul: It's like a guy in a Microsoft shirt selling video recordings of movies in a theater and here's a couple of signature laptops you can buy.

Leo: So did you go to like 47th street photo or like one of those places?

Mary Jo: That's where I should have gone. I went to the flagship Best Buy in New York, which is on 5th avenue in the 40's. It was a terrible experience, I have to say, and I'm not blaming the people who work at Best Buy. They weren't the reason it was so terrible, it was the way that these things were so tethered down to the tables. You could barely pick them up. So I couldn't ever tell how heavy any of those things were.

Leo: Yeah I hate that, how they'll have those locks on the back.

Mary Jo: The other funny thing- Well not funny, it was kind of enraging- Happened was I saw the Asus Zenbook in there, which I also wanted to look at and compare to the Acer. I went to pick it up but couldn't do so all the way, so I put it back down. Then this guy standing next to me just picked it up and pulled on the tether really hard and that sets off an alarm in the store. So the guy like, runs off and I'm just standing there.

Leo: I didn't do it!

Paul: He's like, she did it, and runs away.

Leo: So he just runs away?

Mary Jo: I just held my hands up and was like, don't shoot!!

Paul: So Mary Jo spent the day at Homeland Security...

Mary Jo: No, and so I thought that an employee would come over to shut the alarm off so that I could try to pick up the device and feel of the weight, but no one ever came. The alarm went off for like 5 or 6 minutes until I finally just walked off.

Leo: Oh we don't care if you steal that, just steal.

Paul: I think we're getting into the territory to blame the employees at Best Buy?

Leo: Five minutes and no one shows up?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: That's just wrong on so many levels.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I know. It just makes me sad because Microsoft did a partnership last year with Best Buy and they said they were really going to transform the retail experience for people buying Windows PCs. Like the whole store within a store thing and they were going to fix a lot of things that were broken in this process. But to me, it just feels the same as it did before they did this, now. I would just like to see it change, something has to change here for people buying PCs.

Paul: I think they changed a couple of light bulbs.

Leo: That's really sad. And you can see now why Apple has all of the retail presence. It's just that they used to do the same thing, and it's terrible.

Paul: They used to do the same thing and they realized you've got to- This is a step up from nothing..

Leo: Well at least you got the Signature PC, right?

Mary Jo: Yeah, I did. Okay that was crazy. I ordered the PC from Amazon but it didn't say anything about getting a Signature Edition. My PC showed up, I opened the box, and there's a card in it that says, 'You have the Signature Edition.' Which means no crapware, everything's already Windows 8.1.

Paul: I didn't even think that was possible. How did that happen?

Mary Jo: I didn't either! I asked Microsoft about that and said, oh I didn't know you were doing Signature Edition through Amazon. And they said, "We are?"

So they didn't know either, but it's great.

Leo: Was Microsoft the seller, or who was the seller?

Mary Jo: Nope, Amazon.

Paul: That is so strange.

Leo: And now they're out of stock. You got the 392 I imagine, right? That's the top of the line.

Mary Jo: I did, yeah.

Leo: Yeah, out of stock. This is not cheap, it's $1631 and the list is $1800.

Mary Jo: No, not cheap.

Leo: But you get i7, you get 8 gigs of ram, you get the Solid-State Drive. Amazing screen, I mean that's a beautiful screen.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: But I think you're smart, because people just underpay for their computers. It doesn't say anywhere--I'm looking at it--and it doesn't say Signature Edition.

Paul: Oh, I didn't know that you could buy a Signature PC through Amazon, that's amazing.

Leo: It's good news...Maybe just what they had in the box.

Paul: I was telling Mary Jo though, I think I would recommend this to people and this is what people should get. But you could almost imagine some people saying, wait a minute... What is this? And then maybe they'd research the computer and they knew it came with all of these crazy A/C utilities and they see some value to that, but would actually be disappointed by that fact. There are people like that out there.

Leo: Right, where's all my crazy Acer utilities?

Paul: Yeah, where's the free version of Norton that's going to expire in seven minutes?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah, that's awesome. I think you made the right choice, it's my Windows machine as well and I really like this laptop. I have the older version, but I really like it. Good.

Mary Jo: Yep. So, finally.

Leo: Okay so, there is no Acer stuff on the Signature Edition at all? It's just a generic Windows install?

Mary Jo: There's a couple Acer things, like there's an Acer webcam. But nothing that would make you say, oh I have got to get rid of that. I haven't deleted anything except Xbox games.

Paul: Well the Signature programmers goal isn't to blanket delete everything that was on there, although that obviously happens. A lot of times, PC makers will install out of date drivers and additional utilities that just do the same thing as something that is pre-existing.

Leo: Horrible.

Paul: They don't allow that stuff through, but sometimes there is a utility on there that is pretty useful and is not something that is in Windows already, and so they'll often let that kind of thing through.

Leo: Yeah, I think you made the right choice.

Mary Jo: I do too.

