Software & Apps - Page 18

Windows 11's Phone Link app is getting an AI-powered feature that was spotted in testing earlier this year, but is now rolling out to everyone.

This is 'suggested replies' which provides exactly that - short potential replies to the texts you get, within Phone Link - and this functionality is rolling out now (so not everyone will have it just yet, but it's coming).

The replies are generated via AI (in the cloud, not on-device), and they will only appear for certain messages. Namely texts where the AI can actually get a handle on the conversation enough to be able to generate some possible responses.

Windows 11 no longer has WordPad, with Microsoft finally giving the venerable app the chop with the 24H2 update.

This comes as no surprise, because Microsoft had already deprecated WordPad - that happened late in 2023 - marking it for removal from Windows 11. Following that, it was yanked from test builds of the OS at the start of 2024, and we were informed that the app would be cast out of Windows 11 when the 24H2 update came around.

Well, 24H2 is now here - or it's rolling out, anyway - and as promised, there is no WordPad anymore. Furthermore, fresh installs of Windows 11 won't come with WordPad either.

Some folks aren't so keen on the size of the taskbar buttons with Windows 11, and if you fall into the group that feels the icons are oversized, there's some good news for you going by a change hidden in testing.

As uncovered by PhantomOfEarth in a beta build of Windows 11 (22635), there's going to be an option to have the taskbar icons made smaller - but this is hidden in the preview right now.

The leaker uncovered the change by using ViVeTool (a Windows configuration tool) and just because the concept is present in testing, in the background, doesn't mean Microsoft will ever enable it. But there's certainly a chance that'll happen.

Windows 11 24H2 is finally here, the annual update for Microsoft's desktop operating system for this year, and its launch has arrived rather out of the blue.

Microsoft notes that the rollout will be a phased affair, which is always the case with these major updates. So, if you don't get Windows 11 24H2 straight away, don't be surprised - the initial batch of PCs that the 24H2 update is piped to will probably be a relatively narrow selection.

As Microsoft becomes more confident about how solid the 24H2 update is, and that there aren't any big bugs - or truly nasty showstoppers - involved anywhere, the scope and speed of the rollout will be increased.

Windows 11's latest update has been causing quite some chaos for some of those who have installed the preview - to the point that Microsoft has now pulled it completely (and issued a rollback for those who've installed it).

We're talking about the optional update for September, released last week, which has been responsible for Windows 11 users getting hit by Blue Screens of Death (or indeed GSoDs, the green variety) and multiple restarts - with the Automatic Repair tool getting triggered following those repeated reboots in some cases.

On top of that, the BitLocker recovery screen is appearing for some - a bug witnessed earlier this year in Windows 11 - and there are other issues with USB and Bluetooth peripherals failing to work.

Microsoft Recall, the AI-powered search tool for Copilot+ PCs, was quickly delayed after people realized what it did and how it worked. For those who needed a reminder, Recall was touted as the big AI feature for Copilot+. It would continuously take screenshots of your PC, index them, and use generative AI to turn them into a searchable database of your PC history.

"Hey Recall, what was that funny video I watched last night on YouTube," or "Hey Recall, can you put together a list of all the new sneakers I was looking at a few weeks ago." These are two examples of a potential use; however, early hands-on with Recall showed that its screenshots were not only unencrypted but would contain sensitive material like banking information, and the database itself was an indexed wet dream for hackers.

Well, Recall is coming back, and in a new Microsoft blog post, the company has outlined how this latest version is designed with "security and privacy in mind" and core principles like ensuring sensitive data is always encrypted and that other users won't be able to access encryption keys.

If you've upgraded your Mac to the latest desktop operating system from Apple, macOS 15, then you may have been seriously annoyed by the way screen recording permission requests now work.

The good news is that there's now a fix, sort of - not from Apple, but a third-party software developer that has produced an app called Amnesia.

To recap briefly, with macOS 15 the mentioned permission requests now happen repeatedly, so instead of having to grant an app that engages in screen recording - whether that's screen grabbing, or screen sharing in the likes of Slack - permission once, you're asked multiple times.

Spotify's AI Playlist feature is finally rolling out to those on the Premium plan in the US, albeit the functionality is still in beta.

Obviously enough, it uses AI to generate a playlist based on your request, and the feature was previously made available in the UK and Australia some time ago (nearly half a year back, in fact).

