A better keyboard than QWERTY
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Welcome to the bird cast, the flagship podcast of alternate keyboard layouts. I'm a friend, David piers, and I am sitting here at my dining room table going through what I guess i'd like to colleges, my tech crp bag. So a hundred years ago, I started basically buying duplicate of all of my charges, and plugs and chords and back up headphones.

Just have one thing that I can just leave in a bag, in my suitcase at all time. So I don't have to unplug everything from my room. When I want to leave, I don't have to constantly be slipping stuff back and forth.

I kind of leave everything where IT is at home, and then I have this stuff for travel. IT has saved me so much time and so much effort and so much forgetting of stuff over the years. I cannot recommend IT enough, but when I travel a bunch in a row, IT gets like this.

It's kind of messy and tankle and I don't know anything is and there's a bunch of stuff that supposed to be in here that i'm sure is not in here. Everyone in a while, I have to sit down and very quietly and lovingly coil IT all back up, put IT back in needy, and then slowly destroy IT again over time. Works up great, makes me feel good.

No regrets. Anyway, we have an also shop coming up free today. We're gona talk about two different things. First, starting off with our kind of accidental keyboard series that we're doing. We're going to talk to somebody who spent two years reinventing from the ground up how his keyboard works and how uses IT the superfund ry.

Then we're going to talk to tom, warn about a surprising amount of change happening at microsoft right now, and what that means for its plans for A I and its plans for surface devices and what in a ipc is an old bunch other stuff. Also going to do a hot line question. We got to like coming up the epco, all that is coming up in just a second.

But first, I just discovered that one of these cables has finally come like fully on done and doesn't charge anymore. And so I need to buy the replacement. This thing has lived a long life. It's time for a new one. This is the verge cast.

We've seen the set.

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Welcome back. Here's a question. How often do you think about your keyboard? I think for most people, the answer is never. You just like have a keyboard on your laptop, on your phone, that's your keyboard.

The end at the very top end of the spectrum, I think, are the mechanical keyboard people who obsess over switches and colors and all that kind of I think as regular computer users go, that's about as intensity that gets. But there is a community of people online who go much, much deeper than that. And I recently got on a call with one of them who spent an evening in his office and sweden .

talking to me about keyboards. And I started computer science. But I prefer to see myself as a self talk developer.

I found to us because over the last couple of years on his blog, he's been keeping a journal of sorts about his attempt to build the perfect keyboard, because the key body had the ones that you and I use all day without thinking much about them, wasn't working for him anymore. I mean, IT was fine in a certain sense, journalists of programmer and a pretty fast typist.

I've never used these typing trainer or website or stuff, but I I think I typed in like under twenty words per minute or something. It's it's okay, but it's not super incredible where when I started looking at this if was actually when I got.

by the way, IT stands for a repetitive stress injury. Or repetitive stress injury is an umbrella term for what essentially is a lot of problems caused by doing the same thing the same way, over and over and over again.

I started feeling pain in my hands, specifically my right hand. I had also broke in my on the top of the hand, close to the the pink key. So when I started typing, I like, oh, pressing like enter and other keys with my pinky kind of hurt.

So the first thing jn stop was okay. Maybe i'll get an organometallic ard, one of those that either split into or just has that kind of wave shape that supposed to be less intense on the risks and forearms. He had actually tried .

these keyboards before, like fifteen years ago or something I was relating to mechanical keyboards. But at that time this was just, oh, pretty kick PS. Oh, maybe this switches that sound cool.

Oh, look at our fast on typing IT sounds like i'm typing fast with this switches. And I also bought like an argo dox. I think it's was one of the first like argono ical mechanical keyboards.

And I got that I was super excited. I tried that out and hated IT and he has put the in the box. So when I got the site problems again, oh, but I had the solution here in a box somewhere.

So if you put IT together and like, oh, are you see you crafted like, because IT doesn't look like a regular keyboard, right? So you have to figure out where to put you, at least your enter key space keys and some of these things. So I thereof crated them like, all this will be perfect, if so good, put IT together and I start typing like, oh, shit, this sucks. I, I mean, I I hate this.

what? What should I do? Well, of course, I bought another keyboard.

He eventually bought a keyboard called a ferris IT looks kind of like a Normal keyboard deconstructed. It's made up of two panels of seven keys, so thirty four keys in all with a wire at the bottom connecting in the two birds. Each panel has five rows of keys, a one kind of like your hand with the tallest one in middle, like your midfjord, and then two more keys, right where your thum goes. The idea is that you rest one hand on each panel, and then you have easy access to all thirty four keys without moving your fingers or rests too much. So jonas buys black keyboard, oh.

and a mouse. I also got this track because I got, some are side in the thun. And most of these mouse alternative, you have the the ball of the thumb, but that was really contract native. So I got this like big gift trackable thing, which I move with the fingers. So of course, I started that route as well.

So he's got all this and feels like he's set. But the thing about face keyboards is that, generally speaking, all the keys are blank. This thing isn't a Normal quality keyboard like you're used to.

And so you actually have to decide where you want all the keys to go. And old boy, is that quite the rabbit IT? Turns out there's nothing really magic about the quality layout that were all used to.

There are a lot of theories about where quality came from, actually, when you hear a lot is that IT was created for typewriters and that actually IT deliberately move the commonly used keys away from each other so that the type or mechanisms wouldn't crash into each other. I'm honestly not sure if that's a myth or the truth, but that is kind of the common story that out there now. And really, the reason we all use these keyboards is just that we've used them all for so long. There's honestly not a Better reason that quality has won the accept that IT has won and retraining our brains to a new way of typing is just too much work. But when you start thinking about IT, when you really step all the way back and start thinking about IT, there are a lot of ways you could be Better.

What is like one of the worst or if not the worst keyboard layout that's actually used? I mean, there are a lot of different ways you can evaluate cable layouts on. And almost no matter what way you choose, evaluate quality is really, really bad. I don't really care if you want to argue that cold mark is Better than warm or if it's Better than work men, but all of these are so much Better than quality.

Isn't that weird that if you type quote on quote correctly, the only thing your thun ever does is hit the space bar. You're wasting two perfectly good fingers on a single key, not to mention the easiest to hit key on the whole keyboard. Also, your index finger is typically more dextrous and powerful than your pinky.

