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Sep 22, 2023
Disclosure: Intel is a client of the author.
At Intel's Innovation conference this past week, the company highlighted the next generation of Windows PCs, clearly anticipating Microsoft's genAI Copilot tool, which can write documents for you, create presentations from comments, and automate much of what annoys everyone about Outlook. Intel offered up a number of interesting scenarios about this new class of hardware — due in December — that has the potential to transform work and entertainment.
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Sep 22, 2023
The future of Windows AI. That's what we've been hearing, and now Microsoft has shown us exactly what that looks like. If the future of Windows is AI, that's because it's like any other Microsoft product — the future of every Microsoft product involves AI and a Copilot.
That's the vision. AI everywhere. But the AI is your copilot, both figuratively and literally. Microsoft's message is that there is one Copilot, and it will integrate into every Microsoft product — including Windows. But Copilot isn't where the AI features end.
Here's what I learned at Microsoft's big event in New York City yesterday. (For full disclosure: Microsoft provided a Lyft to the event from my hotel, coffee, and a light lunch. The coffee was fine.)
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Sep 22, 2023
If you're reading this column, odds are, you don't have a lot of iPhone envy.
Believe me, I'm right there with ya. But much as we may enjoy the (ahem) greener pastures here in the land o' Googley matters, every now and then, Apple does come up with a genuinely interesting idea for its iPhone devotees.
And amidst all the magical and revolutionary blathering at last week's iPhone 15 event, one such intriguing addition made its way to the surface. It's a new "Action button" that sits on the side of the iPhone 15 Pro, exclusively, and is able to summon a single specific command of the phone-owner's choosing.
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Sep 22, 2023
US copyright law has yet to catch up to the numerous challenges posed by the wildfire adoption of generative AI, and the first real movement on major legal questions is likely to come from upcoming trials.
One of those key questions is the copyright status of works generated by artificial intelligence — for example, whether a Midjourney image that the system generated in response to a user prompt is protected by copyright, and, if so, who owns that copyright.
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Sep 21, 2023
Microsoft's M365 Copilot will be made generally available to business customers beginning Nov. 1, the company announced Thursday.
Microsoft first unveiled plans to embed the generative AI assistant into its M365 collaboration and productivity apps — including Outlook, Teams, Excel, and PowerPoint — earlier this year. The M365 Copilot, built using gen AI models codeveloped with OpenAI, can automate tasks and create content, potentially saving users time and enhancing productivity.
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Sep 21, 2023
Workflow management software provider ServiceNow has embedded a chatbot for assisting customers with most of its products.
ServiceNow's new Now Assist tool is an expansion to its AI-powered Now Platform, and is available in its Vancouver software release for IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), HR Service Delivery (HRSD), and Creator workflow application.
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Sep 21, 2023
The EU Chips Act has officially come into force today, putting in place a comprehensive set of measures to shore up the European Union's semiconductor supply chain resilience and reach its target to double its current global market share to 20% in 2030.
The act is made of three pillars, the first of which is a Chips for Europe Initiative, a program that aims to bridge the gap between research and innovation by promoting advanced semiconductor technologies by European businesses.
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Sep 21, 2023
Mac adoption in the enterprise isn't just about giving employees hardware options, according to Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn. It's a business imperative — and many companies agree.
Previn spoke at this week's Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC), where he explained that migrating to Apple hardware boosts productivity, enhances security, and can trim ownership costs. And he has the evidence to back the claim up.
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Sep 21, 2023
If we're gonna have an honest discussion about email, we need to get a few tough truths out of the way first. Think of 'em as ground rules for the conversation we're about to embark on:
Email is atrocious. It's a soul-sucking hell-hole that steals hours of your day and never lets up.
Most modern email tools fail to create a fully effective framework for navigating the deluge of email we busy professionals find ourselves facing on a daily basis — a truly inspired system for taming the madness and keeping our inboxes organized (ideally while keeping our sanity at least somewhat intact).
Email is also unavoidable, and when handled properly, it can be an absolute asset for practically any business or professional purpose.
Now, if you don't agree with any of those points, let me save you some time: This article isn't for you.
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Sep 20, 2023
Four years after it started life as a white paper, the UK government's controversial Online Safety Bill has finally passed through Parliament and is set to become law in the coming weeks.
The bill aims to keep websites and different types of internet-based services free of illegal and harmful material while defending freedom of expression. It applies to search engines; internet services that host user-generated content, such as social media platforms; online forums; some online games; and sites that publish or display pornographic content.
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Sep 20, 2023
Sales of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) headsets continue to decline sharply due to weak economic conditions and aging product lines, according to IDC. But upcoming device launches from vendors such as Meta and Apple could help drive a rebound later this year and into 2024, the analyst firm predicts.
Global shipments for AR/VR devices fell 46% year on year in the second quarter of 2023, according to IDC's latest Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker, with commercial shipments falling in line with the overall market (44.4%). This amounts to the fourth successive quarterly decline in shipments, and follows another steep drop-off in the first quarter (54.4% year on year, according to IDC figures from June).
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Sep 20, 2023
Imagine running fleets of iPhones that alert you when unexpected security-related incidents take place, or when otherwise legitimate service requests arrive from devices at an unexpected time or location. Imagine management and security software that not only identified these kinds of anomalies but gave you useful advice to help remediate the problem.
This, and more, is the kind of protection Jamf hopes to deliver using generative AI tools.
Generative IT for Apple admins
Jamf believes generative AI can be a big benefit to tech support and IT admin, and talked about its efforts at the end of an extensive Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) keynote. Akash Kamath, the company's senior vice president, engineering, explained that just as the Mac made computing personal, genAI makes AI personal.
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Sep 20, 2023
Manufacturing firms are already investing in a range of technologies that could serve as the building blocks for the industrial "metaverse," but the end of goal of fully interconnected, immersive environments is likely to take longer to realize.
The metaverse concept has been used in recent years primarily to describe the development of a 3D internet, referring to virtual environments used mostly — so far — for entertainment. The concept has gained traction in the industrial sector specifically, where it's used as an umbrella term for various existing technologies that can be combined to digitally replicate real-world objects and processes.
