Software & Apps News - Page 15

Microsoft Paint is a simple graphics editor that has been a part of Windows for decades, launching with the first version of the Operating System back in 1985. Released as a direct competitor to Apple's MacPaint for the Macintosh, the simple lo-fi MS Paint is a Microsoft Windows staple and, over the years, hasn't changed much, retaining its status as a simple-to-use and basic graphics editor.

It's no Photoshop, but fast forward to 2023, and Microsoft Paint is starting to make headlines thanks to new AI-powered features. In September, we reported on the app getting a one-click background removal function that was surprisingly powerful. And now, thanks to AI, Microsoft Paint can generate images using OpenAI's DALL-E via the app's latest addition - Paint Cocreator.

Available now for Windows Insiders, it might just be the easiest-to-use AI image generation tool on the market, thanks to Paint's simple and clean interface.

The Apple Card has been around for a few years at this point having launched in 2019, but it might not be around all that much longer. That's after a Wall Street Journal report claimed that the partnership between Apple and Goldman Sachs that makes the Apple Card possible is on the verge of being killed off.

The Apple Card is a Goldman Sachs-backed credit card that is entirely managed via the Wallet app on an iPhone and offers various cashback deals that are surprisingly competitive. But the card is only available in the United States four years after its 2019 debut, with little sign that it is going to expand beyond the country's borders. Now, the Wall Street Journal, says that Apple is pulling the plug on its credit card partnership with Goldman Sachs, with the deal possibly exited within the next 12 to 15 months. The exit would reportedly cover the entire consumer partnership, including the credit card itself.

However, it isn't clear what that would actually mean for customers of the Apple Card. Would they continue to be able to use their card with Apple picking up a new backer, or would their cards be converted to a standard Goldman Sachs credit card, and its management be moved away from the Wallet app entirely? That isn't yet known, but it seems that the decision to end the agreement is mutual.

When Apple released the iPod all those years ago it probably didn't know that music might not be the biggest thing to come out of it. Podcasts were born, and now they're big business and listened to by millions of people around the globe. There are tons of ways to listen to podcasts now, including Apple's own Podcasts app. And now the data collected by Apple Podcasts has been used to show us the most popular podcasts of the year.

Apple shared details of the most popular shows in a press release that was broken down into a few different categories. In terms of the most popular show, that honor fell to Crime Junkie while The Daily and Dateline NBC made up the top three podcasts.

For fans of finding new podcasts, the next category will be most interesting - top new shows. At the top of that list was Scamanda, while The Retrievals and The Deck Investigations rounded out the top three most popular new shows according to Apple Podcasts.

When it comes to reading books and listening to audiobooks there are a few ways to do that on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. But Apple Books is obviously the way route that Apple wants people to take, and now it's shared details on the most popular books that people have been reading and listening to in that particular app.

Apple says that a new Year in Review is available in the Read Now tab under the Top Picks section on the iPhone and iPad, giving people a new way to find more information about the books that they have been reading throughout the year. They'll learn about what kind of reader they are based on their reading history, while they will also see the total number of books read as well as the total number of minutes that they have been reading. It's all put together into a nice sharable format that can be published to social media, too.

In terms of the most popular books on the platform Apple broke its collections into four categories; nonfiction books, fiction books, nonfiction audiobooks, and fiction audiobooks.

If you're a Google Drive user who has noticed that you don't seem to have all of the files you might have expected, you aren't alone. In fact, a number of people have posted in the Google support forums that they have experienced the same loss of files, and it seems Google is aware that there is an issue.

According to a report by The Register some people have claimed that they are missing as much as six months of business data, something that is far from ideal to say the least. There isn't an awful lot of information on what's going on here, but some users say that the file synchronization from the Google Drive desktop app simply stopped working so the data stored in Google Drive's cloud essentially got cut off at that same date.

A comment by someone claiming to be from Google support told people not to go fiddling with their data to try and get things back after it was suggested that changes to cached files could be what was needed. Specifically, Google says that users should not make changes to the root/data folder to avoid making matters worse.

If you're a WhatsApp fan who makes use of Channels you're in for a treat with a future version of the app set to enable new sticker options. The latest version of WhatsApp, now available to those who have access to the TestFlight beta builds of the app, now includes the ability for people to post stickers to a Channel for the very first time.