So why isn't IT given more to do? And why are letters like o and a and even e the most common letter right in the middle keyboard? I should say, by the way, that keyboards and keyboard needs vary widely across languages.

One reason a lot of non english speaking countries have gravitated to soft ware keyboards in particular. And one of the reasons phones have been so successful in they can be customized and very so much more. But for my purposes here, I only know how to type in english, so i'm going to focus on english keyboards.

John's does type some in swedish too, but that didn't figure too much into this story. Talking to john's got me wondering about keyboard layouts I know about, like divorce, which rearranges all the letter keys to try and put the most common letters and combinations right on the home row. So don't have to move your fingers as much.

But there are actually a million others too. There's com c, which does the same thing is divorce, but rearranges them in a lightly different way. There's workman which tries specifically to minimize how much your fingers move side, decide which is one of the most painful things for them to do and how much work your pinkies have to do.

There's one caught hands down that is particularly useful if you type in multiple languages on and on and on. There are so many more things than I realized. The one i'm most interested in personally is called bo B E A K L.

It's designed to do most of the same things as the rest, minimize finger and risk movement, especially, I decide, baLance the load between your two hands, make IT easier to use the same finger from multiple letters in a row. But bele is also big on shifting work from your ring and pinky finger to your thumb. There's a website that I found with the principles of beo theory, which is a thing.

And one of them is to explain the powerful funds to their maximum potential. What a cool sentence that is. So you could put, let's save the e. Ki, which again is the most commonly used key on the keyboard on them. It's wild and different, but actually this makes sense to me. Anyway, john is tried beo and a bunch of others, and he started to lock in on something that felt really good to type on, like physically good. And he also started to realize that, especially for his purposes, using a keyboard involved a whole lot more than just typing the twenty six letters of the alphabet.

When people talk about keyboard layouts, they almost always referred to use the alpha s, like A, B, C, up to set. And it's like, oh, you have column well, they just changed all these letters, the numbers and enter keys and the space and everything else. There's always on the same in the same place. But when you use like a really small keyboard like I do, then you don't even even have this case. So this is something that you have to design for journals.

There was one APP in particular that he cared about most. This is like the only thing he talked to me about in our whole conversation. M is a thirty year old, outrageously customizable tax editor. It's one of those apps that people, particularly programmes, kind of live their whole life inside of.

One of the things about we missed that you have all these strange key bindings. You can almost talk to any vim user about this. What is the number one fear of switching to a new layout? It's well will make vm key bindings work.

And you have like this arrogance, like H, J, K, L. And you have them on a regular keyboard. Es on the home only, super convenient.

And most being users abuse them. People use them too much because, well, that's what people do. So they also always worry, well, will this work should die? Because switching to another layout, it's a huge task.

You need a ton of effort, like, never mind just to sign in your own, just learning something new is really, really painful. And do you risk going into this journey and you end up with something that might not work for the two? Let you use.

And you know, my self found a lot of other people who use wim. We use swim for everything. I mean, we use swim all the time we were programing when we're writing, I mean, their hours and hours every day.

We we use this tool. So I mean, I would say that it's something that I was worried about from the beginning IT for something. I looked that when looking at other keyboard layouts because you don't want to have your most used p like jay is one of the least used keys in english.

So most keyboard layouts that try to optimize for english, because most do that. They would just put jay in the worst spot. But then as a vim user, that's like, oh, that sucks.

I come layout anymore. Well, IT is not that bad. I mean, a lot of people use something like a navigation layer or they try to force themselves to reduce the usage of a. And the others movement is w jumps stood in the next word, for instance, and it's a lot Better to use that than their wim arrows. But IT was steal something that I was worried about.

So for an extremely specific, extremely customize use case, Johnson decided to get an extremely specific, extremely customize keyboard. There is no world in which you or I could sit down and use his computer, which is actually think about this whole process that I kind of love. We all use the same gadgets in the same super prescribed ways now. And Jenny just decided to blow all that up and set up something that worked just for him and nobody else.

The deficit for me to reduce my area. And I mean, should I do this because of popularity or or because I want everyone else to use IT? No, I don't.

I just want IT to feel good for me. And it's the same reason why I spent hours of configuring my own any of in configuration. I mean that just time think that no one will ever get in the use of IT. It's just for me and it's the same for my layout really.

And I know there are a lot of people who designed this like general layouts, but I really feel that customers the layout, even if you just, you know, change, escape to a Better position because as a Venus' escape is like a super important key. So maybe you used to change that. And I think customising things is actually a bit underappreciated in the keyboard layout community. I mean, a lot of people want to make these generalize good things like all this is the perfect layout for english, and I think more people should try to customize, especially when you go down this rabid total of choosing, uh, small keyboard or or aggro keyboard.

So journey starts experimenting at this point. He puts in a layout, uses IT for a while, and starts trying to really notice what's working and what isn't. I both do and don't recommend doing this for yourself, by the way, because it'll make you strAngely self aware of how you type. And at least for me, i'm convinced it's making me worse at typing. I think about IT much more than I ever have, and i'm not sure that's a good thing, but jonas got really good at figuring out what worked and what didn't, and most importantly, what hurt and what didn't.

I think there are two directions you can do this. One needs to take the purely algorithm approach. You create a computer program that optimists to find a perfectly layer for you, and then you just tweak these settings, oh, I don't like same finger diagrams.

So this is a penalty for having these two keys on the same finger. And then you use, tweet all these settings all the time until you find something that's good so that that's one way of doing IT. I did not do that.

I instead went mostly on fuel. So when designing the alpha ir, I looked a lot at the same finger background because I know that this was something I really disliked. So, oh, maybe I can switch around these three characters.

And I thought about IT like a lot. So i'm gonna try IT. And I look in this like analyse bo, but that pilgrim is really common.

That's not good. So then I went back to the drawing g, but mostly IT was, think about IT, think about IT a more try IT. That was basically my approach.

It's probably enough the best approach. But I was the one I used mostly because I think it's extremely hard for me to put down this feeling of how could this feel into number. You can do a basic exercise, just how hard this is to press one key on your keyboard.

