00:00SPEAKER- Okay, I bought something cool.
00:02SPEAKER- I like cool, it's better than not cool.
00:06SPEAKER- Back in the days when Blue Sky still worked,
00:07SPEAKERI telegraphed this there.
00:09SPEAKERLike decided- - Hasn't been down all day?
00:11SPEAKER- They've had problems the last couple of days.
00:12SPEAKER- This has not been going anyway.
00:15SPEAKER- Look, one of the side effects of the vibe coding era
00:18SPEAKERof web properties and platforms seems to be that uptime
00:22SPEAKERis no longer considered as important as it once was.
00:25SPEAKER- It's optional.
00:26SPEAKERIt's not, uptime is now a nice to have.
00:29SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it's like the Maslow's hierarchy
00:32SPEAKERof internet needs.
00:33SPEAKERIt's like a number four behind sick beats
00:36SPEAKERand like funny emojis, I guess.
00:39SPEAKERBut I told people the couple of nights ago
00:43SPEAKERthat I was gonna get,
00:44SPEAKERI think I might be a mechanical pencil guy.
00:46SPEAKER- Oh, wait, hang on, you've worked before?
00:49SPEAKER- Well, you know, like I for a long time have used these,
00:53SPEAKERlike their Paper Mate little Sharp writers,
00:57SPEAKERthe little yellow ones, they're kind of disposable.
00:59SPEAKER- Yeah, with the twisty tip?
01:01SPEAKER- Yeah, the twisty tip, the problem with them
01:03SPEAKERis there's only one piece of lead in there, right?
01:06SPEAKERSo it's a pretty wasteful design.
01:08SPEAKERIt makes a lot of plastic, which I don't like.
01:10SPEAKER- Oh, so they're literally just one and done,
01:12SPEAKERlike use up the graphite and then just toss it?
01:14SPEAKER- Use it and toss it. - That stinks.
01:16SPEAKER- It's a very boomer solution to a,
01:18SPEAKERhey, I need a mechanical pencil
01:19SPEAKERthat doesn't cost $10 problem.
01:21SPEAKER- Myself and at least one of my friends, if not all of us,
01:24SPEAKERwere big Pentel quicker clicker guys in school.
01:28SPEAKER- Is that the silver one with the black trim?
01:31SPEAKER- They come in different colors, but they were mostly,
01:33SPEAKERoh, I'm looking, oh, the modern version
01:34SPEAKERlooks pretty different.
01:36SPEAKERBack then it was a clear plastic body, very fine tip.
01:43SPEAKER- And you pitched the side?
01:44SPEAKER- The button was, yeah, like around the,
01:46SPEAKERkind of around where you would hold it
01:47SPEAKERwith your fingers to write.
01:49SPEAKERYou just kind of hold it around the button
01:50SPEAKERand not put your finger on the button.
01:52SPEAKERBut that was, it was extremely replaceable
01:56SPEAKERor basically the inside of the body of the pencil
01:59SPEAKERcould hold like a whole bunch of extra graphites
02:01SPEAKERand one would just kind of feed down into the hole
02:03SPEAKERwhen the previous one was short enough.
02:06SPEAKERAnd you could just fill it up with graphite
02:08SPEAKERand go like most of the school year.
02:10SPEAKER- So when I was in high school,
02:12SPEAKERI was all about that zebra mechanical pencil life.
02:15SPEAKERThe one with the, it was like a drafting pencil.
02:18SPEAKERSo it had a long fine point.
02:20SPEAKERAnd anyway, the thing I found though,
02:24SPEAKERlook, sometimes you gotta trust Japan, you know?
02:28SPEAKER'Cause when it comes to stationary, Japan, strong game.
02:32SPEAKER- I bet there were some amazing
02:33SPEAKERJapanese mechanical pencils.
02:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so I went, I found a YouTube channel.
02:37SPEAKERIt's gonna cost me some money, I think probably.
02:40SPEAKERBut I got the first one in the other day
02:43SPEAKERand I've been using it for about a week now.
02:45SPEAKERAnd it's a remarkable, a remarkable mechanical pencil.
02:48SPEAKERThis is a Kitabashi two millimeter mechanical pencil.
02:52SPEAKERSo most mechanical pencils are like 0.5 mils.
02:54SPEAKERIt's very, very fine lead.
02:57SPEAKERThis is the thickness of a normal wooden pencil lead.
03:01SPEAKER- Interesting.
03:02SPEAKER- It comes with a lead sharpener
03:04SPEAKERthat you just jam the lead down into
03:05SPEAKERto make it put a good point on it.
03:08SPEAKERAnd the frame of it is made of wood.
03:12SPEAKERSo it feels like a normal pencil.
03:14SPEAKER- Wild.
03:15SPEAKER- It just doesn't get ground down.
03:17SPEAKERAnd it was like $9.
03:19SPEAKER- All right.
03:19SPEAKER- I am enjoying it so much.
03:22SPEAKER'Cause it's like, get the fine point for drawing.
03:24SPEAKERYou get the shading on the side, all that stuff.
03:27SPEAKERIt's fantastic.
03:28SPEAKER- Domestic reseller?
03:30SPEAKERShould I assume you didn't have to order it from Japan?
03:33SPEAKER- I bought it at a stationary shop
03:35SPEAKERdown the peninsula a little bit, but they have them on Amazon.
03:40SPEAKERI looked before I started talking about it.
03:41SPEAKERSo it's the, again, it's the Kitabashi two mil
03:45SPEAKERmechanical pencil matter barrel
03:47SPEAKERis the version I got, the red one.
03:49SPEAKER- I assume they have like finer tip ones as well.
03:51SPEAKER- They do normal, they do traditional.
03:53SPEAKERSo this is a, I think this is the,
03:56SPEAKERper the YouTube video I watched,
03:57SPEAKERI believe that this is a traditional wooden pencil company
04:01SPEAKERthat got in the mechanical pencil game
04:04SPEAKERbecause they viewed that as a,
04:07SPEAKERthere's not that many people making pencils anymore.
04:09SPEAKERAnd they were like, we should cover all the base.
04:11SPEAKERWe should cover all the pencil bases.
04:13SPEAKERWe should do mechanical and traditional pencils.
04:15SPEAKER- Is that a thing,
04:16SPEAKERmuch like there are only three companies
04:17SPEAKERmaking hard drives now,
04:18SPEAKERor there are actually not that many pencil manufacturers?
04:21SPEAKER- I want to say that at one point
04:22SPEAKERthere were like 30 or 40 Japanese pencil manufacturers
04:25SPEAKERand now there's three.
04:26SPEAKERSo yeah, similar situation.
04:28SPEAKERI mean, look, you're always going to get
04:30SPEAKERa Ticron Condoroga, right?
04:32SPEAKERIt's not like the CRT world where one day
04:36SPEAKERthe Ticron Condoroga, the last Ticron Condoroga
04:38SPEAKERwill roll off the line.
04:39SPEAKERBut I mean, maybe it is.
04:42SPEAKERBut the kids still use pencils.
04:43SPEAKERThat's all I know.
04:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe it.
04:45SPEAKER- Even in a world with a world without Scantron,
04:47SPEAKERthey still need a number two pencil occasionally.
04:50SPEAKER- They don't Scantron anymore?
04:52SPEAKER- No, they just use computers, man.
04:53SPEAKERIt's the future.
04:54SPEAKER- Man, this might be the one time
04:56SPEAKERI've ever been disappointed by the phrase,
04:58SPEAKER"No, they just use computers now."
05:01SPEAKER- I'm going to go and tell you,
05:02SPEAKERthe kids hate taking tests on computers.
05:04SPEAKER- Really?
05:05SPEAKER- At least my daughter and her friends all hate it.
05:07SPEAKERBecause like you think about it,
05:08SPEAKERyou're like doing a math part of a standardized test
05:12SPEAKERand you have to have a scratch sheet next to you
05:14SPEAKERbecause you're doing your figuring on a piece of paper.
05:17SPEAKERBut then you're just bouncing back and forth
05:21SPEAKERbetween keyboard and paper and keyboard and paper
05:23SPEAKERand keyboard and paper and it sucks.
05:25SPEAKER- God, I can't believe I'm nostalgic
05:27SPEAKERfor filling in little bubbles.
05:29SPEAKER- I mean, look, I have a printer.
05:30SPEAKERI can give you bubbles to fill.
05:33SPEAKERIt's not going to be the same,
05:34SPEAKERbut it'll give you the bubble-filling needs.
05:36SPEAKER- Okay, we might have to talk later.
05:37SPEAKERAll right, last thing.
05:38SPEAKERDid you want to name and shame the YouTube channel?
05:41SPEAKERThat's not name and shame.
05:43SPEAKERDo you want to name and fame the YouTube channel?
05:45SPEAKER- I don't remember.
05:47SPEAKERIt was a short, so it was disposable.
05:49SPEAKER- Okay, as we all know, shorts don't exist on servers.
05:54SPEAKERThey just evaporate into the ether after viewing.
05:57SPEAKER- Look, I can go into my history and I can probably find it,
06:01SPEAKERbut it's going to be back in time a little bit.
06:03SPEAKER- All right, well, you know,
06:06SPEAKERprobably the fewer shorts viewed, the better.
06:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I like the shorts.
06:11SPEAKER- I watched, we watched an eye-opening video on,
06:15SPEAKERdo you know Haltown?
06:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:17SPEAKER- You know Joss Fong?
06:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:19SPEAKER- I don't know her, but I-
06:20SPEAKER- I don't know them personally.
06:21SPEAKER- I know of her and I don't know if her co-founders
06:24SPEAKERof that channel also, she was with The Verge before, I think?
06:28SPEAKER- That seems right, maybe.
06:30SPEAKER- She and a couple of other people have their own channel now
06:32SPEAKERdoing the same types of deep dive science-y videos
06:35SPEAKERthat I think they were doing for The Verge
06:38SPEAKERor whoever it was, they did a pretty long one
06:40SPEAKERabout the effect on the brain
06:42SPEAKERof too much short-form video scrolling.
06:45SPEAKER- It's probably good, right?
06:46SPEAKER- It was alarming.
06:48SPEAKER- Oh no.
06:49SPEAKER- There have been some studies.
06:50SPEAKER- Oh no, I watched a lot of short-term videos.
06:53SPEAKER- Oh look, it's your brain, man.
06:55SPEAKER(upbeat music)
07:08SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
07:23SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Metatek Pod, I'm Will.
07:26SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
07:27SPEAKER- I found the video.
07:28SPEAKER- Great, that was quick.
07:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I found it, it's at the BUNGU store, B-U-N-G-U store.
07:34SPEAKERI think they sell mechanical pencils.
07:36SPEAKER- That would make sense.
07:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I like a YouTube short where they sell the thing.
07:40SPEAKERLike I like watching people make candy, that's interesting.
07:43SPEAKER- Oh, that's, I Googled the name of the pencil
07:46SPEAKERyou mentioned and that was in fact the store
07:48SPEAKERI had already ended up on to buy the pencil.
07:51SPEAKERSo they've really cornered the market
07:54SPEAKERon this particular model of pencil.
07:55SPEAKER- Now the problem is I don't know
07:57SPEAKERwhere I'm gonna get the two mil lead.
07:58SPEAKERI guess this is probably where they get you.
08:00SPEAKERThey sell you the pencil for cheap
08:01SPEAKERand then the leads are gonna be like $35 each
08:03SPEAKERor something ridiculous, but you know.
08:05SPEAKER- Here is a $44 all metal mechanical pencil
08:09SPEAKERthat looks like a dentist's implement.
08:11SPEAKER- Nope, got to get enough of that at the dentist.
08:14SPEAKER- It's kind of scary looking.
08:15SPEAKERWhat is the, what is that?
08:17SPEAKERGod, not only do I not know the name
08:19SPEAKERfor this type of metal surfacing,
08:20SPEAKERI don't even know the name for the-
08:22SPEAKER- The knurling?
08:23SPEAKER- Knurling, I think knurling is in fact it.
08:24SPEAKERIt's like the-
08:25SPEAKER- Knurling, it's like a crosshatch pattern kind of thing.
08:27SPEAKER- Yeah, like a textured.
08:28SPEAKER- Yeah, it makes it grippier.
08:30SPEAKER- Geometrically textured, yeah,
08:31SPEAKERit's got a big fat knurl to grip on it.
08:34SPEAKER- Yeah, when you do that on a lathe,
08:35SPEAKERthere's a special bit that you put on the lathe
08:37SPEAKERthat goes around the edge of whatever you're cutting into
08:40SPEAKERthat it digs that pattern into the metal.
08:42SPEAKER- And this one has multiple, it has optional tips.
08:45SPEAKERThis does it up to 0.3 millimeter tip.
08:48SPEAKER- That's, 0.3 is not big enough, I need two.
08:51SPEAKER- This is a scary pencil.
08:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I have a couple more coming.
08:54SPEAKERI've maybe made a mistake, but I'll report back in later.
08:59SPEAKERI did also, that pencil doesn't have an eraser on it,
09:01SPEAKERwhich was the first thing my wife pointed out
09:02SPEAKERand I was like, hey, check out this cool pencil I bought.
09:05SPEAKERShe's like, where's the eraser?
09:06SPEAKERI was like, well, I mean, if you make mistakes,
09:07SPEAKERI guess that's a problem.
09:09SPEAKERBut I got a pack of mono Japanese plastic erasers
09:16SPEAKERat the stationery store to go with it.
09:18SPEAKER'Cause the guy was like, hey, this doesn't have an eraser.
09:20SPEAKER- Okay, last pencil thing, we should move on.
09:22SPEAKERBut I went in their store, went to the pencil section
09:26SPEAKERand sorted price high to low, what do you think?
09:29SPEAKER- 50 bucks.
09:30SPEAKER- $245 is the most expensive mechanical pencil they have.
09:35SPEAKER- What is it used for?
09:38SPEAKER- I don't know, it just looks nice.
09:42SPEAKERRevolutionize your writing experience
09:44SPEAKERwith the Kuru Toga dive mechanical pencil.
09:48SPEAKER- So I have one coming that like just the movement
09:51SPEAKERof your hand pushes the lead out.
09:53SPEAKER- Okay.
09:54SPEAKER- Just like you shake your hand a little bit
09:56SPEAKERand it pushes it out and Brad's making a big face now.
09:59SPEAKER- Okay, wait, hang on.
10:00SPEAKERI was so blown away by what I was reading
10:02SPEAKERthat I'm not sure, could you repeat?
10:04SPEAKER- So I have another pencil coming that you shake your hand
10:06SPEAKERto move, like the movement of your hand
10:08SPEAKERextends the lead naturally.