The AI Playlist is now available to users in the US and Canada, as well as Ireland and New Zealand, on mobile devices (Android and iOS).

Windows 11 has not gone down well with the computing public for one reason or another - from system requirements, through to bewildering interface changes (steps backward in places), ad pushing, and other niggles besides - and we've just caught a glimpse of what we could have had instead.

Well, kind of - if Microsoft had sat down and properly thought out making a desktop operating system which is clean and streamlined, free of bloat and, yes, dare we say it, with AI pushed more to the side.

BetaNews spotted that a well-known concept creator, AR 4789 on YouTube, put together a video clip showing off a mock-up of a fictional Windows 12.1. (It's not Windows 12, as AR 4789 already did a concept for that, so this is a refinement on that previous take).

Windows 11 has become rather notorious for Microsoft jamming in adverts - or 'recommendations' of one sort of another - pretty much everywhere in the interface, but the company's latest move on the ad front looks to be a positive one.

Windows Latest noticed a recent change in test builds of Windows 11 in the Canary and Beta channels (although not everyone has seen this, so the measure is seemingly still rolling out on a limited basis).

It involves the Privacy & security panel in the Settings app, where Microsoft has taken the 'General' options page and turned it into a 'Recommendation & Offers' page.

Microsoft is scheduled to end support for Windows 10 in October 2025, but before the world's most popular operating system reaches its end of life, Redmond has rolled out a new update that addresses changes related to the European Digital Markets Act (DMA). 

One of the ways Microsoft intends to comply with the new DMA changes or operating regulations for any country that falls within the European Economic Area (EEA) is to change how signing into apps on Windows within Windows 10 and Windows 11. Reports indicate that if a user located in a country within the EEA signs into Windows and then clicks on an app, a prompt will appear asking the user if they want to use their Windows login credentials for the application. 

This feature is what Microsoft call an SSO notice, or single sign-on notice. In December 2023 the company said that if a user logins into the app with the same credentials they logged into Windows with, the SSO notice would not longer appear. However, in August Microsoft revealed the notice was appearing much more frequently then intended, for Windows 10 and Windows 11 users. 

Windows 11 received a new cumulative update last week, but it appears that the September patch gives with one hand, and takes away with another, at least going by some reports of bugs with KB5043076.

The main gift of this patch - outside of the usual security updates - is that it comes with branch prediction code improvements for AMD Ryzen CPUs (Ryzen 7000 and 9000 chips to be precise). These usher in some impressive frame rate boosts indeed, to the tune of 10% on average as we've heard before (with some bigger leaps, too).

The bugs are the downside, of course, and as a report from Windows Latest underlines, there's a fair old smattering of glitches of one sort of another - an unusual number of gremlins in the works, in fact, some of which are (ironically) affecting PC gamers.

Microsoft is working to make some of its default apps run faster in Windows 11, specifically the clients using Windows App SDK.

That software development kit is used in the likes of the stock Photos app in Windows 11, or Phone Link, but apps leveraging the SDK can often exhibit sluggish behavior when loading, or in terms of general responsiveness, as Windows Latest notes.

However, the tech site has spotted a support document from earlier this month which tells us that Microsoft has brought in native Ahead-Of-Time (AOT) compilation for Windows App SDK.

When Microsoft announced its Windows Recall feature that was headed to the new Copilot+ PCs the feature was met with heavy criticism from users as it was essentially viewed as an invasion of privacy.

Here's how Recall works in a nutshell. Microsoft's latest AI feature in Windows 11 indiscriminately and continuously takes screenshots of a user's desktop to create a searchable index that has categorized all of the content the AI has seen on screen. Notably, the tool doesn't blur out any sensitive information a user may be looking at, such as banking information, private images, passwords, medical information, etc. Once users discovered this, the feature received extreme criticism as it raised concerns that Recall users would have their sensitive data stored on Microsoft servers.

Microsoft attempted to reassure users that all screenshots captured by Recall would be stored locally and wouldn't be sent to Microsoft servers. However, that prompted security concerns for users, as bad actors who gained access to a PC would simply need to navigate to the directory of this Recall feature and copy all of the screenshots to steal all of a user's personal information. How does this relate to Apple's new suite of AI features under Apple Intelligence?

Linus Tech Tips has caught itself in another controversy, but this time, it doesn't have to do with poor quality videos, but instead, its videos perhaps being a little "too" good.

