After much speculation, Apple has announced its developer conference, WWDC, will be held in San Jose between June 6 and June 10, with a keynote being held on June 6, where it's expected to announce iOS 16, macOS 13, and more.
Mirroring previous years, the event will be fully remote, with the keynote being streamed on June 6, and developer sessions across the week will also be held remotely.
Apple's conference is usually where we will see updates to iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and its other software be showcased. Last year brought widgets to iPadOS 15, while we saw Focus be brought to iPadOS, iOS 15, watchOS, and macOS to help your productivity.
We expect the next versions to be announced, but we'll be covering everything that Apple announces, once June 6 arrives.
How you can take part in WWDC 2022
It’s one of my favorite times of the year! #WWDC22. Can’t wait for June 6th. 🥳 pic.twitter.com/98gag4zGeIApril 5, 2022
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WWDC has always been a week-long event, as Apple wants to communicate with its developers on the newest features that it hopes will benefit the apps that are across the App Store.
Regardless of going online-only in the past two years, the sessions have always been a helpful guide to developers, in talking to Apple engineers in solving some issues and being inspired to try out new features.
But there's also been plenty of events and apps held by Apple enthusiasts, whether they've been held around San Jose or as online events.
However, the first port of call would be Apple's Developer app. This will allow you to see which events you can keep track of, while also allowing you to download certain sessions to watch at a time that better suits you.
But if you're planning on visiting San Jose regardless, plenty of developers on Twitter will most likely be going too. And if you're a developer, see if you can take part in community sessions for when the next versions of iOS and macOS are announced, so you can brainstorm features and ideas for your apps.
Meta has announced that Slack-like shortcuts are coming to Messenger to make it easier to get the attention of an entire group chat.
Just like in Google Workspace and many other online services today, typing “@” and a person's name will tag that specific person in a group chat or document. Now though with the new @everyone shortcut, Messenger users on iOS and Android will be able to ensure that everyone in a chat sees what they have to say.
When you start a message with @everyone in Messenger, all of the participants in the chat will be notified which is perfect for group reminders, impromptu get-togethers or when you need everyone's help to answer a specific question.
In addition to the new @everyone shortcut, Meta is rolling out its new /silent shortcut for those times when you want to say something in a group chat but don't want to wake up others with a notification or disturb those who live in different time zones. This shortcut is also available on Instagram though on the service it is written as “@silent” instead.
Messenger shortcuts
Meta's new @everyone and /silent shortcuts are just the beginning though as Facebook's parent company plans to add even more shortcuts to Messenger going forward according to a new blog post.
Messenger users in the US will soon be able to use the /pay shortcut to make it easier to send and receive money directly from their one-one-one chats. To use the shortcut, simply type /pay to send or request money securely without fees.
GIFs are another way that users like to express themselves which is why Meta plans to add its new /gif shortcut to Messenger on iOS. Typing /gif followed by a topic at the beginning of a message will pull up a row of GIFs that users can choose from to insert into their chats.
Likewise on Messenger for iOS, Meta plans to roll out its /shrug and /tableflip shortcuts so that users don't have to type out the old-school text based tableflip “(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻” and shrug “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” emoticons.
While @everyone, /silent and /gif could be quite useful for Messenger users, /shrug and /tableflip are more of a throwback to a simpler time before emoji became what they are today.
Keeping in touch with your colleagues around the world could soon be a lot easier thanks to a new update to Google Chat.
The online collaboration service is now allowing users to create group chats (known as Spaces) within Google Chat that you can then share with others in your organization.
Much like Slack, once a new custom Spaces group has been created, you'll be able to share it with whoever you choose, with participants able to join by clicking on a custom link.
Google Chat or Slack?
“With this launch, Spaces are no longer restricted to only people added to the conversation,” Google said in a Workspace blog post announcing the news.
The company says the update will be particularly useful for creating and sharing “topic-based conversations” within your business, such as team discussions, how-to guides and mentoring opportunities.
(Image credit: Google Workspace)
The change could also help leaders or admins share organizational and policy updates, or gather together a particularly interested or skilled group, such as when investigating an outage. Or, it could be great for just finding those with similar interests to yourself, allowing for custom groups to celebrate anything from sports to cooking.
Spaces will only be able to be shared with those inside your organization, and will have to be entirely new groups created from this date forward.
The feature is available and rolling out now to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers.
