Software & Apps News - Page 1

The ongoing battle between Microsoft and the FTC over the company's planned $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard has been making headlines for a while now, with several Xbox, gaming, and even PlayStation revelations as the case is being heard before a judge. Company emails, testimonies, and even internal-only plans are surfacing - one being Windows related.

Internal slide showing Microsoft's plans for the cloud, image credit: Microsoft.

According to an internal Microsoft document outlining the company's immediate and long-term plans, it's planning to shift Windows to become a cloud-based operating system that can stream to any device. Similar to the current Windows 365 service exclusive to Microsoft's commercial customers, except for all Windows users with an eye towards Chromebook-like devices.

The information comes from a June 2022 presentation slide about the state of the company's business under the heading "Move Windows 11 increasingly to the Cloud" as a long-term opportunity. It states that the cloud and client will "enable improved AI services and full roaming of people's digital experience."

In a development you can file under 'pointless but hilarious,' a software developer has made their own version of ChatGPT for an extremely old version of Windows.

In fact, as The Register spotted, DialupDotNet made a ChatGPT client for Windows 3.1 - called WinGPT, and written in C - which is very much in keeping with that period in computing history (the early nineties).

Ask WinGPT what's the easiest way to share photos with friends, for example, and the 'chatbot' will happily inform you that the best course of action is to give them the (physical) photos, or post them (on a floppy disk), or put the pics in a scrapbook.

DuckDuckGo's browser, which is designed to offer tight levels of privacy when scooting about the web, is now out for Windows.

The DuckDuckGo browser is now available for Windows as well as Mac, Android, and iOS (Image Credit: DuckDuckGo)

The browser has previously been on the Mac platform (and for some time - the best part of a year), so its arrival on Windows will see it reach a much larger audience.

This is the public beta release of the Windows flavor of DuckDuckGo's browser, and it's available to Windows 10 or Windows 11 users (the requirement is to be running at least Windows 10 May 2020 Update, although that version is now out of support, we should point out).

Remember Clippy? Of course you do - if you were around in the 90s anyway, when the iconic paperclip was unleashed as Microsoft's assistant for Office. But the helper wasn't created on a Windows 95 PC, as you might imagine.

No siree Bob, as PC Gamer spotted, a YouTube video from Great Big Story, in which Clippy creator Kevan Atteberry is interviewed, reveals that the character was first conceived on a Mac.

Atteberry (now a children's book author and illustrator) actually worked on Microsoft Bob (another high-profile flop) before being asked to come up with an assistant for Microsoft Office.

TikTok has been dominating the short-form video content sector of the internet for quite some time, and other platforms such as YouTube and Meta are playing catch up.

Instagram Reels Download button

Short-form content, clips that are between 0 and 3 minutes long, have become a cornerstone of the internet. These short videos were originally popularized by the now-extinct app Vine and now arguably solidified by ByteDance's TikTok. Social media platforms such as Meta responded to TikTok's popularity by rolling out their own versions, with Instagram Reels, and while Reels was immediately popular, it lacked some features that gave TikTok a unique edge.

However, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri posted that across the US, Instagram users will now be able to download reels that are shared by public accounts. Users can now do this by clicking on the Share icon and selecting the Download option.

The latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23481 aims to trim some fat regarding Folder Options in File Explorer. According to Microsoft, "many of these are legacy settings that have been around for ages and are not being regularly used by people on Windows 11." The changes aren't yet official but indicate that these features are part of a future update.

Microsoft is cutting some Folder Options in File Explorer.

You can check out the list of items being removed below, with Microsoft noting that they aren't disappearing entirely - though they'll only be accessible via modifying registry settings. This means they're gone for most Windows 11 users, even those who might consider themselves advanced users of Microsoft's latest operating system.

One of the removed features is the ability to 'Show drive letters' it has sparked some discussion within the Windows community around these changes dumbing down Windows 11 for no good reason. Streamlining something like File Explorer is a great idea; reducing visual clutter and improving the UI/UX experience is always welcome - though not at the cost of accessing advanced features easily.

Google Chrome is getting some big new features on the iPhone, and they're all free upgrades to the app that's already available in the App Store. Most of the new features are rolling out starting today.

There are four new features in total, and they're all specific to Chrome - none of these Google features will be available on Safari, so you'll have to use Chrome to take advantage of them. Note that you can also use the Chrome app on your iPad and benefit from all of these improvements as well.

At the top of the list is the new ability to see an address in Google Maps right from within Chrome. Now, users will be able to tap and hold on any address that Chrome detects and then see a mini version of Google Maps without switching apps.

The hugely popular instant messaging service WhatsApp has announced that it is bringing two new privacy features to its apps, making it safer and easier for people to use it.

WhatsApp privacy options - image: whatsapp.com

The new features were announced in a blog post by the meta-owned company and they should be rolling out to users starting right now, and they're both well worth taking a proper look at.

At the top of the list is the ability to silence unknown callers. When enabled, this feature will prevent calls from unknown people from coming through as normal. They'll still appear in the call history and you'll still get a notification, but you won't get the usual ring on your phone. You can of course call back if it's important, but this change should help cut down on the number of spam calls people have to deal with.

Downloading pirated software, especially an operating system, is not something you should consider - especially in light of this new report from Doctor Web. They've found multiple pirated copies of Windows 10 Pro feature a hidden trojan app called Trojan.Clipper.231 that steals cryptocurrency by substituting crypto wallet addresses in the clipboard with different addresses.

These unofficial and pirated builds of Windows 10 feature the malicious apps built into the OS, so it's not something you'd be able to spot when doing a clean install. Looking into the issue, Doctor Web quickly found five versions of Windows 10 on torrent tracker sites with the malicious trojan app.

The good news is that they have identified the malicious apps in the system directory.

The iOS 17 update hasn't yet been released to the public, but if you're running the developer beta you might already have discovered that there's a bit of a probe;m in relation to SMSes.

iPhone 14 - image: apple.com

That's because those who are running iOS 17 have started to report an issue that causes their iPhone to report that it was unable to send an SMS. Sending an iMessage continues to work as normal and that's good news for people who are sending messages to iPhone owners. But when it comes to sending them to people with Android, SMS is often the way to go.

However, people have been reporting on social media for the last week that something is amiss. And interestingly, while the iPhone does consistently warn that it was unable to send an SMS and that it wasn't delivered, that isn't the full story. According to posts on Reddit, the SMSses are actually arriving at their destination, no matter what the iPhone says.