So if it's on the homework n, you can put to zero because it's the easiest. But in the edge of the screen of the keyboard, is that the four, or is that the three, or maybe five? I try to do this exercise, and every time I went back to do IT again, I got a different result because it's so freaking hard for me to just put things into numbers. So that's why I give up on the idea. And I is that, oh, I will just try to feel IT and change IT whenever I dislike something.

to ever try something. And then just immediately, the first time you hit the key, you were like, I hate this. This feels bad. Fail attempt.

Yes, I think I had all an underscore like they're not on the same uh finger now but I I tried IT and yes oh, I can just switch these two keys and would be much Better. And the first time I I just type something because in coding you have, like, are and on score quite of them next to each other. When you type variable names with nake, I was like, oh, I hate this. And I immediately through IT away. Once you start .

to think about this stuff in terms of minimizing pain and movement, you come across all sorts of hacks. One thing I had never heard of, but Johnson and others talk about a lot, is the idea of a repeat key.

I don't remember exactly where I got the idea a from, but the real, he basically repeats the last key you pressed. So for instance, if you want to type fool, you press F O O L, but in this case you press F O repeat l. Why is this useful? Well, if if you're just looking at same finger programs, which I don't like, I dislike pressing the same key multiple times.

So instead of typing, oh, with the middle finger, I type middle finger under the pink key, which aches my repeat key location right now. So you can do this like rolling motion and rolling motions. They are really quite nice. And a lot of different keyboard layouts optimize more for rolling motions than same finger bagram. So I think empty gap is one layout which has a really good .

roles growing, meaning kind of just the way your fingers move from into .

out yeah into out to out to if they are next to each other that you should release to press.

This is what I mean when I say it's a deep rabbit. L the people who work on this stuff are thinking about keyboards the way I think we all should, as incredibly important, incredibly complex tools that are used for countless hours every day and in which even a small improvement can be a huge deal. And there are so many small improvements out there.

One thing a lot of keyboard tinkers like to use is what's called the one shot key, instead of pressing and holding. So if you want to capitalize something, you hit shift and then the letter you want, instead of having to hold shift down and struct your hand all across the keyboard, it's a little thing, but can be a real pain reliever. The problem is all that improvement is fighting against literally a hundred years of muscle memory and how to use quality keyboards.

And so the improvements keep losing. IT took Jones, someone who was deeply dedicated to this two years, to get around to something that fit that he didn't feel like he needed to obsessively tweak anymore. I tried a bunch of times to get him to describe kind of his mental model of his keyboard, how he designed, how IT works and how he uses IT. And he kind of couldn't do IT.

I was worried you. I would have to explain, oh, where is this? Oh, where is this? Because I can't.

It's almost all muscle memory right now. I mean, if I really think about IT, sure, the most used keys I could probably map out. But I mean, most of IT is just, I need to sit down and press the button.

Since he can't explain IT, let me try Jones's layout, which now calls t thirty four, is basically a bunch of layers of keys. The top layer is the alphabet and some basic punctuation. And he put common letters like t and k and I in the center and e on his dumb. He has two modified keys that then let him go down a layer to a new set of keys. This part he does explain pretty well.

So for instance, you can have, oh, where do you have your arrow keys while I just pressed down my left time? And then I have arrow keys on the right time just below my fingers. I also have a on the left hand, like in the arrow configuration that Normal key must have at twelve.

So when I pressed the thumb, I activate the navigation layer. And then you have dislike, like like you say you, you stack the keys on top of them. So that's a way you can access arrow keys, functions keys. I also access number keys because I don't have a number of numbers I said to have, I don't know how in layers. So I have IT ends up quite a lot.

I have a lot of layers that I don't even remember, like I had this ID of wanting to be able to type regular shortcuts because like control x, it's a super common shortcut in a lot of different applications. But I have acts on the right hand, so sometimes I used to want to use the mouse with my right hand, so I don't want to remove my mouth and the control x. So I have a layer, while control x is on the left side. So layer is a super import thing.

This all feels to me a little like trying to use excel just with a keyboard, remembering all of the navigation tools and keyboard truck cuts and formulas and everything. But Jenny says that once he figured that out, IT began to feel much Better, at least for him. I should again be clear here that never for one second did he think he was designing a Better keyboard for everybody, just a Better keyboard for himself. And honestly, in this case, even Better depends on how you to find the word.

I thought I would really enjoy this process of gradually getting Better, like, because I had this ID in my head. Another cool thing is to be a really fast timer. So I want to, you know, continued practicing every day until I I beat my old score and may be even surpassed.

But then I just figured this super hard work, it's really boring and I cannot do IT anymore. So i'm not having closes fests as i'm on a regular keyboard, don't really care that much time, a bit slower. I mean, I really care about my hand not working every day. So Victory.

right? As for whether IT was worth all the time and energy to get to this point, well debated.

I actually started this year when we had our second child or middle child, and he was awake like one to two hours every night is so much just in some kind of trap. And on your. And I don't want to pay with him because I wanted to sleep.

So I ended up your standing front from my computer and doing stuff. And that's when I really decide most of my layout and learn most of my layout. So in the middle night, like for six months or something, I was just like a bit sleep deprived. And maybe that's what IT takes to go on on this kind of journey, but I don't know.

All that said though, he does kind of think everyone should go through at least a bit of this process. And I think I agree, if you spend hours a day with your rests cocked awkwardly and stretching painfully around on the keyboard, why shouldn't you invest the time and energy to get something Better?

The first thing I would recommend is used to get the programmable keyboard. If you use swim, you know that escape is the best key theories, and there are lots of different ways to to solve this. But you if you have a programmable keyboard, you can use movie to caps lock, or you can make a combo on the homework.

Maybe you use e max and you say that, oh, the control key is the most horrible key derris because you need like, uh, uh, six finger. If you use IMAX, you really should have a six finger, so you can press the down control key all the time if you have a programming ble keyboard, then you can use move control log to caps lock. You can even have a escape and caps lock on the same key.

So if you tap into its escape and if you hold the down, its control. So that's really the first thing I would recommend people to do because you don't have to relearn anything. You can just remark, escape or control. You can put the navigation layers like instead of having the arrows like far away on the keyboard, you can just have IT on the home row and used to hold down something. And that's pretty easy to get right.

He also recommended a split keyboard, which makes total sense to me. But I should confess something here. I hung up call, expecting to go make a bunch of changes, explore new layout, try and combat the pain that i'm also starting to feel typing all day, every day.

