Software & Apps - Page 37

Elon Musk has defended his decision to remove headlines from news links across X, following criticism of the change.

In what appears to be a soft roll out of the new change, X is now not displaying headlines on news links for a select amount of users. The update was first discussed last month by Musk that said the change was on its way and it's coming directly from him. Musk also revealed that the removal of headlines on news links will "greatly improve the esthetics", while simultaneously free up more space on the timeline.

Additionally, Musk has explained that removing the headline will free up more screen real estate, which will enable more posts to be seen. Furthermore, the removal combats inflammatory and click-bait-focussed headlines. Musk has recently replied to a criticism of the change by Aaron Levie, who wrote on his personal X account that the value of receiving news quickly on X just dropped, as viewers are unable to determine which post is worth clicking on.

Windows 11 recently got the Copilot feature courtesy of Microsoft's Moment 4 update which rolled out at the end of September, but not everyone has the AI.

In actual fact, there are a couple of reasons you might not have Copilot, but what Microsoft has just confirmed is that there are certain regions which just aren't getting the AI - at least not yet - at all.

Only Windows 11 users in the US, UK, and some Asian and South American countries are getting Copilot rolled out to the finished version of the desktop OS.

If you've been following news around Microsoft this week, you may well have seen an alarming suggestion that the next version of Windows will be subscription-based - the good news is that this isn't true.

Let's rewind a bit to where this rumor came from. It originated from German tech site Deskmodder, which discovered some entries in a configuration file in a Windows 11 preview build (from the Canary channel).

Those entries mentioned things like subscription status and subscription type, leading to some speculation that this might be the groundwork for some kind of subscription model coming to Windows.

If you've looked at the current X Premium subscription and been left unimpressed by what it offers, don't worry, you aren't alone. But there's another reason not to worry because it seems that X is getting ready to add to its subscription offerings with two new tiers. And one of those tiers will do something that X Premium should have done a long time ago.

While the X Premium subscription currently reduces the amount of ads that people see in their timelines, a new leak appears to show that X is getting ready to remove ads completely. Assuming you're willing to pay for it, of course.

That's all according to code found by the software code diver @aaronp613 on X after he found that there are new options for different tiers. According to a post by them, there will be new Premium Basic, Premium Standard, and Premium Plus offerings. Those tiers will have ads, half the number of ads, and no ads at all, respectively.

Windows 11's installation process - or any operating system, for that matter - is a pretty dull affair involving a lot of foot-tapping, but a new addition from Microsoft tries to make the initial OS setup a good deal more fun.

As The Verge reports, while setting up Windows 11 on a Surface Laptop Studio 2 and applying updates, Microsoft offered up the chance to play a game.

This is a surfing game that's a modern version of the SkiFree mini-game from way back when, challenging you to dodge obstacles as you whizz down a course (and avoid the marauding yeti - changed into a kraken for the surfing version). There are also other modes like slalom and time trial, too.

Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform formerly called Twitter, now X, announced back in August that he was going to remove headlines from news links and how they show up in the timeline.

That change has seemingly been implemented, with many users reporting the lack of headlines in posted links to the platform. The initial announcement of the change dates back to August 22, where he commented on some news regarding X's move to remove headlines/text from posted links and only display an image card. Musk said that this idea came from him directly and that these changes would "greatly improve the esthetics" and free up space on the timeline.

Before these changes, Twitter displayed a preview card of the post along with the headline and the summary text. Additionally, Musk believes that this new compact design will free up screen real estate that will enable more posts to be seen on-screen while simultaneously reducing the incentivization for click-bait or inflammatory headlines designed to inflict shock upon the reader.

Microsoft's new AI Copilot feature is rolling out with the latest Windows update, giving millions of Windows users their very own AI assistant or "companion" to help with whatever might benefit from some machine learning. It arrives as part of Windows 11 22H2 'Moment 4' that brings around 150 new features to the OS, including updating Paint with AI goodness (yep) and more.

But as with any major update, there can be issues with things that were previously working that no longer work due to strange glitches or even outright crashes. From a PC gaming perspective, AMD GPU owners have been the hardest with the latest Windows 11 update, with users reporting that AMD Radeon Adrenalin Software resets after each system reboot.

When you factor in the recent release of HYPR-RX for Radeon RX 7000 Series GPU owners, which lets users enable things like Anti-Lag+, Fluid Motion Frame, and other effects at the driver level and customize game profiles not to mention one-click overclock settings - this is not a good thing.