The new feature was first spotted by the folks over at WABetaInfo with a new sticker option being added to the chat bar. Interestingly, the report also notes that some users of the latest version of WhatsApp that can be downloaded from the App Store also appear to have access to the new sticker feature, suggesting that this is all based on a server-side configuration rather than the actual software that is being run.

The added benefit of having stickers in Channels is obvious because it allows people to be more expressive and emotive without having to type things out. It's also much more familiar and friendly, something that may or may not match a specific channel and its users. However, as with so many things, the key here is that giving people the option to use stickers means that people can choose whether or not to use them for themselves.

A new report from The Wall Street Journal has claimed Meta's algorithm for Instagram Reels served up questionable content to accounts that were exclusively following pre-teen and teen influencers on the platform.

The WSJ conducted an experiment by taking a group of accounts and exclusively following pre-teen and teen influencers. The publication then monitored the type of content the account was being delivered through Instagram Reels, and according to the report, the content these accounts were being served was "risqué footage of children as well as overtly sexual adult videos". These types of ads aren't allowed on Meta's platforms, yet they were being served to accounts designed to simulate a typical child's account.

Additionally, the WSJ reports that some notable brands, such as Disney, Walmart, Pizza Hut, Bumble, Match Group, and The Wall Street Journal itself, had ads representing their brands served alongside this questionable content. The same issue recently took place on the social media platform formerly called Twitter, and now called X, as antisemitic featured ads from big brands that resulted in some advertising expenditure being pulled or at least paused.

Evernote has long been a popular note-taking app among those who like to keep everything on their computer, but its free tier appears to be in danger. Parent company Bending Spoons has been trying to find ways to generate more income for a while now, and it's been on something of a cost-cutting exercise of late. Now, in an attempt to move people from its free tier towards a paid-for one, Evernote is starting to get serious.

Currently, Evernote allows people to have a free account with limitations that include notes being a maximum of 25MB and a monthly cap on uploads. Those who want more flexibility can of course pay to save bigger notes and upload more data. And now Evernote is testing a new limitation that could force people to start paying.

TechCrunch reports that some people have started to see in-app language that says they are now limited to just a single notebook and a total of 50 notes until they pay for more. Evernote says that it's still finalizing things and is currently rolling the limit out to less than 1% of its users, but it seems like only a matter of time before this change is rolled out to all free-tier users.

One of the best privacy-focused features of the WhatsApp instant messaging platform is the ability to send photos and videos but only allow them to be viewed once before they are removed and recipients are unable to see them again. It's a feature that is available on WhatsApp's mobile apps for the iPhone and Android, and the desktop apps did have the same feature previously before it was removed. Now, it seems it's making a triumphant return.

While you might not see the ability to send ephemeral photos and videos yourself, the beta watchers at WABetaInfo do now report that some users can. It would appear that, in typical WhatsApp fashion, this change is starting to roll out to some people now before being made available to more people in a wider audience over the coming weeks. If you don't see the option to send view-once photos or videos just yet, don't worry. The feature should be with you soon enough.

The feature speaks for itself and the use cases are obvious. Being able to send a photo or video that can only be viewed a single time can help protect privacy and sensitive information, and it's something that should always have been available in the desktop apps. The lack of such a feature was baffling, but it's now clear that WhatsApp has come to its senses.

When Apple announced the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max in September it also announced that the new phones would get support for USB 3 data transfer speeds via their USB-C ports which makes for much faster file transfers. As part of that, it was also confirmed that the new iPhones would allow creatives to record their videos directly to an external SSD to save space on the iPhone's internal storage. The catch was that individual apps would need to be updated to add support for such a feature but now one of the most popular has done exactly that, allowing content on an external SSD to be edited with ease.

That app is of course LumaFusion from LumaTouch with an updated app now available for download from the App Store. It's version 4.1.1 and it's a free download for those who already have the app installed. In fact, those of you with automatic updates enabled might already have it without realizing it.

The new app update means that those who want to create longer videos are no longer limited by the amount of free storage space that they have on their iPhones. Simply connect a USB-C SSD to the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max's USB-C port and new content will be available for editing there once the updated LumaFusion has been configured just so.