And then I did nothing, just nothing. The thing is, I type too much, too often, and I type really fast. And I just seems like so much work to essentially learn what amounts to like, a new instrument, just to be able to do my job all day.

I'm not sure how long I could get away with not finding stories because I can't type fast enough, you know. I mean, so i'm stuck sitting here staring at this stupid quality keyboard on my desk, which apparently everyone agrees is a bad option, but is kind of just the one were stuck with. And so now i'm looking around my desk wondering what else is like this? What other tech is this way? Just because IT is this way, we talk about A I as appending the way we do everything online. And maybe that's good even if the AI isn't good and ultimately isn't going to change everything about how we do everything because maybe it's good to sit down and we think how we do everything every once in a while.

My image of the ultimate yb ard reduced a regular keyboard with cool switches. So that was the extent of my knowledge. I I knew I had this air dog was like that.

Just some weird, strange thing. But I mean, I think it's when you start going down the rebec hole, the whole starts to open. You realize all there are so many other things.

Alright, we get to take a break and then we're going to come back and talk about surface windows in the future of microsoft. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from crucible moments, a podcast from scope capital.

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Welcome back. Over the course of the last few weeks, there's been a lot of what i'd call sneaky shakeups happening inside of microsoft. I mean, nothing to the level of last year when I looked like microsoft might just hire the entirety of OpenAI.

And of course, all of that turned out to be nothing, but there have been a few corporate moves and a couple of product launches and even a different non acquired acquisition. That'll make me think there is something big going on here in terms of how microsoft thinks about A I and windows and surface in particular. So it's time to do what we always do in these situations, which is get the virtuous time, warn on the line to help us figure out what's actually going on here. Tom, warm, welcome back to the show.

Hey, good to be back.

I feel like I have to bring you on every time microsoft does something weird and confusing, and you have to make sense of IT. I feel this, this is not a true job, should be.

But what is what I need you for? IT, explaining microsoft? Ss.

just forever like reading the org chart of microsoft to accent. And so actually the org chart is where I want to start. I want to talk about a ipc, and I want to talk about services, but we're gonna to all that minute.

I think what is happening inside of microsoft actually explains a lot of that stuff. So let's go back to six fish months ago, I think, which is when I announced he was leaving microsoft. Describe that to me at microsoft because he's a guy who had been there forever. He was a big face of microsoft. He was in charge of a lot of things, like what happened when panos left.

Yeah, I think IT IT was kind of a surprise, right? I think he took us up by surprise. And I think IT pretty to Marks self by surprise as well, like the things that was a few days or like before, a surface event, which was also like timing, you know that they announced IT publicly anyway.

And I think like catching up with people at the event. You could you got that sense that that was a surprise. You this wasn't expected happen. see. Yeah, I think that that was the big takeover was a surprise.

And I think the way that Marks of kind responded IT to her, like the delis shape shifting of windows, was that they split windows and surface. So so penalties, responsibility, ie. S into two different leaders. And if not mistaken.

microsoft had made a big deal out of uniting those things under panels, right? That was like, that was supposed to be this coherent, like, holistic way of thinking about devices.

right? And that wasn't that long ago. No, IT wasn't. IT was around. Actually.

I think he was just before the pendered IT was a well.

IT doesn't feel like that right, right? But he was interesting timing because he was a few months after panels and the rest of team had unveiled jews Green surface stuff. And that was going to be the future of windows and the stuff.

So if IT seemed like that, you know put in everything on the panos was going to a line surface hardware and windows software, so that seemed like that was was going to happen. That's what time is been working on. And then they just split IT out in weird way.

So of the panels left to frame on, they gave the surface hardway stuff to pavan devalue. He's been at microsoft twenty years. He's pretty key engineer. He's definitely a key player that I was preinspection tal to the qual common named relationships where they've done the customs rescue one processes and stuff for these.

So like a natural guide to put in charge of this after this.

and then off the windows of engineering office and all those teams over to to macan, who had been in microsoft for a years as well but was essentially his official title, was formally now but a CEO of like web and advertising.

I feel like he's the name I started to hear with some of the AI stuff over the last year.

I was that right? yes. So he was looking else to he hearing a lot, but he was tween for about the being chat stuff, yeah, okay, edge, maybe all I saw stuff.

So he was difficult for me to rack my head around this because I was like, he didn't seem like the natural person take over windows just given his role. But he's obvious a talented engineer and leader. But IT seem strange for IT to go that way, even where windows, windows and surface has been. So that happened about six months ago. He's been looking after that and then not so much anymore.

That brings us to now. And basically that has been, at least as far as I can tell, sort of pretty cleanly done.

pretty much yeah. So the teams most of the teams that went over to because organize lation have gone back essentially, if you want to call that to prevent that, we who was also looking after the surface hard. So he's now looking off the windows most the windows engineering and surface hardware.

The key thing is that they all kinds into a big move that the delemar. So this is wise, is actually happening. His oversea hired the former cofounder of google, deep mind mister for selema, and he hired him into a position as CEO of microsoft AI.

So a new group um inside microsoft or you might say the same group that macos looking after and is kind of been pressured. He's given IT a lot to myself, particular the ads and search site like they. They've become a lot more relevant in the last few years on on that side, and they've been before. You can argue they've been pushing being in weird ways, pushing aging, weird ways that haven't been too .

great for consumers. You giant pop up telling you to use bing chat.

I love IT when I mean the whole of playing a game or like in my x els british and this is joint, please use copilot, whatever. Yeah, it's the .

clipper st thing microsoft has done clippy. I'm not a but OK. So if I think of the old structure now, you have basically the sort of windows and devices side of things, which is basically like hardware that people use, and that's all under power devilry. Now he has like most of the partners job is now his yeah he's not like he's .

still not unlike the senior leadership team. So he still reports up to someone, but essentially and that's what he's looking after. And I think I get the impression that most of that work immediate be looking after is, is how they optimize windows for the new silicon is coming. And you know the M, P, U, all that sort of stuff because that seems to be pray, and we will see talk about that and soon. But that's why I think that bringing IT back to like because they know they need that engineering effort got IT.

okay. I do want to talk about that just is because I think how all of this comes like back together in the product is the part of this that I understand at least, and really talk about that. But the other side of this, we haven't really talked about all of the inflation A I yes, non acquisition acquisition stuff going on.

