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Windows 11 could make checking your phone from your PC even better – so Apple, take note for macOS Sequoia
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Windows 11 could put your iPhone or Android device right into the heart of the Start menu, in a manner of speaking – or at least the Phone Link app is apparently headed this way.

That’s according to clues unearthed by MS Power User, which reported on whispers from Windows 11 testers to the effect that Phone Link is set to be made into a Start menu ‘Companion.’

If you’ve missed the Companion panel appearing in Windows preview builds last month, it’s a floating panel that can be docked to the left or right of the Start menu. The Companions it plays host to are a bit like Live Tiles of old, widget-style affairs that display real-time info which is piped through.

In theory, Phone Link will be one of the apps that’ll appear in the Companion panel, as MS Power User took a deep dive into files from Phone Link and found a number of code strings relating to ‘StartMenuCompanion’ settings.

Analysis: Dialing up the work on phone integration

This would appear to be the groundwork for Phone Link to become a Start menu Companion, but of course, this is just work hidden in testing right now – and we can’t take it for granted this will happen. Indeed, the Companion panel itself might be abandoned yet if Microsoft thinks better of it – only time will tell.

Given the rumors, and at least some concrete evidence that Phone Link will get this treatment, it seems more likely to happen than not, on balance. Phone Link would also be a logical and useful app to have in the Companion panel, in order to pipe notifications through from your smartphone, bringing them to your attention when you’re in the Start menu.

Phone Link has been a key part of Windows for some time now, and it’s not surprising Microsoft is pushing ahead with potential features like this – and work on the Cross-Device Experience Host (albeit that has stumbled of late) and other phone-related capabilities besides – given that Apple now has iPhone Mirroring inbound with macOS Sequoia.

Whichever way you dice it, smartphones are becoming more and more deeply integrated into desktop operating systems these days.

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Google’s NotebookLM is now an even smarter assistant and better fact-checker
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Google is updating its NotebookLM writing assistant with improved performance and new features, among other things. It now runs on the company’s Gemini 1.5 Pro model, the same AI that powers the Gemini Advanced chatbot. 

Thanks to this functionality, the assistant is more contextually aware, allowing you to ask “questions about [the] images, charts, and diagrams in your source” in order to gain a better understanding. 

Although Gemini 1.5 Pro is part of NotebookLM, it's unknown if this means the AI will accept longer text prompts or create more detailed answers. After all, Google's AI can handle context windows of up to a million tokens. We reached out to the tech giant to ask if people can expect to see support for bigger prompts.

Prompts will mostly stay the same, although they’ll now provide inline citations in the form of encircled numbers. Clicking on one of these citations takes you directly to supporting passages inside source documents. That way, you can double-check the material to see if NotebookLM got things right. 

AI hallucinations continue to be a problem for the tech, so it’s important that people are able to fact-check outputs. When it comes to images, opening the citation causes the source picture to appear in a small window next to the text.

NotebookLM

(Image credit: Google)

Upgraded sourcing

Support for information sources is expanding to now include “Google Slides and web URLs” alongside PDFs, text files, and Google Docs. A new feature called Notebook Guide is being added, too. What this does is give you the opportunity to rearrange the data you enter into a specific format like a series of FAQs or a Study Guide. It could be quite handy.

The Guide sees other changes being made, though they’re not included in the initial announcement. For instance, you can have up to 50 different sources per project, and each one can be up to 500,000 words long, according to TheVerge. Prior to this, users could only have five sources at once, so it’s a big step up. 

Raiza Martin, who is a senior product manager at Google Labs, also told the publication that “NotebookLM is a closed system.” This means the AI won’t perform any web searches beyond what you, the user, give it in a prompt. Every response it generates pertains only to the information it has on hand.

NotebookLM’s latest update is live now and is rolling out to “over 200 countries and territories around the world.” You can head over to the AI’s official website to try out the new features. But, do keep in mind that NotebookLM is still considered to be experimental and you may run into some quirks. TheVerge, for instance, claimed the URL source function didn’t work in their demo. However, in our experience, the tool worked just fine.