The idea is that accurate simulations of factory equipment, for example, would allow manufacturing and other industrial firms to optimize operations without disruption, improve collaboration for staff and external partners, and enhance frontline employee training. As with the consumer vision of a 3D internet, the industrial metaverse concept is a work in progress.
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Sep 20, 2023
Google's Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet may not look like siblings, but the two 2023 flagship Android offerings actually have a surprising amount in common.
And i's not just that they're the first Pixel devices in their respective categories of folding phones and tablets, either. Nope: When you use the two products side by side, you quickly realize that they share plenty of DNA within the evolved Android setup they showcase and the overall user experience they provide. And that extends all the way to their relatively unusual unlocking mechanisms.
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Sep 19, 2023
Google today announced it is embedding its conversational,Bard chatbot into many of its most popular apps, allowing users to get human-like responses to questions, summarize Gmail messages, and search Google Docs and Youtube.
Bard is in heated competition with other top generative AI technologies, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing conversational AI tool (which is also based on ChatGPT). Microsoft has added ChatGPT functionality to its suite of Microsoft 365 business productivity and collaboration apps through its own Copilot chatbot assistant.
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Sep 19, 2023
Google has once again sought to overturn a €2.4 billion ($2.6 billlion) fine imposed by the European Union in 2017 after it found the company had violated antitrust rules by using its dominant position in the search engine market to illegally promote its comparison shopping service.
Google originally appealed the fine the ruling in the General Court — the EU's lower court — in 2021, but the decision was upheld. The company has now again sought to challenge the fine, this time in Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), arguing that the EU had failed to demonstrate how its practices were anticompetitive.
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Sep 19, 2023
Work management software company Smartsheet unveiled its next-generation platform today, debuting features designed to provide users with new generative-AI powered capabilities at scale.
Work in the Smartsheet platform centers around "sheets" that contain information relating to a particular project or projects, within which users can include a variety of details such as a description, status, due dates, and which workers have been assigned to complete a task.
"Our goal is to make our platform not only powerful, but intuitive, beautiful, and delightful to use. And with this announcement, we're giving customers more and better ways to visualize their work in Smartsheet," said Ben Canning, senior vice president of products at Smartsheet, during a press conference. The company is taking a very practical approach to AI, he said.
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Sep 19, 2023
Now in its 14th year, the world's biggest event for IT admins who manage Apple hardware, the Jamf Nation User Conference kicks off today in Austin, Texas with Apple-related insights from Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and other big names in tech management and integration.
MacPaw, Okta, Mac Stadium, and many other important vendors in the space are also on tap at the hybrid show.
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Sep 19, 2023
Companies are increasingly using role reassignments as a strategy to sidestep expensive layoffs, according to some tech industry experts. But they see it as generally short-sighted and likely to do a company more harm than good.
As with last year's 'quiet quitting' trend, quiet cutting appears to be a concept originally coined in the media — in this case, by The New York Times. The practice involves reassigning workers to roles that don't align with their career goals to achieve workforce reduction by voluntary attrition — allowing companies to avoid paying costly severance packages or unemployment benefits.
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Sep 18, 2023
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has warned about the potential risks of artificial intelligence in its newly published review into AI foundation models.
Foundation models are AI systems that have been trained on massive, unlabeled data sets. They underpin large language models — like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's PaLM — for generative AI applications like ChatGPT, and can be used for a wide range of tasks, such as translating text and analyzing medical images.
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Sep 18, 2023
Apple once again appears to have upsold the world to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and while demand once again exceeded supply when orders began Friday, somewhere in Cupertino the bubbly was likely flowing as the company's initial stockpile of the iPhone Pro Max sold out in minutes.
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Sep 18, 2023
Google's dominance in the search arena has given rise to two major antitrust lawsuits from the U.S. government, which allege that the company has manipulated the market to maintain that dominance, to the exclusion of its competitors and the detriment of the public at large.
The first lawsuit, targeting Google's search business, kicked off last week, and a second trial against the tech giant, focusing on advertising, is scheduled for next year.
The cases heavily echo the turn-of-the-century Microsoft antitrust case in several respects, not least of which is the fact that Google faces the possibility of being broken up by regulators if it is unsuccessful in its legal battles.
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Sep 18, 2023
ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, and other public-facing generative AI chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) are nice enough, but they're general-purpose and not well integrated into enterprise workflows. Employees either have to go to a separate app, or companies have to spend time and effort adding the functionality to their applications via application programming interfaces. Plus, in order to use ChatGPT and other genAI chatbots well, employees have to learn prompt engineering.
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Sep 18, 2023
Though technology companies announced massive layoffs last year, 2023 has been much worse. Layoffs have far outpaced last year's cuts, as tech giants including Amazon,Cisco, Facebook parent company Meta, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce — as well as many smaller companies — announce sweeping job cuts.
The problem: Big Tech went on a hiring binge during the pandemic when lockdowns sparked a tech buying spree to support remote work and an uptick in e-commerce, and now they face revenue declines.
Continuing supply chain issues, inflation, and the war in Ukraine are also having an impact on both business and consumer spending, leading to fears of recession.
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Sep 15, 2023
Microsoft released 59 updates in its September Patch Tuesday release, with critical patches for Microsoft Office and Visual Studio, and continued the trend of including non-Microsoft applications in its update cycle. (Notepad is a notable addition, with Autodesk returning with a revised bulletin.) We've made "Patch Now" recommendations for Microsoft development platforms (Visual Studio) and Microsoft Word.
Unfortunately, updates for Microsoft Exchange Server have also returned, requiring server reboots this time, too.
The team at Readiness has created this infographic outlining the risks associated with each of the September updates.
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Sep 15, 2023
Low-code software company Airtable announced its second round of job cuts in nine months, laying off around 237 people, or approximately 27% of the company.
The cuts are part of a plan to focus the company on winning large enterprise clients and getting spending under control, CEO Howie Liu told Forbes, which first reported the layoffs. They follow job cuts made by the company in December 2022 that saw 254 people laid off.
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Sep 15, 2023
What's up with the iPhone radiation story? On the eve of Apple's big iPhone 15 reveal, France demanded the company remove iPhone 12 from sale in that country because it said the product radiates too much.
Now that demand seems to be spreading across Europe.
What's happening here?