So basically, as I understand, IT, microsoft hired with sofa someone who was the covenant deep mind and then went and found this company called inflection A. I paid a ton of money for him and a bunch of other executives to come join the company didn't call an acquisition. A lot of people are saying that because I was worried about the anti trust realizations have called you get an acquisition.

But essentially they acquire like whatever the opposite of an acquisition is like higher dished, the bunch of inflection AI people to come due A I for microsoft, which again to me says microsoft doesn't feel like IT is where IT needs to be in terms of like winning the A I racing. And this is the company that twelve months ago was just as confident as you could possible be about the future AI and being being the thing and making google dance and that they were really gonna in. This is to me that microsoft is much less feel in itself. Maybe then IT was a year ago.

What's your read of this situation? I that's a year ago, oversee and i've writing about this recently, they will oversee alien on being and being chat, all that little stuff. And internally, they were talking about picking the bing brand because of this.

I think the particular among tech people anyway and the the general consumer can look at being and really like, don't you know what IT is? Maybe but along along the tech so of people is is kind of that right is formed upon the the bing brand. And they talking internally at that time, you know is five hundred million, however, is a marketing spend to pick new name.

So they're like we going to go with being dust away forward. IT didn't really shift the needle. Della wanted google to dance. They wanted to to get least you know, the percentage intl of google. I don't I think they probably only got one or two percent if that of they they are aiming for, for more for there to be an impact.

You know, my impression is that most people who use being through microsoft think they are using ChatGPT. I can't prove that. But like when I talk to people who are using being as A I stuff, they think they're using ChatGPT bad sign for microsoft.

Yeah it's probably reasonable and they obvious ly rebranded the being chased off to to copilot, right? And they have super about add all that stuff. So does all linked him with this.

And like when i've been speak to people about working on the meaco, IT sounds like he is run as as kind of like a startup spare the way you're constantly work, like you trying to do much out as little resources as you have. So IT seems like he was kind of a bit crunchy over there. And I think there is some much for managing going on there as well, is something that sort of stuff that has been happening in research.

Three pairs probably happens in a bunch of organizations anyway. But he seemed like IT just, I think, from the fact that the day I was gone and hired someone into the C. E. Opposition, IT clearly wasn't working, right. Like whatever they were doing, that team wasn't working.

And that's the key point that I think bloomberg reported that the dead was frustrated at that time or frustrated the time there was something because he offers he wants to go fast and microwave has been go very fast and copilot in office and in that world where where they can appreciate. And actually this revenue opportunities there are, you see in the stock Price and other stuff. So they wanna really push on the consumer side as well.

And ever see IT hasn't sky rocket to relevant. So but will say though that I think is the first time i've known. People to be downside in the being mobile APP or actually talking about being right. yeah. So it's had some sort of impact.

But of and IT just seems like I will say credit where credit is due for microsoft in terms of like baking copilot into the office apps and stuff in and sort of giving people like real actual business uses for A I, it's done a Better job, I think, than anybody, right? ChatGPT is sort of neeter uh, and gemini is weird and whatever. And as as consumer brands, those are really the two the people talk about.

But in terms of like the whatever thirty dollars a month you're trying to get I T departments to pay for, I actually think microsoft is at least my own perception ahead of everybody else on that front. So credit or credit do for that. It's just that's not a Victory .

for exactly like the good thing about copilot in in that office spaces, the teams integration where you can literally like you know how you're like to how do you really need to go to that meeting or can I catch up like and you worry now you just click on the link and IT tells you if someone even spoke about you and you can just click like and you will just instantly go to that part is is pretty, pretty well what y've done for the teams integration and and also like outlook, like I tested out the copy of post stuff, which is for consumer, is actually the team stuff is unavailable for consumers, but I tested that out. And the most impressive part that is you going to outlook and is the amount is summarized, the email at the top of that. So I was just really useful when you have the back and forth of like a customer support rap and you like I kind of remember what was doing in email, like loads of a little interesting touch points to is still a little bit still and he needs to mature and stuff yeah they have known some of on the office site, but on the windows side, they're been promising a bunch of stuff and he has an i'm i'm not sure this a ipc stuff .

is IT yeah me neither. So let's talk about that because we came on the show a few weeks ago when apple announced the new macbook, and we a lot of fun of apple for saying that these are really great A I pcs, which amounted to essentially like you can do some photo editing and also use the internet. Thus these are a ipc. And microsoft and intel and others are out here making all this noise also about a ipc and that they have the copilot key. And I feels like if they want to be consumer winners in this space, IT seems like microsoft is betting a lot on really having like a hardware instantiation of A I B the thing yeah but like just back all the way up for me like when microsoft ys a ipc the hell is he talking about?

That's why I wanted know yeah that's the key question at the moment. Yeah like I think a PC is differently a bit of a marketing term right now because most are saying this up. And it's like the definition which actually learn this week from intel is that IT needs to have the latest CPU and G, P, S and an epu at the new process in unit, which is a chip that we've seen on a bunch of ARM powered windows laptops for years now.

And essentially it's been there. And accelerates tars like background blowing on the video, like noise cancelling when your dog barking behind you on to say, there's all the other instances. And software developers are working in the stuff that will be utilize IT, but full tensor purposes.

That's the most consumer friendly option you have for the mp. now. So what else is the M. P.

You gonna do? What of a task going to leverage that in windows? That still the mystery.

So although much has come out saying here's our surface protein for business, yes, that's the full name of the product south first surface A I P C IT still doesn't really explain like why, like because the A I stuff that they have been push copy, which is cloud based, so just need an M P U locally to accelerate on a thing. So that's a missing part of the puzzle. And I think that all gonna a make sense. Or may twenty of when they when they do this surface and windows event.

Yeah, what do we know about the surfaces so far? Microsoft just released a couple of business surfaces, which seem like that reading your story about them, you seem to see those as sort of a hint that what we might see from the consumer facing surfaces, but also those might be different. And I don't know like what's your sense of kind of how much we know about this next generation services is coming?

yes. So so they announce the surface protein for business and the surface laptop six for business, and they both running into core ultra chips, which do have in and i'd say beyond that is welcome changes, but the designs are very much the same as is pretty much a very plain release, but some good hot grades for the business customers .

and the harbor is good. Like I like the surface, say, in the surface laptop. I think to the extent that it's like desperate for a hardware redesign, like whatever, but I think that what you just describe to me in no way makes these things qualify as A I P, C S. So that still i'm stuck, right? What is the a ipc story inside of this thing?