The news is the latest change to Google Chat to bring it more in line with some of its rivals, offering tools such as in-line replies and native content search, bringing Google Chat closer in line with services like Slack and Teams.
Google Chat officially replaced Google Hangouts earlier this year, with all enterprise and business users on “Classic Hangouts” having been upgraded to the new service by March 22, 2022.
The company says the move will ensure all Google Workspace customers are using the same platform, with anyone trying to access Hangouts being redirected across to Google Chat.
The revolutionary power of the internet is hard to quantify but for some, accessing even the basic aspects is difficult. Blind and low-vision people often interact with the web using screen readers, tools that read the contents of a page out loud.
Unfortunately, msot screen readers rely on alternative text (or alt text) and other behind-the-scenes information to do their job properly, and developers can sometimes overlook these significant but small details.
In order to help out, Microsoft has announced new features for its Edge browser that automatically add alt text to images that do not have it already, something the company hopes will make the web more accessible.
“When a screen reader finds an image without a label, that image can be automatically processed by machine learning (ML) algorithms to describe the image in words and capture any text it contains,” says Microsoft’s Travis Leithead. “The algorithms are not perfect, and the quality of the descriptions will vary, but for users of screen readers, having some description for an image is often better than no context at all.”
The update hopefully solves the problem of screen readers reading out “unlabelled graphic” whenever an image doesn’t have alt text.
Microsoft Edge accessibility
Powering the technology is, of course, the company's Azure cloud platform. Any unlabelled image will be sent by Microsoft Edge to Azure’s computer vision systems, which then auto-generates alt text in English, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, or Chinese Simplified.
Some images – like those that are smaller than 50×50 pixels, contain pornographic, gory, or sexually suggestive content, or are very large – unfortunately won’t be sent for analysis.
Microsoft is rolling out the changes to Edge on Windows, macOS, and Linux right now and expects to add them to iOS and Android at a later date.
“This feature is still new, and we know that we are not done,” says Leithead. “We’ve already found some ways to make this feature even better, such as when images do have a label, but that label is not very helpful (e.g., a label of “image” or “picture” or similar synonym that is redundant with the obvious). Continuous image recognition and algorithm improvements will also refine the quality of the service.”
The annual Google IO event has been confirmed for 2022 – this year, it'll take place between May 11 and 12, with a big keynote conference kicking it off on that first date.
This was confirmed by the company's CEO Sundar Pichai, who posted on Twitter to confirm that the company's big yearly event would return on those dates – and at a physical location too, showing an interesting recommitment to physical events after the pandemic.
We’ll be back live from Shoreline Amphitheatre for this year’s #GoogleIO! Join us online May 11-12 https://t.co/KgNKbaLeym pic.twitter.com/NUodJb7UCiMarch 16, 2022
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Nw, before you roll your eyes and think 'this is too techy, I don't care' – well, there's a reason this might be interesting to you.
You see, while Google IO is mainly a developer event, in the same vein as Apple's WWDC, we also sometimes see tech from the company unveiled at the event. So here's a quick sizzle through the key things we're hoping for.
Android 13
(Image credit: Google)
Google almost always shows off its next Android update at IO – this year, that's Android 13.
Those are cool features but they're not exactly flagship ones, so we're hoping Google has something big up its sleeve for its unluckily-numbered next update.
Wear OS
(Image credit: Google)
Google IO is typically a software-focused event, but it generally didn't talk about Wear OS, its smartwatch operating system…
… until 2021, when Wear OS 3 was unveiled, and it was the biggest shake-up to the company's smartwatch software in years. It was designed alongside Samsung, but more companies were set to use the software for their wearables too.
It's been a bit of a quieter year for Wear OS than we expected, as not as many companies adopted the new system as we (and likely Google) would have liked. But with the backing of Samsung, we don't think Google will forget about its software – hopefully, we'll see new features for it that make it more tempting for manufacturers.
Google Pixel 6a
There's an outside chance that we'll see the Google Pixel 6a – the company has previously unveiled its affordable A series of gadgets at Google IO before, though it hasn't for a few years.
This would be an inexpensive take on the Pixel 6, designed for people whose budgets don't have space for super-pricey Android phones.
If the Pixel 6a doesn't appear, we could still see other A-series devices like earbuds, as they've shown up recently at IO too.
The annual Google IO event has been confirmed for 2022 – this year, it'll take place between May 11 and 12, with a big keynote conference kicking it off on that first date.