The story so far
ANFR, the French agency that regulates these things, claims that certain iPhone 12 models emit unacceptable levels of electromagnetic radiation. The regulator subsequently ordered Apple to halt all sales of that model as of Sept. 12, pending a fix. Apple denied the claim, citing numerous radiation studies of its own, and now promises a software patch to bring the device into line with French regulations. But questions are now being asked across the EU, with Italy, Germany, and Belgium demanding a similar software patch.
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Sep 15, 2023
Amazon has launched a new generative AI tool that creates copy listings for users selling items on the company's e-commerce platform.
Designed to simplify the selling process, the new tool reduces the need for sellers to enter many pieces of specific product data when generating product descriptions. Instead, users can now enter a brief description of the product they are listing for sale - Amazon said this can be a few words or sentences - and the tool will generate the necessary copy, which sellers can then review and refine before uploading their item to the Amazon catalog.
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Sep 15, 2023
These days, a relatively clean and uncomplicated Windows 10 or 11 system disk might be home to more than 250,000 files and 90,000 folders. A more complex, application-heavy system disk might contain between half a million and a million files. My Windows 11 production PC has over 970K files and 275K folders, for example. That's a lot of stuff!
Indeed, all those files need not necessarily be kept around. That's why it's a good idea to practice regular disk hygiene. This is exactly what is explained and explored here, with plenty of examples and screen shots to illustrate the cleanup process. Best of all, the tools that help you tidy up won't cost you a dime.
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Sep 14, 2023
The iPhone has come a long way since its arrival in 2007.
First iPhone
The Evolution of the iPhone The Original iPhone" width="1200" height="800" data-imageid="100771460" data-license="IDG"/ IDG / Apple
After months of rumors and speculation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007. The device, which didn't actually go on sale until June, started at $499 for a 4GB model, $599 for the 8GB version (with a two-year contract). It offered a 3.5-in. screen, a 2-megapixel camera and won plaudits for the then-new multitouch features. Critics, however, said the phone was too expensive to do well in the market. (See iPhone launch story.)
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Sep 14, 2023
The year's most hotly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) in tech opened at the starting bell this morning, with ARM Holdings' (ARM) stock beginning the day on Nasdaq at $51 per share. That's the cost per share for the 10% of the company (95.5 million shares) Softbank is putting up for auction so far, aiming for a roughly $54 billion valuation on the stock.
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Sep 14, 2023
The European Union is reportedly planning to move forward with a formal complaint against the way Microsoft sells Teams, even though the company publicly announced in August it would start unbundling the collaboration app from Office and Microsoft 365 packages in Europe.
Under the proposed plan, Microsoft would separate out Teams and sell its 365 application suites to customers within in the EU for a discounted annual rate, starting October 1.
"These changes … are designed to address two concerns that are central to the Commission's investigation: that customers should be able to choose a business suite without Teams at a price less than those with Teams included; and that we should do more to make interoperability easier between rival communication and collaboration solutions and Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites," Microsoft said in a blog post announcing the changes.
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Sep 14, 2023
Smartphones are arguably more powerful than PCs. Consider that the iPhone 12, at 11 teraflops, outperformed the Cray 2 supercomputer by over 5000 times. And that's a now-three-year-old phone.
Even Samsung argues that modern smartphones are more powerful than PCs. Even if that isn't true for high-end PCs, the performance of the two classes of devices is very close between top-end smartphones and high-volume PCs with integrated graphics.
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Sep 14, 2023
Large language models (LLMs) often appear to be in a fight to claim the title of largest and most powerful, but many organizations eyeing there use are beginning to realize big isn't always better.
The adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools is on a steep incline. Organizations plan to invest 10% to 15% more on AI initiatives over the next year and a half compared to calendar year 2022, according to an IDC survey of more than 2,000 IT and line-of-business decision makers.
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Sep 14, 2023
In yet another incident of an outage this year for Microsoft 365, enterprises using the company's North American infrastructure for running Teams faced disruption on Wednesday evening, resulting in delay in sending or receiving messages over the productivity application.
"We're investigating an incident affecting Microsoft Teams. Users may encounter delays or failures sending and receiving messages. For more details, please see TM675041 on the Service Health Dashboard in the admin center," the company posted on Twitter, now rebranded as X.
Two hours after its first post, the company determined that the problem affecting Teams was specific to some users served through affected infrastructure in North America.
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Sep 14, 2023
Google-parent Alphabet late on Wednesday let go of hundreds of employees from its recruiting team in continuation of its efforts to operate more efficiently as macroeconomic uncertainty looms.
The company, which faces stiff competition from Microsoft, AWS, IBM, and Oracle in the field of generative AI and artificial intelligence, is looking to trade non-technical roles for engineering and technical talent.
"As we've said, we continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring," a Google spokesperson said in an email statement.
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Sep 13, 2023
As part of its commitment to AI R&D, the UK has announced the development of a new supercomputer and research facility to be housed at the University of Bristol.
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Sep 13, 2023
While the move to USB-C might mean bigger businesses will end up with a host of older Lightning accessories and cables to drop into the landfill over the next year or two (take that, EU), Apple will still sell 150 million of the new iPhones over the next year, according to Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics, devices at IDC.
Here's a rundown of some other considerations enterprises might keep in mind following Apple's iPhone launch.
Apple's international price decisions
While iPhone prices remained the same in the US, Apple raised some prices in some key markets, including in China, India, and Japan. In China, while the base model prices stayed the same, the cost of higher-capacity models climbed, while in India, the Pro models saw the steepest price hikes.
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Sep 13, 2023
The most significant tech antitrust trial of the 21st century thus far kicked off in US federal court Tuesday with the Department of Justice and 14 co-plaintiff states squaring off against the search engine giant. The DOJ accuses Google of unlawfully monopolizing the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the via anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.
During opening arguments, Kenneth Dintzer, deputy director in the DOJ's civil division, said, "This case is about the future of the internet, whether the Google search engine will ever face meaningful competition to protect that future." At the heart of the government's case is Google's use of contracts to maintain what Dintzer contends is a "default status" market share that tops 89% in the search engine market and 74% in the search ads business.
