Software & Apps News - Page 8

If you were in any doubt, Microsoft has confirmed that this year's major update for its desktop operating system will be Windows 11 24H2.

An official announcement puts paid to any belief that the software giant might instead bring out Windows 12 - or some other all-new Windows incarnation with a different name - later this year.

Rumors had already pretty firmly indicated that Microsoft was set to run with a 24H2 update, but now with the blog post for Windows 11 preview build 26052 (for the Canary and Dev channels), this has been confirmed.

Windows 11 has a new 'Moment' update inbound, which will be the fifth such package of new features for the desktop operating system, and it'll be arriving later this month.

That's the skinny from Zac Bowden over at Windows Central, one of the more reliable leakers when it comes to Microsoft gossip.

Bowden believes that Moment 5 will debut late in February, but it'll be a much more modest set of extra features compared to previous Moments.

Interoperability with other encrypted messaging apps is what it will be called when the popular messaging app WhatsApp adds the ability for users to send and receive messages from people using a completely different communication app like Messenger, iMessage, or Signal.

WhatsApp boasts around 2 billion users globally, and this notable update arrives courtesy of compliance with new EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) legislation. According to the new law, companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta must open up their core services to others - with a DMA compliance date of March 2024.

According to a new report at Wired, the WhatsApp team has been working on adding this feature for years - letting people chat across apps without impacting end-to-end encryption. So, it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

There's a new toy from Microsoft called PC Manager, an app that Windows 11 users (or indeed Windows 10 folks) can grab from the Microsoft Store.

PC Manager was noticed by Windows Latest and the tech site explains that it was first launched in January 2024, but as of this month, it has been more widely rolled out to other regions including the US. (In fact, it has been in testing for a year or more, going by reports online).

This app has come from the Microsoft China division - the initial version was in Mandarin as a result - and indeed the product blurb on the Microsoft Store does sound like a translation. For example, it talks about PC Manager being 'pure without disturbance' (presumably meaning streamlined).

It wasn't very long ago that Microsoft announced it was killing support for its most popular operating system, Windows 10, which was a clear bid to move users from the older operating systems onto the company's newer versions.

Now, Valve has released Steam's latest hardware survey that showcases trends from December 2023, which shows users are moving away from Windows 10, Microsoft's currently most popular operating system, to Windows 11. While Steam's hardware survey does show a shift toward Microsoft's latest operating system, the wider market hasn't responded as quickly as Windows 10 still dominates, with a 67% market share compared to Windows 11 at just 26%.

However, looking at Steam's hardware survey for December we can see Windows 11 is used by 44% of surveyed users, compared to Windows 10 with 51%. A move of 4% represents millions of gamers shifting operating following Microsoft's end-of-support announcement for the operating system, which will occur on October 14, 2025.

We've just caught a glimpse of some more evidence that Window 11 will get a 24H2 update later this year, meaning the next version of Windows won't be an all-new release (such as Windows 12).

Windows Latest uncovered a Windows App Development support document in which Microsoft talked about a specific function (EnumDeviceDrivers) and its history, noting that it will be changed in the next version of Windows.

Specifically, an incoming tweak is mentioned that'll start with Windows 11 version 24H2. The document states:

"Starting in Windows 11 Version 24H2, EnumDeviceDrivers will require SeDebugPrivilege to return valid ImageBase values."

Windows 10 users are in some cases being hit by frustrating errors when trying to run core (default) apps in the OS.

The Register spotted a thread on Microsoft's Answers.com support forum where there are quite a few posts from disgruntled Windows 10 users who are suffering at the hands of recent app updates.

What's happened is that the most recent updates for these core Windows 11 apps, piped through from the Microsoft Store, appear to have broken them.

Windows 11 just got a new interface for the setup process of the OS - the first time the installation UI has been modified in ages - but it seems that this new look has been kicking about in Windows for, well, ages.

The change to setup came in with preview build 26040, the latest release in the Canary channel.

If you caught sight of it, you'll no doubt have noticed that while it is a fresher - and more fleshed out - setup interface than is currently in place, the UI still looks pretty basic.

WhatsApp is one of the world's biggest and best cross-platform messaging solutions and it appears that the Meta-owned company is hard at work on getting ready to add a new security feature for iPhone users.

The feature, as first reported by the WhatsApp watchers at WABetaInfo, will see iPhone owners gain support for signing into their accounts using a passkey for the first time. The move will give people a new option for signing into accounts that don't require that they remember any credentials.

Passkeys are seen by some as a replacement for usernames and passwords and they remove the need for people to remember those things - a change that is a huge one in terms of security. People often reuse passwords which puts their accounts at risk and that isn't a consideration when passkeys are used. Instead, passkeys use biometrics to handle the authentication mechanism which in the case of the iPhone means Touch ID or Face ID.

Microsoft Graveyard is a new website which is one of those that does what it says on the tin - namely, it offers up an array of headstones of products and services which Microsoft has killed off.

Actually, there's a slight twist in that there are also products which are still around, but on the chopping block - these are represented by a coffin.

Everything is in chronological order - coffins, followed by gravestones, with the most recently killed off products coming first. And that most recent headstone is Odyssey, the survival game from Blizzard which just got axed and became a casualty of the post-buyout reorganization.