article

REVIEW - windows weekly

episode # 372

[subjects-summary]

[00:00] smalltalk

] today is 3rd anniversay of twits new 'brickhouse studio' and there having an open house party
] MJF was the guest on twits triangulation show this week
] bonus MJF story - the bill gates and steve jobs interview, that could have been ...

[04:40] 18,000 layoffs company wide

] 12,500 of the 18000 total layoffs will be nokia employees
] 14% of the total msft workforce
] 6,000 msft employees is still the largest number of msft employees ever laid off
] 1,371 in redmond, WA hq
] a terrible thing for the people being laid off, BUT
] the layoffs were needed - too many layers at the company, too much management
] wall street is "cheering this on", they are liking the layoffs.
] msft has "B dash employees", aka external employees, contingent workforce,
] geekwire say 71,000 of these employees , NOT full time employees, work for 1 show or 1 event,
] msft trying to trim this workforce by 20%
] finnish finance minister says, "msft betrayed finland"
] size of the business was unsustainable,
] employees were 'taken care of', 1.5B set aside for layoff packages in latest financial reports
] at nokia, phones were the primary business, at msft phones is a small component, nokia was staffed at levels of a much larger sized company
] windows division people were laid off, quite a few testers were laid off
] undoing the "functional management structure" put in place during Sinofsky/Balmer era
] theory is doest make sense to have 'silos' of test, dev and program management,
] combining roles of developers and testers, devs should test, not just develop and throw it over the wall to testers
] rumour - theory was too get rid of extra management levels, hierarchy, the people who stand between a decision and implementation BUT instead they got rid of key people and not the driftwood,
] msft had already done something similar this at bing, at office and at windows server divsion
] xbox music is safe, tweets Joe Belifore, a msft VP
] msft did not handle these layoffs, as well as they could have, boner
] the size of the layoff was unexpected

[22:40] the end of the Android X era at Nokia, Asha is gone too

] the android division at nokia has been axed
"] PT - i wasn't annoyed by it, i was agressively against it, it sends a bad message to windows phones developers
] msft was recruiting android developers up until this week,
] ? is why when they would have known that this division was going to be axed, maybe to NOT signal that that was coming ???
] nokia adopted windows phone, did an amazing job, BUT sold fewer and fewer phones, AND were not making any money
] was logical for nokia to fallback on android phones, BUT ....
] nokia announcing the android phones after msft had announced its intentions to purchase the company, which was ridiculous,
"] PT borderline crazy time
] [speculation] maybe they were thinking that with Nadella being the leading contendor for CEO and him being "against" the Nokia aquisition, that he would try and kill it
] nokia's 'ASHA' phones are also discontinued
] these were low end phones that were running a different OS (symbian)
] msft IS still experimenting with ways to run android apps on windows phones
] msft had made design concessions on the phone hardware because of the Android X deal, example use the software buttons instead of hardware buttons(PLUS), no camera button(MINUS),
] 530 super low end phone, out in europe, coming to us (Tmobile) in sept, 4Gb/512mb, very cheap, dual sim support on intl, much better of with the 635 which is only about $50 more
] the 530 is the really cheap phone to replace the Android X and the Asha phones

[38:00] redmond we have a problem, "communicatively dysfunctional"

] the company we cover is disfunctional, they have a communication problem and its time for an intervention
] they are never speaking with clarity
] the best example is the 1 windows bit for all screens, of all sizes
] the truth is ... nothing has changed
] there still will be multiple versions of windows, they just added yet another version for the Internet of Things
] BUT this was reported as "one windows, there will be only 1 version of windows" in the future, reporters are not windows specialists
] 1 developer platform,
] even the notion of universal apps is a bit of bs, its just a consolidated set of apps that share some code, not all code
] the expansion of univ. apps to xbox one will be a +
] everything Nadella says is parsed by many different audiences, business, enterprise user, end users
] advice from MJ F - reporters covering msft, should google it - universal apps. Learn about it
] streamline investments in music and video
] could be bad news for xbox music,
] Joe B tweeted that its not being dropped
] One Windows: It's really three Windows variants sharing more core stuff
] another communication - surface pro 3 docking station now availabe for pre-order, being reported,
] has been available in North America for pre order, since Surface launched, now it avail outiside of NA in some additional countries, ships in sept.
] Surface Pro 3 Docking Station: Now available for preorder in the UK and elsewhere
] tech ed show explanations
] ... new show in chicago next year, may 4th
] TechEd is dead (or is it?)
] perspective - frustrations with msft, keep you in business

[55:00] lenovo Mix II - another PR blunders, runner up for the "worst blunder" of the week

] Lenovo announced they are suspending sales of their mixII windows tablet in the US, will be back for christmas
] John Phillips, a veteran @PCWorld writer, recieved an email from Lenovo, after reaching out to them
] readers must have reported that they can no longer order the ThinkPad 8 or the Lenovo Mix II windows tablets from the companies website
] Phillips was told ... "we are not selling the mini tablets in the US, the larger tablets are selling but the small tablets are not, We have moved our stock to countries where they sell better.
] then Lenovo denied that statement and said they have "sold out" in the US, will be bringing back more for the fall/xmas season
] PC world got the story right
"] PT - when i reviewed windows tablets this year, the Thinkpad 8 was the best of the bunch, but it costs considerably more ...
] the next best, was kind of a tie, the Dell Venue Pro 8 and this Lenovo Mix II, and they both cost about the same, have slightly different styles
] so if your going to buy one now, your going to have to get the Dell
] Lenovo is getting out of mini-tablets. In the US. No, wait. No it isn't.