10:09SPEAKER- I heard enough of what you said to hear
10:11SPEAKERthat it had a novel lead dispensing mechanism,
10:15SPEAKERbut you still have to interact with it
10:16SPEAKERto dispense the lead is what you're saying.
10:18SPEAKER- I think the idea is that the act of using it,
10:20SPEAKERlike moving it with your hand to write
10:22SPEAKERextends the lead automatically.
10:23SPEAKER- Okay, well this $245 pencil eliminates the need
10:28SPEAKERto knock the pencil while writing,
10:31SPEAKERutilizing the force of the lead pressing against the paper,
10:34SPEAKERthe world's first mechanism advances the lead automatically
10:37SPEAKERwithout dragging the pen tip.
10:39SPEAKER- Wow, that's wild.
10:40SPEAKER- Automatic lead advancement.
10:42SPEAKER- So it's like a self winding watch.
10:43SPEAKER- Yes, like the lead comes out as you write with the lead.
10:46SPEAKER- Sounds pretty good to me.
10:47SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, all right.
10:49SPEAKER- Speaking of things that, you know, never stop working,
10:55SPEAKERI don't know, it's a bad segue.
10:57SPEAKERThere was this blog post for Microsoft a couple of weeks ago
11:02SPEAKERand it happened while you were out sick.
11:04SPEAKERSo we didn't talk about it here.
11:05SPEAKER- Yes, it's time to fix Windows 11.
11:08SPEAKER- Yeah, no, our commitment to Windows quality.
11:11SPEAKER- We're here to fix Windows 11 this week.
11:13SPEAKER- We're gonna make Windows work good again.
11:16SPEAKER- No, we're not.
11:17SPEAKER- No, no.
11:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I think we wouldn't, when did we bring this up?
11:20SPEAKERI think I maybe mentioned it very briefly.
11:22SPEAKERI think it posted right before my surgery.
11:25SPEAKERAnd I think I just maybe barely mentioned the existence
11:28SPEAKERof this blog post on that last Q&A episode before I was out.
11:31SPEAKER- Yeah, we talked about it briefly, but there's a lot here.
11:34SPEAKERIt's worth digging into.
11:35SPEAKER- Yeah, and I think we're gonna get into some ideas
11:38SPEAKERof our own for improving Windows 11.
11:40SPEAKERBut also I think like the fact that this blog post
11:43SPEAKEReven exists is pretty telling.
11:46SPEAKER- Yeah, like-
11:47SPEAKER- And is really like a signifier of maybe deeper
11:50SPEAKERand broader problems at Microsoft.
11:53SPEAKER- Well, you know, Microsoft's been in the business
11:55SPEAKERof shoveling AI down everybody's throats
11:57SPEAKERfor the last few years.
11:58SPEAKERAnd maybe, you know, they did the Co-Pilot Plus PCs,
12:01SPEAKERwhich didn't really move the needle on PC sales at all
12:04SPEAKERin the way that I think everybody involved
12:06SPEAKERwas hoping they would.
12:09SPEAKERAnd this feels like one of the great Mea Culpa blog posts.
12:14SPEAKERDo you remember when PUBG was still relatively new
12:17SPEAKERand they posted a blog post
12:20SPEAKER'cause they were having cheating problems
12:22SPEAKERand like game balance problems
12:24SPEAKERand they initiated the #FixPUBG campaign?
12:28SPEAKER- Wait, that was theirs?
12:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that was theirs.
12:30SPEAKER- Oh, I thought that was people who liked the game
12:32SPEAKERand were mad about it.
12:33SPEAKER- No, no, the people who liked the game
12:36SPEAKERand were mad about it made fun of it for years
12:38SPEAKERbecause the #FixPUBG campaign
12:40SPEAKERdidn't really #FixPUBG.
12:43SPEAKER- I don't know if as the product maker getting out there
12:45SPEAKERand publicizing the notion that your product needs fixing
12:49SPEAKERis the best, I don't know, maybe?
12:51SPEAKER- I think if you have obvious problems
12:54SPEAKERthat everybody who plays something
12:55SPEAKERor engages with it is aware of is a problem,
12:57SPEAKERthen acknowledging that there's a problem
12:59SPEAKERmakes a lot of sense.
13:00SPEAKERBut only if you have a concrete plan
13:02SPEAKERthat you're pretty confident you can execute on
13:04SPEAKERto actually solve those problems.
13:07SPEAKERAnd that's why we're talking about this blog post today
13:09SPEAKER'cause I don't think they have a concrete plan
13:12SPEAKERto solve most of these problems.
13:14SPEAKER- Yeah, some of these are pretty directly actionable.
13:17SPEAKEROthers feel pretty hand wavy and overly broad.
13:20SPEAKER- Well, okay, so this is from Pavan Davaluri,
13:24SPEAKERwho is the Windows Insider program team lead, I think,
13:29SPEAKERwhich means he's basically,
13:30SPEAKERoh, sorry, he's the EVP of Windows and devices.
13:33SPEAKERSo that means he's in charge of Windows and Surface
13:35SPEAKERand all the Windows devices that aren't Xbox, presumably.
13:39SPEAKER- Okay.
13:40SPEAKER- And it's written to Windows Insiders,
13:46SPEAKERwhich is, for folks who don't know,
13:47SPEAKERthe Windows Insider program's
13:49SPEAKERlike their public beta testing program.
13:51SPEAKERSo if you are a Windows enthusiast
13:53SPEAKERor you don't wanna pay for Windows,
13:55SPEAKERyou can sign up to be a Windows Insider
13:57SPEAKERand they will treat your Windows as if you paid for it
14:01SPEAKERand give you early,
14:04SPEAKERbasically, they dump early versions of the OS out
14:07SPEAKERto people in different versions of the Insider ring.
14:09SPEAKERThere's two or three rings.
14:11SPEAKERThere's one that's like,
14:12SPEAKERyou just get the new stuff as soon as it hits.
14:14SPEAKERThere's one that's like you're getting some beta software
14:17SPEAKERand there's one that you're on the bleeding edge.
14:22SPEAKERLike, here is the lead paragraph for this.
14:26SPEAKER"Hello, Windows Insiders.
14:28SPEAKER"I want to speak to you directly as an engineer
14:30SPEAKER"who has spent his career building technology
14:32SPEAKER"that people depend on every day.
14:34SPEAKER"Windows touches more people's lives
14:36SPEAKER"than almost any technology on Earth.
14:37SPEAKER"Every day, we hear from the community
14:39SPEAKER"about how you experience Windows.
14:41SPEAKER"And over the past several months,
14:42SPEAKER"the team and I have spent a great deal of time
14:44SPEAKER"analyzing your feedback.
14:45SPEAKER"What came through was the voice of people
14:47SPEAKER"who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better."
14:51SPEAKERI think that's-
14:54SPEAKER- That is a masterclass in massaging the reality
14:57SPEAKERto sound friendlier and more beneficial to the company.
15:01SPEAKER"What came through was the voice of people
15:03SPEAKER"who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better."
15:07SPEAKERI don't know if I'd say that's consistent
15:09SPEAKERwith a lot of the sentiment I see out there
15:11SPEAKERabout Windows these days,
15:12SPEAKERbut in a certain sense, he's not wrong.
15:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look,
15:18SPEAKERif you're gonna beta test Windows software for Microsoft,
15:21SPEAKERyou clearly care about the OS.
15:22SPEAKER- Okay, okay, yes.
15:23SPEAKER- And you clearly want it to be better, right?
15:24SPEAKER- I think I'm maybe being a little overly broad here
15:28SPEAKERabout who he's talking about.
15:29SPEAKERLike if you're talking strictly
15:30SPEAKERabout Windows Insider members
15:33SPEAKERor people on the inside rings or whatever,
15:36SPEAKERthen yes, those people probably do care deeply about Windows.
15:40SPEAKER- But I also, like you remember,
15:41SPEAKERthis is also six months after they said,
15:43SPEAKER"Hey, man, if you are on a Windows 10 machine
15:46SPEAKER"that doesn't support these things
15:47SPEAKER"that are less than 10 years old,
15:49SPEAKER"you can't use the new OS
15:51SPEAKER"and also we're turning off support for the old OS," right?
15:54SPEAKERSo I think they've fucked around
15:59SPEAKERand now they're in the finding out phase
16:01SPEAKERof that transition.
16:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, this is amid Linux hitting all-time highs
16:06SPEAKERon the share of the Steam user survey and X, you know.
16:12SPEAKERThere's an asterisk there
16:13SPEAKER'cause they did change the way they report
16:15SPEAKERsome of those numbers, but I don't understand the,
16:18SPEAKERI haven't dug in enough to look at the nuance
16:20SPEAKERof how that works.
16:23SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, so like this is a big May couple
16:26SPEAKERfrom Microsoft and basically he starts this blog post
16:31SPEAKERwith some stuff that they say they're gonna roll out
16:35SPEAKERat the end of March release and throughout April.
16:38SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so I think a couple of these things
16:40SPEAKERhave already happened in the three weeks
16:43SPEAKERsince this post ran, but then there's a much broader plan
16:46SPEAKERfor the rest of the year and we'll step through that
16:47SPEAKERafter we quickly dispense with the current stuff.
16:50SPEAKER- Well, and it's worth mentioning,
16:51SPEAKERhe's talking about in the insider builds for these, not,
16:54SPEAKERso if you're on a mainline build,
16:56SPEAKERyou probably won't see this until much later.
16:57SPEAKERAnd even if you are in the insider build,
16:59SPEAKERif you have a piece of hardware
17:00SPEAKERthat they've determined is incompatible,
17:02SPEAKER'cause this is part of the challenge
17:03SPEAKERwith the insider rings, right,
17:04SPEAKERis they look at the hardware in your system.
17:06SPEAKERIf they know that there's something
17:07SPEAKERthat's gonna cause an issue, they don't give you an update
17:10SPEAKERand you'll get it later when they resolve
17:11SPEAKERwhatever the issue is or when your driver's updated
17:14SPEAKERor whatever the problem is.
17:15SPEAKER- Which frankly, I appreciate that,
17:17SPEAKER'cause there have been a couple of cases in the past
17:19SPEAKERwhere like the annual update,
17:20SPEAKERI looked at the changelog or the known issues list rather,
17:23SPEAKERand saw something that absolutely would have bitten me
17:26SPEAKERfor whatever esoteric network share setup
17:29SPEAKERI've got or something.
17:30SPEAKER- Well, the way they stagger rollouts now is really smart
17:33SPEAKERand actually quite effective usually.
17:36SPEAKERSo you don't end up in situations
17:37SPEAKERwhere your weird network card
17:39SPEAKERis gonna cause you a problem or something like that.
17:40SPEAKER- Right, I mean, that said,
17:42SPEAKERthat didn't stop that Mellanox card
17:43SPEAKERfrom abruptly ceasing to function in my system
17:47SPEAKERa couple of months ago, but whatever.
17:49SPEAKER- Look, it's omelet's eggs, Brad.
17:53SPEAKER- It is a complicated problem space.
17:55SPEAKER- And you're on a,
17:57SPEAKERlike the lower percentage of the hardware in your machine,
18:00SPEAKERthe more problems you're gonna have.
18:03SPEAKER- That's a 14-year-old card, I believe,
18:06SPEAKERmade for data centers 14 years ago.
18:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and probably there's like 18 people
18:11SPEAKERthat have those in desktop, Windows PCs.
18:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
18:14SPEAKER- Anyway, so, okay, so let's go down.
18:16SPEAKERSo what we're gonna do,
18:17SPEAKERwe're gonna talk about the things they have in this list.
18:19SPEAKERWe're gonna talk about the things he talks about to come.
18:22SPEAKERThe first list is stuff that's gonna happen
18:25SPEAKERin Insider Build soon, like this April, basically.
18:28SPEAKER- Yeah, this month.
18:29SPEAKERAnd then the first one on the list, I mean.
18:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
18:33SPEAKER- Like if you had any doubt up to this point
18:34SPEAKERthat this was in fact a mea culpa,
18:36SPEAKERthat this is addressing very pointed user criticism.
18:40SPEAKERThe fact that they're leading with,
18:41SPEAKERhey, you can put the task bar on the sides or top again.
18:45SPEAKER- Hey man, ultra wide monitors are a thing
18:47SPEAKERand having your task bar across the bottom
18:49SPEAKERof a 3,600 by 1,440 display is real stupid.
18:53SPEAKER- Yeah, also it's like the most egregious example
18:55SPEAKERof a thing they took away
18:57SPEAKERin the course of transitioning to Windows 11,
18:58SPEAKERwhich I mean, it's, I guess,
19:01SPEAKERprobably not a very short list.
19:03SPEAKERI'd say there's quite a few UI things
19:05SPEAKERthat they changed for the worse,
19:06SPEAKERbut this one has to be by far the most complained about.
19:09SPEAKERLike this is the most low hanging fruit
19:11SPEAKERI can think of among things people don't like
19:13SPEAKERabout Windows 11 that they're just like,
19:15SPEAKERhey, you know what, we're just gonna let you do that again.
19:17SPEAKER- And like centering the task bar, that's fine, whatever.
19:19SPEAKERThey let you turn that off.
19:20SPEAKERLike I usually use defaults,
19:23SPEAKERbut having the left side task bar is really convenient,
19:25SPEAKERit turns out.
19:26SPEAKER- Yeah, some people, I'm not a huge fan of side task bar,
19:28SPEAKERbut some people will swear by it.
19:30SPEAKER- I was always a side task bar person until Windows 11.
19:32SPEAKERYeah, 100%. - Really, no kidding.
19:34SPEAKER- Well, 'cause I had big monitors
19:36SPEAKERand like I'd rather use less space for that.
19:39SPEAKER- Actually, you're not wrong,
19:41SPEAKERespecially in the days of,
19:42SPEAKERor in the modern era of the task bar just being icons.
19:45SPEAKERI guess I'm forever sort of poisoned by original task bar
19:49SPEAKERwhere you have the very, very wide tiles
19:52SPEAKERthat had like most of the window title in them.
19:54SPEAKER- Yeah, when did the icon only started
19:56SPEAKERwith the Windows 7, right?
19:57SPEAKER- Ah, Vista, right?
20:00SPEAKERDidn't Vista have that?
20:00SPEAKER- I don't remember, I'd have to look.
20:01SPEAKERBut basically, Windows 10
20:05SPEAKERwas when I started getting high resolution.
20:07SPEAKERIt's when I had an ultra wide monitor the first time
20:09SPEAKERand I switched over and I never looked back
20:11SPEAKERuntil they were like, "No, you can't do this anymore."
20:14SPEAKER- Oh, I think you're right.