So may twenty, if they're going to the same devices. But for consumers, the recent tweeted designs, the surface protein is pressed. Now lets display, which is nice, all sort stuff in expect from the sun side.

But more importantly, they're not gonna intel, so they're gonna be cool tra pcs. They are gonna be a snow tran xx coming rich wakers. So I am based, which is not unusual for most of to do, I am based surfaces .

that got pricks in .

the past, but mean of IT later. IT could be some exclusive, but as far I know they launching exclusively, we are welcome, which is I think that speaks to some sort of confidence in these welcome chips because welcoming promising these performance to match match books and stuff for years and it's never really delivered, right?

So the year of windows on ARM has been every year for like a decade .

at this point. Yeah but IT seems like mx soft is really confident for more understand they're gonna even be to beat and free performance, which is which is interesting yeah because even if they can be.

that would be a huge deal.

Just like IT seems like the unusually confident, which I don't use you say.

I mean for IT m three performance, if you can get to like apples m one performance, like that's a huge leap forward both for cocom in general, which can then go sell these things, other people also, but also for the surface light. But that would make the surface probably more interesting to more people than that has spent in a really long time.

Yeah, I think I think it's me supreme, obvious. Ly, these chips obviously going to go into regular lamps as well. And IT doesn't like with the room is of was a AMD in the video pretension to the next year or the year after coming the exact IT does feel like there's something going on here until keeps invite me to brief ings about the culture a so they overseen know that something is going on so I feel like there is something going on here, but not fully committed to trusting that this is gonna free performance .

yeah and in terms of the A I still afraid like I think the one part of the A I story that I do buy is that basically efficient performance goes a really long way.

Yes, granted.

every computer with good performance of good battery is a Better PC for A I. yeah. Is that an A I P C? No, this just a pretty good laptop in twenty twenty four, but I digress.

But as you we've seen microsoft on the consumer side that I feel like try a bunch of different ways to put A I in front of people, right? There's being chat. They made all this big deal about edge.

They are trying to put her in the start menu. What's your sense of what, if anything, is is working there? Like what would you bet on kind of being the front face of A I on windows going forward?

I think copilot definitely the front face. So into versey had these spects and there was the chip side, but then there was the IT has to have access to copilot software. He was like, sure, windows, whatever. But IT has had the copilot key as well for IT to be an A A PC in micro definition, which is like, okay, interesting.

So IT has to do A I and IT has to have an A I but yes.

that's what ck, I don't think stickers, all these things. But I mean.

you never know that would be amazing. Instead of intel inside, should just starting A, I said that stuff for that's .

the copy is definitely the portal. Now how they'll get away from IT just been a chapter or seen as just a chapter on underside of winners, which is basically there is right now that can be interesting to see how I integrate tes for the apps.

They do have something coming called, I think is good A L expLoring and he sounds real creepy but it's going to since you record everything you do in your PC and then say you, I don't know, researching a holiday last week, you could say to IT, I was looking holidays last week but a comment bread was and then able like, oh, you were looking like holidays to europe last week during to check out the time he had oh, shore and then you click and IT brings up the types of working on documents, whatever. So it's like a time line of how you use in your PC and the stay I was in and all that. So stuff I know exactly how is onna work in reality, but that's that's what they'll they are building at the moment, essentially.

So it's going to be the the killer the killer feature because he's going to leverage the M P, A modest to quickly pull up this this stuff and reference IT IT sounds very similar to the windows ten timely future they tried to do, which was like a similar sort of fame, but sort of going across mobile apps, but needed apps support. So was kind like dead in the world. We have develop, actually, you about this doesn't need APP support. They can just do IT because they IT runs on top windows.

not on the screen.

Yeah, I need privacy minefield. But yeah.

well, yeah, I remember I D about this company.

rewind maybe a year .

ago that is doing something very similar. And there is this like a separate APP that you download that then gets permission to record screening of the stuff. And in talking to people about that.

Everybody immediately goes one of two ways is where it's like, oh, awesome. That runs only on my computer and doesn't go anywhere else. Kick asked, what an incredible productivity ool that's going to be an a bunch of other people who are like, absolutely not under no circumstances, never, ever, ever, ever, ever. And I literally, I talk to a bunch people around that story .

and found no one who is in the middle of those in me like, yeah, something gna run locally and all that but that doesn't matter if it's recording you. Still weird, right?

Yeah, great. But I will say if that becomes kind of part of the interface of a computer, which I actually think done well, is pretty interesting. The idea of like because, I mean, think about your browser history, right? Like the fact that you can sort of query your browse history to be like, what was that page I was looking at about xy is silly. Like you should be able to do that.

The information right there IT has IT anyway, right? So to be able to take information that like, of course, IT already has and do something with IT, that's a pretty compelling use of A I to me again, I I wonder what that will look like and whether IT will totally collapse this suppose of good performance, Better life of my computer. Yeah.

advertising companies basically have access your search history, I mean, not in the literal sense, but by tracking you around the web. So and make can make relevant crews. So IT would be very useful to be able to look back in useful L A powered ways. So I see, I see the big benefits of IT is just how they said IT and the previous aspects and everything else.

Do you think all the other windows manufacturer are going to be into the copilot idea and co pilot key the same way that microsoft is?

Yeah, I think I probably because usually they follow because .

they don't have much choice.

so much what to say. You can pop, know some of your stuff where you can make a tiny bit revenue on. And they have these big deals, ms, to incentivize all this old stuff so that theyll have like marketing day.

IT was just basically be one of those things where if you are know you can't have to go with IT because we see saw in the past support for winner and ARM from a bunch very um some of them pull IT pretty ick. But they all kind of most of them did one or two models just in support of IT. So I think I think there will be support for I think most of them will probable the cop eventually as well, even if not all of them have A I think IT would be pretty early supported OK.

And for microsoft, seems like this event in may actually turns out to be a pretty big deal even if IT is you know relative sort of spec updates of things like I don't know, my my last question for you was basically going to be like, what do we think here? Two of microsoft all in on A I bet, is going to look like and I kind of feel like what IT sounds like is we're going to know the answer that much more clearly when we see this new hardware that like that is going to be the way to see what all this looks like.