[60:00] msft FY-2014-QTR-04 earnings report on Tuesday, July 22, 2014

] a mixed results qtr, revenue was very good
] 4.6 B in earnings
] .55 share earnings on expectations of .60 share
] boiled down to 3 words, -nokia hardware horrors,
] had to take some losses, it wasnt pretty
] enterprise business did really well, helped to offset some of the pain from nokic
] server products did well - sql server,
] cloud did really well - office 365, azure, 4.4B annual run rate (Major new businesses)
] analysts liked the qtr, cutting product lines, making layoffs
] Enterprise still carries the day
] Satya Nadella says, bing to be a money maker by 2016,
] currently has approx 19% market share in the US, to make money expectation of 25% market share, their current trajectory shows its feasible
] Bing has lost over 10B to date, ads are it's main revenue, will take a while to recover that
] turning Bing into more of a platform, not just a web search engine, used across different services, example maching learning
] windows phone to be "operating break even by FY 2016", ( 2 years )
] what does that mean, the nokia business,
(] PT & MJ F are sounding somewhat skeptical about this, but note that msft doesnt say stuff like this lightly to analysts )
] 1.99 B in revenues in 4th QTR, operating loss of 692M,
] commercial stuff is going gangbusters,
] not giving up on consumers,
"] PT - they dont have to give up on consumers, consumers are doing it for them"
"] PT - msft does have good consumers products ( outlook, office 365, xbox, )
] msft doesnt want to be an IBM and focus solely on the enterprise,
] msft working on some smart things, home and business fusion,
] msn portal site, retail stores for hardware ( we dont consider those core to the business, we will ensure disciplined financial execution)
] they are not getting out of business, they are not getting into it further, maybe more layoffs
?] is Nadella digging himself out of Balmer's hole?
] No, Nadella is getting credited for some of the 'projects' Ballmer initiated, example office of ipad
] he is trying to get the company re-aligned, around his mobile first, cloud first, platforms and productivity mantra
] hardware is just meant to light up the software VS Ballmer's intentions to make a lot of hardware
] xbox - is going back to gaming, VS being an entertainment platform, were commited to it being a gaming platform
] this is confusing because previously messaged 65% of xbox activity was not gaming, (was positioned as 'entertainment console' )
"] PT ... Nadella is still in "honeymoon period", we are not hearing "screw this guy, get him out of there, what does he thiink he's doing?"
"] MJF ... says he is getting savaged on the mini microsoft blog, anonymously, by some msft employees
x] PT up until this point, he hasn't really done much as far as high level decision making process,
x] possibly, more layoffs in the next 6 months
] the cost of the unsurfaced surface
] slide deck in earnings call referenced surface, taking a hit on margins because of surface model(mini) that were not released
] surface mini and the ?remaining surface RT inventory? - were written off
] doesnt mean the mini is dead, just the ones they already built will likely not be sold, maybe used for parts or ???
] story is Nadella looked at it, said it wasnt 'differentiated enough', we dont have touch first office for windows, were going to pull it

[00:00] oneNote parody video

] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf-XI-gihN8 - OneNote team parodies version of "Sexy and I know it"

[BONUS] latest threshold - leaks start menu screenshots

] theVerge - understand that the screenshots are genuine and in some versions

[00:00] TIP OF THE WEEK

] msft changed 'design guidelines' for win phone hardware - buttons can now use 'software' buttons(softkey) vs hardware buttons (physical)
] PRB w/hw buttons, ex photos - when looking at phone and you hand it to someone, the photo disappears because you usually touch the 'search' button, with the button on screens, that solves the problem, also the buttons are customizable

[00:00] SOFTWARE PICK OF THE WEEK

] wizTree by antibody software - oneDrive was synching more then what he thought it was, has used another app, but this 1 runs really, really quick,
] Uber for Windows Phone - official app for windows available now,
] proshot - $2.00 camera app - very speedy, low light performance, cant be used as default camera, UI is not standard, both msft and nokia apps are awesome but ..., can pin configuration for camera to screen

[00:00] ENTERPRISE PICK OF THE WEEK

] Azure ML public preview - maching learning service, live, preview version, on the first day 1000 users had tried it out, look for msft machine learning blog
] Microsoft's Machine Learning blog

[00:00] codename of the week - OneCore

] the common code being shared across various windows platforms, shared common componentry on

[100:00] Beer picks of the week

] MJF - Firestone Walker Sucuba
] PT -Paul's beer pick: Tripel Karmeliet

[objects]

[tech-sw os]

] windows 8.x
] windows 8.1
] windows 8.1 update
] windows 8.1 update 2
] windows 9.x (threshold)
]

[tech-hw-tablets]

] tablet - surface pro 3

[tech-hw-gaming]

] x-box-one

[tech-hw-smartphones]

] smartphone - lumia 630
] smartphone - lumia 635

[tech-software]

] office-365

[people]

] show - twit.tv

] host - Leo Laporte
] co-host - Paul Thurrott -
] co-host - Mary Jo Foley -

] MSFT - microsoft

] Satya Nadella

]

[events]

[places]

] SHOW - PAGE url - Windows Weekly 372 | TWiT.TV - watch the live video of this episode
] SHOW - audio - twit.cachefly.net/audio/ww/ww0372/ww0372.mp3 - download the .mp3 audio file

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REVIEW - windows weekly

episode # 372

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[events]

[places]

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