20:15SPEAKERI'm looking at a Vista screenshot
20:17SPEAKERthat still has the super wide textual.
20:20SPEAKER- I think it's when they made the start button
20:21SPEAKERnot say start anymore. (laughs)
20:24SPEAKERLet's see, they're gonna integrate AI
20:26SPEAKERwhere it's most meaningful with craft and focus.
20:29SPEAKER- Now that is a well thought out line right there.
20:34SPEAKERCraft, I don't know how you craft AI,
20:37SPEAKERbut they're saying, "Hey, we're gonna reduce
20:40SPEAKERunnecessary copilot entry points
20:41SPEAKERstarting with things like snipping tool,
20:43SPEAKERphotos, widgets, and notepad."
20:47SPEAKERThey've done some of this already.
20:49SPEAKER- Yeah, this just happened in the last week, I believe.
20:52SPEAKERNotepad I know is on the list.
20:55SPEAKER- It's still in there.
20:57SPEAKERIt's just called something else now,
20:58SPEAKERwhich is maybe the most Microsoft way
21:00SPEAKERto solve a problem I've ever heard.
21:01SPEAKER- You're right.
21:02SPEAKERFirst comment on this Reddit thread.
21:03SPEAKERThe title is misleading.
21:04SPEAKERThey did not remove it, they renamed it.
21:06SPEAKER- Yeah, so it doesn't say copilot anymore,
21:09SPEAKERbut it does copilot-ish things.
21:11SPEAKERNice job, Microsoft.
21:12SPEAKER- Well, I guess that's the craft and focus.
21:14SPEAKERThey decided what it should be called now.
21:16SPEAKER- I'm focusing my something on something else.
21:19SPEAKERReducing disruption of Windows updates.
21:21SPEAKERThis is a good one.
21:22SPEAKERRight now, you can only delay Windows updates
21:26SPEAKERtwo weeks, I think, if you're on a consumer level OS.
21:30SPEAKERThis lets you say, "Hey, I don't want to get updates.
21:33SPEAKERI can skip them indefinitely.
21:34SPEAKERI can skip them during device setup."
21:37SPEAKER- You can effectively pause updates
21:39SPEAKERuntil you unpause them yourself, right?
21:41SPEAKER- Yeah, and the machine won't restart or shut down
21:46SPEAKERfor an update without you knowing that it's gonna happen,
21:49SPEAKERwithout you saying, "Yeah, I want to do this."
21:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I think this is probably a net good.
21:53SPEAKER- This is a good one.
21:54SPEAKER- I do think a lot of people are way too lackadaisical
21:57SPEAKERtoward the updating and security of their devices,
22:01SPEAKERbut also you have to prioritize user freedom
22:05SPEAKERin every case, right?
22:06SPEAKERLike you have to, God, there I go using the word freedom.
22:09SPEAKER- Well, but-
22:10SPEAKER- Here, I'm going to be all free as in speech,
22:13SPEAKERnot as in beer soon here, but-
22:14SPEAKER- Oh, no.
22:15SPEAKER- But I mean, I guess you should give people enough rope
22:18SPEAKERto hang themselves with, right?
22:19SPEAKERLike you should, if they want to assume the risks
22:23SPEAKERof not updating their OS for six months, then go with God.
22:26SPEAKER- Well, so there's a ton of use cases
22:28SPEAKERwhere you don't want to update the OS.
22:29SPEAKERLike we have one at PC World all the time
22:31SPEAKERwhen we were testing CPUs or GPUs.
22:34SPEAKER- Oh, sure, yeah.
22:35SPEAKER- We don't want to update the OS during that time period.
22:36SPEAKER- Temporarily, absolutely.
22:38SPEAKERIt's the indefinite turning off updates
22:40SPEAKERwhere I think some people are just going to forget
22:42SPEAKERto ever turn them back on.
22:44SPEAKER- For me, the turning off updates
22:45SPEAKERand not getting more updates is like, that's an edge case.
22:48SPEAKERI'm sure they're going to put some warning language
22:50SPEAKERaround that.
22:51SPEAKERIt's like, "Hey, this is a bad idea.
22:51SPEAKERYou shouldn't do this."
22:52SPEAKERAnd maybe they pop a notification after three months
22:55SPEAKERthat's like, "Hey, you haven't updated in a while.
22:56SPEAKERIt's important for security."
22:58SPEAKER- For me, it's, "Hey, I'm giving a presentation."
23:00SPEAKERAnd all of a sudden my computer turns off
23:02SPEAKERbecause in the background, the notification that said,
23:05SPEAKER"Hey, we're going to restart your computer
23:06SPEAKERin five minutes," didn't pop up
23:07SPEAKERbecause the presentation has notifications suppressed.
23:12SPEAKER- But that falls under the temporary pausing
23:13SPEAKERas opposed to the just indefinite like,
23:15SPEAKER"Hey, turn it off and leave it off."
23:16SPEAKER- Well, but there's also- - Which I think is what's new.
23:18SPEAKER- Another part of this is also the,
23:20SPEAKER"Hey, we're not going to turn off your computer
23:22SPEAKERfor an update without you clicking a button."
23:25SPEAKER- Yeah, that obviously is good.
23:26SPEAKEROr, I mean, that is essential.
23:28SPEAKERThat shouldn't even be a good to have.
23:30SPEAKERThat should just be the way it is.
23:32SPEAKER- Yeah, that should be.
23:33SPEAKERHere's another good one.
23:34SPEAKERFaster and more dependable File Explorer.
23:36SPEAKER- Yeah, well, so some of these we'll come back up
23:38SPEAKERwith more detail in the kind of annual plan going forward
23:41SPEAKERthat they delineate here.
23:43SPEAKERI don't know how much they're going to be able to do
23:45SPEAKERto File Explorer in this first, well, okay.
23:47SPEAKEROur first round of improvements will focus
23:49SPEAKERon quicker launch experience, reduced flicker.
23:52SPEAKERI'm not quite sure what they mean by flicker.
23:53SPEAKER- If you have a bad graphics card,
23:56SPEAKERsince there was flicker in the window, apparently.
24:00SPEAKER- Weird. - Yeah, yeah.
24:03SPEAKER- Smoother navigation and more reliable performance
24:06SPEAKERfor everyday file tasks.
24:08SPEAKER- I don't know if more reliable performance
24:09SPEAKERmeans drawing the window and listing.
24:11SPEAKEROne of the things that happens is if you have,
24:14SPEAKERyou can get your folders in a situation
24:16SPEAKERwhere you have the wrong preset on the folder
24:19SPEAKERand it tries to scan the metadata
24:20SPEAKERof all the items in the folder.
24:22SPEAKER- Oh, I hate that, oh my God.
24:24SPEAKERI got, there's like.
24:26SPEAKER- The weird downloads folders,
24:27SPEAKERthe place this happens most commonly, I think.
24:29SPEAKER- Yeah, downloads, I don't mind so much.
24:30SPEAKERLike you can turn that on and off.
24:32SPEAKERThat's like the group by function
24:34SPEAKERwhere it's like group by date, you know?
24:36SPEAKER- Not that one, I'm talking about the.
24:38SPEAKER- You're talking about the type of content.
24:39SPEAKER- The type of metadata that it thinks it should look for,
24:42SPEAKERyeah. - List this folder
24:43SPEAKERas music files, list this as documents.
24:46SPEAKERI hate, I don't mind that idea in principle,
24:49SPEAKERbut it's just implemented so poorly.
24:51SPEAKER- Their implementation is awful.
24:53SPEAKER- There are like four or five random folders on my machine
24:56SPEAKERthat just will not obey that setting no matter what I do
24:58SPEAKERand constantly are reverting themselves.
25:01SPEAKER- Well, and the thing that happens when you're a user
25:04SPEAKERis that all of a sudden you have three folders
25:06SPEAKERon your computer that just take an incredible amount
25:08SPEAKERof time to open. - Yeah.
25:10SPEAKER- And it's a terrible experience.
25:12SPEAKER- I'd even go further here.
25:13SPEAKERLike the directory that I save all podcast recordings into,
25:16SPEAKERI try to sort by date, it absolutely will not remember
25:21SPEAKERthe sort by date no matter what I do every single time.
25:24SPEAKERI open that. - Is it on your NAS
25:25SPEAKERor is it on your local machine?
25:25SPEAKER- No, it's just a local folder on my desktop.
25:28SPEAKER- That's wild.
25:29SPEAKER- And it just refuses to stick the sort by dates.
25:32SPEAKERSo like more consistency around stuff like that.
25:34SPEAKERI would even go further here.
25:36SPEAKERI may be cannibalizing one of my suggestions a little bit.
25:39SPEAKERAlso, we should maybe say we didn't tell each other
25:41SPEAKERwhat our ideas are for improving Windows.
25:44SPEAKERSo it'll be a surprise when we get to the end of this.
25:47SPEAKERThis is probably a deeper thing
25:49SPEAKERthat's gonna take much more time.
25:50SPEAKERAnd this might actually be lower level than File Explorer,
25:53SPEAKERbut the ability to basically ruin File Explorer
25:56SPEAKERby doing anything where the IO operation
25:59SPEAKERjust can't complete, like putting in a USB thumb drive
26:02SPEAKERthat happens to be starting to go,
26:04SPEAKERor a bad external drive hard drive that's crapping out.
26:08SPEAKER- Handling fail points is an important.
26:10SPEAKER- Like failure handling is like it'll bring
26:12SPEAKERall the File Explorer down where like,
26:14SPEAKERif you're in the computer view,
26:15SPEAKERit will populate any drive
26:17SPEAKERbecause it can't read from that one drive.
26:19SPEAKERAnd that's just like a terrible experience.
26:21SPEAKER- Yeah.
26:22SPEAKER- Like it should make it clear what's going wrong
26:24SPEAKERand isolate that thing that's going wrong
26:27SPEAKERand not completely freeze or block
26:29SPEAKERthe entire rest of the application.
26:30SPEAKER- So I hope they're also talking about performance
26:33SPEAKERfor like file copies and stuff like that,
26:35SPEAKERbecause the file copy performance,
26:38SPEAKERespecially for many small files on Windows
26:43SPEAKERversus every other OS I use is terrible.
26:46SPEAKERAnd part of it's because of the way the file system works.
26:48SPEAKERPart of it's because the File Explorer interface
26:51SPEAKERhas been bad at that forever.
26:52SPEAKERSo anyway.
26:54SPEAKER- Yeah, they get, we'll get into that.
26:55SPEAKERThen when they bring File Explorer back up
26:57SPEAKERseveral months from now, I believe they're yes.
27:01SPEAKERYeah, we'll touch on that again.
27:05SPEAKER- So let's see.
27:07SPEAKERThe next one is more control over widgets
27:10SPEAKERand feed experiences.
27:11SPEAKEROkay, this is one of those things
27:13SPEAKERthat I think is really interesting
27:13SPEAKERbecause this is always the first thing
27:16SPEAKERI turn off in Windows.
27:17SPEAKER- Yeah, that was my first comment on this item
27:19SPEAKERis do you use widgets?
27:21SPEAKERBecause I don't.
27:22SPEAKER- So my daughter loves them, right?
27:25SPEAKERSo she has the weather widget on her computer
27:28SPEAKERand she sees that and then she gets annoyed
27:31SPEAKERbecause sometimes it just changes location randomly.
27:33SPEAKER- Huh, I did kind of suspect that widgets
27:36SPEAKERmight be a bit of a generational divide
27:38SPEAKERbecause I think they kind of originate in mobile, right?
27:41SPEAKERLike phones have had widgets for much longer
27:44SPEAKERthan desktop operating systems.
27:45SPEAKER- No, congregate started.
27:47SPEAKER- Well, I think the modern iteration of widgets,
27:51SPEAKERobviously, you know, there were widgets 20, 25 years ago
27:55SPEAKERthat were mostly third-party installs,
27:58SPEAKERbut like iOS has been successively adding
28:01SPEAKERmore and more widgets over time in different places.
28:03SPEAKER- I think widgets came to iOS and Windows
28:05SPEAKERat around the same time.
28:07SPEAKERIt was probably a little bit later in Windows,
28:08SPEAKERbut not that much.
28:10SPEAKERThis current inclination, the incarnation though,
28:13SPEAKERis mostly about selling shit
28:16SPEAKERand getting you to go to Microsoft services.
28:18SPEAKERLike if you look at the lock screen, the welcome screen,
28:23SPEAKERthere's multiple different views of that.
28:25SPEAKEROne of them is a like programmatic welcome screen
28:28SPEAKERthat you have zero control over anything
28:31SPEAKERon the actual screen other than to say,
28:34SPEAKERyes, I want Microsoft to feed me dynamic wallpapers
28:37SPEAKERand also whatever the latest business on MSN
28:41SPEAKERand their weather apps and their partners is.
28:44SPEAKER- You can turn all that stuff off,
28:45SPEAKERbut you have to turn all of it off.
28:47SPEAKER- It's all or nothing.
28:48SPEAKER- Yeah, you have to lose the dynamic wallpapers
28:50SPEAKERand everything, I believe.
28:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I also don't know what the discover feed is.
28:54SPEAKERI wasn't able to figure it out.
28:55SPEAKERSo interesting there.
28:56SPEAKER- Yeah, improved personalization for the discover feed.
28:58SPEAKERI couldn't tell you.
29:00SPEAKER- Simpler, more transparent Windows Insider program.
29:02SPEAKERThis is great.
29:03SPEAKERThey're going to communicate more.
29:04SPEAKERI think Microsoft being better at communication
29:07SPEAKERdoesn't hurt anybody.
29:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you.
29:10SPEAKERI am never, ever, ever going to run
29:12SPEAKERan Insider version of Windows.
29:14SPEAKERSo this is not relevant to me at all,
29:17SPEAKERbut it seems like a good thing
29:18SPEAKERto beef up your testing program.
29:20SPEAKER- Yeah, and then the improved feedback hub,
29:22SPEAKERwhich have you ever used the feedback hub?
29:24SPEAKER- I have not.
29:25SPEAKER- You can only access it from Windows.
29:27SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.
29:28SPEAKER- So it's like a website,
29:29SPEAKERbut you can only get to it from Windows and yeah.
29:32SPEAKER- Should I launch it for the first time as we speak?
29:34SPEAKER- You can if you want, but it's like feedback before.
29:37SPEAKER- So just if there's a suggest a feature button.
29:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it's been there for a long time.
29:41SPEAKERI don't think they do anything with it.
29:43SPEAKER- Probably not.
29:43SPEAKERWell, of course we did some kind of tips and tricks episode
29:48SPEAKERnot long ago.
29:49SPEAKERAnd I feel like you said, suggest more features.