Yeah, I think the keys is snapp trigger chip have have that performs if IT well, then you can imagine this mean next in A I P S, which they they will seek talking about internally. I think these are considered next gen was perhaps the stuff is in the market right out of the cover, but I think you to be I hope it's black. More fishing out windows.

And how is actually using all this this M P power um and leveraging all locally on the device because it's still that's the main feature. I think this going be a video streaming improvement as well that they have a kind of main feature that there are. There's two features that they they kind of sending for the next time A I P C about marketing slogan.

It's interesting to here you talk about A I as the sort of start up inside of microsoft and actually makes a lot of the last twelve months make a lot of sense yeah, both in terms of this sort of like falling around all over windows, trying to figure out what to do, but also some of the stuff like the growth hacking inside of edge and inside of windows, like that's the kind that big mature companies do less of, but startups do lots of. yes.

And that culture clash, I think it's like maybe why IT felt so bad as a user to get some of that stuff over the last year like microsoft. This is gross. Like leave me alone. I'm just trying to use your web brows or for god.

c but is interesting because the windows engineers of those who go mets in surface side, but they're kept being agent copa on that mix of the other side. So IT does suggest that they will be doing all of the AI work within those those free brands. So we might not get, as I don't know, as pushy, hopefully pushed you stuff in the windows experience itself.

So but just probably is still gonna messy.

Yeah, I just want to match one thing that the interesting thing I think they are going to say, and I work, I kind of know from sources, you know how much you to say a PC in every home was. Let the windows slogan right it's gonna a co pilot for a few person like that's how they're to sell us now yeah and they are hoping to get like fifty percent of new laptops like by the end of twenty twenty six will be all the mp hard on them interesting and .

that's very telling.

Yeah when you get to that scale and it's it's quite turning of their their ambitions and where they might .

go with this enough right? We're going out to check back in, in may. I'm so skeptical of these qualm trips time, I cannot even tell you .

but there and so skiable a ipc slogan and nonsense. Yeah, if anyone knows what .

an A I PC is pleased. Email as verge caste 点 com。 I wanna know .

I went .

to take right? We going to take one more break, and I will be right back with the first cast all line. Thank you.

Thank you.

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Alright, we're back. Let's get to the hot line. As always, the number is eight, six, six, verge, one, one.

The email is verge cast at the verge outcome. We love all of your questions. We try to answer at least one on the show every week.

Thank you to everybody who has been calling in the questions have been so weird the last few weeks. I love IT. I wish we could do more of them.

We're gonna do more of them. We've definitely got to do a hot line episode soon because we have got a punch, fun ones, to get into. For now, we have a question from .

josh gave. This is josh calling from northern washington state. I recently watched a word, word documentary, and netflix, that is pretty man. Now, my Christina, I like world, were two documentary.

So how should I read this on netlik? Should I give you the comes up the two times up, down, down? Because I wanted see more water, water documentary. So how does the alcohol m take IT? If I say times down, will IT not recommending more document, please for me? Uh, if I give you two terms up, but I say, oh, you like media construction tary someone recommend more media construction tary for you and really confused on how to train the elegant unit comes to media could shows and all of these really want to show me things rather than letting me choose things. Really, really appreciate your help of these things.

If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that recommendation systems are like an obsession of mine. So in order to into this question, I went back to an interview I did last year with pat flinging, who is a senior director of product management at netflix. Basically, he runs the member experience team.

So everything that you do when you use the APP, that is responsibility. And one of the things that is his responsibility is all of this recommendation stuff. You can listen to a lot of our interview in an episode from last fall.

I'll put that than the sheets, but one of the things we talked about specifically was basically how to tell netflix what you do and don't want to watch. He gave me a bunch of information on kind of what netflix cares about, what is paying attention to, what you can do to signal all this good stuff. So the first one is, let me just play you a clip from that interview in which he described a few of the things that netflix is looking for. The biggest one is what you watch, what you watch, and don't matters most. But here is pat describing some of what netflix cares about.

You can think of titles as being broken down into these constituent components. This meditate, is that a movie? film? What's its originating country? As long as IT what language are available in genera, perhaps of tagging about attributes of the title, and those things all helped to sort round out what the title is like. And then you matched that against member taste of references and take that sports stocks, drama, baking shows, if you watch any two of those things and lots of people watch all three of those things, then it's pretty good chance that that third genre might be interesting to you. And so some point time you'll discover some genre that what wouldn't have otherwise have been your conscious ness and tried out on netflix.

One of the of the things patent I talked a lot about was these dumps. I've always been fascinated by the thumbs versus stars thing. Here's actually help patt described why netflix goes with the thumbs thing. Two thumbs, one thumbs up, thumbs down, instead of like a zero to five starts ranking. When you really love IT.

give a two thumbs up. When you love IT, give the thumbs. And if you don't like IT, that's okay.

Let us know. Give you a thumbs. So that's one very concrete way.

I actually like that explanation of lot, and I really makes sense to me. I think about things like yelp, where everything seems to be three point five stars and you don't know whether that's good or bad. Any restaurant on yelp that's over four stars, I assume, is great.

And anything that's under like three point eight, I assume, is awful. That doesn't make any sense, but that's kind of where we are. And then you get in an uber and anything other than five starts essentially means I would like for you to be fired, which also so doesn't make any sense.

So we're in this odd place where different levels of stars mean different things depending on where you are, and there's no real room brick for IT. So I think in this case, the thumbs up comes down thing is much easier to pass. But again, for our friend josh here, I quite a easy person. One more thing about the thugs, I think this is actually kind of relevant, which is that thumbs down is very important. So what I would say in this case is, unless you truly load to this documentary and don't even want to see anything like IT do not thugs down, because what I heard from pat is that they'd love to have more information about why you gave something a thumbs down, but they really don't.

The magic would be the longer that you spend, the Better that final recommendation would be because we would have know so much more about the things you could have been interesting and might not have been interesting. So one thing that so little more chAllenging is extracting, say, negative feedback from you.