Leo: Nice job. And I'm surprised you had to buy it on Amazon.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: This is why brick and mortar stores are struggling. Because you went through the whole process. You tried like the Dickens to buy it at a brick and mortar.

Mary Jo: I was willing to buy it in a retail store in New York if I could have found it, but I couldn't.

Paul: It's crazy.

Mary Jo: I know.

Leo: And Microsoft does sell this online from their store, they were just out of stock while you were looking.

Mary Jo: They were. And like we said, when something is out of stock on the Microsoft store, you can't even pay for it and say you'll take it at a later date. There's just no way to order it, at all.

Paul: Yeah, it's just all so crazy.

Leo: So I see Microsoft is offering a free touch cover now, on Surface.

Paul: Surface.

Leo: Surface RT or Surface Pro?

Mary Jo: Either I think, but it's just this week. It's just a week long promotion.

Leo: Good, good. And have you ever gotten your power cover either?

Paul: Yeah, I got mine. I've only tested it with the original Surface Pro so far. I think it's fair to say that there have been some problems with charging it and so forth and it's significantly heavy. When I wrote my little First Impressions thing about this, I got some feedback from people who were saying, why would anyone buy this thing? I don't think anyone buys a Surface Pro 2 and then buys this. I think this is for people who have had their machine for a while and for whatever reason they have the first Surface Pro, which does not get good battery life, and they're in some situation where this is extremely important to them. This is actually kind of a neat way to add battery life and it does a couple of things. Obviously it adds weight and thickness too, and honestly for the keyboard, I think that the additional thickness is actually kind of pleasant, in the sense that it's easier to type on. It may help you type better on your lap. One of the problems, and Mary Jo will tell you that, with the Surface and any touch or type keyboard, you can't just put it on your lap because it's top-heavy, and it's unstable but this thing is more stable.

Leo: Is it less flexy?

Paul: Much less. It's thick and stiff. So I can tell you that I haven't tested it on the other two yet, but on the original Surface Pro, I have gotten almost exactly the additional battery life bump that Microsoft said it would get. Which is about 70%, actually averages about 69% but it's right there at what they said. But it's not fantastic if you're used to the MacBook Air or like the new laptop Mary Jo got where you get like 8 more hours of battery life, this is more like 6 1/2 between both batteries. That's not great, but for someone who previously got 4 - 4 1/2, it definitely is.

Leo: So for a weight penalty and a little bit of a thickness penalty, you get significant battery improvement. And it's something a little more rigid and usable.

Paul: Yeah, if you want to use that on your lap, it may be possible-

Leo: Can you use that on the first edition Surfaces, on the originals?

Paul: Not on the RT, but on the Pro.

Leo: The Pro. Surface 1 Pro or Surface 2 Pro.

Paul: That's right.

Leo: And it's $200.

Paul: $200.

Leo: And available now, finally. And then Microsoft has finally- I say finally in the sense that finally it is discontinued.

Paul: I knew this would come.

Leo: Finally! I knew they'd discontinue the wireless keyboard adapter.

Paul: Those quitters... That nobody knows anything about.

Leo: Didn't even know they existed.

Paul: I have one of these things, I'm going to sell it on Ebay for $1000.

Mary Jo: You should, people want them. When I wrote about this today I said, Microsoft has decided they are not making these anymore. They just confirmed that to me.

Paul: Do people want these? Because I definitely will get rid of this thing.

Mary Jo: They do, they want them.

Leo: So this lets you use a touch cover-

Mary Jo: Or a type cover, either one.

Leo: Or a type cover, using Bluetooth from a distance.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: So say you want-

Leo: Why would you want to do that?

Mary Jo: Say you want to project onto a big screen like 30 feet away. It's a $60 thing. A lot of people say they would use it when they traveled. But Microsoft just said for some reason, due to a number of factors, we are no longer making these.

Paul: Number one of those, being unpopularity. When this thing first came out and when it was first announced, a lot of people said this would be an interesting solution for the living room, if there was a way to use this keyboard in tandem with-

Leo: Oh, the lean back solution.

Paul: Yeah, I could see that I guess.

Leo: So the thing attaches to the keyboard?

Paul: Yeah, it's very strange.

Leo: There's a little tube that you click into the keyboard and then it talks to the computer.

Mary Jo: So if you do want one of these, Best Buy does have them in stock and I guess they're going to try to unload the stock now. The Microsoft store is sold out and they aren't coming back.

Leo: They are attached to those little wires but you just pull it right off because nobody's paying for it.

Paul: Nobody cares.

Mary Jo: Right, just take it and run.

Leo: But Leo said I could.

Paul: It's like Armageddon in there, you know. Did a wolf howl when you were in the PC room?

Leo: Welcome to the Thunder Dome.

Paul: Yeah. It's like, hey Grace I think I see a customer in the PC section.