29:51SPEAKER- I did that on a Mac OS and they did,
29:54SPEAKERthey added the thing that I wanted for the Apple stuff.
29:57SPEAKER- Maybe Apple is more reactive.
29:58SPEAKER- I mean, you can try something, yeah.
30:00SPEAKER- 'Cause a couple of mine that I have
30:01SPEAKERfor the end of the episode
30:02SPEAKERare things I would dearly love to see them do.
30:05SPEAKER- Well, I mean, so let's, I mean, well, let's,
30:07SPEAKERI think we should go down
30:08SPEAKERthe rest of this list real quickly.
30:10SPEAKERThe post April updates are basically focused on performance.
30:14SPEAKERThey talk about system performance, more responsive apps,
30:17SPEAKERmaking File Explorer have lower latency
30:20SPEAKERfor search and navigation.
30:22SPEAKER- Yeah, we should go through each one of these
30:23SPEAKER'cause there's some granular stuff in here
30:25SPEAKERthat's actually worth talking about.
30:27SPEAKER- Okay.
30:29SPEAKER- I don't know if these are all supposed to be
30:30SPEAKERby the end of the year
30:31SPEAKERor I think over the course of the year
30:33SPEAKERis how they phrase this.
30:34SPEAKEROver the course of the year, we're improving blah, blah, blah.
30:36SPEAKEROkay, improving system performance.
30:39SPEAKERFaster and more responsive Windows experiences
30:42SPEAKERwith early improvements already delivered
30:43SPEAKERand launch time reductions in apps like File Explorer.
30:45SPEAKERWe kind of already covered that.
30:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
30:47SPEAKER- Improved memory efficiency,
30:48SPEAKERlowering the baseline memory footprint for Windows,
30:51SPEAKERfreeing up more capacity for the apps you run.
30:54SPEAKER- Hey, you know, Apple just released a MacBook Neo
30:56SPEAKERthat has eight gigs of RAM.
30:58SPEAKER- Yeah.
30:59SPEAKER- And Windows partners can't work in that space.
31:01SPEAKER- Yeah, true, true.
31:02SPEAKERAlthough, I mean, as we've talked about before,
31:04SPEAKERlike MacBooks partially get around this problem
31:09SPEAKERwith their very tightly vertically integrated OS
31:12SPEAKERand hardware stack.
31:13SPEAKER- Well, and by churning SSD.
31:15SPEAKER- That's why, that's why.
31:16SPEAKERBecause Apple controls every single piece of their ecosystem
31:19SPEAKERfrom the literal metal on up to the user experience.
31:22SPEAKERLike they know exactly what they have.
31:24SPEAKERAnd so yes, they page to the SSD very aggressively
31:28SPEAKERin a way that helps paper over memory stuff.
31:30SPEAKER- But also we live in a world that's memory constrained
31:34SPEAKERall of a sudden.
31:35SPEAKER- Yeah.
31:36SPEAKER- So, you know, this makes sense.
31:37SPEAKER- I mean, making things more memory efficient obviously
31:39SPEAKERis like self-evidently a good.
31:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
31:42SPEAKER- There is an element of this though,
31:45SPEAKERwhere I feel like people are maybe a little too obsessive
31:47SPEAKERabout staring at their free RAM.
31:51SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
31:52SPEAKERI'm not saying anybody should ever stare at that.
31:54SPEAKERIt's not like I know that I have 44 gigs
31:55SPEAKERof RAM free right now.
31:57SPEAKERI have that on my test for it and I can just tell.
31:59SPEAKERThat's a fair amount of RAM free.
32:01SPEAKER- I feel good about that.
32:03SPEAKER- In fact, I think it would go further
32:05SPEAKERand not just, it's not just user behavior here.
32:08SPEAKERIt's also like there is kind of a whole class of grifty.
32:13SPEAKER- Oh.
32:14SPEAKER- Like tech grifter social media posts,
32:17SPEAKERbasically just posting like memory usage screenshots
32:19SPEAKERof things and talk about how unoptimized everything is.
32:22SPEAKER- I mean, look, there's a big difference between,
32:27SPEAKERfor me this matters when you feel it, right?
32:29SPEAKER- Yes, that's exactly it.
32:29SPEAKER- When you run out of memory in your hard drive
32:31SPEAKERand you're churning and launching applications
32:34SPEAKERtakes a long time or opening a file
32:36SPEAKERtakes a long time or whatever,
32:37SPEAKERthat's the problem, not that the number is too high.
32:40SPEAKER- Yes, that's exactly it.
32:41SPEAKERI've seen this like on Discords recently,
32:44SPEAKERnot our Discord to be clear.
32:45SPEAKERI thought it was on a different server,
32:46SPEAKERbut I've seen people hemming and hawing,
32:48SPEAKERwringing their hands over how much memory they have free.
32:51SPEAKER- Well, it's, yeah.
32:52SPEAKER- I guess the thing, and like, look,
32:54SPEAKERI'm not a computer scientist here,
32:55SPEAKERbut the thing that I think people not,
32:59SPEAKERthey don't misunderstand,
33:00SPEAKERthey just have a low understanding of this concept
33:02SPEAKERis that modern operating systems
33:03SPEAKERare generally pretty good at managing memory,
33:06SPEAKERbut they use memory aggressively.
33:09SPEAKERLike every OS like aggressively uses the memory you have
33:12SPEAKERbecause not using memory is a huge waste.
33:14SPEAKER- Yeah, you have it in there, you're powering it,
33:16SPEAKERyou might as well take advantage of it.
33:17SPEAKER- Like I've spent kind of an embarrassing amount of time
33:20SPEAKERlooking at how Linux handles this kind of thing.
33:23SPEAKERLike there are all kinds of different like caches
33:25SPEAKERand sort of memory mapped things
33:27SPEAKERthat Linux will temporarily put in memory
33:30SPEAKERwith what is effectively like a very low priority
33:33SPEAKERwhere it can be evicted from memory very quickly
33:35SPEAKERwhen something actually needs that memory.
33:38SPEAKERLike empty RAM is wasted RAM basically is what I'm saying.
33:41SPEAKERSo like, just because you look at a thing
33:43SPEAKERand see most of your memory full
33:45SPEAKERdoesn't necessarily mean that's a bad thing.
33:46SPEAKERLike in fact, I mean,
33:47SPEAKERmemory is the fastest storage in your machine,
33:49SPEAKERlike you should be using it for something.
33:53SPEAKER- Well, and like the avoid the grifters,
33:58SPEAKERit reminds me of the old phone tips that were like,
34:01SPEAKERhey, every day you need to open up
34:04SPEAKERyour task closer interface on your phone,
34:07SPEAKERwhether it's Android or iOS
34:09SPEAKERand swipe all those applications closed.
34:11SPEAKER- I still see people doing that.
34:12SPEAKER- When that actually has a real negative impact
34:15SPEAKER'cause it means that instead of saving
34:16SPEAKERthe state of the machine on the flash memory of the device
34:20SPEAKERso that it can start, you have to start it every time
34:22SPEAKERwhich hits your battery.
34:23SPEAKERAnd anyway, it doesn't matter,
34:25SPEAKERbut yeah, you don't have to obsess about this,
34:27SPEAKERbut Windows has gotten kind of RAM hoggy
34:31SPEAKERover the last 10 years. - But that I believe, yeah.
34:32SPEAKERLike I believe there absolutely are inefficiencies there.
34:35SPEAKERIn fact, the next item on this list is one of those,
34:37SPEAKERbut the last thing here,
34:39SPEAKERmore consistent performance even under load.
34:41SPEAKERI mean, that's one of those hand wavy ones that like,
34:44SPEAKERmaybe they will do that,
34:46SPEAKERbut this is not quantifiable in the scope of this blog post.
34:49SPEAKERSo not much to say.
34:51SPEAKER- That to me says,
34:52SPEAKERhey, if you have something running on one window
34:54SPEAKERthat's using a lot of resources,
34:56SPEAKERthen the rest of the machines should still feel responsive.
34:59SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.
34:59SPEAKER- And that's like a thread scheduler
35:01SPEAKERand RAM management and all of these problems.
35:03SPEAKER- It would be great to hear more specific information
35:05SPEAKERlike that about what they're actually talking about here,
35:07SPEAKERbut this is so vague,
35:08SPEAKERit's hard to know exactly what they mean.
35:10SPEAKER- Each of these bullet points could be its own blog post
35:12SPEAKERexplaining how they're going to approach this.
35:14SPEAKER- That's fair.
35:15SPEAKERMore fluid and responsive app interactions.
35:18SPEAKER- This one, Jesus.
35:19SPEAKERReducing interaction latency by moving core windows
35:22SPEAKERexperiences to the WinUI 3 framework.
35:25SPEAKER- What's the WinUI 3 framework, Brad?
35:27SPEAKER- It is, it's their newest windowing API,
35:31SPEAKERas I was able to gather looking at it.
35:33SPEAKERIt's written in C++ and C#,
35:36SPEAKERso it's basically the lowest level current windowing.
35:40SPEAKER- It's fast and good, generally speaking.
35:43SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know how this,
35:45SPEAKERlike what are some of the past ones?
35:47SPEAKER- Oh, there's like Win32 and all the,
35:51SPEAKERlike Wasapi and all the, there's been a bazillion of them.
35:55SPEAKERIs Wasapi one?
35:56SPEAKERNo, that's audio.
35:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know what the specific windowing ones are.
35:59SPEAKERI think Win32 is just kind of the general runtime.
36:02SPEAKERI don't know what the graphics windowing layer of that is,
36:06SPEAKERbut anyway, it doesn't matter.
36:09SPEAKERThe point is, as far as I know,
36:11SPEAKERWinUI 3 is basically the newest iteration
36:13SPEAKERof that kind of stuff.
36:14SPEAKERI think it's the one that looks like Windows 11 stuff.
36:17SPEAKERIf that makes sense.
36:18SPEAKER- Yeah.
36:19SPEAKER- Like the modern right-click menu,
36:20SPEAKERI believe in Windows 11 is a WinUI thing.
36:23SPEAKER- GDI is the old one, and then they did,
36:27SPEAKERI guess WinUI was the one thing that replaced that,
36:29SPEAKERbut that might be a retronym.
36:31SPEAKER- Anyway, like I think what this really is
36:33SPEAKERis them talking around the fact that it came to light
36:36SPEAKERin the last year or so that like parts of the Windows 11 UI
36:39SPEAKERare written in things like React Native,
36:43SPEAKERwhich did not go over well at all.
36:45SPEAKER- They did a bunch of web UI stuff,
36:47SPEAKERand people have been blaming the slow right-click on this,
36:51SPEAKERthe slow right-click menu on this, a bunch of other things.
36:55SPEAKERThe only thing I know of for sure that was written in React
36:58SPEAKERis the recommended pane in the start menu.
37:00SPEAKER- Yeah, that's because I looked this up
37:01SPEAKERright before we recorded to remind myself
37:03SPEAKERthat they themselves revealed that
37:07SPEAKERat a React Native conference.
37:08SPEAKERThey basically were like,
37:09SPEAKER"Hey, look at the React stuff we're doing in Windows,"
37:11SPEAKERand pointed to that start menu stuff,
37:13SPEAKERand that did not go over well.
37:16SPEAKER- No people mocked them.
37:17SPEAKER- Yes, so I mean, should, I'm the web developer,
37:20SPEAKERbut should you be using web frameworks
37:23SPEAKERfor OS Native UI elements?
37:25SPEAKERProbably not.
37:26SPEAKER- When we have access to low-level
37:28SPEAKERand faster compiled languages,
37:31SPEAKERit seems goofy to use web frameworks for that,
37:33SPEAKERbut what do I know?
37:34SPEAKER- The excuse for things like Electron
37:35SPEAKERis that you need those apps to be cross-platform easily,
37:37SPEAKERor it's too much work to do native apps.
37:40SPEAKERIt's too much work to do three different native versions
37:43SPEAKERof Discord when you can just make it an Electron app
37:45SPEAKERand it works on everything.
37:47SPEAKERWindows does not have that problem
37:48SPEAKERbecause Windows runs on Windows.
37:50SPEAKER- Yeah, well, except for Windows runs on ARM
37:53SPEAKERand Windows runs on x86 now,
37:55SPEAKERso maybe they do actually have that problem.
37:57SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, those native APIs
38:00SPEAKERare gonna work on everything that Windows runs on.
38:02SPEAKERThis just seems like a unilateral positive.
38:07SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe we had a bad experiment here
38:10SPEAKERand we needed to get rid of it.
38:11SPEAKER- Yes, improving File Explorer fundamentals.
38:14SPEAKERWe kind of covered that stuff,
38:15SPEAKERbut substantially lower latency for search,
38:18SPEAKERnavigation, and context menus.
38:20SPEAKERI think, let's touch on search again later.
38:23SPEAKER- Yeah.
38:24SPEAKER- Copying and moving large files
38:26SPEAKERwill be faster and more reliable.
38:28SPEAKER- That's exciting.
38:28SPEAKER- Interesting that they say large files.
38:31SPEAKER- I think this large files are okay, but not great.
38:34SPEAKERThe small files seem like they have a big pastel,
38:37SPEAKERa small file is a real problem.
38:38SPEAKER- Yes, well, like we talked about on the Q&A a few weeks ago,
38:40SPEAKERa lot of that is just down to hardware limitations.
38:43SPEAKER- Well, no, it's down to file system limitations,
38:46SPEAKERwhich is a software problem.
38:46SPEAKER- Well, no, no, those are hardware level.
38:48SPEAKERThe IOPS thing is a hardware level gate,
38:51SPEAKERregardless of what file system you're using.
38:53SPEAKER- Fair, okay.
38:55SPEAKER- Faster launch and responsiveness for common file,
38:58SPEAKERthen we kind of covered the File Explorer stuff already.
39:01SPEAKER- And there's some stuff here
39:02SPEAKERabout Windows Subsystem for Linux
39:03SPEAKERI don't think we need to get into.
39:04SPEAKER- Oh, actually there are two things I wanna touch on here.
39:06SPEAKER- Okay.
39:07SPEAKER- Please permit me.
39:08SPEAKERDo you use WSL too, do you?
39:10SPEAKER- No, I run Linux, I don't need that.
39:12SPEAKER- I guess so.
39:15SPEAKERFaster file performance between Linux and Windows,
39:17SPEAKERthat one's actually super interesting to me
39:18SPEAKERbecause I do work in WSL too, like every day.
39:21SPEAKER- How do they--
39:22SPEAKER- There is a huge performance penalty
39:24SPEAKERif you access anything on the Windows part of the storage
39:28SPEAKERversus doing it natively inside the virtual hard drive
39:31SPEAKERthat WSL too runs in.