So you would be nice for us to know with a little bit more precision when you skip over something, whether you spend a little of time with a trailer and you say that's not for me tonight. Sometimes that's a little more chAllenging for us to know precisely in the moment. And that's an area where we want to spend a little more time.

So basically, where pat landed on that one is if you're going to do thumbs down, they're going to take that is a very strong signal that you don't want to see this anymore. And it's possible that over time, netflix will get Better at understanding what you mean by that, whether like pet said, you never want to see you again or you just want to see you tonight.

But I would use that pretty sparring ly, and as a kind of gavel that just says, get this out of my face so that's a thun down, wouldn't do that for this one. So we're down to one thugs up or two thugs up for this one. Here is how pat described the difference, which I would argue is both helpful and unhelpful.

Thun is a simple way for you to provide feedback on whether you like something or didn't like something. The trick on stars is sometimes you might write something very highly on the stars because that's how something you think something ought to be. So it's critically claimed and and so you feel like IT IT deserves many stars as supposed to.

How did you actually feel about IT? And that's what's more meaningful to improve your recommendations is the reflection of how you actually felt about something and whether IT was good for you. And so thus have the benefit of one being simpler and to hopefully being a Better reflection of what you actually love or didn't love about what you're watching on ethics.

Okay, great, helpful and unhelpful. But I would say for you, josh, I think we are square in one thumbs up territory to me. I think of that as one thugs up is like I had a nice time or i'm glad I watched this or i'm sake that this exists and was being recommended to me.

It's kind of like a anything that you see that you would make the noise of just like, yes, good. Like that to me is one thugs up, right? It's not i'm sticking my reputation on the quality of this.

This is the greatest thing that i've ever seen. I would watch this every single day if IT made sense for me to do so. It's just like, yes is a nice time.

It's how I feel about like ninety five percent of movies ever watched on plans, right? Not the worst way to spend two hours. What do IT again?

Probably not going to write about IT in my diet. The end the day. Whether two thumbs up is like, yes, please, netflix ruin my recommendations with this one.

I want to see everything that you think is associated with this specific title, the people who made IT. The thing is about when I came out what IT looks like the colors in the background in the third scene like yes. netflix? yes. And I don't think we're there on this one. So I think we are squarely in one thugs up territory.

I'd be curious to know what everybody else thinks, how you would read this, but I feel like i'm saying, yeah, show me more stuff kind like this but I want you to know this was not the best version of this one summer. Before I go, though, I went back to to the interview with pat and tried to pull out a bunch of the things that he told me about how to signal to netflix what you do and don't like. So let me just run through a few of them.

One of the ones that he said is if you go go to the upcoming stuff, the stuff that hasn't come out on deflect yet, if you watch a trailer for something, but especially if you hit the reminded me button to get notified when something comes out, that's a super strong signal that you like that stuff. That means you went way out of your way to actually go and get IT and declare your intention to watch IT to netflix. That's a super strong signal.

So is watching stuff to the end. Netflix cares a lot about where you fall out of a show. So the more of IT you watch Better.

And I was even in the case of like a documentation you all like, but isn't your favorite if you just sort of leave IT on and leave the room until IT ends, that's a pretty good signal that you want to see more of this, whether if you shuttle off after three minutes, that might be a strong signal that you don't. All of this is tRicky push, pull stuff. But how far you watch is a strong signal.

What you score past is also a strong signal. This kind of goes with the thumbs down that that was talking about where if I score passed ten thumbnails of things, it's very hard for netflix s to figure out why I don't wanna watch those things. But IT knows that I don't wanna ch those things and it's getting stronger and stronger at recommending stuff after that, right?

I can say not only here's what you watch the late, but okay, you don't want to watch this. You don't want want to watch this. You don't, anna, watch this.

Oh, that must mean you're in the mood for a movie or a cooking show or whatever IT has to be. And so that stuff is coming more slowly. But actually, what you don't watch is a real signal. So is what you search for, even when you search for stuff that's not on netflix.

If you go in and type in the title of something, it'll both give you the recommendations for things similar to that, that you might watch on netflix, which again, if you go watch strong signal that you like that, but also IT just shows netlist what you care about. It's tracking that stuff. IT wants to know what you want to watch, even the stuff that's not on netflix.

So that is a strong signal. One other one is just a taste profile that you have. I don't know if you do this too, but I always just leap through the thing at the very beginning of any music service or streaming service or whatever, what IT take, pick three titles that you like.

But IT turns out that actually pretty important and goes a long way towards sort of kick starting the personalization that netflix and all these other services do. So if you're new and netflix or if you want to go back and and do IT, again, that is a thing you can do. And IT is apparently more important than I have given IT created for called your taste profile.

And netflix cares a lot about IT. But again, the single most important thing you can do, according to pat, is just watch stuff. IT is much more attuned to what you click on and what you actually watch than anything else.

So i'm kind of in this position where every time I score on netflix or click on anything, i'm petrified of what i'm teaching the algorithm. Think we all feel this way about youtube and tiktok in all these other things. What like, oh, no.

Did I ve linger too long? Is the APP? Can I think I like this and show too much? I think netflix is working on that a little bit.

But again, the fact that you went in and watched this whole is a stronger signal to netflix than how you rate IT. So if you want more of these documentary, I wouldn't worry too much about IT, just keep watching the that's my main advice. One thumb up for netflix, two thumbs up for cool.

Alright, that is, if for the verge cast the day. Thank you to everybody who was on the show. Thank you to everybody who called the hot line and sent to emails.

And thank you was always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about. And my old conversation with pat in the show, notes on the verge that come read the website. It's a good website. There is so much stuff going on this week.

It's not, as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, keyboard layout, ts, I should know about or anything else, email as vers ver com A T line IT six six five 1 one。 Looking forward, hearing from this shows produced by Angel marino, lm James and wilpon verge cast is a verge production and part of the oxidize podcasts. Nei alex I, after a series of vacations and illnesses, will be back on friday, and we have a lot of news to catch up on. We'll see you restaurant.

Support for this episode comes from A W S. A W S, generate A A I gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud. Hey, it's lee from decoder with the poop. We spend a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in taking business about what they're putting resources to and why do they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series diving into some of the most unique ways companies are spending money today.

For instance, what does that mean to start buying and using A I at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buying? And most importantly, what are they doing with IT and of course, podcasts? Yes, the thing you're listening to right now, well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

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