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Sep 13, 2023
Adobe on Wednesday announced the commercial release of Firefly, a suite of generative AI models that are natively integrated throughout Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Generative Fill and Generative Expand in Photoshop, and Generative Recolor in Illustrator.
Firefly, which was released in Beta in May, provides AI-powered image creation and editing for enterprise users that the company says are safe for commercial use. The AI model on offer from Adobe has been trained on stock images owned by the company, public domain content, and other openly licensed or non-copyright material.
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Sep 13, 2023
Ask most Android enthusiasts for their thoughts on the eternal "iPhone vs. Android" debate, and you're bound to hear some comically common conclusions:
Android is more advanced and ambitious, both in its software and especially in its hardware (hello, folding phones!).
Android is more customizable and conducive to productivity, thanks to all the ways it lets you take total control of your virtual environment and make it work the way you want.
The iPhone is bland, old-fashioned, and boring in comparison.
Apple's iOS platform certainly has its advantages, but it's tough to deny that Android is the more modern, powerful, and adventurous option (a juxtaposition expressed admirably in this recent video analysis by the ever-balanced Marques Brownlee).
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Sep 13, 2023
Microsoft has a surprising and powerful new competitor in its attempt to dominate the generative AI market - OpenAI, the company behind Microsoft's genAI products, in which Microsoft has invested $13 billion, and whose technology is the sole reason Microsoft has taken the lead in genAI.
That competition began in late August, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise. The company claims "offers enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, customization options, and much more." And, according to OpenAI, the tool is "an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data."
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Sep 12, 2023
Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscribers get more frequent software updates than those who have purchased Office without a subscription, which means subscribers have access to the latest features, security patches, and bug fixes. But it can be hard to keep track of the changes in each update and know when they're available. We're doing this for you, so you don't have to.
Following are summaries of the updates to Office 365/Microsoft 365 for Windows, with the latest releases shown first. We'll add info about new updates as they're rolled out.
Note: This story covers updates released to regular Office 365/Microsoft 365 for Windows subscribers. If you're a member of Microsoft's Office Insider preview program or want to get a sneak peek at upcoming features, see the company's "Release notes for Office for Windows Desktop (Beta builds)" page.
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Sep 12, 2023
So all the speculation was largely on target.
At its big Tuesday event, not only did Apple unveil its new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro line-ups, but it stressed environmental bona fides and its efforts toward becoming carbon neutral by 2030. It also introduced the Apple Watch Series 9, an Apple Watch Ultra 2, and offered noteworthy commitments regarding its future corporate environmental responsibility.
In other news, iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, tvOS 17, and HomePod 17 will be available as free updates on Sept. 18; macOS Sonoma ships a little later, on Sept. 26.And as expected, Apple's iPhones, watches, and AirPods Pro will be among the first of its mobile products to be equipped with USB-C, in line with EU regulation. EarPods will also migrate to USB-C.
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Sep 12, 2023
The launch of a major Windows 10 update isn't the end of a process — it's really just the beginning. As soon as one of Microsoft's feature updates (such as Windows 10 version 22H2) is released, the company quickly gets to work on improving it by fixing bugs, releasing security patches, and occasionally adding new features.
In this story we summarize what you need to know about each update released to the public for the most recent versions of Windows 10 — versions 22H2 and 21H2. (Microsoft releases updates for those two versions together.) For each build, we've included the date of its initial release and a link to Microsoft's announcement about it. The most recent updates appear first.
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Sep 12, 2023
Global business spending on collaboration software — including videoconferencing apps, team chat, email, and more — reached $33.9 billion in 2022, according to a recent IDC report. It was the seventh consecutive year of double-digit growth, up 14.6% compared to the 2021.
But that figure amounted to slower year-on-year growth compared to IDC data from the preceding two years (28.4% YoY growth in 2021, and 32.9% in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid shift to hybrid and remote work).
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Sep 12, 2023
With Apple spending a lot of money on generative AI and machine learning models, is it time for us to start prepping for Siri 2.0?
The Information says Apple has "significantly" increased spending on AI development focused on genAI capabilities within Siri. The report suggests Apple's internal AI research thrust is pushing in three key directions:
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Sep 12, 2023
Last month, I noted that staffers work from home just fine. Yes, I know some companies, including Zoom, demand that employees return to the office after making their fortune with remote work. And Congressional Republicans want to turn back the clock with its SHOW UP Act.
So, what? There will always be moronic managers — ignore them. It would be best to focus on getting the most from your remote workers as quickly as possible.
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Sep 12, 2023
While some companies in recent months have been rolling back remote-work policies, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has been reticent to set any in-office mandate — or even informal goals — for its workers.
Various teams have in-office staff meetings, and employees who live close to an office site tend to come in two or three days a week. But HP sees its path to the future of work as enabling employees to have the same experience in the office as at home, thereby enticing workers to come back to their cubicles only for specific reasons, such as in-office collaboration.
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Sep 12, 2023
The largest antitrust action since the turn-of-the-century Microsoft case is headed to trial today, as the federal government and a group of state attorneys general challenge Google's dominance in search.
Google is specifically accused of creating a monopoly through the use of exclusivity contracts with device manufacturers and software providers — deals, in short, that make Google the default search engine for a given device or platform. The overall effect of those numerous deals, according to the government's complaint, has been to artificially deny access to the search engine market to rivals, creating an effective monopoly.
The complaint, which was filed in October 2020 in the federal district court in Washington, D.C., further alleged that the exclusive contracts were used not just to broaden the use of its products, but to explicitly exclude competitors from chipping away at Google's dominant market share in search.
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Sep 11, 2023
Employees in IBM's software division have become the latest tech workers to face a return-to-office mandate, in this case requiring them to be in the office for a minimum of three days a week, starting from today.
Unlike other return to office mandates that have been put in place by Amazon, Google, Meta, and Zoom in recent months, IBM's requirement will affect employees across the globe, rather than just workers who are based in the US.
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Sep 11, 2023
Apple's attempt to build its own 5G modems may have hit some kind of wall as the company has reached a deal with Qualcomm to supply 5G modems for smartphone launches all the way to 2026.
Apple had been expected to begin using its own internally developed 5G modem beginning in 2024. (We had thought the iPhone 15 might be the last iPhone to use a Qualcomm modem, but this no longer appears to be the case.)
"Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Apple Inc. to supply Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF Systems for smartphone launches in 2024, 2025 and 2026," Qualcomm Technologies announced today in a statement. The deal could actually be extended through 2028.
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Sep 11, 2023
Having announced plans in May to build generative AI into its collaboration application, Slack now expects to make its the new features available to select customers as part of a pilot this winter, with a full rollout next year.
The company has been experimenting with the genAI internally for several months to identify the best ways of integrating the technology for collaboration purposes. The initial focus is on three main use cases designed tosave users time by automating certain processes.
One is the ability to summarize conversations that take place in Slack channels and threads.
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Sep 11, 2023
Having announced plans in May to build generative AI into its collaboration application, Slack now expects to make its the new features available to select customers as part of a pilot this winter, with a full rollout next year.
The company has been experimenting with the genAI internally for several months to identify the best ways of integrating the technology for collaboration purposes. The initial focus is on three main use cases designed to save users time by automating certain processes.
One is the ability to summarize conversations that take place in Slack channels and threads.
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Sep 08, 2023
The Windows 11 2022 Update has been released, but behind the scenes, Microsoft is constantly working to improve the newest version of Windows. The company frequently rolls out public preview builds to members of its Windows Insider Program, allowing them to test out — and even help shape — upcoming features.
Skip to the builds
The Windows Insider program is divided into four channels:
The Canary Channel (new in March 2023) is where platform changes (such as major updates to the Windows kernel and new APIs) are previewed. These changes are not tied to a particular Windows release and may never ship at all. Little documentation is provided, and builds are likely to be very unstable. This channel is best for highly technical users.
The Dev Channel is where new features are introduced for initial testing, regardless of which Windows release they'll eventually end up in. This channel is best for technical users and developers and builds in it may be unstable and buggy.
In the Beta Channel, you'll get more polished features that will be deployed in the next major Windows release. This channel is best for early adopters, and Microsoft says your feedback in this channel will have the most impact.
The Release Preview Channel typically doesn't see action until shortly before a new feature update is rolled out. It's meant for final testing of an upcoming release and is best for those who want the most stable builds.
The Beta and Release Preview Channels also receive bug-fix builds for the currently shipping version of Windows 11. See "How to preview
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Sep 08, 2023
The US government has reportedly opened a probe into Chinese chips being used in Huawei's latest 5G-enabled smartphone, a move that has raised questions around the effectiveness of President Joe Biden's recent executive orders that were supposed to have tightened export controls on such technology.
The Huawei Mate Pro 60 contains Kirin 9000s chips — 7 nanometer (nm) chips that have been made in China by the partly state-owned Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), according to an analysis published by TechInsights, a semiconductor research and analysis organization.
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Sep 08, 2023
One of the technologies being explored by videoconferencing software vendors involves the use of Deep Fake avatars to present at, or attend, meetings. The avatars allow a presenter to alter their appearance so they always look sharp and to pre-tape their speech for a more professional result. Eventually, the avatar could do the talk from a script generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Invitees who can't attend could have their avatars take their place and both transcribe and summarize what happened so they can selectively choose what to watch or just read the parts they're interested in. Since neither the presenters nor the attendees would be in attendance — remember, they're all avatars — simply sending out the script and summary of the talk would be a more efficient use of resources.
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Sep 08, 2023
Apple has pushed out an essential security update to defend against yet another attack by an out-of-control mercenary surveillance group.
Like a bad smell, NSO Group has clawed its way back into the spotlight with yet another unprincipled attack against free speech and citizens' rights, as revealed by Citizen Lab. The security researchers found this latest example of a sinister, yet egregious zero-click attack while checking the device of an "Individual employed by a Washington DC-based civil society organization with international offices."
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Sep 08, 2023
Microsoft is promising to defend customers of its Copilot AI assistant against copyright lawsuits, the company said in a statement Thursday.
Customers are worried that outputs from the generative AI assistant could infringe on copyright law, putting them at risk of legal claims, Microsoft said. To address those concerns, the company pledged to "defend the customer" and pay any judgments or settlements incurred as a result of lawsuit.
The Copilot Copyright Commitment applies to customers that use the "guardrails and contents" built into its software products, Microsoft said.
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Sep 08, 2023
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently told Amazon employees who refuse to come into the office at least three days a week that "it's probably not going to work out for you" — threatening to fire those employees (or invite them to engage in a "voluntary resignation").
I'm afraid I have to disagree. I predict the edict will instead not work out for Amazon.
Jassy's comments reflect his frustration over non-compliance with his May 1 back-to-office order. And he's not alone. Jassy told employees that virtually all of the other CEOs he's talked to prefer that employees work in the office rather than remotely.
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Sep 08, 2023
We all take notes. Since grade school, we've scribbled down the main points of what we're learning so we can access that information later. Suddenly, the power of note-taking is about to increase 100-fold.
Major existing data-container products such as Box, Dropbox, Notion, and thousands of new tools now use generative AI to let you query your own data.
Google believes this idea is great for note-taking, too. So, the company is working on something called NotebookLM (the LM stands for language model — like a large language model without the dataset being necessarily large). NotebookLM is now a beta, and you can get on the waitlist to try it here.
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Sep 07, 2023
Good news for PC users: Windows desktop software isn't going anywhere. In fact, every operating system wants to run it.
A decade ago, the tech media was full of pronouncements that "PCs are dying" at the hands of the iPad. But in 2023, the hot new commodity is Windows desktop software. More and more operating systems are now running Windows desktop apps it once seemed everyone — including Microsoft itself — wanted to leave behind.
At a glance, it's easy to say this is just about Windows business applications, or it's just about PC gaming, or it's just about people wanting to offer access to decades' worth of software on their devices. Itss definitely about all of those things — and more.
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Sep 07, 2023
Chinese cloud and social media conglomerate Tencent has announced that its Hunyuan large language model (LLM) will be available for enterprise use, as companies in the country stake their claim as technology industry and generative AI leaders.
"A war of a hundred models has begun," said Tencent's vice president, Jiang Jie, in comments published by Reuters. He noted that by July, there were more than 130 LLMs in China. These include the AI models that were recently unveiled by China's largest search engine, Baidu, and AI software company SenseTime.