Leo: Run! Time for lunch. Our show today brought to you by... And they wonder why Amazon is getting all of the business, that cracks me up.You're showrooming. Yeah, that's exactly right. Because nobody helped me. Our show today brought to you by our good friends at Citrix and the great program ShareFile. If you are in business, you probably have noted that a lot of emails these days have attachments. That's the wrong answer, it's not what you should be doing for a number of reasons. We always say don't open attachments, of course whenever I say don't open attachments, I always get, but I'm in business and need to send attachments to clients. I have Power Point presentations or contracts, you know, I just have to send stuff. Yeah, I understand that. The other problem of course is, it's not secure when you send stuff through email, anybody can read it. We'll talk about that shortly. Also, if that guy had just sent those private Microsoft documents through ShareFile - I'm not advocating the use of ShareFile for any illegal purposes. However if you're in medicine, it is illegal not to make sure that you're patient records are protected. Sending them through email  would be illegal. Same thing with the SCC has similar regulations and many industries do. There's also the issue of bounceback, you can't send giant files through email, it's not polite or right and is not secure. So use ShareFile. So many big businesses now use ShareFile because it works so well; It's a way to share files. You get a white label customized landing page with your company logo on it. You can send files of almost any size securely, and control how it's accessed and by whom. What levels of permission they have. You confirm when files are received with tracking and email alerts, with their free app you can access your files yourself anytime and on any computer. I use ShareFile every day to send audio files to radio stations and it's really the right way to go. I want you to try it, 30 days free. Just click that 'podcast listeners click here' button at the very top of the page in fine print. Make sure you put WINDOWS in when it asks you for the offer code. Choose your industry, you don't have to but it's a nice idea to do so because they'll customize it. If you're in law or medicine, whatever it is, they'll customize it appropriately and fill you in on the regulations and everything that it sticks to. ShareFile.com, type in WINDOWS and you'll get it free for 30 days. Paul Thurrott Mary Jo Foley, we are talking about Windows. Windows Weekly is on the air. Still to come, Picks of the Week, Beer Pick of the Week and things like that, the renamed Microsoft service of the Week right now. And I'm not talking OneDrive. Azure is no longer Windows Azure. It's Microsoft Azure.

Paul: That's about all we need to say about that.

Leo: There you go. You said this should happen two years ago, apparently. I didn't realize that.

Paul: Yeah, I've had trouble locating my articles about this but we know we've talked about this and last year I wrote an editorial about how Windows Azure in many ways was the future of Microsoft. This was before they redid their company structure and all of that kind of stuff. I was saying when you think about devices and services in Microsoft, kind of 70% of it is services. It's not 50/50 you know, and when you think about services it's all kind of based on Azure. A lot of what they do is or will be based on Azure. Azure is the center of it- And it's not Windows, is it? They kind of sold it that way in the beginning, but it's really not Windows.

Leo: They should have renamed it TitanFall Azure.

Paul: Yeah, I like that.

Mary Jo: Woo hoo...

Leo: Actually, one of the other reasons TitanFall worked so well on the Xbox One, is because they're Azure servers.

Paul: Every time you paid for some kind of service you could say your Titan is ready.

Leo: Press the down arrow to get your Titan.

Paul: It'd make that awesome sound.

Leo: To me, that is actually really good proof of concept because gaming latency is everything. So the fact that you could use these kind of enterprise grade servers for gaming is pretty impressive. TitanFall server, it rolls off the tongue.

Paul: This is kind of dumb, I'm sorry I'm telling you this now but I actually have to leave a little early today.

Leo: Okay, like now?

Paul: I just got a reminder in my calendar... No, in about 15 or 20 minutes.

Leo: We'll be done by then.

Paul: Sorry about that.

Leo: I don't mind at all Paul. Your cat needs you, it's almost kitty time.

Mary Jo: One more thing to say on the Azure announcement this week. I think it's kind of another telling announcement because if you think about what is hosted right now on Azure and what kind of tools you can use if you're an Azure developer. It didn't really make sense anymore to call it Windows Azure. You can use Java, PHP, Oracle-

Leo: Linux, you can run Linux on it.

Mary Jo: Linux, yeah.

Paul: It's fair to say that- Go ahead.

Mary Jo: I was just going to say it makes sense that they did this.

Paul: Yeah, I have always thought this made sense, and obviously within Microsoft there are going to be people who are going to argue against this. You know there are still the old school kind of Windows centered folks who want everything to have that Windows name on it, they think it's important. You know, this new CO in town.

Mary Jo: Yes there is.

Paul: And what part of the company-

Leo: Yeah, so do you think this is a little bit of a bellwether that the word Windows no longer has the magic potency that it had earlier?

Paul: It already doesn't actually. But I would just say that it doesn't make sense to put it on everything, you know. I think it was last week that I mentioned the kind of, lack of respect that a name like Windows Live Messenger has when you're running it on the Mac.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: It just doesn't make sense everywhere.

Leo: Yeah, Microsoft Messenger makes more sense. Microsoft Azure. If only we knew how to pronounce it. It wasn't always Azure.

Paul: Somebody did say, I think it was on Twitter, someone said, it's just like Microsoft to take out the one part of the name that everyone could pronounce, and leave in the one that we didn't know how to pronounce. It is pretty great, it's like a cling-on word.