Windows 11 has been out for two years, so you might wonder how it's doing regarding market share. According to the latest report from StatCounter, there has been growth over the past year, with Windows 11 now accounting for 23.64% of the PC market as of September 2023 - a sizable jump from the 13.61% from a year ago. However, users aren't upgrading from Windows 10.

Looking at the StatCounter data, it's clear that as more people upgrade to Windows 11, far fewer people are still running Windows 7 and Windows 8. Even though Microsoft's latest OS is the successor to the popular Windows 10, Windows numero 10 is still the dominant Operating System with a whopping 71.64% market share.

And to make the situation even more interesting, Windows 10 market share hasn't changed over the past year, with the September 2023 figures being just about identical to the September 2022 ones.

Spotify hosted an event in its New York office on Tuesday where it announced it will be adding to the audiobook side of its product.

Spotify has announced it's expanding the audiobook side of its service with 150,000 additional titles for its Premium subscribers. The music-streaming platform launched its audiobook side with 300,000 titles in September 2022, and the platform said it will continue pushing into the market as its been going 20% year-over-year, with audiobooks only taking 6% to 7% of the wider book market.

The music-streaming platform has said that audiobooks are currently suffering from a distribution and discovery problem, which it believes it will be able to solve as it's done with music and podcasts. Notably, Spotify co-president and chief business officer Alex NorstrÜm said about 2 billion people will read a book throughout 2023, but the percentage of those people listening to an audiobook is still very small.

Windows 11 has only just got the Copilot feature, as part of the recent Moment 4 update for the OS, but the AI assistant is already being used to display ads to users according to a report.

Windows Latest spotted that when using Copilot, some queries result in small ads popping up in the side-panel for the AI.

The example provided is a query comparing Amazon Prime Video to Netflix, which produced an advert at the end of the answer linking through to Amazon's streaming service.

RGB lighting on a modern PC, especially a gaming rig, is standard in 2023. What isn't standard is how you can customize and sync all of the various lighting protocols across different brands - and often, you'll need multiple pieces of software to make lighting changes to your motherboard, keyboard, and so on.

Microsoft has been teasing the addition of dedicated RGB lighting controls coming to Windows 11 for a while now, and it finally looks like the feature is here and available for everyone to check out if they toggle the "receive the latest updates as soon as they are available" toggle in the Windows Update menu.

Having RGB control software within Windows 11 could be a game changer for RGB lighting across various peripherals and other bits of hardware, as it could mean third-party apps having to be installed and a shift to a more unified way lighting is handled. Assuming, of course, that Microsoft can provide robust customization tools as lighting is about more than simply setting a color and leaving it at that. Which is what the tool is at the moment.

The hugely popular video-based social network TikTok is testing a new ad-free tier that will allow people to pay a monthly fee and then browse videos without having to deal with ads.

The new feature is only in the testing phase right now but a new Android Authority report notes that the new ad-free tier is being tested at $4.99 per month in the United States, but there's no telling whether that price will remain the same throughout the testing process. It also isn't clear whether the price will be the same in local currencies when the ad-supported tier goes live in additional countries, either.

The Android Authority report says that there are strings in the latest TikTok for Android app that show the service is ready to ditch ads - but only for a price. TikTok has not yet publicly commented on any plans to charge a free to remove ads, but it's something that other companies already do.

Microsoft made the decision to roll out the revamped Dall-E 3.0 image creation capability to Bing AI users at the weekend - but demand means the feature is working slower than expected.

As Microsoft's head of Advertising and Web Services, Mikhail Parakhin, explained on Twitter, the company kicked off the broad rollout of Dall-E 3.0 to Bing chatbot users at the start of the weekend (on September 29, with it expected to reach everyone by the end of the day).

However, what Microsoft didn't count on was how many folks out there would want to head over to Bing AI and try out the new image generation.

WhatsApp is currently testing a new feature with iPhone owners that allows them to more easily create new stickers without having to do it manually. The new feature is also being tested with a limited number of Android beta testers, too.

The AI sticker feature was first reported by the WhatsApp watchers over at WABetaInfo and appears to allow people to create new, unique stickers using nothing more than a few words. It's available to some of those who are on the latest WhatsApp TestFlight beta, but it isn't yet known when we can expect the update to roll out to everyone who gets the app via the App Store.