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Sep 07, 2023
Not to say I'm obsessed with Apple's processors, but MediaTek's latest statement gives us some insight into what new A- and M-series chips from Cupertino may be capable of, and yes, they'll be faster, cooler, and more performant.
MediaTek this morning tried to set its flag for business on news it has successfully developed its first chip using the 3-nanometer process technology TSMC also uses to build chips for Apple.
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Sep 07, 2023
Most of the app recommendations I make these days tend to revolve around Android. It's the platform I carry in my pocket, after all, and it's been the primary focus of my writing for something like 7,347 years now.
But while there's certainly something to be said for finding the best apps for one specific flavor of device you rely on, the reality is that most of us don't limit our work to a single platform or type of technology. We have our personal phones of choice, sure, but we also use a computer. Some of us might have one computer in the office at another at home — or maybe even multiple computers in both locations. And that's to say nothing of the tablets and all the devices our colleagues, friends, and family use that need to play nicely with everything we do, too.
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Sep 06, 2023
Financial services and small-business software provider Intuit will be rolling out an "Intuit Assist" feature to all of its major product lines, including TurboTax and QuickBooks, building on the development of its own generative AI operating system.
GenOS, as the company calls its new operating system, was unveiled in June and is the basis for the Assist feature, announced Wednesday. Intuit said that its own customer data created a competitive advantage in building GenOS, and that the large language models (LLMs) behind the operating system — which Intuit itself developed — are specialized for solving challenges faced by Intuit's customers, including tax, accounting, marketing and personal finance.
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Sep 06, 2023
The UK government has conceded one of the more controversial parts of its Online Safety Bill, stating that the powers granted by the legislation will not be used to scan encrypted messaging apps for harmful content until it can be done in a targeted manner.
Companies will not be required to scan encrypted messages until it is "technically feasible and where technology has been accredited as meeting minimum standards of accuracy in detecting only child sexual abuse and exploitation content," said Stephen Parkinson, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Arts and Heritage, in a planned statement during the bill's third reading in the House of Lords on Wednesday afternoon.
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Sep 06, 2023
If you had any remaining doubt about Apple's long-term plans for processor development, you should note the significance of a newly revealed chip technology deal the company has reached with Arm. The deal extends beyond 2040.
Arm docs reveal Apple deal
News of the deal was included in documents filed by Arm ahead of its $52 billion initial public offering (IPO). "We have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing our longstanding relationship of collaboration with Apple and Apples access to the Arm architecture," the SEC filing said.
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Sep 06, 2023
Slack is building a work management tool designed to allow users to track team projects directly from the collaboration app.
The "lists" feature, announced Wednesday ahead of parent company Salesforce's Dreamforce event next week, provides functions similar to the likes of Asana and Trello, with the ability to create, assign, and manage individual tasks as part of a larger project.
This can be done via a spreadsheet or kanban-style board layout view, with record cards containing information on related tasks, as well as information about status, due date, and which team member is responsible.
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Sep 06, 2023
The European Commission has published a list of so-called gatekeeper companies that will be regulated by its Digital Markets Act (DMA), simultaneously announcing it will open investigations into the arguments put forward by Microsoft and Apple that claim iMessage and Bing don't meet the threshold for regulation.
The Commission said it had notified Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft and Samsung of their gatekeeper status — companies with a market capitalization of at least €75 billion ($81 billion) or sales in Europe of over €7.5 billion, at least 45 million monthly users in the EU. Twenty-two core platforms operated by these companies also fall under the scope of the DMA.
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Sep 06, 2023
AI transcription company Otter.ai on Wednesday launched OtterPilot for Sales, an AI sales assistant that helps employees with non-selling tasks such as note-taking and CRM data entry.
The sales-specific product launches seven months after Otter.ai released OtterPilot, an AI meeting assistant that automatically sends AI-generated meeting notes, including summaries and key meeting points, to participants after a call.
"One cohort of users who we saw using OtterPilot was salespeople," said Sam Liang, co-founder and CEO of Otter.ai. "Sales reps do a lot of calls every day and it's actually a big pain point for them to enter the data [from those calls] into Salesforce. With Otter, AI automates that process so, not only can OtterPilot for Sales listen and take notes at the end of the call, it can automatically pull that information into their CRM."
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Sep 06, 2023
OpenAI recently announced the first of its B2B product portfolio, ChatGPT Enterprise, arguably the most significant upgrade to the generative AI (genAI) platform since it launched last November.
The Enterprise version aims to address two major concerns users have had with the cloud-based AI service: What happens to corporate data that's used to customize it for specific business purposes, and how can that data be secured. The new ChatGPT offering increases security and privacy through encryption and single sign-on for enterprise authentication.
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Sep 05, 2023
Though they remain low, unemployment figures have seesawed over the past six months, a phenomenon that has some tech industry experts scratching their heads trying to make sense of what may be the new norm.
Last month, unemployment in technology fields increased along with the overall US unemployment rate, which rose from 3.5% in July to 3.8% in August, according to new data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). At the same time, total nonfarm employment across all markets increased by 187,000 jobs in August.
The mixed messages in last Friday's employment report carried over to the tech industry and workforce, according an analysis by industry group CompTIA.
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Sep 05, 2023
Apple and Microsoft are attempting to circumvent the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) by arguing that neither iMessage nor Bing are sufficiently popular enough to be regulated by the legislation.
The DMA was approved in July 2022 and is designed to rein in the power of large tech corporations such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta, forcing them to change how they integrate digital services and handle customer data.
It enables a range of antitrust action while also addressing issues including the right to uninstall software on devices, greater personal data access controls, enhanced advertising transparency, an end to vendors self-preferencing their own services, and a stop to certain restrictive app store requirements for developers.
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Sep 05, 2023
"An iPad, a Mac, a personal productivity device, an iPad, a Mac, a personal productivity device, can you see what it is yet?"
Apple may be planning a cheaper portable Mac to rival Chromebooks, according to DigiTimes. If that claim is true, then might this device be the combined iPad/Mac system that has been speculated on, discussed, and fantasized about for many years?