Mary Jo: I always thought the code name red dog would've been easier.

Leo: Red dog, Microsoft Red Dog. We reported on this, a lot of people have, we've been talking about it almost all week now. And it's funny, if Microsoft hadn't ran the Gmailman ads and the Scroogled ads, there would be a lot less to this story.

Paul: I don't know, I'm not sure.

Leo: Some people just took glee in saying, see! Even Microsoft reads your email.

Paul: Yeah, but to that I would say when they know that a crime has been committed. Again, the intent is so different, than reading your email to generate ads. Like we're reading your emails to find a crook, or to find viruses. It's nearly not the same thing. But I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't see this as a potential story in the making as it happened because in retrospect, it's fairly obvious that the piracy people would come scurrying out of their little wood piles or whatever. I mean obviously, now it's obvious in retrospect.

Leo: Right. So a former senior architect at Microsoft, used to be a director at another company, was stealing Windows trade secrets, while being an employee, and sending them to a French blogger.

Mary Jo: Yeah...

Leo: But I like his loyalty because he used Microsoft products the whole time. Hotmail, SkyDrive, MSN Messenger.

Paul: Mary Jo, let me ask you, so you have your own email account, right? Your own domain.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Do you go through Microsoft services?

Mary Jo: Some of mine do, some do not.

Paul: Okay, so I got a number of emails, including one from a friend who said, well clearly you're going to stop using Hotmail now or outlook.com because this happened. You write about Microsoft, they could read your email, if sources are sending you information, they could find out who those sources are. You would be dumb not to do this.

Leo: Yeah, that's a good point.

Paul: Yeah, I sort of thought about that. My knee-jerk reaction is I don't need to worry about that because the people that tip me off are smart enough not to do that through a Hotmail account.

Leo: But if they do it to an outlook account...

Mary Jo: Yeah. You know, I've got to say that I don't fear this myself very much because no one sends me stolen bits, they send me tips. And I think Microsoft would have a lot more qualms going through my email for tips than they would for actual product bits.

Paul: See right now someone is rubbing their hands together saying, oh yeah??

Mary Jo: Can you imagine the outcry if Microsoft hacked into my email and did that? I think there'd be a lot more outcry because I'm not stealing their software.

Paul: Right. And I will say that no Microsoft employee, I believe, has ever given me codes certainly. And then of course, there's the intent.

Leo: But tips and leaks-

Paul: It's still information, intellectual property.

Leo: It's still a violation of their contract. Mike Errington, take it for what it will because he's kind of a paranoid guy. But he wrote that Google read the Gmail of somebody who tipped him, and fired the guy.

Paul: Yikes.

Leo: Google's denying it, and with Mike you never know. If I were a journalist, I probably wouldn't maintain an account through the servers of the company I'm covering for that reason.

Paul: It's a tough thing because I need to write about this stuff and I need to actually use it.

Leo: Yeah, you should have an account but maybe say, hey tipsters send it to my Gmail account.

Mary Jo: Right. I have a Gmail account and a Yahoo account.

Leo: Well you have to have, we all have Outlook accounts, you have to have it.

Mary Jo: Right. So you just pick and choose how you get your information.

Paul: I think the audacity and stupidity of what these people do is the real story. It's so stupid. Like I'm going to give you an SDK and maybe you can turn this into an activation server that will sit outside of Microsoft's data center and in a VM and we will control it and we can sell activation keys on ebay. It's just so second rate. It's just so stupid.

Mary Jo: It was pretty crazy.

Paul: And calling that guy a blogger is a bit of a stretch.

Leo: I know.

Paul: And as silly as many bloggers can be, I think that's a black mark on everybody that- Lump him in with the rest.

Leo: Really more pirate, would be a better word.

Paul: Idiot.

Mary Jo: To me, the silver lining in all of this is Microsoft said they're going to change some of their policies about how they deal with this if it happens again. They couldn't actually try to get themselves in trouble because of where this was hosted but now they're saying-

Leo: You don't need a subpoena to read their mail and you would be laughed at by law enforcement in court if you tried to get one.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: I think there's someone hiding in my closet will you give permission to open my closet?

Leo: Can you come over and look?

Mary Jo: Right, so now they say they're going to have more of a wall in between these two groups and they're going to actually have to prove that they should be looking in the email instead of just saying, we have proof.

Leo: I thought their response was excellent

Mary Jo: They were honest, instead of saying, no no.

Leo: And a couple of points, this happened before the NSA revelations by Edward Snoden. So at the time, people were not, perhaps as aware of the issues of a company like Microsoft reading their email. Secondly, they responded, we're going to act at the same level as if we had to get a subpoena. We have a retired judge-

Paul: By the way, that kind of response is what I often reply to people who are freaked out by the NSA and Snoden's stuff. Which is, if you really are freaked out by the privacy implications of cloud computing and your data being transmitted between end points on the internet and someone spying on it and how much they may or may not know about you and so forth, just the public discussion around this stuff is what typically changes those policies right? It almost doesn't matter where you fall on the NSA secrecy thing because it's going to be fixed now, I think. Just because it's come out into the public. We'll see some changes, and obviously there will always be spy agencies spying and all of that but I think this stuff, I don't want to say self-policing, that's not fair. But it will, I think just by virtue of the fact that there's a public debate about it, that's often enough. These people are relying on you not paying attention.

