Software & Apps News - Page 75

Android's latest major update Nougat launches today, five months after it entered beta. It's ready to install on Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Pixel C tablet, and General Mobile 4G, and will come pre-installed on the LG V20 when it launches around early September.

Nougat introduces approximately 250 major features. Among them: quick switching between apps, multi-windows, support for Vulkan API, built-in VR support, improved battery life, faster booting, and data saving for background apps.

If you don't see an update prompt on your phone now, you should soon. If you don't own one of the above listed phones, unfortunately you're likely to wait a long while for the update as per usual.

Microsoft's recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update has been causing problems with USB webcams, where the update prevents them from using MJPEG and H.264 encoding processes, in favor of the NV12 and YUY2 formats that are causing issues for many more people than Microsoft had anticipated. Millions of webcams have been affected.

Windows insider Paul Thurrott said that the Anniversary Update allows new situations where multiple applications can access the webcam, and the banned processed would duplicate the encoding stream, slowing it down. Only allowing a certain few compressions formats would stop multiple simultaneous processes, but now Microsoft has just made millions of webcams across the world not work in a click of their fingers.

Many users have taken to a developer forum where "Mike M" from the Windows Camera team at Microsoft explained why they removed the formatting, with the developer saying there's a fix for the MJPEG issue that will arrive in the September update, but the H.264 fix is a while away yet. You've got 10 days to roll back the Anniversary Update, which will have this problem solved, but if you pass that then you're going to have to wait until the fixes are delivered through Windows 10 updates.

Crytek's newly published roadmap for CryEngine reveals big features are not far off at all.

First is DirectX 12 multi-GPU support, a complete DirectX 12 renderer, the possibility of support for NVIDIA's PhysX, and more. All of these are labeled for version 5.2, due out any day now.

Version 5.3, meanwhile, will introduce the increasingly popular Vulkan API. Developed as a spin-off of AMD's Mantle, it serves as another low-overhead solution that's been shown to majorly increase performance in games. 5.3 is planned for mid-October.

Android might be installed on over 1 billion devices, but that doesn't mean Google isn't working on other operating systems - like the new, mysterious OS called "Fuchsia".

Fuchsia, according to Google's own description simply means "Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System). There's nothing more than that, but Android Police reports that the Magenta kernel is based on the 'LittleKernel' project, and just like Linux and Android, the Magenta kernel is what powers the larger Fuchsia operating system.

Android Police says that Magenta is "being designed as a competitor to commercial embedded OSes, such as FreeRTOS or ThreadX." Magenta is designed to scale better, which will see it work on embedded devices, smartphones, and even desktop PCs. In order for this to happen, Magenta improves on the foundations of LittleKernel by adding first class user-mode support, as well as a capability-based security model.

Mozilla is experimenting with integrating the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine into its Firefox browser. What this means is anytime you hit a dead page, the browser will automatically detect it and offer up a link to an archived version. At least, in theory: the feature (dubbed "No More 404s") is in the early stages and doesn't always detect pages and sometimes there is no archived version available.

If you want to try out No More 404s, install the Firefox Test Pilot add-on and find the new feature through that. Alternately, you can try out an add-on like Resurrect Pages.

Firefox recently hit version 48.0, which introduced revolutionary multiprocess design (so freezing isn't really an issue anymore) and a much-improved awesome bar.

After extensive planning and development, multi-process Firefox (aka Electrolysis or e10s) is here with Firefox 48. The jist of it is this: web content and browser interface processes are now separate, so if a page is hogging resources, your tabs, buttons, and menus will no longer lock up.

E10s is rolling out slowly; to check if it's enabled for you, type about:support into the address bar and check the line that says 'Multiprocess Windows.' If it says '1/1 (Enabled by default', you're good to go.

The awesome bar also gets significantly more useful with the 48 release: many more suggestions, each showing more information now show up when you begin to type in the bar.

After many months of waiting, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update is finally here. Well, for some: the update is a slow rollout as you'd expect, so if you don't see it in Windows Update yet, you will soon.

There are tons of new features and improvements included, among them mirrored Android notifications and texts, Windows Hello third-party support (so you can login into a lot more apps and sites with your fingerprint or face), an Ink-compatible sticky notes app said to feel like the real thing, Windows Defender scheduling and notifications, a performance-enhanced Edge browser with extensions, Xbox Play Anywhere, and lots more.

The update will his PCs first, with Windows Phone and Xbox One afterward. In the case of the Xbox One, it will be called the Summer Update, and will see Cortana return, and Windows Store integration and sharing, among other changes.

Today is your absolute last chance to upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge. Starting tomorrow, you'll have to shell out $119 for a copy.

The occasion marks not just the end of an offer, but also the end of Microsoft nagging you to upgrade, and the imminent launch of the Windows 10 Anniversary update (set for Tuesday, August 2).

Windows 10 has received a lot of criticism over Microsoft aggressive tactics surrounding the upgrade process as well as the Windows Store. Conversely, it's garnered a lot of praise for being more desktop friendly than Windows 8, as well as its performance benefits (particularly in games), among other perks.

Microsoft has claimed that its Edge browser is the only one out of the four big browsers on the market that can handle 1080p playback of Netflix content, and according to PCWorld, the claims are true.

The three other browsers - Chrome, Firefox, and Opera - are all capped at 720p. Using the "secret Netflix menus" (press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D) will display the resolution and bitrate of the Netflix content on your PC, and Microsoft is right - the others are capped at 720p while Edge ramps up to 1080p. The Windows 10 Netflix app renders Netflix at 1080p as well.

Considering that the PC is one of the most powerful platforms in the world, it's a strange thing to see that the PC doesn't support 1080p playback of Netflix, let alone 4K playback. Le sigh.

NVIDIA has just released its new GeForce 368.81 WHQL drivers, which are Game Ready for a bunch of new VR titles that NVIDIA has just released - including VR Funhouse. You can download the new GeForce 368.81 WHQL drivers here.

There's also support for Everest VR, Obduction (from the makers of Myst), Raw Data, and The Assembly. As for the changelog on NVIDIA's new GeForce 368.81 WHQL drivers, here's what you'll need to know:

Game Ready