LTT has decided to go after the owner of the platform it posts its videos on, Google, with a series that has seemingly ruffled some of the company's feathers as it informs viewers how they can move away from Google-related products/services. The first episode of the series was posted on May 23, 2024, and is titled "De-Google Your Life". It provides viewers with information on how to move away from Google Chrome and its related services.

The second part in the series was published on August 20, 2024, and was removed from YouTube for violating the platform's "community guidelines". Within this video the LTT team showcased how a user could transition away from using Google's password manager, Google Maps, and even interact with the platform without interfacing with YouTube directly, including by downloading videos.

Following his arrest in France on charges on twelve charges, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has had his past looked and it was discovered the billionaire tech founder has helped father more than 100 children, or at least according to him.

Durov was arrested in France last month on several criminal charges that alleged he was complicit in drug trafficking, distribution of child sexual abuse material, facilitation of fraud, illicit transactions, and more. All of these charges stem from an unknown percentage of the 950 million Telegram users that take advantage of the end-to-end encryption of the messaging platform.

The Telegram CEO has since responded to the charges in a recent Telegram post, saying he was "surprised" to discover he could be held personally responsible for the illegal activities of people using his platform. In a recent USA Today report, the publication pointed out Durov has publicly claimed he has fathered more than 100 children through anonymous sperm donations and that his doctor informed him his sperm was of "high quality".

Earlier last month, a US federal judge ruled that Google held a monopoly over the search industry and abused its power to maintain it.

The lawsuit that Google lost claimed the company acted illegally to keep its grip on the search industry, which involved paying other big tech giants such as Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars per year to stay as the default search engine on their respective phones and browsers. US Federal Judge Amit P. Mehta found Google to be guilty of violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and has now given an update on the company's punishment.

According to reports from The New York Times, a federal judge will deliver the punishment for Google by August 2025, and in the meantime, Judge Amit P. Mehta has asked prosecutors from the Justice Department and states to submit proposals on how to remedy the problem. Prosecutors have until the end of the year to submit proposals for Google's remediation, and after that, Judge Mehta will hold a new trial to hear evidence on how to move forward.

Instagram users will soon be able to comment directly on Instagram Stories, rather than a comment being sent directly to the account that posted the Story via private-message.

The new feature will enable people to interact with Instagram Stories more publicly, as the comments on Stories will be displayed to other users, unlike the previous setup where comments were sent directly to the posters private messages. However, users will only be able to comment on a story if they follow the account posting and if that account follows them back.

Additionally, the comments on Stories will only last 24 hours and users will be able to choose to turn Stories comments on or off for each Story. It appears Instagram is leaning more towards providing new features for users to enjoy that promote user engagement. In other Instagram related news, Meta was recently associated with "Active Listening" software through a leaked pitch deck from one of its partners.

Most people have encountered the strange coincide of having a conversation about a topic and then picking up their phone, opening a social media app and seeing an advertisement for that very thing that was just being discussed.

Some people, including myself, have reported this coincidence happening multiple times, leading to the assumption tech giants have access to the microphone in a smartphone and listen to people's conversations to better hone targeted advertisements. Despite this anecdotal evidence, social media giants such as Meta's Facebook have denied using any listening software for advertising purposes, but a recent report by 404 Media revealed through leaked pitch decks the technology exists.

The 404 Media report cited a leaked pitch deck about "Active Listening" software that accessed a smartphone microphone to monitor conversations and gather data. That data was then combined with behavioral data for more precise targeted advertising per user. The leaked pitch deck came from Cox Media Group (CMG), which cites Amazon, Google, and Facebook as partners. Following the release of the report, Google has since dropped CMG from its Partner Program list.

Brazil recently ordered its telecommunications regulator to block access to X following a Supreme Court Justice's determination that X violated federal regulations on content moderation and failed to appoint a legal representative in the country.

The debacle between Elon Musk's social media platform and Brazil revolves around Brazilian courts demanding X remove content the court believes harms democratic institutions in Brazil, which could impact an upcoming election. The Supreme Court also ordered X to have a legal representative in the country per its federal laws, which the social media platform failed to do.

Moreover, the Supreme Court's orders involved freezing the financial assets of Starlink, a product created and produced by SpaceX, Elon Musk's privately owned space-fairing company. Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court Justice that signed off on the orders viewed Musk's social media platform X and Starlink as one in the same. Furthermore, the freezing of financial assets in Brazil was to reportedly ensure SpaceX paid its court-ordered fines.