Leo: Transparency heals a lot of wounds and that's what's great about the internet, is the public discourse is much more possible. That's why Turkey is trying to shut down Twitter. Bad acts, often need to be in secrecy.

Paul: Right.

Leo: And then there were ten. Microsoft board now down to ten, the Chairman CEO of CGate is leaving the board. Steven Luxzo.

Mary Jo: And then there was a report this week in the journal that Steve Ballmer said he doesn't know how long he's going to stay on the board. That's kind of up in the air. So that's going to be kind of interesting to see, like who they add to the board. They said they don't have plans to add anyone but they could at any point in time, add somebody. Because they're always recruiting and trying to make sure they're looking for the best people so when they do have openings they can add them in.

Leo: I would guess there's some pressure from stock holders that we want a board that's more independent.

Mary Jo: I'm sure there is. Right, because right now you've got Bill Gates, Ballmer, and Satya Nadella all on the board, so they have the appropriate-

Paul: Yeah, but the majority of the board is still independent.

Leo: Yeah, although I'd say Thompson is as close to a company guy as you're going to get. I don't know if I was a stock holder, I'd want to make sure the board was doing some independent oversight to make sure.

Paul: If you were a stock holder of Microsoft, you'd have much bigger problems.

Leo: There'd be corn. DirectX 12.

Mary Jo: Did you guys talk about this in other shows?

Leo: We did not.

Mary Jo: At GDC last week, Microsoft showed off and talked about the next version of DirectX, DirectX 12. They said a few interesting things about it. They said by the time of holiday 2015 there will be games that will be out that will be able to take advantage of the new capabilities.

Leo: And not just on Windows, it sounded like they wanted to put it on Xbox One as well.

Mary Jo: Right, definitely. So that makes sense, since the guts of Xbox One are Windows.

Leo: It makes it easier for developers.

Mary Jo: Yeah, so it's just good because I've heard a lot of people saying DirectX is dead and they thought that Microsoft was done revving it other than very minor point releases and this shows no effect. This shows pretty major updates to it so that they can increase performance of both games and very graphic intensive applications that are not games as well.

Leo: Good, glad to know DirectX is not dead.

Paul: I've got a mini theory about the timing of that because you know, holiday season next year is kind of a long way away. One of the complaints about the Xbox One that could bear fruits over the years. I don't think it matters yet. Is that it is technically not quite as advanced as the PS4. People are often talking about the power of the GPU and the speed of the ram, whatever it is. So the Xbox One seems to fall a little shy of the PS4 on these type of things. Now in the past, that kind of thing didn't necessarily matter so much because the architectures were so different and so it would take developers a number of years to get up to speed on the strange processing set that the PS3 had and the same thing on the Xbox 360, it was a power PC processor and was just kind of an unusual thing. It took a little while, and those things kind of evolve over time. But now that they're based on PCs developers actually understand this architecture very well. It's possible that within a year or two, they could take advantage of the extra performance that is in a PS4 and make games that perform better, look better, and etc. There are obviously some games now that run at higher resolutions or faster frame rates and so forth. It's possible that this DirectX12 thing can help counter that a little bit because DirectX is very well understood by developers and if they can harvest the power of this thing in a very kind of, legitimate way it will help developers a lot because the PC architecture is actually new to the Playstation people. I mean, that's kind of a new thing on that side of the fence. So, I'm curious about this and am wondering if this is tied in some way to like a bump in performance/sophistication for Xbox One that may come 2 years after launch.

Leo: Paul I know you're running out of time, but should we just talk about the Xbox One or should we just move through?

Paul: No, I'll just do that next week because I don't have enough time. That will be a lengthy rant.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Saved by the bell.

Leo: Dodged a bullet there, Mary Jo.

Paul: I'll just record something and you can tack it onto the end. Why is this week's show 13 1/2 hours long?

Leo: So let's get your tip of the week.

Paul: Yeah, so the Windows 8.1 Field Guide, which is the new book I've written with Raphael. It is not quite complete, but will be complete this week. It's basically this one little milestone that we've been working toward. This is the version we're going to sell on Kindle and Nook. I think other platforms as well, because I think the service we're using to put it out is multi-platform. The version you can buy from us now directly is only $2.00, you get pdf, moby or epub format and again, we intend to keep this thing going, we're going to keep updating it.

Leo: I love the cover by the way. The Indiana Jones style cover is great, yeah. Did you do that, of course you did.

Paul: No, I didn't do that. That's actually the best part about the book is the cover. Mark McClain's cover, it's so awesome. This is the guy that does those awesome posters for Microsoft, like the Posterpedia app. He does those architectural backgrounds for Microsoft.