Be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best business laptops for 2024, if you plan on using the assistant at work.

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Report: Apple may make it even easier to manage passwords on the iPhone and Mac
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Yes, Apple’s long offered an easy way to save usernames and passwords as part of iCloud Keychain and even allowed syncing them across devices for easy sign-ins. However, Apple may soon devote an entire application across platforms to password management.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will show off a new app called Passwords at WWDC 2024. The app will be a part of, and available on, “iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15.” Like iCloud Keychain, the dedicated app can “generate passwords and keep track of them.” 

Reportedly, on iOS or iPadOS, it will move out of Settings and into a dedicated app, while on the Mac, it will leave Safari Settings and turn into a dedicated app. As you might suspect, iCloud Keychain will still be the backbone of this experience.

a promotional image for WWDC 2024 featuring a dark Apple logo on a black background

A teaser image for Apple WWDC 2024. (Image credit: Apple)

The application will be a one-stop shop for password management across Apple devices and be divided into categories. It will support standard logins and passwords, saved Wi-Fi networks, and passkeys that utilize Touch ID or Face ID. Releasing a dedicated password management app will put Apple more directly in competition with third-party services like LastPass, Aura, and 1Password.

Like those, Apple’s Passwords solution will likely support the import of passwords, possibly encouraging folks to opt for the one built into the heart of the platforms.

The latest report also notes that passwords will work on Vision Pro – we’ll note the $ 3,500 Spatial Computer already supports iCloud Keychain for auto-filling – and on Windows computers. It’s unclear if that will be a formal application or a web experience for the latter. Either route, the application will offer the ability to autofill logins and passwords on these devices.

As someone who uses iCloud Keychain, I already appreciate that it works across platforms, and a dedicated application might make it easier to manage them. And if I am searching for a password, it'll be a bit easier to open an app and authenticate versus diving into settings. It will be neat to see if any new features are rolled out, potentially an ability to auto-update logins or passwords after a set amount of time. That's all speculative, though.

Apple will likely unveil the Passwords app alongside a trove of other news at its opening keynote for WWDC 2024. Much of the focus will likely be on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) announcements for all of Apple’s platforms – iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS.

We’ll know for sure on June 10, 2024, and you can see the other rumored announcements ahead of the World Wide Developers Conference here.

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Google reveals new video-generation AI tool, Veo, which it claims is the ‘most capable’ yet – and even Donald Glover loves it
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Google has unveiled its latest video-generation AI tool, named Veo, at its Google I/O live event. Veo is described as offering “improved consistency, quality, and output resolution” compared to previous models.

Generating video content with AI is nothing new; tools like Synthesia, Colossyan, and Lumiere have been around for a little while now, riding the wave of generative AI's current popularity. Veo is only the latest offering, but it promises to deliver a more advanced video-generation experience than ever before.

Google IO 2024

Donald Glover invited Google to his creative studio at Gilga Farm, California, to make a short film together. (Image credit: Google)

To showcase Veo, Google recruited a gang of software engineers and film creatives, led by actor, musician, writer, and director Donald Glover (of Community and Atlanta fame) to produce a short film together. The film wasn't actually shown at I/O, but Google promises that it's “coming soon”.

As someone who is simultaneously dubious of generative AI in the arts and also a big fan of Glover's work (Awaken, My Love! is in my personal top five albums of all time), I'm cautiously excited to see it.

Eye spy

Glover praises Veo's capabilities on the basis of speed: this isn't a deletion of human ideas, but rather a tool that can be utilized by creatives to “make mistakes faster”, as Glover puts it.