39:32SPEAKER- So it gives you a VHD that's like EXT2 or something?
39:35SPEAKER- It's a VHDX, yes, that your Linux distro lives in
39:39SPEAKERthat's formatted X4.
39:41SPEAKER- And then do they mount your C drive
39:42SPEAKERas like slash mount slash C or something?
39:45SPEAKER- All of your permanent drives, not removables,
39:48SPEAKERbut permanent drives in the machine get mounted in
39:52SPEAKERinto the WSL two instance automatically.
39:54SPEAKER- That's weird.
39:55SPEAKER- Here's the interesting part.
39:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:57SPEAKER- File IO between what's inside the Linux thing
40:01SPEAKERand the Windows parts of the storage
40:03SPEAKERis done over a protocol called 9P,
40:07SPEAKERwhich is the network data protocol
40:09SPEAKERfrom the operating system plan nine from outer space.
40:13SPEAKER- Oh yeah, of course.
40:14SPEAKER- Dude, you know plan nine, right?
40:15SPEAKER- Are you actually familiar with the movie?
40:17SPEAKERI don't know what plan nine is, no.
40:18SPEAKER- Dude, we could, I mean, you would--
40:20SPEAKER- Is this an episode?
40:21SPEAKER- I was just about to say, we could do an episode on this.
40:23SPEAKERYou would have to do a ton of reading.
40:25SPEAKERI would have to do about 99% as much reading as you
40:27SPEAKERbecause I barely took.
40:28SPEAKERBut what plan nine from outer space is,
40:32SPEAKERis the sequel to Unix.
40:33SPEAKERLike literally Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie
40:35SPEAKERand the people at Bell Labs who created Unix
40:39SPEAKERwent on to make a successor operating system
40:41SPEAKERat Bell Labs called plan nine.
40:45SPEAKERAnd all I know about it is apparently,
40:49SPEAKERokay, you know the everything is a file concept
40:51SPEAKERand all the Unix philosophy bullet points
40:53SPEAKERthose guys came up with,
40:55SPEAKERthey apparently extended all those metaphors out
40:57SPEAKERlike dramatically in plan nine
40:59SPEAKERin ways that everybody who has ever used plan nine
41:02SPEAKERsaid is like mind blowing.
41:04SPEAKERLike, but none of it ever caught on
41:06SPEAKER'cause nobody ever used plan nine
41:07SPEAKERbecause the entire industry had like long standardized
41:09SPEAKERon Unix already at that point.
41:11SPEAKERSo it was basically just turned out to be kind of
41:13SPEAKERan academic experiment that was cool, but forgotten.
41:17SPEAKER- Wow.
41:17SPEAKER- Apparently the way plan nine is able to blend
41:19SPEAKERnetwork resources and printers and file systems
41:23SPEAKERand everything into one giant pool and networked computers
41:27SPEAKERis like, I've seen it described as achingly elegant before.
41:31SPEAKER- Okay.
41:32SPEAKER- Apparently it's like a fascinating approach
41:34SPEAKERto computing generally.
41:35SPEAKERAnd I don't know a ton more than that
41:36SPEAKERother than again, all the people that I've seen
41:38SPEAKERwho have actually used plan nine
41:39SPEAKERspeak like incredibly highly of it.
41:41SPEAKERBut, and this was in the eighties also.
41:43SPEAKER- I have an idea.
41:45SPEAKERI think what you should do,
41:46SPEAKERI think we should make you one of those sandwich boards,
41:49SPEAKERlike people wear on the sides of the streets.
41:52SPEAKERAnd I think next time we go to the flea market,
41:53SPEAKERyou should have a sandwich board that says,
41:56SPEAKERtalk to me about plan nine from outer space.
41:58SPEAKER- Yes, tell me about plan nine.
42:00SPEAKERThere's probably somebody at that flea market
42:02SPEAKERwho has used plan nine.
42:04SPEAKERI guess I think there are modern,
42:05SPEAKERlike there's a, I think the most recently maintained version
42:07SPEAKERis only a few years old.
42:08SPEAKER- Okay.
42:09SPEAKER- You can technically still run it on modern hardware.
42:12SPEAKERAnyway, sorry, that was just an old operating system
42:14SPEAKERdigression, but they used,
42:15SPEAKERapparently 9P is used in all kinds of places these days.
42:19SPEAKERAnd one of the places is in Windows subsystem for Linux two,
42:23SPEAKERthey use it to access the Windows drives.
42:24SPEAKERAnyway, I wonder if they're replacing that whole thing.
42:27SPEAKER- I mean.
42:27SPEAKER- And doing some more direct, direct IO,
42:31SPEAKERbecause like it's really noticeable because I'm like,
42:34SPEAKERI'm like crunching podcasts and videos.
42:36SPEAKERLike when I encode the long story,
42:40SPEAKERlike I encode the ramble cast video in Linux
42:42SPEAKERto a Windows drive and like, you can see it.
42:44SPEAKERYou can see a difference.
42:46SPEAKERIf I use FFmpeg in the Linux to a Windows drive
42:50SPEAKERversus if I use the FFmpeg in Windows to the Windows drive,
42:53SPEAKERlike huge, obvious difference in how fast.
42:56SPEAKER- Well, like talking from inside a VM to outside a VM
43:00SPEAKERis always challenging, right?
43:02SPEAKER- Problem with Linux too, like it's often faster
43:05SPEAKERto use an external hard drive mounted in the Windows VM
43:08SPEAKERand then disconnect it, reconnect it to the Linux VM
43:12SPEAKERand copy it back in than it is to move it
43:14SPEAKERacross the network share or something like that.
43:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:16SPEAKER- But that's cool.
43:18SPEAKER- Yeah, real quick improve network compatibility
43:20SPEAKERand throughput.
43:21SPEAKERI've never noticed that being a problem,
43:22SPEAKERbut I guess that's cool.
43:23SPEAKERMore streamlined first time setup and onboarding experience.
43:26SPEAKERThat's definitely a good thing because there's like
43:28SPEAKERthree different ways to get started
43:30SPEAKERwith this thing right now.
43:32SPEAKERAnd it's kind of a mess knowing which one you should do.
43:35SPEAKERShould you download your,
43:36SPEAKERshould you download your Ubuntu from the Windows store?
43:39SPEAKER- That feels weird.
43:40SPEAKER- Or should you run WSL dash install?
43:44SPEAKER- Do they all do the same thing?
43:45SPEAKER- They all, they basically all get you to the same place.
43:47SPEAKERAlthough yes and no, because I think in some cases
43:50SPEAKERyour Linux distro ends up being a UWP packaged app.
43:54SPEAKERAnd in other cases it's just a VHD.
43:58SPEAKER- Oh my God.
43:59SPEAKER- Yes, it is kind of yuck, exactly.
44:01SPEAKERSo real quick, I promise I won't hijack
44:03SPEAKERthe rest of the episode with this,
44:04SPEAKERbut I've actually just like yesterday and today
44:07SPEAKERhave gone the complete other direction with this thing.
44:09SPEAKER- Okay.
44:10SPEAKER- Because it finally hit me or I finally noticed
44:12SPEAKERthat they have now added the ability to export
44:15SPEAKERthe distros you're already running.
44:17SPEAKER- Oh, as a VHD?
44:18SPEAKER- To either a VHD or a tar ball.
44:20SPEAKERAnd then you can import those back in as distros
44:23SPEAKERthat are not attached to the Windows store.
44:25SPEAKEROr you can actually, a lot of distros
44:27SPEAKERare putting out .wsl files, like arch,
44:30SPEAKERlike arch and Nix OS, you can just go to their websites
44:33SPEAKERand download a .wsl.
44:34SPEAKER- And then just dump that in?
44:36SPEAKER- Run that and it'll just add itself as a distro.
44:39SPEAKER- Is it already installed?
44:40SPEAKERLike is it an image that's installed
44:42SPEAKERor do you have to go to an installer?
44:43SPEAKER- There's no installer, it's just ready to use.
44:45SPEAKERAnyway, long story short, I now just have all the distros
44:49SPEAKERthat I tinker with in WSL as VHDs on a drive.
44:53SPEAKERAnd those VHDs are portable.
44:54SPEAKERI can import them back into a new Windows install later.
44:57SPEAKERI can back them up on my NAS.
44:59SPEAKERI've fully decoupled it from the Windows store
45:01SPEAKERand all the UWP bullshit in a way that makes me very happy.
45:04SPEAKERSo anyway.
45:05SPEAKER- Makes it easier to back up too.
45:07SPEAKER- Okay, sorry, that was my Linux minute.
45:09SPEAKER- Another top level point here is reliability.
45:13SPEAKER- Yes.
45:14SPEAKER- He describes this as the bedrock of trust,
45:17SPEAKERwhich not wrong.
45:18SPEAKER- Sure.
45:19SPEAKER- They're talking about strengthening reliability
45:21SPEAKERand quality of the Windows Insider program,
45:23SPEAKERwhich is great, support your beta testers.
45:25SPEAKER- That's stuff we touched on already.
45:26SPEAKER- Increasing OS driver and app reliability, also good.
45:30SPEAKERReducing OS level crashes, that's fantastic.
45:32SPEAKERMaking it so the drivers don't take out the thing.
45:35SPEAKERThey're not talking about secure boot here
45:37SPEAKERand walking down the kernel,
45:38SPEAKERbut that seems to be something that's coming as well.
45:41SPEAKER- Yeah.
45:42SPEAKER- Just to reduce the CrowdStrike situation in the future.
45:45SPEAKER- Sure.
45:46SPEAKERThis strengthening driver quality and app reliability
45:50SPEAKERacross our vibrant ecosystem of silicon ISV and OEM partners,
45:54SPEAKERlike doesn't that depend on those partners?
45:56SPEAKERLike how much they--
45:57SPEAKER- They could be providing testing.
45:58SPEAKERLike the thing is there's ways,
46:01SPEAKERin the old days that you had the IHV labs
46:03SPEAKERand the Windows wiggle labs
46:05SPEAKERthat would do hardware and software qualification
46:08SPEAKERand they don't so much do that anymore, it seems like.
46:11SPEAKER- Okay, that's fair.
46:12SPEAKER'Cause I mean, like, I think a lot of people
46:14SPEAKERknow like the crappy driver for your LAN interface
46:18SPEAKERon your motherboard that was abandoned
46:20SPEAKERand not updated for the last three years.
46:21SPEAKERThat doesn't work, you know what I mean?
46:23SPEAKERLike people being at the mercy of the crappy vendor drivers
46:26SPEAKERfor their hardware has a tail as old as time.
46:30SPEAKER- I like this last one, more consistent device wake,
46:33SPEAKERincluding further wake consistency improvements
46:35SPEAKERfor docking scenarios.
46:36SPEAKER- Yeah, that's true.
46:37SPEAKER- I know he doesn't mention the warm laptop bag problem,
46:41SPEAKERwhich is a unique to Windows experience.
46:43SPEAKERSee, you have a MacBook,
46:44SPEAKERso you've never had this happen before,
46:46SPEAKERbut often when you take your Windows laptop,
46:47SPEAKERyou put it in your bag, you get on the airplane,
46:50SPEAKERyou get to 10,000 feet, you're like,
46:52SPEAKER"Oh, I'm gonna get my laptop out and do some work,"
46:54SPEAKERand it's been cooking in there the whole time.
46:56SPEAKERSo yeah, more better sleep.
47:00SPEAKERImproving Windows updates seems good.
47:02SPEAKERThe less disruption, so moving to a single monthly reboot
47:06SPEAKERseems like it makes a lot of sense
47:07SPEAKERfor people who don't shut their computer down every night.
47:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems like most of the security updates
47:11SPEAKERthey roll out, well, like you're not in Windows
47:12SPEAKERas much as I am these days,
47:13SPEAKERbut like most of the sort of Windows Defender definitions.
47:16SPEAKER- That's all silent, yeah.
47:17SPEAKER- Yeah, and they don't require reboots typically
47:20SPEAKERfrom what I've seen.
47:21SPEAKERSo yeah, getting it so you only have to actually do
47:23SPEAKERthe big reboot once a month is desirable.
47:27SPEAKER- Yeah, the more control, including ability to pause
47:30SPEAKERfor as long as you need, restart or shut down
47:32SPEAKERwithout being forced to install updates, that I get.
47:34SPEAKERI don't understand why, like I can always choose to reboot
47:38SPEAKEReven if I have an update pending, it seems like.
47:40SPEAKER- Without updating?
47:41SPEAKER- Without updating.
47:42SPEAKER- Interesting.
47:43SPEAKER- I don't know if I did something to make that happen
47:44SPEAKERat some point.
47:47SPEAKERAnd built-in recovery is nice as well.
47:50SPEAKER- Let's see, they talk about biometric authentication
47:52SPEAKERa little bit, which like that's fine.
47:54SPEAKERBut, and then the craft is the good stuff.
47:57SPEAKERThis is the improving the taskbar and start menu experience.
48:02SPEAKERMaking consistent, dependable,
48:05SPEAKERmaking them enabling personalization
48:07SPEAKERso you can put them wherever you want
48:09SPEAKERand make them behave the way you want them to.
48:11SPEAKER- And smaller taskbar, what could that mean?
48:13SPEAKERThat sounds kind of, that sounds exciting.
48:15SPEAKER- I, look, I love my 20 pixel high bar in Linux.
48:20SPEAKERLike it just has all my stuff in it.
48:22SPEAKER- Yeah, or you know, like the Mac OS menu bar
48:23SPEAKERis a good size, I think, for something like that.
48:26SPEAKERLike small, in fact, I mean, variable taskbar size
48:32SPEAKERused to be another Windows feature, remember that?
48:34SPEAKER- Wait, you can make it not go all the way across?
48:36SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, I'm not talking vertical.
48:37SPEAKER- Oh, vertical, yeah, yeah, yeah, make it short, yeah.
48:40SPEAKER- When Windows 95, you could just drag it up and down.
48:42SPEAKER- Yeah, you could have a doubled height.
48:44SPEAKERYou could have two rows of icons down there
48:46SPEAKERif you were a monster.
48:47SPEAKER- I am curious about smaller taskbar.
48:51SPEAKERMore focused experience with less distractions.
48:53SPEAKERSo the setup is faster and quieter
48:55SPEAKERwith fewer pages and reboots.
48:58SPEAKERI hope this also includes things
48:59SPEAKERlike not trying to sell you Game Pass
49:00SPEAKERand Office if you already have them.
49:03SPEAKER- It says device setup on new PCs
49:04SPEAKERis quieter and more streamlined.
49:06SPEAKERI have to hope that means fewer upsells.