Leo: It's beautiful, it's Indiana Jones all out there.

Paul: Someday I'll show you the excellent photo he sent me of me as Indiana Jones, that I decided not to put out.

Leo: Aw, that would've been fun.

Paul: It was a little much, but it was pretty good though.

Leo: Windows8.1book.com for details on how to buy it and it will be available everywhere.

Paul: Yep, soon.

Leo: Soon, congratulations. And your software Pick of the Week.

Paul: Yeah so the software Pick of the Week is if you want to, you can download the source code now from Microsoft. Doss 1.1 and 2.0, some of the earlier versions. Those date back, I want to say 1981 and 1982, if I'm not mistaken.

Leo: That's when the PC shipped, yeah.

Paul: Yeah, so MS-Dos was Microsoft's versions of PC-Dos, which is the thing that they supplied to IBM. You might recall the first PC actually shipped with 3 operating systems which were, CPM/86 and P-system, which was based on Pascal. MS-Dos or PC-Dos was based on CPM as well. Then they also released a source code for Word for Windows 1.1a, which I believe is actually the first version. This was the version of Word, of course, that made Word take off in a meaningful way in the market, previous to that the Dos versions did not sell well versus WordPerfect. And WordPerfect was slow to adopt Windows and the rest, as they say, is history.

Leo: This is so cool.

Paul: Yeah, it's really neat.

Leo: Assembly language for Dos.

Paul: Yeah, so break out your MASM, I think I put that in there somewhere.

Leo: Break out your MASM. I don't know what language Word is in, is it C?

Paul: It's got to be a mixture of C and Assembly Language, yeah.'

Leo: Yeah, well I just downloaded about 3 seconds.

Paul: Yeah, this is probably Petsald straight C Win16.

Leo: 6.9 megabytes.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah, so that's a lot of C. A lot of C code. Yeah. This is fun.

Paul: Yeah, it's neat.

Leo: Boy, really a great thing to do. You know, there's really no value to it at this point, so why not.

Paul: Somewhere in there, there's a WinMain.

Leo: Yeah, find your WinMain. I don't know what Cashmere is but this is really cool.

Paul: Not to be confused with the Led Zeppelin title.

Leo: Yeah, let's see if I can find Main. Is it WinMain in Windows?

Paul: Well, WinMain is the name of the function, I guess.

Leo: Here's the Make file, WinMake.

Paul: Look, it's called WinInfo, they stole my name!

Leo: Hey! Knock it off Microsoft!

Paul: Those bastards! I knew it.

Leo: I wonder if I can cross-compile this on Mac. Oh no see, the batch files are going to kill it. Space to tab .bat.

Paul: That's like Surface 2 Tablet. I actually have a second software Pick but I'm actually going to let Mary Jo do that because she was the one who recommended this.

Leo: Then we'll let you go Mr. T.

Paul: Sorry about the late notice.

Leo: No, no problem at all. Paul Thurrott, ladies and gentlemen. He'll be back in the studio next week, don't forget Friday sometime between 1 and 4 whenever Paul gets here with the rental car.

Paul: Like the Partridge family bus coming up from San Francisco.

Leo: You know what, everybody get here at 1 and we'll stand here on the street and applaud him as he drives up.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Thanks Paul.

Paul: Alright, I guess I'll see you personally next week.

Leo: Yeah, can't wait. First beer is on me for everyone. We're going to take a break and get to Mary Jo, her software Pick of the Week, her Enterprise Pick of the Week, Codename of the Week, and the Beer of the Week still to come on Windows Weekly. Our show today brought to you by SquareSpace. You don't have to go too, do you Mary Jo?

Mary Jo: No, I do not. Suddenly you're just here by yourself.

Leo: She's gone. Squarespace.com, remaking the web one site at a time. Yes, yours. Squarespace, as you all know, we talk about them a lot. The great hosting that you cannot bring down, plus the best software on top of it in the world, to give your site a unique look and feel. To make your site rock and roll, a better web starts with your website at squarespace.com. There's a lot of reasons why you like a hosted service like this. Of course one of the advantages is it's easy. You just get the hosting, get the domain name, you get the software and you're up and running. Go to squarespace.com click 'get started' and you could have a site going in five minutes. I could do it as I read the commercial. It's that easy, but the other advantage of that is all the software is tightly coded with the server software. So you're going to get a beautiful responsive website. It's easy for them to not only keep it secure, but keep it up to date and give you new features all the time. For instance, when we first started talking about it, there were 20 templates and now there are 25. There's a new logo design tool which is truly awesome. Let’s you design your old logo for small companies and individuals who want to have a nice logo. They've got all of the fonts from Google Fonts, they've got amazing apps that let you post your blog and also approve comments. Mobile apps for Metrics as well, that just came out. Squarespace.com, I want you to check it out and see all of the things you can do with a Squarespace site. The platform gets better and better, the code behind the scenes is beautiful, but you don't need to code. You can use Squarespace and do everything with point and click. You don't have to be a developer. If you need a little help, 24/7 there's somebody at the Squarespace headquarters who will help you via chat or email or phone. There's a great help site just redesigned for easier access to self-help articles and video workshops. All of this goodness is so affordable. As little as $8/month when you get an annual plan, and the annual plan includes the domain name registry even. Even that professional plan starts at $16, commerce full business is $24, although every website on Squarespace has commerce capability. Great for a school fund drive, a non-profit, a cash wedding registry. Please try it, go to squarespace.com click the 'get started' button and you can do it for 2 weeks without a credit card, you don't have to give much personal information. But if you decide to sign up, please use my offer code: WINDOWS and you'll get 10% off. Squarespace, building the web one site at a time, including yours. Squarespace.com, try it free, and don't forget when you buy to use the offer code: WINDOWS. Paul Thurrott is gone, we've released him. Release the Thurrott! But fortunately we are not alone, Mary Jo Foley is here. Paul said you gave him the software Pick of the Week. How did that happen?