The flexibility of Veo's prompt reading is a key point here. It's capable of understanding prompts in text, image, or video format, paying attention to important details like cinematic style, camera positioning (for example, a birds-eye-view shot or fast-tracking shot), time elapsed on camera, and lighting types. It also has an improved capability to accurately and consistently render objects and how they interact with their surroundings.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis demonstrated this with a clip of a car speeding through a dystopian cyberpunk city.

Google IO 2024

The more detail you provide in your prompt material, the better the output becomes. (Image credit: Google)

It can also be used for things like storyboarding and editing, potentially augmenting the work of existing filmmakers. While working with Glover, Google DeepMind research scientist Kory Mathewson explains how Veo allows creatives to “visualize things on a timescale that's ten or a hundred times faster than before”, accelerating the creative process by using generative AI for planning purposes.

Veo will be debuting as part of a new experimental tool called VideoFX, which will be available soon for beta testers in Google Labs.

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Your iPhone may soon be able to transcribe recordings and even summarize notes
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It’s no secret that Apple is working on generative AI. No one knows what it’ll all entail, but a new leak from AppleInsider offers some insight. The publication recently spoke to “people familiar with the matter,” claiming Apple is working on an “AI-powered summarization [tool] and greatly enhanced audio transcription” for multiple operating systems. 

The report states these should bring “significant improvements” to staple iOS apps like Notes and Voice Memos. The latter is slated to “be among the first to receive upgraded capabilities,” namely the aforementioned transcriptions. They’ll take up a big portion of the app’s interface, replacing the graphical representation for audio recordings. AppleInsider states it functions similarly to Live VoiceMail on iPhone, with a speech bubble triggering the transcription and the text appearing right on the screen.

New summarizing tools

Alongside VoiceMemos, the Notes app will apparently also get some substantial upgrades. It’ll gain the ability to record audio and provide a transcription for them, just like Voice Memo. Unique to Notes though, is the summarization tool, which will provide “a basic text summary” of all the important points in a given note.

Safari and Messages will also receive their own summarization features, although they’ll function differently. The browser will get a tool that creates short breakdowns for web pages, while in Messages, the AI provides a recap of all your texts. It’s unknown if the Safari update will be exclusive to iPhone or if the macOS version will get the same capability, but there’s a chance it could.

Apple, at the time of this writing, is reportedly testing these features for an upcoming release on iOS 18 later this year. According to the report, there are plans to update the corresponding apps with the launch of macOS 15 and iPadOS 18; both of which are expected to come out in 2024.

Extra power needed

It’s important to mention that there are conflicting reports on how these AI models will work. AppleInsider claims certain tools will run “entirely on-device” to protect user privacy. However, a Bloomberg report says some of the AI features on iOS 18 will instead be powered by a cloud server equipped with Apple's M2 Ultra chip, the same hardware found on 2023’s Mac Studio.

The reason for the cloud support is that “complicated jobs” like summarizing articles require extra computing power. iPhones by themselves, may not have the ability to run everything internally.

Regardless of how the company implements its software, it could help Apple catch up to its AI rivals. Samsung’s Galaxy S24 has many of these AI features already. Plus, Microsoft’s OneNote app can summarize information thanks to Copilot. Of course, take all these details with a grain of salt. Apple could always change things at the last minute.

Be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best iPhones for 2024 to see which ones “reign supreme”.

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You’re not imagining it, Amazon Prime deliveries got even faster in 2024
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Amazon Prime continues to be a service juggernaut in the tech industry as the company has broken a new record. According to a recent announcement, Amazon revealed it managed to deliver over two billion items in the first three months of 2024 through Prime. That’s more than the total amount of packages they sent out in Europe to members last year. 

Worldwide Amazon Stores CEO Doug Herrington stated in March that almost 60 percent of Prime orders “arrived the same or next day across” 60 of the largest urban areas in the United States. In London, Tokyo, and Toronto, “three out of four items” arrived at their destination in the same time frame.