This was confirmed by the company's CEO Sundar Pichai, who posted on Twitter to confirm that the company's big yearly event would return on those dates – and at a physical location too, showing an interesting recommitment to physical events after the pandemic.
We’ll be back live from Shoreline Amphitheatre for this year’s #GoogleIO! Join us online May 11-12 https://t.co/KgNKbaLeym pic.twitter.com/NUodJb7UCiMarch 16, 2022
See more
Nw, before you roll your eyes and think 'this is too techy, I don't care' – well, there's a reason this might be interesting to you.
You see, while Google IO is mainly a developer event, in the same vein as Apple's WWDC, we also sometimes see tech from the company unveiled at the event. So here's a quick sizzle through the key things we're hoping for.
Android 13
(Image credit: Google)
Google almost always shows off its next Android update at IO – this year, that's Android 13.
Those are cool features but they're not exactly flagship ones, so we're hoping Google has something big up its sleeve for its unluckily-numbered next update.
Wear OS
(Image credit: Google)
Google IO is typically a software-focused event, but it generally didn't talk about Wear OS, its smartwatch operating system…
… until 2021, when Wear OS 3 was unveiled, and it was the biggest shake-up to the company's smartwatch software in years. It was designed alongside Samsung, but more companies were set to use the software for their wearables too.
It's been a bit of a quieter year for Wear OS than we expected, as not as many companies adopted the new system as we (and likely Google) would have liked. But with the backing of Samsung, we don't think Google will forget about its software – hopefully, we'll see new features for it that make it more tempting for manufacturers.
Google Pixel 6a
There's an outside chance that we'll see the Google Pixel 6a – the company has previously unveiled its affordable A series of gadgets at Google IO before, though it hasn't for a few years.
This would be an inexpensive take on the Pixel 6, designed for people whose budgets don't have space for super-pricey Android phones.
If the Pixel 6a doesn't appear, we could still see other A-series devices like earbuds, as they've shown up recently at IO too.
A new era of gargantuan Google Sheets could be coming thanks to a new change made by the company.
In a Google Workspace update blog, the company revealed that it was increasing the cell limit in its spreadsheet software from up to five million cells to up to ten million cells.
The new limit isn't just for newly-created files either, with Google noting that it will also be available for existing and imported files, meaning you can expand to your heart's content.
Giant Google Sheets
“Over the course of the last four years, we’ve been steadily increasing the cell limit in Google Sheets: from 2 million to 5 million in 2019 and now to 10 million,” the blog post read. “We hope this and future increases give users the ability to work with their data on a much greater scale in Google Sheets.”
The update is rolling out now to all users, and won't require any special admin control or action to activate. It's available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers.
The feature is the latest in a series of recent updates to Google Sheets as it looks to boost its offerings for hybrid workers.
This includes the recent addition of intelligent formula suggestions based on the data in question and the user’s initial input, taking much of the heavy lifting out of complex formulae.
The software itself also recently saw a cosmetic overhaul to make Google Sheets better for users with smaller screens. The changes saw the menu bar, as well as the right-click menu shortened to better fit on a smaller screen, and to prevent menu items from being hidden off-screen.
Some features were also reorganized and moved to “more intuitive” locations. For example, freezing a row or a column can now be done directly from the right-click menu. Menu items also received new icons, while the descriptions of some items in the menu are shorter.
Microsoft Teams is working on an update that will extend one of its most useful features to a wider pool of users.
According to a new entry in the Microsoft 365 product roadmap, guest users will soon gain access to the live captions feature for Microsoft Teams on desktop, a facility currently available to registered users only.
The roadmap suggests the update for the collaboration platform is still under development, but should take effect for all users by the end of April. TechRadar Pro has asked Microsoft whether users can expect the change to be extended to the mobile client in future.
Microsoft Teams live captions
Introduced soon after the widespread shift to remote working as a result of the pandemic, the Microsoft Teams live captions feature is designed to ensure that all video meeting participants can follow the thread of conversation effectively. That includes anyone with hearing impairments or whose command of the language spoken in the meeting is imperfect, but also anyone with a poor connection or working in a noisy environment.
Until now, the live captions feature has been gated behind a registration wall. In other words, if someone was joining a meeting as a guest via a link provided by the host, they would have to make do without the accessibility feature.