49:09SPEAKER- Man, I bet it doesn't, but we can dream.
49:13SPEAKERWidgets surface information more intentionally by default.
49:16SPEAKERI don't know what that means.
49:18SPEAKERThat seems like a nonsense phrase.
49:21SPEAKERSimpler settings make it easier to personalize,
49:23SPEAKERopt into or turn off widgets,
49:24SPEAKERand feed content based on your preferences.
49:26SPEAKERThat seems nice.
49:28SPEAKERReduce notifications so you can stay focused.
49:30SPEAKERThat also, the number of notifications I get from Windows
49:33SPEAKERjust has me leave Windows in D&D all the time.
49:36SPEAKERDo not disturb, sorry, not Dungeons and Dragons.
49:39SPEAKERAnd then enhancing search.
49:40SPEAKERThis is one that matters, 'cause look,
49:43SPEAKERmy official policy is to install everything search.
49:47SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I'll touch on that when we get to my ideas.
49:50SPEAKER- And well, did you know that there's an integration
49:53SPEAKERwith that spotlight bar now, the power toy?
49:56SPEAKER- Well, wait, there's an everything integration?
49:58SPEAKER- There's an everything integration for that.
50:00SPEAKER- Command pallet?
50:02SPEAKER- Is it command pallet?
50:03SPEAKER- Yeah, command pallet is the new one.
50:04SPEAKERPower toy is run, is the original one.
50:06SPEAKER- Yeah, there's an integration with run for sure.
50:08SPEAKERI don't know about the command pallet.
50:10SPEAKER- Dude, what?
50:11SPEAKERShit, I have to look into that.
50:12SPEAKERWell, as we'll get to, I'm just cannibalizing my stuff here.
50:16SPEAKERMaybe they should build their own solution for that,
50:18SPEAKERbut still, that sounds exciting.
50:22SPEAKER- More consistent search, like, here's the thing.
50:24SPEAKERThey say things, my big frustration with Windows search,
50:28SPEAKERthe place I use it most, is to mash the Windows key,
50:31SPEAKERand then I type the name of an application
50:32SPEAKERthat I wanna start. - Totally, totally.
50:33SPEAKER- I've talked about this a thousand times on this podcast.
50:35SPEAKERI'm sorry for bringing it up again,
50:37SPEAKERbut it's the stupidest thing in the world
50:39SPEAKERthat like one out of three times when you do that,
50:40SPEAKERyou get a Bing search result.
50:42SPEAKER- To this day, I just pulled up the start menu
50:47SPEAKERand typed store.
50:48SPEAKER- Yep.
50:49SPEAKER- Microsoft store is the second result.
50:51SPEAKERThe first one is pointing to some random
50:55SPEAKERlike store library file that is not runnable or actionable.
50:59SPEAKERI don't know what that is.
51:01SPEAKER- So like getting the priority on that stuff
51:07SPEAKERin the start menu especially is really simple.
51:10SPEAKERIf you're typing something in the start menu,
51:12SPEAKERyou want to launch an application
51:13SPEAKERor you want to launch a file that you have used recently.
51:17SPEAKERIf there's a conflict,
51:18SPEAKERlet the user decide which one you prioritize.
51:21SPEAKERDon't just make a decision or kick it to the web,
51:24SPEAKERwhich is like the worst possible outcome in this.
51:27SPEAKER- Or give the user some granular control
51:29SPEAKERover what types of things surface in that search,
51:31SPEAKERwhich they don't do.
51:32SPEAKERThey finally, in some way,
51:35SPEAKERthey finally gave you the ability to turn off web searches
51:37SPEAKERlike Bing searches in there.
51:39SPEAKER- No, they didn't.
51:40SPEAKER- Or do you still have to-
51:41SPEAKER- No, you have to do a regedit.
51:43SPEAKER- I did that through group policy actually.
51:44SPEAKER- Yeah, group policy editor regedit, either one will work.
51:46SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, so they should add that, even that.
51:49SPEAKERBut also you should be able to tell it not to search files.
51:51SPEAKERLike I don't need the start menu
51:52SPEAKERto search files on my computer.
51:54SPEAKERI'm there to find the app I want to launch.
51:56SPEAKER- When they originally rolled out that search feature
51:59SPEAKERin Windows Vista, I think, you chose,
52:02SPEAKERhey, do you want to search the web?
52:03SPEAKERNo.
52:04SPEAKERDo you want to search files?
52:05SPEAKERNo.
52:06SPEAKERDo you want to search settings?
52:07SPEAKERYeah, actually that one's useful.
52:08SPEAKERI like that.
52:09SPEAKER- An awful lot of this whole conversation
52:11SPEAKERis just about various functionality
52:13SPEAKERthat Windows used to have
52:14SPEAKERthat they have slowly taken away over time.
52:16SPEAKER- Absolutely.
52:18SPEAKERAnd a lot of it is about, well, okay,
52:20SPEAKERso let's get to the prescriptive phase of this whole thing,
52:23SPEAKERright, where we tell them how to fix this.
52:24SPEAKER'Cause we're smart and we're podcasters
52:26SPEAKERand we know what we're doing.
52:27SPEAKER- Okay, I'm gonna claim the first one
52:29SPEAKERbecause it is literally what we were just talking about.
52:31SPEAKERLike it just makes sense to go ahead and finish the thought.
52:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
52:35SPEAKER- 'Cause it's basically what their last item was about.
52:37SPEAKER- They should just create some kind of everything style
52:40SPEAKERfile indexing service for Windows
52:42SPEAKERand give you instantaneous up-to-date file search.
52:45SPEAKER- They used to have that.
52:46SPEAKERIt was called Windows Search.
52:47SPEAKERIt was in Windows for like a good 10 years.
52:49SPEAKER- Did it actually work?
52:51SPEAKERBecause it has been so long.
52:53SPEAKER- Well, that's a loaded question.
52:54SPEAKER- It has been so long since I used the search field
52:56SPEAKERin File Explorer that I can't even remember
52:58SPEAKERwhen it used to actually ever work, if it ever really did.
53:02SPEAKER- So Windows Search was a XP Vista era thing.
53:06SPEAKERI think it was software they released for XP
53:09SPEAKERas an add-on that you can download.
53:11SPEAKER- Okay, I never used that then.
53:12SPEAKERIf that was a separate install, I don't know what that is.
53:15SPEAKER- Well, and then they integrated it with Vista
53:17SPEAKERand it wasn't as good in Vista as my recollection.
53:20SPEAKERThe search inside files was always iffy.
53:23SPEAKERIt was good at text files and stuff like that.
53:25SPEAKERIt wasn't good at other stuff.
53:26SPEAKER- I don't even need search inside files.
53:29SPEAKERThey would love to have search inside files,
53:30SPEAKERbut I would be happy with search file names working correctly.
53:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so here's the thing.
53:36SPEAKERI don't know that that kind of search
53:38SPEAKERis a thing that people want in 2026.
53:43SPEAKERI know you want that
53:44SPEAKERbecause you're the right kind of nerd to want that.
53:46SPEAKERBut I think-
53:47SPEAKER- We cannot have the abstracted file systems
53:49SPEAKERconversation here.
53:50SPEAKERWe cannot have, I mean,
53:54SPEAKERthe everything should be Google Drive thing is like,
53:58SPEAKERthat might be a red line for me in terms of like,
54:01SPEAKERI might just be tapping out of computers
54:02SPEAKERif that's the way everything is coming.
54:04SPEAKER- Look, this is why I'm using a Linux brand.
54:08SPEAKERI think you're not wrong.
54:10SPEAKERI think that there's,
54:12SPEAKERlook, this is one of those places,
54:13SPEAKERand I assume that they still do this.
54:15SPEAKERThey used to have huge data,
54:17SPEAKERuser data teams at Microsoft where they watched,
54:20SPEAKERthey brought in normal people.
54:22SPEAKERThey paid them like 20 bucks to sit there for an hour
54:23SPEAKERand they watched how they used a computer
54:25SPEAKERand they based a lot of their decisions
54:27SPEAKERon those kinds of interactions,
54:29SPEAKERlike watching those interactions
54:31SPEAKERand how people who don't give a shit about computers
54:35SPEAKERuse their computers as a tool.
54:36SPEAKER- I fully get that and I have no problem
54:38SPEAKERwith it being there as an option.
54:40SPEAKER- This is good.
54:41SPEAKERSo this is my first one.
54:42SPEAKER- Okay.
54:43SPEAKER- My first one is they got to stop shaving the edges
54:46SPEAKERoff of everything.
54:47SPEAKER- Okay, sure.
54:48SPEAKER- Like they've made the entire OS smooth Yoda at this point.
54:51SPEAKERAnd like, yes, it's great that they appeal
54:54SPEAKERto the most mainstream possible audience,
54:57SPEAKERbut it means that anybody who wants more
54:59SPEAKERfrom their computer has to jump
55:01SPEAKERthrough a bunch of insane hoops.
55:02SPEAKERAnd it's stuff like installing your profile folders
55:06SPEAKERto OneDrive by default so that you can't find that stuff
55:09SPEAKERif you want to find that stuff.
55:11SPEAKERIt makes it difficult to access.
55:13SPEAKERIt's stuff like forcing you to reboot
55:16SPEAKERwhen you don't need to reboot.
55:18SPEAKERIt's stuff like installing drivers
55:20SPEAKERwhen you already have a driver that you've manually installed
55:22SPEAKERthat's newer than that driver.
55:25SPEAKERIt's stuff like WinGet being kind of in a weird
55:28SPEAKERin-between state of a feature that like power users want,
55:32SPEAKERbut then they don't support it particularly well.
55:34SPEAKERAnd you end up with weird things
55:35SPEAKERlike you type Discord into it
55:36SPEAKERand there's 18 Discord applications
55:38SPEAKERand you don't know which one is the real Discord.
55:42SPEAKERBut yeah, they have made this thing so easy to use
55:46SPEAKERthat if you want to make the machine your own,
55:49SPEAKERit's almost impossible to.
55:51SPEAKERUI, backend, the whole thing.
55:53SPEAKER- Yes, strong agree.
55:55SPEAKERLike another one of my bullet points in that vein
55:57SPEAKERis that they need to make the process
55:59SPEAKERof doing file associations not a nightmare again.
56:02SPEAKERHave you tried to- - Is it bad?
56:03SPEAKERI just do open with and then pick the thing.
56:05SPEAKER- It is awful.
56:07SPEAKERIt is awful when you're trying to do it in bulk.
56:09SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:10SPEAKER- Like I install some fairly, not unconventional,
56:14SPEAKERlike they're very popular programs,
56:15SPEAKERbut they're not like grab it from the Windows store
56:18SPEAKERor it's not the thing that ships with Windows.
56:20SPEAKERLike I still use UrfanView for like browsing images
56:23SPEAKER'cause it's extremely fast.
56:25SPEAKERYou remember that thing?
56:26SPEAKERI use MPV as my video and audio player.
56:29SPEAKERLike I install those from Scoop with the package manager.
56:32SPEAKERGetting Windows to see those Scoop installs
56:35SPEAKERof those two applications as viable media viewers
56:38SPEAKERthat it will then let me associate with file types
56:41SPEAKERis a nightmare.
56:41SPEAKER- Oh, does it just happen when you run it the first time
56:43SPEAKERand then it registers?
56:45SPEAKER- I've had some luck with that just trying to open the file
56:48SPEAKERand then telling it use this application every time,
56:51SPEAKERbut that doesn't always stick.
56:53SPEAKERBut also, I don't want to have to do that
56:55SPEAKERfor every single extension, every file.
56:58SPEAKERLike I don't want to have to go find a file of every type
57:00SPEAKERI want to associate with the thing
57:02SPEAKERand do that over and over.
57:03SPEAKERI want to check a list or I want to do some bulk thing
57:08SPEAKERbecause how many different video file and audio file
57:10SPEAKERextensions are there? - It's like 100, yeah.
57:11SPEAKER- There's a bajillion of them.
57:13SPEAKERAnd the way they expose them right now in the settings,
57:15SPEAKERyou have to go through either by application
57:17SPEAKERor by file type.
57:19SPEAKERYou have to go through every single file type
57:21SPEAKERand change it to the program automatically.
57:23SPEAKERAnd that's assuming that it identified MPV as a valid
57:25SPEAKERvideo player that I can use for that purpose
57:27SPEAKERin the first place.
57:28SPEAKERIt's the worst it has ever been.
57:30SPEAKER- I wonder if that's a byproduct of the legal settlement
57:33SPEAKERabout the monopoly stuff in the year.
57:36SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, I don't know.
57:38SPEAKER- Well, so this is the corollary.
57:42SPEAKERYou hit the corollary to my first point,
57:44SPEAKERwhich is they smooth off the stuff that doesn't matter
57:47SPEAKERand they don't actually handle common OS pain points
57:50SPEAKERparticularly well.
57:52SPEAKERSo things like this, this is a perfect example.
57:55SPEAKERHey, I want VLC to open all my video files.
57:59SPEAKERThere's no easy way to tell it open all video with VLC.
58:02SPEAKERThere's no easy way to say open all the web stuff
58:04SPEAKERwith Firefox.
58:05SPEAKER- For a while there was, it's not there anymore.
58:07SPEAKERI think it was Windows 10 era.
58:09SPEAKERFor a while, they did have those common buckets
58:11SPEAKERof like, here are all the common video file types.
58:13SPEAKERWhat do you wanna use as your video player?
58:14SPEAKERAnd that actually worked okay for a while,
58:16SPEAKERbut they, A, they took it away and B, their definition
58:19SPEAKERof what counted as a video player was not as broad
58:21SPEAKERas it should have been.
58:22SPEAKER- I think that might be on the software side.
58:24SPEAKERI think you have to register as the right type
58:27SPEAKERof MIME handler.
58:28SPEAKERBut anyway, like why did they get rid
58:32SPEAKERof the old Windows backup tool?
58:34SPEAKERWhy have they, actually, I know why they did that.
58:36SPEAKERIt's 'cause they had to pay somebody a per user license
58:38SPEAKERevery time somebody fired that thing up.
58:40SPEAKERBut they should build a backup tool that makes it easy
58:43SPEAKERto back up to a NAS, an external storage or the cloud
58:46SPEAKERand let that be a user choice, right?
58:48SPEAKERIt's a core part of the OS functionality.
58:50SPEAKEREvery other modern OS ships with that.
58:53SPEAKERWhy are video card vendors and Valve making tools
58:56SPEAKERthat handle things like distributing compiled shaders
58:58SPEAKERfor games?
58:59SPEAKERThat seems like an Xbox app or DirectX feature.