This success in the US seems to be the result of the logistical changes Amazon made in 2023. They essentially divided up the country into “eight interconnected regions” to serve specific geographic areas. These regions have a “fulfillment center” housing a wide array of items, allowing the company to quickly deliver their stock right to your door. Amazon even claims that thanks to AI, it can predict “which items [people] in various parts of the country” want and when they want them. The tech giant also works with multiple sellers, both big and small, to get those brand-name products out fast.

It’s possible Amazon will demolish its 2023 Prime delivery record. The company is certainly on the way and Herrington says they’re “just getting started.” But will they meet this goal? Most likely. Recent moves hint that they’ll do it, but there’s a chance they'll fall short.

New services

Not too long ago, Amazon made some important business updates.

They launched a new grocery delivery service for Prime members on April 23. For $ 10, subscribers can get unlimited delivery on orders over $ 35 from local and specialty supermarkets – so long as the final bill is over $ 35. That’s the only requirement. People without a Prime membership can join the program as well at $ 5 a month. However, they must own a registered EBT (also known as food stamps) card. 

Before that, the company said it was expanding its Prime Air drone delivery service to the Phoenix Metro Area in Arizona. It’s not running yet. Amazon still has to get all the “necessary permissions” from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) before it can take to the skies.

So with the grocery delivery program and a little help from a fleet of drones, the 2023 Prime delivery record could be smashed. However, we hesitate to be confident in Amazon's corner because of the layoffs we’ve seen in the past few years. The platform has taken a hatchet to its business. From 2022 through 2023, Amazon cut over “27,000 jobs across almost every area” of the business.

Granted, things have slowed down, but Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said they’re not done cutting costs. Layoffs could ramp up in the near future.

Memorial Day is coming up in the US and that means discounts. If you want to stay up to date on whatever Amazon is planning, be sure to follow TechRadar's Amazon Memorial Day sales roundup for 2024.

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YouTube can stream 8K videos to your Meta Quest 3 – even though its displays aren’t 8K
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Following news that Meta’s Quest 3’s getting some big mixed reality upgrades including an AI that can recognize furniture and improved passthrough quality, there’s yet another improvement on the way this time for one of my favorite Quest apps: YouTube.

That’s because the VR version of the video-sharing platform now supports 8K video playback on Quest 3 – up from the previous max of 4K.

To turn it on make sure you’re running YouTube VR app version 1.54 or later, then boot up a video that supports 8K, tap on the gear icon, and where it says Quality you want to change the resolution to 4320p – or 4320p60 if you want 8K at 60fps instead of the usual 30fps. If 4320p isn’t an option in this list unfortunately the video you want to watch isn’t streaming in 8K.

There are a few extra caveats. First, you’ll want a strong internet connection, because even if the video supports 8K playback you’ll struggle to stream it over weak WiFi – unless you like waiting for it to buffer. Oh, and one other important detail; the Quest 3 doesn’t have 8K displays. But that's not as big a problem as it might seem.

Method in the 8K madness

The Quest 3 has two displays (one for each eye) that boast 2,064 x 2,208 pixels each; 8K resolution is 7,680 × 4,320 pixels. Even if we combine the two displays they still boast only just over 25% as many pixels as an 8K display.

So is 8K streaming pointless? Well, not entirely. 

A Meta Quest 3 owner watching a spatial video of their husky dog in a field

Spatial video is 3D, but not as immersive as 360 video (Image credit: Meta)

For flat YouTube videos, playing them in 8K probably is worthless on Quest hardware. The only advantage you might find is that you’ll be seeing a downscaled video – the opposite of upscaled, where a higher resolution source is played at a lower resolution – which can sometimes lead to a more detailed image than simply streaming a video at the lower resolution.

The real improvement can be found instead with immersive 360-degree videos. 

To explain things simply: when you see a flat video you see the whole resolution in that 16:9 frame. In 360 videos the resolution is spread across a much larger image, and you only see portions of that image based on where you’re looking. That’s why – if you’ve watched 360 videos in VR – 4K content can look more like HD, and HD content can look like blurry messes.