WABetaInfo reports that users can click a new "Create" button that appears in the stickers section of the app. Once they do, they are presented with space to enter a description of the sticker that they want to create. Once done, the WhatsApp app creates the new sticker and it can then be used as required. The feature means that people no longer have to be able to manually create their stickers in order to get something that isn't already offered.

Bing might not be the default search engine on Apple's hardware but that doesn't mean that the company isn't well aware of its existence. In fact, Apple was reportedly so aware of Bing that it considered buying it from Microsoft as recently as 2020.

That's according to a new Bloomberg report which describes tentative discussions surrounding the possibility of Apple buying the Bing search engine, with Apple services chief Eddy Cue reportedly involved in talks. Cue is also the person who wound up doing a deal with Google that saw it continue its years-long deal to be the default search option on the iPhone.

It's that deal that saw Cue wind up in court this week, appearing as a witness in an antitrust suit brought by the United States against Google. The US argues that Google unfairly dominates the search market. For his part, Cue argues that the billions of dollars Google pays Apple to be the default option was part of a deal agreed on merit, adding that Google is the best option out there.

If you're a Google Calendar user you're in for a good time because there is a new update being tested that might not seem like the hugest of deals at first, bit will quickly become one of your favorite app tweaks in some time.

That's because Google is now testing a change that will show the live date in the area between the search icon and the account switcher in the Google Calendar app. Previously, there was simply a button that you would press to take you back to today. Now the button still does exactly the same thing but you'll never be left wondering what date it is.

Now sure, that doesn't sound like it will be that big of a deal, but it can be. Especially if you spend a lot of your time in the Calendar app on your Android phone or tablet. Unfortunately, 9to5Google reports that the change is only rolling out to people using Android on their phones right now. Those using a tablet might have to wait a little while longer.

Windows 11 just got a big update, Moment 4, which delivers the Copilot AI (and much more besides, including 'never combine' for the taskbar), but Microsoft has taken one piece of functionality away from the OS with this upgrade.

As Windows Latest observes, that would be the ability to drag and drop files in File Explorer's address bar, which was previously a feature in Windows 11.

In short, before the Moment 4 update, it was possible to open a folder in File Explorer, and within that window, you could grab any given file, and drop that into a different folder via the address bar at the top of the window.

Apple's macOS Sonoma is finally available for everyone to download after going through months of beta testing and one of the big new features is called Game Mode. The feature is exactly what it sounds like, a mode that is designed to be turned on whenever playing a game. But what does it do?

Apple had already said that Game Mode would redirect system resources to make sure that games run at the best possible performance levels by reducing background processes. That hands over more of the CPU and GPU to the game, making it run better. We also see that the Bluetooth sampling rate will increase, reducing latency when using AirPods and game controllers. Now, Apple has shared details on how to use the feature and how to disable it if you don't want it to be used at all.

A new support document, spotted by MacRumors, details exactly how Game Mode works. It says that it'll turn on automatically whenever a game is run in full-screen mode by hovering the pointer over the green arrow button in the top-left corner of the game window and choosing the Full Screen option.

Apple has today released macOS Sonoma to the world, allowing people to download it onto their Macs for the first time.

The macOS Sonoma update was previewed during the WWDC 2023 event on June 5 and it's been in beta ever since. That beta included both private developer and public beta programs and there have been many releases across the last few months. Now that the update is ready, everyone who has a compatible Mac can download macOS Sonoma for free and enjoy all of the new features that it brings to the table.

There are plenty of new improvements as part of this update including support for placing widgets on the Desktop for the very first time. Those widgets are also live, which means that they won't open their corresponding apps just to update data. Users can also install iPhone widgets on their Mac for the first time, too.

Elon Musk's X social network is already hard at work on bringing video and audio calling to the platform and now it appears that it is closer than ever to fruition. Musk confirmed that he wanted to bring calls to X last month, and code suggesting the feature is on the way is already being found in the iPhone app.

That code was spotted in an iPhone version of the X app and appears to suggest that audio and video calls are closer than ever. The feature will bring calling support to anyone who has the iPhone app installed and also happens to pay for X Premium, the subscription offering previously known as Twitter Blue.

Musk believes that X is in a unique position to handle voice and video-based calling because he sees it as the world's address book, adding that the feature will be available on iPhone, Android, and the web. The cross-platform support could be a big deal, although X won't be the first to offer such a thing.