59:01SPEAKERThat should be just something that the OS handles.
59:03SPEAKERThis is what I expect OSs to do,
59:05SPEAKERis take away those pain points.
59:07SPEAKERBut where's a core API that handles,
59:10SPEAKERthat gives access to things like AI upscaling
59:14SPEAKERand frame gen and latency acceleration for games?
59:18SPEAKERThat's another core OS functionality
59:20SPEAKERthat they just don't do.
59:22SPEAKERWhat's the, I mean, I have a bazillion of these.
59:25SPEAKERI'm not gonna belabor it,
59:27SPEAKERbut they don't actually make the things that are confusing.
59:31SPEAKERWhy do they not default?
59:33SPEAKERWhy do they default?
59:34SPEAKERWhen you plug in a monitor,
59:35SPEAKERit's a high refresh rate monitor.
59:36SPEAKERWhy does it default that to 60 hertz?
59:38SPEAKERIf you have a, they know you have the panel,
59:41SPEAKERthey know you have the cable,
59:42SPEAKERthey know you have the video card.
59:43SPEAKERPut it at 120, man.
59:45SPEAKER- I've seen like two or three instances
59:46SPEAKERin the last few months of people saying
59:48SPEAKERthat they bought a high refresh monitor
59:49SPEAKERand then never changed it off of 60 for like a year.
59:51SPEAKERAnd then when they finally did it, their brain exploded.
59:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I was talking to Abby Russell the other day
59:57SPEAKERwho just bought a new monitor.
59:58SPEAKERI was like, "Hey, did you set the refresh rate in Windows?"
1:00:00SPEAKERShe's like, "No, I have to do that."
1:00:02SPEAKERI was like, "Yeah, you do."
1:00:03SPEAKERShe's like, "Oh, this is a lot better."
1:00:05SPEAKER- It is.
1:00:06SPEAKER- Yeah, it's ridiculous.
1:00:07SPEAKERLike why do they not, they don't protect the users
1:00:11SPEAKERfrom doing things that are gonna hurt their use.
1:00:14SPEAKERThey're only doing the users that prevent them
1:00:16SPEAKERfrom doing things that cost Microsoft money
1:00:18SPEAKERor don't make Microsoft money.
1:00:22SPEAKERStop selling stuff all the time, man.
1:00:23SPEAKER- Well, okay, let me add to that.
1:00:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:27SPEAKER- Yes, I agree with you.
1:00:29SPEAKEROkay, this one will never happen
1:00:30SPEAKERbecause it's just not the type of company they are anymore.
1:00:33SPEAKERI wrote, "Maybe start charging for Windows again."
1:00:36SPEAKER- Look, yeah.
1:00:38SPEAKER- Do you remember what on our scientifically determined
1:00:41SPEAKERranking of Windows was the number one Windows?
1:00:43SPEAKER- Was it Windows 7?
1:00:44SPEAKER- It was Windows 7.
1:00:45SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:46SPEAKER- Do you remember when the last time I was
1:00:47SPEAKERthat I paid for a Windows license?
1:00:49SPEAKER- I'm using a Windows 7 license today.
1:00:51SPEAKER- Like Windows 7 is the last boxed copy of Windows
1:00:54SPEAKERthat I just paid for outright and installed on my computer.
1:00:56SPEAKERAnd like that's the last time
1:00:58SPEAKERthat I think everybody acknowledges Windows was universally,
1:01:00SPEAKERlike go figure when Windows basically started becoming free,
1:01:05SPEAKERthey found all the other shittier ways to monetize it.
1:01:08SPEAKER- So I have on my list under the smooth Yoda section
1:01:11SPEAKERof the OS, I have, I can't believe I'm suggesting this,
1:01:14SPEAKERbut I would pay for a stripped down
1:01:16SPEAKERenthusiast version of the OS.
1:01:17SPEAKER- I've been saying this for like months,
1:01:19SPEAKERat least in my head, if not out loud.
1:01:21SPEAKERLike I would, I would happily go back to paying,
1:01:23SPEAKERI don't know, a hundred bucks for a copy of Windows
1:01:26SPEAKERor whatever they want for a better version of Windows
1:01:29SPEAKERthat fixed all these problems
1:01:30SPEAKERand pulled out all the bullshit.
1:01:31SPEAKER- I'm happy to pay to be the customer.
1:01:33SPEAKER- Yes, yes, like I would, you know.
1:01:36SPEAKER- I'd always rather be the customer than the product.
1:01:38SPEAKER- Yes, I'd happily rather start paying for the product again,
1:01:42SPEAKERinstead of being the product.
1:01:43SPEAKER- So yeah, I mean, that definitely goes
1:01:45SPEAKERwith the selling stuff constantly,
1:01:47SPEAKERbut like stuff like pitching Office and Game Pass,
1:01:50SPEAKERwhen I'm already paying for both of those things,
1:01:52SPEAKERfeels like it's the worst feeling in the world.
1:01:54SPEAKERIt's like you're being marketed to by somebody
1:01:57SPEAKERwho's incredibly incompetent.
1:01:59SPEAKERTying features that I like, like that cool wallpapers
1:02:01SPEAKERfrom the internet on the Windows Hello screen.
1:02:04SPEAKERLike I love getting a different wallpaper
1:02:05SPEAKERwhen I log into the computer
1:02:06SPEAKERand it's something that surprises and delight me,
1:02:08SPEAKERthat's great, but I don't want to see an ad bump
1:02:11SPEAKERfor how many people have been bombed today
1:02:14SPEAKERor what horrible earthquake happened in Southeast Asia
1:02:17SPEAKERor some natural disaster that's going to be
1:02:19SPEAKERjust a huge bummer when I'm sitting down
1:02:21SPEAKERto turn on my computer at the start of the day.
1:02:23SPEAKERThat sucks, don't tie those things together.
1:02:26SPEAKERAnd whoever put Bing in the Start menu is really,
1:02:30SPEAKERthey should be in the Hague.
1:02:31SPEAKERLike it's the worst OS decision Microsoft has made ever,
1:02:36SPEAKERI think, it's just profoundly stupid.
1:02:38SPEAKER- You should, again, you should be able to limit
1:02:40SPEAKERthe Start menu to just searching apps
1:02:42SPEAKERthat are listed in the Start menu.
1:02:44SPEAKER- Yeah, weird.
1:02:45SPEAKER- I've got a couple other small ones here.
1:02:47SPEAKERThese are the types of things that I should
1:02:48SPEAKERand probably will go type into that suggest a feature thing.
1:02:52SPEAKERThey added tabs to File Explorer some years ago,
1:02:54SPEAKERwhich is a good thing.
1:02:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I like that.
1:02:56SPEAKER- They should absolutely give you an option
1:02:58SPEAKERto make it default that anytime you open a storage link,
1:03:01SPEAKERlike anytime you open anything
1:03:02SPEAKERthat will spawn a File Explorer window,
1:03:03SPEAKERwhich you often do, you should have the option
1:03:06SPEAKERto have all of those open in your existing File Explorer
1:03:09SPEAKERwindow that's already sitting there.
1:03:10SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds great.
1:03:11SPEAKER- Currently, there's no way to do,
1:03:13SPEAKERso even though you have tabs, every time,
1:03:15SPEAKERlike 'cause you know applications will spawn
1:03:17SPEAKERa File Explorer window occasionally when they're like,
1:03:19SPEAKERhey, go here, go to this location.
1:03:21SPEAKERLike the screenshot tool, the snipping tool
1:03:23SPEAKERdoes that for example.
1:03:24SPEAKERYou take a screenshot with snipping tool,
1:03:26SPEAKERthere's a link right there
1:03:27SPEAKERthat's like open this file in storage.
1:03:30SPEAKERThat's opening a new File Explorer window
1:03:33SPEAKERthat you then have to drag the tab of
1:03:35SPEAKERinto your existing window
1:03:36SPEAKERif you want everything in one place.
1:03:38SPEAKERLike it's just insane that that's like they put the tabs in,
1:03:41SPEAKERbut did not make it so you can easily
1:03:43SPEAKERhave all the tabs go to the same place.
1:03:48SPEAKER- I got one.
1:03:49SPEAKER- Okay, go ahead.
1:03:50SPEAKER- Core OS applications like Notepad and Task Manager
1:03:53SPEAKERand let's see what else.
1:03:56SPEAKERThey should open in, they should,
1:03:59SPEAKERFile Manager should all be instantaneous
1:04:02SPEAKERon any hardware that will run Windows 11.
1:04:05SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, sure. - Like if they take longer
1:04:06SPEAKERthan a quarter of a second to open,
1:04:09SPEAKERsomebody at Microsoft should be getting like the data
1:04:13SPEAKERfrom that machine so they can figure out why it's slow.
1:04:16SPEAKER- Agreed. - Because the benefit
1:04:17SPEAKERof doing a cutoff of an eight-year-old,
1:04:19SPEAKERof everything older than eight years old
1:04:21SPEAKERwhen they did this jump to Windows 11
1:04:23SPEAKERis that the hardware is good at this point.
1:04:27SPEAKER- Agreed.
1:04:30SPEAKERI've got some others that are still
1:04:32SPEAKERother kind of little usability improvements.
1:04:34SPEAKERThey had something like this in Windows 10
1:04:36SPEAKERand they took it away.
1:04:37SPEAKERMaybe you're noticing a theme. - Yeah, weird.
1:04:40SPEAKER- The ability to like, basically better window management,
1:04:43SPEAKERbetter like minimize and restore behavior.
1:04:45SPEAKERLike I have a ton of windows open.
1:04:47SPEAKERI've got two monitors, I do a lot of media work.
1:04:50SPEAKERYou know, like I've just got a lot of stuff open
1:04:52SPEAKERall the time.
1:04:53SPEAKERYou should have the option to minimize
1:04:55SPEAKERand restore all the windows that belong
1:04:57SPEAKERto the same application in like one action.
1:04:59SPEAKER- You can't do that? - Not anymore.
1:05:01SPEAKER- Oh boy.
1:05:02SPEAKER- Used to be able to shift, right click the icon
1:05:04SPEAKERon the taskbar and hit minimize and they would all minimize.
1:05:07SPEAKERThat is gone now.
1:05:08SPEAKER- I didn't know that.
1:05:08SPEAKER- And also like, so the show desktop functionality
1:05:12SPEAKERis still in there.
1:05:13SPEAKERYou know, you can do win key D to do that
1:05:14SPEAKERor I think you can still click to the, yes, I just did it.
1:05:17SPEAKERYou can still click to the right of the system clock
1:05:19SPEAKERto make all your windows minimize.
1:05:22SPEAKERYou should be able to restore all of those
1:05:23SPEAKERto the previous position, which you cannot do.
1:05:26SPEAKERLike the fact that I can't just click that button again
1:05:28SPEAKERto have everything go back exactly like it was.
1:05:30SPEAKER- It sucks.
1:05:31SPEAKER- Like better kind of grouping.
1:05:33SPEAKERLike the way Mac OS handles windows
1:05:35SPEAKERthat belong to the same application makes more sense to me.
1:05:38SPEAKERYou know, you can hide an entire application at one time.
1:05:41SPEAKER- We have. - Which you can't do here.
1:05:42SPEAKER- This whole metaphor for controlling software on an OS
1:05:46SPEAKERhasn't changed in 20 years.
1:05:48SPEAKER- Yeah. - Like they added
1:05:49SPEAKERthe snap corners and the snap edges.
1:05:51SPEAKER- Snap edges are decent actually.
1:05:52SPEAKER- In Windows 8, I guess, which I like.
1:05:53SPEAKERThey're good.
1:05:54SPEAKER- Windows actually, that's one thing Windows is doing well
1:05:56SPEAKERthese days is the snapping, especially with fancy zones.
1:05:59SPEAKERBut even without it, it's like pretty robust now.
1:06:01SPEAKER- But no, they could do better.
1:06:04SPEAKER- There's a lot of room for improvement, yeah.
1:06:08SPEAKERAnd like they should be pushing this stuff forward.
1:06:10SPEAKERThey shouldn't have to look at what people are doing
1:06:13SPEAKERwith Linux and Mac OS and then lift that.
1:06:15SPEAKERThey should be coming up with novel new ways
1:06:17SPEAKERfor people to interact with computers
1:06:18SPEAKERthat aren't, hey, buy a tablet.
1:06:21SPEAKER- Sure.
1:06:22SPEAKER- Firefox has a big giant button in it now
1:06:24SPEAKERthat says turn AI off.
1:06:27SPEAKERThey should have that.
1:06:28SPEAKERThat's a great feature.
1:06:29SPEAKER- Well, let me do you one better.
1:06:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:06:31SPEAKER- It's got a big button that said turn AI on.
1:06:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:06:35SPEAKER- Like what if it defaulted to off?
1:06:36SPEAKER- Like you opt in?
1:06:36SPEAKER- Yeah, what if you had to opt into it?
1:06:38SPEAKER- It's madness.
1:06:39SPEAKERThat'll never happen.
1:06:41SPEAKERBut yes, opting in sounds great.
1:06:43SPEAKERI bet their stockholders have feelings about that.
1:06:46SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:06:47SPEAKER- I got one more and then I'm out.
1:06:49SPEAKERBut I'm gonna say that Windows documentation
1:06:51SPEAKERhasn't been good in about 15 years at this point.
1:06:55SPEAKER- Are you saying they should start shipping
1:06:56SPEAKERthose big thick white books again?
1:06:58SPEAKER- I think that when they killed the knowledge base,
1:07:01SPEAKERthey made an enormous opportunity for scammers and fraud.
1:07:06SPEAKERAnd there's a lot of good sites.
1:07:08SPEAKERThere's Stack Overflow and there's a bunch of places
1:07:10SPEAKERwhere you get good Windows information.
1:07:12SPEAKERBut there's also a lot of AI spam sites now
1:07:15SPEAKERthat are just trying to sell people memory doublers
1:07:19SPEAKERand Windows registry cleaners and garbage like that
1:07:22SPEAKERthat doesn't actually do anything.
1:07:23SPEAKERAnd that void exists because they don't have
1:07:27SPEAKERan authoritative source for a lot of information
1:07:29SPEAKERthat's not their message boards.
1:07:31SPEAKER- That's fair.
1:07:31SPEAKERI will say they're sort of like their developer documentation
1:07:34SPEAKERand more kind of nerdy adjacent stuff.
1:07:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:37SPEAKER- Like the WSL2 documentation is pretty good
1:07:41SPEAKERand stuff like that.
1:07:41SPEAKERBut yes, for the more mainstream user interface type stuff.
1:07:46SPEAKERYou're right.