By bumping things up to 8K you’ll find that immersive 3D video should look a lot more crisp – as the sections you’re looking at are now effectively 4K. So while you're not seeing 8K, you're still getting a higher resolution.

This update may also be a good future-proofing update for the next Meta hardware. With rumors that a Meta Quest Pro 2 could up the display game for Quest hardware, there’s a chance that it'll get closer to having actual 8K displays, though we’ll have to wait and see.

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Windows 11 24H2 isn’t even here yet but Microsoft is already working on its follow-up that could pave the way for Windows 12
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Microsoft is already working away at what could be the first Moment update to follow the big Windows 11 24H2 update.

Currently, work is ongoing with finishing the 24H2 update which lands later this year – most likely it’ll roll out from September – but Microsoft is already looking past that upgrade to the first Moment update it’ll deliver for that release, likely early in 2025. (Assuming the Moment name is kept, and we’ll come back to that).

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This is according to a respected Microsoft leaker, Albacore on X (formerly Twitter), who as noted in the above post stumbled upon an internal flight – a preview version just being tested within Microsoft currently – which is the first Moment for 24H2. (Add your own scattering of seasoning here, naturally).

As probably hasn’t escaped your attention if you’re a Windows 11 user, Microsoft just released the fifth Moment update for Windows 11 23H2, which comes with some handy new features.

Analysis: The bigger update picture – and potential road to Windows 12

As a quick refresher, Moment updates are sizeable feature drops, though not nearly as big as the annual upgrades for Windows 11 (23H2, 24H2 and so on). Essentially, Moments offer a way for Microsoft to continue to drip feed features between the major ‘H2’ annual versions of Windows 11.

With the first Moment update for 24H2 seemingly already under development, this seems a strong indication that Microsoft will continue with this scheme of things for Windows 11 updates going forward.

As Albacore discusses in the thread of the above post on X, it is possible that Microsoft might change the name ‘Moment’ to something else, but the underlying principle of these small-to-medium sized upgrades – outside the cadence of the big annual updates – should remain in place for Windows 11 as we progress down the road with the OS.

Before too long, though, that road will lead to Windows 12 – or whatever next-gen Windows ends up being called, with it quite possibly turning up in 2025, when Windows 10 exits stage left – and after that, the update delivery philosophy could change again.

Perhaps there’s a heightened chance of this, too, when you consider that Windows is under a new chief – Pavan Davuluri has taken the reins of the OS, as Mikhail Parakhin (who was heading up Windows previously) is off doing other things at Microsoft as of last month.

Traditionally, Microsoft has operated under this kind of scheme of smaller drip-fed updates outside of large feature drops – though not always. Before Windows 11 arrived, you may recall that Microsoft used a twice-yearly update scheme with Windows 10, so no new features were introduced between those upgrades. That left some pretty sizeable gaps of six months or so where nothing happened with the desktop OS feature-wise (except minor tweaks here and there).

We were never keen on that idea, but we don’t think Microsoft will return to that way of working – we’re taking this as a positive sign that Moments, or their equivalent, will be around for a good time yet, and hopefully with Windows 12 going forward, when it eventually rolls into town.

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Microsoft is upgrading its Copilot with GPT-4 Turbo, even for free users
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Microsoft revealed that its Copilot AI assistant will be getting a huge upgrade: it will be integrating Open AI’s GPT-4 Turbo language model. The best part is that all users will have full access to GPT-4 Turbo, including those in the free tier.

According to the same status update on Twitter / X, Pro tier users will have the option to choose the older standard GPT-4 model by using a built-in toggle, which is useful for specialized cases. It also gives the Pro tier added value without taking away from the free tier users.

GPT-4 Turbo is the updated version of the base GPT-4 and is well-known for speed, accuracy, and complex long-form task management. The update brings faster code generation, more insightful suggestions, and improved overall responsiveness, translating to better productivity and smoother coding.