Mary Jo: I did, yep. Because he was asking me this week, what Twitter clients I like for Windows 8 because he's been using Metro Twit in the desktop and I said, have you tried Twittium as the metro style client? And he said no.

Leo: Twittium?

Mary Jo: Twittium.

Leo: Metrotwits is gone, right?

Mary Jo: Metrotwit, they're keeping it alive but they ran into the rate issue.

Leo: Oh they ran out of new users.

Mary Jo: Tokens, yeah. But Twittium, which is a paid app, only $2.99 for the Metro style version of Windows. It's really awesome, it's done by B-side software and our friend Brandon Paddock is the developer on that. He has built this really interesting Twitter client because you scroll horizontally for this so it is very much in tune to the orientation of Surface's especially. And it's got a lot of the Windows 8 metro style stylings. It's a really beautiful piece of software. It took me some getting used to seeing my Twitter stream going horizontally but now I really love it.

Leo: So, that's weird. It's not columns it's rows?

Mary Jo: Yeah, on my Surface I just scroll horizontally.

Leo: I see, it's more natural I agree.

Mary Jo: Right, and he has built an enterprise for a fully featured version.

Leo: It's beautiful.

Mary Jo: It's going to be like a premium version. It's really nice, I really have gotten used to it and Paul, I think is sold on it now too. A lot of us Microsoft bloggers like this client.

Leo: $2.99, Twittium for Metro. And it sounds like you need 8.1 to run it.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think you need 8.1.

Leo: Good choice, I like it.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I like it too.

Leo: Now an enterprise Pick of the Week.

Mary Jo: Yes, so we mentioned earlier on in the show is one of the things Microsoft is expected to announce tomorrow, besides Office for the iPad is this Enterprise Mobility Suite. And at the heart of the Suite is version of Active Directory that I didn't even know existed. I found out about this from one of my sources, it's called Azure Active Directory Premium. I guess they're not going to call Windows Azure Active Directory, WAAD, anymore.

Leo: Oh, thank goodness.

Mary Jo: Because I would think they would probably take the Windows off of it. This is called Azure Active Directory Premium and no WAAD, which is too bad because-

Leo: Now what is- I think everybody in enterprise knows, but what is active directory?

Mary Jo: Active directory is a directory service and what Microsoft did was they took the directory service that was built into the Windows server and the built a version of it for Azure. So it's basically the mirror for active directory on premises in the cloud. So what this premium version is, is it has a bunch of extra capabilities for people who are trying to do things like cross-platform device management. Has more kind of souped-up capabilities around identity and access management. It lets users to self-service password resets, there's self-service group management and if you're an IT manager you can also do your company branding around this so that you can put your company logo on it and make it look like, hey here's the cloud version for whatever your company is. And this is going to be one of the key components of this thing that Satya Nadella is going to announce tomorrow I think, called Enterprise Mobility Suite. So when you hear about Azure Active Directory Premium, that's what this is. It's just a souped-up set of capabilities on top of Azure Active Directory.

Leo: Awesome.

Mary Jo: That was a tongue-twister.

Leo: How do you know all of this enterprise stuff, did you work as an IT person in Enterprise?

Mary Jo: No.

Leo: You just have learned it over the years?

Mary Jo: Yeah, I just have covered mostly the enterprise side of IT in my career so I've talked to a lot of IT pros and I don't use a lot of these capabilities, which makes it kind of challenging to stay up with them but I hear what their pinpoints are and I try to -

Leo: I think you need an exchange server in your living room.

Mary Jo: I think I do too. I think parallel data warehouse right here would be great.

Leo: Codename of the Week, prince Rainier is not going to be happy, I see a lawsuit coming.