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Sep 05, 2023
Baidu CEO Robin Li on Tuesday said Chinese institutions and technology companies have released over 70 large language models (LLMs) with over one billion parameters, further escalating the ongoing US-China trade war that has seen both the nations vie for supremacy in technology prowess, including chipmaking, quantum computing, and AI.
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Sep 05, 2023
We're in the "iPhone moment" for generative AI, with every company rushing to figure out its strategy for dealing with this disruptive technology.
According to a KPMG survey conducted this June, 97% of US executives at large companies expect their organizations to be impacted highly by generative AI in the next 12 to 18 months, and 93% believe it will provide value to their business. Some 35% of companies have already started to deploy AI tools and solutions, while 83% say that they will increase their generative AI investments by at least 50% in the next six to twelve months.
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Sep 04, 2023
The UK government has laid out its five ambitions for the upcoming AI Safety Summit, due to be held at Bletchley Park at the start of November.
First announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in June during a visit to Washington to meet with US President Joe Biden, the summit aims to bring together government officials, AI companies, and researchers at Bletchley Park to consider the risks and development of AI technologies and discuss how they can be mitigated through internationally coordinated action.
In March, the UK government published a white paper outlining its AI strategy, stating it was seeking to avoid what it called "heavy-handed legislation," and will instead call on existing regulatory bodies to use current regulations to ensure that AI applications adhere to guidelines, rather than draft new laws.
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Sep 04, 2023
The outage that occurred on August 30 led to downtime in Azure services pertaining to APIs, databases, and applications.
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Sep 04, 2023
In some offices, computers are shared between two or more employees or temporary workers. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, but Windows 10 and 11 have great tools for allowing multiple people to share a PC without letting them read, edit, or delete each other's files and folders; use or delete each other's applications; or make system-wide customizations.
These tools can also be a big help for people who work from home and need to share their PC with a family member some of the time. They allow you to set up and log in with different user profiles so each user has access to only their own files and folders, apps, and preferences. In this piece, I'll show you what to do.
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Sep 01, 2023
Reports claim Apple is about to cease offering human tech support via X, the service formerly known as Twitter, its own online forum, and YouTube beginning Oct. 1. Users will still be able to access automated systems, but those replies will send you elsewhere to access human support.
Apple support staff who have been providing human assistance via those two channels will be transitioned to phone-based support roles, the reports claim.
Was this an ill-fated love affair?
On the surface, this is a weird decision given Apple's visible commitment to omnichannel customer services. The company has offered customer support via X/Twitter since 2016, when most customer-facing entities began doing so. At that time, customer service teams everywhere flocked to the platform to open up direct and immediate communications with customers.
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Aug 31, 2023
Salesforce and IBM are teaming up to provide generative AI for the enterprise, combining their respective efforts into what the companies hope will be a more attractive package for CRM customers.
The partnership, announced on Thursday, will focus on several areas in the CRM value chain, including the integration of Salesforce offerings for sale with IBM's consulting business. IBM said it will use its Garage digital transformation methodology to help customers implement Salesforce AI technologies such as Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud.
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Aug 31, 2023
As time goes by, people are becoming less trusting of artificial intelligence (AI), according to the results of a recent Pew Research study. The study, which involved 11,000 respondents, found that attitudes had changed sharply in just the past two years.
In 2021, 37% of respondents said they were more concerned than excited about AI. That number stayed pretty much the same last year (38%), but has now jumped to 52%. (The percentage of those who are excited about AI declined from 18% in 2021 to just 10% this year).
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Aug 31, 2023
Microsoft today said that as of Oct. 1, it will start unbundling Teams from Microsoft 365 and Office 365 in Europe after the European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into the company.
The original competition complaint was filed by team chat software rival Slack in July 2020, alleging that Microsoft was engaging in the "illegal and anti-competitive practice of abusing its market dominance to extinguish competition in breach of European Union competition law" by tying its Teams product to the Office productivity suite, "force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers."
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Aug 31, 2023
Apple deployments are accelerating across the global enterprise, so it's surprising that many organizations don't properly recognize that change. Even when companies put Macs, iPhones, and iPads in the hands of their employees, they are failing to manage these deployments. It's quite shocking.
That's the biggest take-away from the latest Jamf research, which warns that almost half of enterprises across Europe still don't have a formal Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy in place. That's bad, as it means companies have no control over how employees connect and use corporate resources, creating a nice, soft attack surface for criminals and competitors alike.
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Aug 31, 2023
The US Copyright Office is seeking public input on copyright law and policy issues raised by generative AI and is assessing whether federal legislative or US government regulation are warranted.
Generative AI (genAI) technology has been documented relying on copyrighted works used to train up underlying language models. The Copyright Office will be looking into the appropriate levels of transparency and disclosure involving the use of copyrighted works, the legal status of AI-generated outputs, and the appropriate treatment of AI-generated outputs that mimic personal attributes of human artists.
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Aug 31, 2023
Hey. You. Yes, you there — the one with your overly moist eyeballs pointed at the screen. What if I were to tell you that that the browser you rely on for all of your web-based exploring on Android had oodles of extra features — top-secret settings that'd add awesome powers into your mobile browsing adventures and make wiggling your way around this wacky ol' web of ours meaningfully better?
Well, provided you're using Google's Chrome browser for Android, that's as true as true can be. And best of all, it doesn't take much to uncover all of Chrome's carefully concealed treasures — if you know where to look.
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Aug 31, 2023
Hey. You. Yes, you there — the one with your overly moist eyeballs pointed at the screen. What if I were to tell you that that the browser you rely on for all of your web-based exploring on Android had oodles of extra features — top-secret settings that'd add awesome powers into your mobile browsing adventures and make wiggling your way around this wacky ol' web of ours meaningfully better?
Well, provided you're using Google's Chrome browser for Android, that's as true as true can be. And best of all, it doesn't take much to uncover all of Chrome's carefully concealed treasures — if you know where to look.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Aug 31, 2023
India and Japan became the first two countries outside the US to get access to Google's Generative Search Experience as the company introduced its Search Labs initiative in the two Asian nations.
Search Labs, which was launched in May at Google I/O this year, is an initiative to experiment with new internet search technologies before they are made generally available to users.
The Generative Search Experience will allow Indian and Japanese users to access generative AI-based search capabilities in their local languages via a text query or using voice input, the company wrote in a blog post.