Copilot is really increasing its value

It’s good to see that free-tier users are getting meaningful updates to their Copilot AI assistant already – it’s a good sign that Microsoft will ensure that those without deep enough pockets to maintain a paid premium subscription can still benefit from the service. This is especially important since the tech giant needs to win over more people to Windows 11, which is where the full version of Copilot will be.

However, the Pro subscribers aren’t left in the dark either, as they get more flexibility in the AI assistant when it comes to language model upgrades. Not to mention other features and tools that have been added so far.

Microsoft just announced a Copilot Chatbot builder, which allows Pro users to create custom task-specific chatbots based on their job role. What makes this so interesting is that it was built without any input from OpenAI, which could be due to a need to distance itself from the popular AI tool due to increased scrutiny and lawsuits. This is odd considering that the latest GPT update was added across the Copilot board.

There’s also a feature that lets the Copilot bot directly read files on your PC, then provide a summary, locate specific data, or search the internet for additional information. However, it’s not a privacy nightmare as you have to manually drag and drop the file into the Copilot chat box (or select the ‘Add a file’ option), and then make a ‘summarize’ request of the AI.

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No, third-party iPhone app stores won’t work outside Europe – even with a VPN
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After many years of Apple keeping its ecosystem firmly locked down, cracks have started to appear in its famous walled garden, with the newly released iOS 17.4 allowing third-party app stores for the first time. However, access to these is only available to users within the European Union (EU) – and don’t expect to be able to get around the restriction using a VPN.

As spotted by 9to5Mac, Apple has uploaded a new support document that outlines how it will make sure that anyone who wants to access a third-party app store is physically located inside the EU.

First, you must have an Apple ID that's set to an EU member state. As well as that, there’s a geolocation check to ensure that you're physically located in one of those countries. Apple says it doesn’t collect your actual location, only an indicator of whether you're eligible to use third-party app stores or not.

Interestingly, the geolocation aspect of Apple’s restrictions implies that even the best VPN services won’t be able to bypass them. That’s because a VPN can change your IP address to fool a server into believing that you're located in a different country, but a geolocation check happens on the device itself (usually using GPS), and therefore can't be spoofed in the same way.

Apple might use other ways to check your location, and it already has a system in place that does just this. Also as found by 9to5Mac, this system looks up things like your rough location (on a nation level, not your exact location), your Apple ID billing address, the region you are using in the Settings app, and the type of device you’re using.

The app stores are coming

The App Store on a phone screen

(Image credit: Shutterstock / BigTunaOnline)

Apple says that you will be able to access alternative app stores if you leave the EU for a brief “grace period,” but warns that if you’re “gone for too long, you’ll lose access to some features, including installing new alternative app marketplaces.” Apps you’ve installed will still work, but you won’t be able to update them. The company hasn’t said how long the grace period is.

Alternative app stores have only just been permitted, but one is already available to download. Called the Mobivention App Marketplace, this store is aimed at corporate customers who want a outlet for distributing their own business-focused apps. Other providers, like MacPaw, Epic Games and AltStore, have said they’ll be launching their own app stores soon.

Apple didn’t give a reason for why it's going so far to ensure that only EU citizens can access third-party app stores, but one reason could be to clamp down on the idea spreading to users in other nations. For one thing, Apple has repeatedly said that third-party app stores to which access is being enforced by the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) could be unsafe.

As well as that, they also represent a potential threat to Apple’s revenues – just one look at Apple’s onerous fees for developers who use third-party app stores shows you how worried Apple must be. While the company is being forced to open up in the EU, no other jurisdiction has followed suit, so it seems likely that Apple wants to contain the spread of alternative app stores as much as it can.

If you’re located inside the EU, you’ll be able to try out these new app stores pretty much straight away. If you’re not, all you can do is wait to see if Apple is forced to open up elsewhere.

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