Mary Jo: Codename of the Week is Monaco, which I think I have made a codename in the past. And Microsoft has used it a couple of different times. But given that Build is next week, this is another one of those developer kinds of things I'm wondering if we're going to hear more about. Microsoft talked about Monaco last November, I think. What it is, is a subset of the visual studio features that works inside of a browser. And not just inside of Internet Explorer. It can work in any "modern browser," so it can work in Chrome, in Firefox, and Safari I believe. Microsoft has already shown how people can use this Monaco technology to do things like edit Azure websites directly from inside the browser. I think they may be starting to talk about the beta of this, if not the final. Because what we saw last fall was just the preview version of this. And it kind of fits in with their whole story of cross-platform, more cloud orientation. We know they're going to talk a lot about Azure at Build so I wouldn't be surprised to see them also talk about Monaco next week.

Leo: Alright, Monaco. Do you have any beer for us?

Mary Jo: I do, and I have a funny story about this beer too. So my Beer Pick of the Week is a beer from Austin, TX. It's called Jester King Noble King. When you're into craft beers, you can't get every craft beer everywhere. This beer doesn't exist in New York, as far as I know. You've got to go to Texas to get it. So last week while we were doing Windows Weekly, I got a note from a guy via Twitter who said, hey I'm at Raddlin' Hum, I'm visiting from Texas and I brought you a beer.

Leo: Now it's nice to have fans. Wow.

Mary Jo: I know, right? And so I couldn't make it down to the bar right then because we were doing the show and so he left the beer for me behind the bar. And this beer is amazing, if you like-

Leo: I just like the label. It's got a lion on it, it's beautiful.

Mary Jo: The label is amazing, right? I know, it's amazing. It's such beautiful artwork and the beer is just as amazing as the picture. If you like a saison farmhouse style beer, this beer is delicious.

Leo: I do, actually. It's hoppy.

Mary Jo: It's hoppy, but not overly hoppy. It's more kind of dry and a little bit funky. It's really good with food, I had it with Japanese food last night and it was the perfect companion for that.

Leo: Really? So it's not so strong it's not overpowering.

Mary Jo: It's not that strong, it's more kind of refreshing and a little lemony and tart, if you like those kind of flavors.

Leo: Mmmm, I do. I really do.

Mary Jo: So yeah, Aaron, thank you so much for bringing that all the way from Texas that was really awesome.

Leo: So sweet, did he just bring a bottle?

Mary Jo: Yeah, he brought a big bomber bottle.

Leo: That's so great. And you must really have friends at Rattlin' Hum, they just held that for you.

Mary Jo: I know, they could have easily just popped the top on that and I never would've known.

Leo: Awesome, awesome. And you want to mention this cling-on beer?

Mary Jo: Yeah, so a few people have talked to me about this. They've said, you have got to try this when it is out. So, there's a beer that's called Klingon Wart Hog. The packaging is great, Star Trek Federation of beer.

Leo: Wow, they must have paid a lot for the licensing fees for that. That's incredible.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I don't think this is out yet. It's a dunkelweizen, so it's not a hoppy beer. It's more a traditional German style 5.5% kind of banana clove type of flavors. I would love to try it, I think I would like it probably. I don't know if we'll see that here in New York or not. But kind of a cool idea.

Leo: It says it's a partnership between CBS consumer products and the Federation of Beer. I guess CBS owns the rights to the Star Trek name.

Mary Jo: Wow, if it's our CBS, I'm in luck since I work indirectly for CBS.

Leo: They should bring some over.

Mary Jo: They should.

Leo: From the ten man brewing company. Mary Jo Foley, thank you for not running out like that loser Thurrott. No, I'm just kidding. I'm looking forward to seeing both of you and we will share a beer or two, I'm sure.

Mary Jo: Yes, that would be fun.

Leo: Next Friday, we won't be doing the show next Wednesday because it's Build and Mary Jo and Paul will be busy. You'll be able to catch Paul Thurrott tomorrow during our broadcast of the Microsoft announcement of whatever it is, we think it might be Office for iPad. And perhaps Touch First Office for Windows as well, that'll be 10 am Pacific tomorrow, 1 pm Eastern, 1700 UTC on Twit.tv as part of our news coverage. Next week, Friday between 1 and 4, somewhere in there. Between 4 and 7 Pacific, and between 2000 and 2300 UTC we will be doing Windows Weekly live in studio with Paul, Mary Jo, and if you want to be here for that, we would love it. We will have a meet up afterwards. But do email tickets at twit.tv for a rough count. You can bring extra people or show up if suddenly things change, we'd love to see you. Have fun at Build!

Mary Jo: Thanks, I think it's going to be fun. It always is fun.

Leo: We'll see you next week and thank you Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: Thank you.

Leo: Mary Jo Foley at allaboutmicrosoft.com. You'll find Paul Thurrott at the supersite for Windows, winsupersite.com and you'll normally find us on Wednesdays at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern time, and 1800 UTC with Windows Weekly. If you missed the live show, we always make audio and video available after the fact at twit.tv/ww or you could subscribe into the Xbox music or whatever you use to get your podcasts and you'll be able to get each and every episode every week as it comes out. Thanks to Paul, thanks to Mary Jo, thanks to you for joining us, we'll see you next Friday on Windows Weekly!