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Aug 30, 2023
Speculation about Apple's upcoming iPhone 15 series will finally be laid to rest on Sept. 12, when the company is expected to announce four new smartphones.
There are also expectations of a new Apple Watch Ultra, AirPods, and perhaps an iPad, all with USB-C. (Nothing is official until Apple announces it, but this is what we think is happening.)
The new devices will be introduced at a pre-taped special event scheduled to begin at 10 .a.m PT/ 1 p.m. ET. The invitation to the event (above) shows an Apple logo and the word "Wonderlust," which seems to combine two thoughts: Wonder, as in something great, and wanderlust, as in a desire to travel.
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Aug 30, 2023
Now, look who wants a four-day workweek: the United Auto Workers (UAW).
The union is negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement between the Big Three Detroit automakers and the UAW's 150,000 members and voted Friday to authorize a strike if necessary. Among the "audacious" proposals UAW President Shawn Fain has proposed are a 46% pay raise, a return to traditional pensions — and a 32-hour, four-day workweek.
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Aug 29, 2023
Google's Duet AI is now generally available, bringing the generative AI assistant to its range of Workplace productivity apps, the company announced on Tuesday. The Duet AI features will cost $30 per user each month, putting the tool's price in line with rival Microsoft's upcoming Copilot.
Duet AI uses genAI to assist users accessing various Workspace products. For example, it can write draft texts in Google Docs based on user prompts, generate email responses in Gmail, and organize data in the Sheets spreadsheet app. It can also take notes and summarize conversations in the Meet videoconferencing tool.
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Aug 29, 2023
Despite 36% of UK and US employees using artificial intelligence on a weekly basis at work, less than a quarter of companies provide any guidance for their workers on how they should be harnessing the technology, new research by work management platform Asana found.
The use cases for this technology have rapidly expanded since the introduction of generative AI tools into the public domain, with most workers using the technology to streamline tasks and reduce so-called busy work. According to the report, 30% of employees surveyed for the report currently use AI for data analysis, and 25% for administrative functions. However, many want to take things even further, with 45% of US respondents saying they want to use AI for brainstorming. In the UK, that figure sits at 32%.
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Aug 29, 2023
Accelerating enterprise adoption of Apple devices feels inevitable, with 76% of large businesses now using more Apple devices, and nine in 10 IT professionals praising the business advantages of Macs, iPhones, and iPads in the workplace.
Those are some of the findings within an extensive Dimensional Research survey that identifies trends for IT use across US enterprises. Commissioned by Apple device management company Kandji, the study sheds fresh light on how Apple hardware is now being used in business, and the benefits they bring.
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Aug 29, 2023
ChatGPT's generative AI domination since its release in late November has led many in the tech industry to predict Microsoft's current stranglehold on the technology will continue well into the future - and that Microsoft will inevitably be the leader in the cloud.
GenAI requires supercomputing-like power, the ability to store and tap into monstrous amounts of data, close links to a company's existing technology infrastructure, and straightforward tools to help users get the most out of it. Those requirements are well beyond the capabilities of all but a few companies, meaning businesses will need to turn to the cloud for them.
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Aug 28, 2023
OpenAI today unveiled ChatGPT Enterprise, a version of its generative AI service that allows companies to decide how the model is trained and how long it can store corporate data used for that purpose.
The new ChatGPT service also offers increased security and privacy by using encryption for data at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2 ) and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) single sign-on for enterprise authentication.
OpenAI also said it has opened up the bandwidth for organzaitons to connect to GPT-4, the large language model (LLM) on which ChatGPT is based and trained on. The company plans to offer "unlimited higher-speed" access to the LLM, and 32k token context windows inputs and follow-ups that are four times longer than previously available. (One token is approximately 4 characters or 0.75 words. As a point of reference, the collected works of Shakespeare are about 900,000 words or 1.2M tokens, according to OpenAI.)
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Aug 28, 2023
Apple may be on the cusp of a rapid expansion of Mac market share across the enterprise computing markets, argues research firm IDC in its latest, slightly optimistic prediction about the PC industry.
IDC now expects that PC sales will return to growth in 2024, even though the overall industry won't get back to pre-pandemic levels.
Enterprise to prop up consumer sales?
The bottom line is that, with consumer markets remaining relatively weak, market growth in the short term will come from commercial/enterprise deployments. That's good news for Apple as its move to accelerated development of its own M-series silicon for Macs is driving steady gains.
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Aug 28, 2023
Increasingly, organizations are under pressure from numerous stakeholders to incorporate sustainability practices into their business strategies. As companies set ambitious environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, they often look to providers of sustainability management software to help them reduce their environmental impact and ensure employees are treated fairly.
What is sustainability management software?
Sustainability management software, also known as ESG software, helps organizations of all sizes track and report on metrics related to their ESG goals, such as greenhouse gas emissions, waste production, energy consumption, and more, said Abhijit Sunil, senior analyst at research firm Forrester.
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Aug 25, 2023
I found the Republican National Debate this week fascinating because, for once, it seemed to involve actual issues instead of regurgitated talking points. One comment caught my attention: it was an attack by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Vivek Ramaswamy implying he was a ChatGPT clone.
This wasn't true, of course, but would that necessarily be a bad thing?
The critique goes to the struggle education is having about whether the use of ChatGPT is somehow cheating and it mirrors similar concerns that using that generative AI tools for work are also cheating. (This brought back a memory of being a kid on a farm, painting miles of fence surrounding the property but being told I couldn't use a spray paint rig because that made the work fun — and work shouldn't be fun. I disagreed with then and still do now.)
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Aug 25, 2023
It looks as if people are at last waking up to a second extraordinarily dangerous requirement buried within a UK government bill designed to promote the nation as a surveillance state. It means bureaucrats can delay or prevent distribution of essential software updates, making every computer user far less secure.
A poor law
This incredibly damaging limitation is just one of the many bad ideas buried in the UKs latest piece of shoddy tech regulation, the Investigatory Powers Act. What makes the law doubly dangerous is that in the online world, you are only ever as secure as your least secure friend, which means UK businesses will likely suffer by being flagged as running insecure versions of operating systems.
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