1:07:47SPEAKER- Mike Denseglio, who is a contributor at PC World,
1:07:49SPEAKERhe does security stuff for us over there.
1:07:52SPEAKERWorked at Microsoft for a long time.
1:07:54SPEAKERHe was one of the people behind BitLocker.
1:07:55SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:07:56SPEAKERYeah, I've heard him on that Dual Boot Diaries
1:07:58SPEAKERlike special interview with him.
1:08:00SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, he was saying that when they added
1:08:04SPEAKERthe QR codes on the blue screen,
1:08:06SPEAKERoriginally each of those was supposed to go
1:08:08SPEAKERto a discrete page where it told you how to solve
1:08:11SPEAKERlike what the blue screen you got meant
1:08:13SPEAKERand how to solve it if it was fixable.
1:08:14SPEAKER- That would've been cool.
1:08:15SPEAKERThat would've been cool.
1:08:16SPEAKER- And then they just, they didn't have budget
1:08:18SPEAKERto make the content for that, so they didn't do it.
1:08:20SPEAKER- That stinks.
1:08:21SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:08:22SPEAKER- Now they don't even let you see the crash dump
1:08:23SPEAKERor whatever it is long enough to scan the QR code
1:08:25SPEAKERbefore it goes away.
1:08:26SPEAKER- No, well, you can fix that by enabling full dumps
1:08:29SPEAKERinstead of mini dumps.
1:08:30SPEAKERBut anyway, what you got?
1:08:33SPEAKER- That kind of, I burned my they should just start charging
1:08:36SPEAKERfor Windows again as my closer, unfortunately.
1:08:41SPEAKERBut that's most of my stuff.
1:08:44SPEAKERI mean, there's certainly more stuff I could come up with.
1:08:46SPEAKERLike virtual desktop management should be better.
1:08:48SPEAKERThey have made that worse in Windows 11.
1:08:50SPEAKER- I think that fits in the, hey, the UI hasn't changed
1:08:53SPEAKERin a meaningful way in a long time.
1:08:54SPEAKER- Like it used to be that if you have something like Chrome
1:08:57SPEAKERor File Explorer where you can have multiple windows,
1:08:58SPEAKERyou know, multiple instances of the same thing.
1:09:01SPEAKERIt used to be that if you had that open on one desktop,
1:09:03SPEAKERbut you went to another desktop where it wasn't open
1:09:05SPEAKERand clicked the icon, it would just open a new instance
1:09:07SPEAKERof it on that desktop,
1:09:08SPEAKERwhich obviously is what you're trying to do.
1:09:11SPEAKERNow-
1:09:12SPEAKER- It just smacks you back to the other desktop?
1:09:13SPEAKER- Yes, now if you had it open on a different desktop,
1:09:15SPEAKERit will instead just send you back to the previous desktop
1:09:18SPEAKERthat the app is open on and open that version.
1:09:20SPEAKERAnd it's like, no, I need a new File Explorer window
1:09:22SPEAKERover here on my work desktop.
1:09:23SPEAKERLike what the-
1:09:24SPEAKER- See, that's why, like I'm gonna take it one step further.
1:09:28SPEAKERI think that if you should have a different task bar
1:09:30SPEAKERand different settings for your,
1:09:32SPEAKERyou should be able to set that stuff up differently
1:09:34SPEAKERfor your different desktops, right?
1:09:35SPEAKER- And give people some customization options
1:09:37SPEAKERaround how they want those things to behave
1:09:39SPEAKERbecause different people have different mental models
1:09:42SPEAKERfor how those things should work.
1:09:43SPEAKERAnd like some amount of variability would be nice there.
1:09:48SPEAKER- Yes, that's it.
1:09:51SPEAKERMicrosoft, we would like some amount of variability, please.
1:09:54SPEAKER- Yes, sure.
1:09:57SPEAKERI take this blog post as a good sign, generally.
1:10:00SPEAKERLike the fact that they felt compelled to post this
1:10:02SPEAKERand that they've got like a pretty well-ordered
1:10:04SPEAKERlist of priorities they're gonna tackle
1:10:06SPEAKERand some of those actually do sound kind of useful.
1:10:08SPEAKERLike I'm optimistic that they,
1:10:12SPEAKERregardless of their motivations,
1:10:13SPEAKERwhich it seems like it's mostly out of desperation.
1:10:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:17SPEAKER- Like, hey, please don't hate us
1:10:19SPEAKERany more than you already do.
1:10:20SPEAKERBut like, I'm hopeful this is headed in a good direction,
1:10:23SPEAKERbut time will tell.
1:10:24SPEAKER- I felt pretty good about it until the,
1:10:29SPEAKERhey, we've taken the co-pilot stuff out of Notepad
1:10:32SPEAKERand Paint, turned out to be just renaming it.
1:10:34SPEAKERAnd then that feels bad.
1:10:36SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:10:38SPEAKER- But I'd love to hear what you all think.
1:10:40SPEAKERWhat would you like to see Microsoft fix in Windows?
1:10:44SPEAKERYou can post them to us in the Discord
1:10:46SPEAKERor send them to techpot@content.town.
1:10:48SPEAKERI think we have questions and answers coming up next week.
1:10:50SPEAKERSo maybe we'll hit some of the faves.
1:10:53SPEAKER- I would also encourage people
1:10:55SPEAKERto send them into the feedback hub.
1:10:56SPEAKERIt seems like they're actually gonna pay attention to that
1:10:58SPEAKERin a way that maybe-
1:10:59SPEAKER- Yeah, now that you mentioned it,
1:11:01SPEAKERlike if they were ever going to look at these suggestions
1:11:03SPEAKERand bug reports, now is probably the time.
1:11:06SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:11:07SPEAKER- I have one more question.
1:11:08SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:11:09SPEAKER- Also for people on our Discord,
1:11:10SPEAKERchatting in this week's thread,
1:11:12SPEAKERthis goes for them too.
1:11:13SPEAKERAnybody who switched to Linux from Windows.
1:11:16SPEAKERAlso, I don't know if this is asking you
1:11:18SPEAKERto like burn future Dual Boot Diaries material.
1:11:21SPEAKER- No, let's do it.
1:11:22SPEAKER- Could you see yourself ever switching back at this point?
1:11:26SPEAKER- I mean, yeah.
1:11:27SPEAKER- Could you be enticed to make it your daily driver again
1:11:30SPEAKERif it got better?
1:11:31SPEAKER- I mean, look, in the capitalist state that we live in,
1:11:37SPEAKERif I have an employer that runs Windows,
1:11:39SPEAKERI'm gonna run Windows, right?
1:11:40SPEAKER- Oh, sure, yeah.
1:11:41SPEAKERI mean, if you have a reason that you have to,
1:11:42SPEAKERthat's different, but like in your current state.
1:11:46SPEAKER- If I started, like right now it's convenient
1:11:48SPEAKER'cause of the games that I'm playing most
1:11:49SPEAKERrun on Linux pretty well.
1:11:52SPEAKER- Sure.
1:11:53SPEAKER- If I got real into Marathon or something
1:11:54SPEAKERthat doesn't run on Linux,
1:11:55SPEAKERmaybe we can have a conversation.
1:11:57SPEAKERI can't imagine, I feel like I've gotten to a point
1:12:00SPEAKERwith productivity stuff where I'm much more,
1:12:02SPEAKERlike the way window handling works for me now
1:12:05SPEAKERis so much better than I've ever had in Windows before.
1:12:07SPEAKER- That's actually, I started--
1:12:08SPEAKER- It would be hard to go back.
1:12:09SPEAKER- I started to put introduce a tiling window option.
1:12:14SPEAKER- This is what I'm talking about.
1:12:15SPEAKER- But I didn't put it on my list
1:12:16SPEAKER'cause I just assumed you would put it on yours.
1:12:18SPEAKER- Well, I mean, nobody is driving UI forward at this point,
1:12:22SPEAKERreally, except for the Linux people.
1:12:23SPEAKERAnd like, they're doing amazing stuff over there.
1:12:26SPEAKERIt is the, what was it, the cosmic people,
1:12:29SPEAKERwhen we had them on dual boot diaries,
1:12:30SPEAKERthe people from System 76 who make the cosmic desktop
1:12:36SPEAKERand their desktop OS said that they added a toggle in
1:12:40SPEAKERon workspaces for tiling.
1:12:42SPEAKERAnd then like three days later,
1:12:43SPEAKERthey were walking around the office
1:12:44SPEAKERand all the people that were on the dog food build
1:12:46SPEAKERwith that had switched to tiling for all of their desktops.
1:12:48SPEAKERAnd it's because like the fancy zones
1:12:53SPEAKERand the corner snapping and all that stuff
1:12:54SPEAKERis convenient and good,
1:12:55SPEAKERbut having the OS just place the windows for you,
1:12:58SPEAKERit turns out is transformative.
1:13:01SPEAKER'Cause the whole point of this
1:13:03SPEAKERis that you don't have to think about it.
1:13:04SPEAKERAnd if you set it up right,
1:13:06SPEAKERyour windows are just always in the exact same place
1:13:08SPEAKERand you develop muscle memory around that stuff,
1:13:10SPEAKERwhich is really, really nice.
1:13:11SPEAKER- Yeah, like I'm trying to think of the last time
1:13:13SPEAKERa commercial operating system feels like it really innovated
1:13:15SPEAKERin the user interface department and like-
1:13:17SPEAKER- Apple introduced Exposé.
1:13:19SPEAKER- But that's exactly, in fact, I was gonna say gestures,
1:13:22SPEAKERlike multi-touch gestures on the Mac with track powers
1:13:24SPEAKERis kind of the last time I feel like any aspect of input
1:13:27SPEAKERor window management or UI, generally UX,
1:13:30SPEAKERlike really felt fresh and interesting and innovative.
1:13:33SPEAKER- Tabs, when the browsers added tabs, maybe.
1:13:36SPEAKER- Yeah, it's been a while.
1:13:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it feels fairly ossified.
1:13:42SPEAKERAnd when we reach a point where things are changing,
1:13:44SPEAKERthen it's good for your brain to do new things, is the TLDR.
1:13:51SPEAKERAnd one of the new things that would be good
1:13:53SPEAKERfor your brain to do is to support your favorite
1:13:56SPEAKERlistener-supported tech shows like this.
1:13:58SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.
1:13:59SPEAKER- Fred and Will made a tech pod.
1:14:00SPEAKERWe wouldn't be here without the folks who support the show
1:14:03SPEAKERand we appreciate each and every one of them.
1:14:05SPEAKER- We would not.
1:14:06SPEAKER- If you wanna find out how you can support the show,
1:14:09SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod,
1:14:12SPEAKERwhere for $5 a month, which is like
1:14:15SPEAKERwhen I went to the coffee shop the other day
1:14:16SPEAKERand got a coffee, it was half the price of a cup of coffee.
1:14:20SPEAKERSan Francisco's a little expensive right now.
1:14:22SPEAKER- That's a hell of a cup of coffee.
1:14:24SPEAKER- I'm not getting coffee at stores anymore, Brad,
1:14:25SPEAKERit's too damn expensive.
1:14:27SPEAKERBut the tech pod, not too damn expensive.
1:14:30SPEAKERFor five bucks, you get access to the Discord,
1:14:33SPEAKERyou get access to the monthly Patreon exclusive episodes,
1:14:37SPEAKERand you keep us from doing weird things
1:14:40SPEAKERlike putting ads on the podcast.
1:14:41SPEAKERSo we appreciate you.
1:14:43SPEAKERWe especially appreciate our executive producer
1:14:46SPEAKERto your patrons, including OpenAI Delenda Est,
1:14:49SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett, OctothorpeBunnyJerk,
1:14:53SPEAKERDavid Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon,
1:14:56SPEAKERmakers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:14:59SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:15:00SPEAKER- Thank you, I'm the only one who saw this.
1:15:04SPEAKERThis is not a video podcast and you're facing the other way.
1:15:06SPEAKERYour game frame was just doing
1:15:08SPEAKERsome real weird shit for a second.
1:15:11SPEAKER- Really?
1:15:12SPEAKER- Yeah, like the bottom two rows of pixels
1:15:14SPEAKERwere lit up real bright in some interesting colors.
1:15:17SPEAKER- Oh, no.
1:15:18SPEAKER- In a way that was, it seemed to fix itself.
1:15:20SPEAKERIt righted itself and continued on.
1:15:22SPEAKER- Oh, I'm gonna be sad if my game frame is on the friends.
1:15:24SPEAKER- It was cool, to be honest,
1:15:26SPEAKERand it was like a bit glitch arty.
1:15:28SPEAKERI don't know what was going on there.
1:15:30SPEAKER- I'll be honest, I was thinking about,
1:15:33SPEAKERI was thinking about doing a,
1:15:36SPEAKERlike writing a Python script or something
1:15:37SPEAKERthat would generate some random noise to put up there.
1:15:40SPEAKERI had that. - Oh, yeah, sure.
1:15:42SPEAKER- I got that, I got the, I got that,
1:15:44SPEAKERthat Pimoroni galactic unicorn
1:15:46SPEAKERor whatever that thing's called.
1:15:48SPEAKERMaybe I'll do that with that.
1:15:49SPEAKERI think there's a way to do like whopper lights on that
1:15:52SPEAKERjust out of the box, but anyway, glitch arty.
1:15:55SPEAKERIt's the future, man.
1:15:56SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool.
1:15:57SPEAKERI spent a little bit of time last weekend
1:15:58SPEAKERreading about async IO in Python.
1:16:00SPEAKER- There you go.
1:16:01SPEAKER- Which is asynchronous,
1:16:02SPEAKERlike how to do multiple things at once
1:16:04SPEAKERand hand off control to different functions
1:16:06SPEAKERand have things wait and it's the first step
1:16:09SPEAKERto writing a demon.
1:16:10SPEAKER- Have you played the former was replaced, Brad?
1:16:12SPEAKER- No, no, I have not.
1:16:13SPEAKER- You need to play that.
1:16:14SPEAKERYou would very much like, it'll run on your laptop too.
1:16:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I should check that out,
1:16:17SPEAKERbut this is basically how you would like to do an event loop
1:16:20SPEAKERfor something like a service or a demon
1:16:23SPEAKERthat sits there waiting for things to happen
1:16:24SPEAKERas opposed to working imperatively
1:16:27SPEAKERand then into, anyway, programming.
1:16:29SPEAKERInteresting stuff. - Yeah, it's the future.
1:16:31SPEAKERThat'll do it for us this week.
1:16:32SPEAKERThanks everybody for listening.
1:16:33SPEAKERAs always, we appreciate y'all
1:16:35SPEAKERand please consider the environment
1:16:38SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.
1:16:39SPEAKER(upbeat music)