Multiple queries from IT administrators in the Microsoft help forum suggest this is a problem a number of businesses have encountered. Strangely, responses from advisors suggest there may be a workaround that involves meddling with settings in the Admin Center, but the reliability of this method is unclear.
With the upcoming update, however, Microsoft will make it far simpler for guests to access the live captions feature in Microsoft Teams meetings, without the administrator of the host domain having to wade through the advanced settings.
The update is the latest in a long line of improvements delivered by Microsoft in an effort to establish Teams as the go-to platform for workplace collaboration, in the face of increasingly fierce competition from the likes of Zoom and Slack.
The latest Windows Insider preview is testing a feature that could make future upgrades to Windows 11 more sustainable. While this is currently still in the testing stages, Insider build 22567 includes the ability to schedule system updates for specific periods of time when your local energy grid is pulling more energy from renewable energy sources than traditionally harmful ones.
To do this, Microsoft will take regional data on carbon intensity from sites like electricityMap and WattTime, and you’ll only be able to enable it if your laptop or PC is plugged into an outlet. If preferred, you can still choose to install updates immediately by navigating to Settings > Windows Update and choosing “Check for Updates”
On the Insider Blog, Microsoft states that “Most electrical grids are powered by multiple sources, including renewables and fossil fuels. Whenever possible, Windows 11 will now prioritize installing updates in the background at times when greater amounts of clean energy sources (like wind, solar, and hydro) are available”
You'll see a small message in the Windows Update section of your settings that reads “Windows Update is committed to reducing carbon emissions”, but this doesn't think to anywhere just yet. Interestingly, the blog also mentions “We’re still working on the content that the text links to – stay tuned for future updates” so we have reached out to Microsft to see if we can get some clarification.
Sadly, If the carbon data isn’t available, it doesn’t look like this feature will be available to you and the blog also notes that not all Insider members will have access to this feature just yet, but it certainly feels like a step in the right direction, even if it’s a small one.
Technology is unavoidable, so we must do better
Laptops like the Acer Vero use a chassis made from recycled plastic (Image credit: Acer)
Modern technology uses a lot of power. It’s sometimes a hard pill to swallow for people who love the latest gadgets and hardware, especially if you’re as eco-conscious as I am, but our drive to constantly improve and build upon previous technology now means that we consume more electricity and energy than ever.
I want to see more companies pushing developments like this. It often feels as though in this new world where every aspect of our lives can be dominated by technology – from video gaming hobbies, daily mobile phone usage and now even smart home technology running 24/7 in our houses and apartments – the only alternative for a clear conscious is to simply avoid it all and live in the woods somewhere off-grid.
As appealing as that can sound at times when you just want to escape, it's not a healthy or practical way of approaching the situation for everyone. Technology is here to stay, and without building in environmentally-conscious policies and features into things as they develop, things could quickly get out of hand.
It feels slightly ridiculous that an operating system needs to make adjustments towards sustainability, but I’m grateful that something this small (in the grand scheme of things) is also making an effort. Microsoft is a huge company, and its actions not only set a good example to other smaller brands, but the number of people across the wider market that will use Windows 11 is only going to grow as older operating systems start getting phased out.
We obviously need to be making changes to our daily habits as individuals, but most of these are facilitated by what we have access to – you can’t be expected to buy an electric car with sufficient charging infrastructure for example, and in many regards, we’re entering a future in which anyone who doesn’t have access to devices like laptops or tablets will be at a huge disadvantage within the workplace and education.
Not everything is 'greenwashing'
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft already makes many notable pledges towards sustainability and ethical working, using recycled marine plastics to create peripherals like mice. It also works towards creating a more equal space across both work and play, creating adaptive controllers for the Xbox console series and implementing inclusive features across its entire hardware and software range to help the disabled community.
There's a lot to cover in that bracket, but if you feel disadvantaged using mainstream technology because of things like mental illness and neurodivergent, or physical disabilities that affect your hearing, vision and mobility then you can read more on the accessibility section of the Microsoft website.
That said, there’s always more to be done, and I fear that a recent trend of ‘greenwashing’ has only thrown additional spanners in the works. For those unaware, greenwashing refers to a marketing tactic where brands will use sustainability or otherwise ecologically virtuous features to sell their products. Think 'bio-degradable' bags that actually take decades to break down into dangerous microplastics.
I’ve spoken to companies like Dell and Razer about its own sustainability pledges in the past, and who were keen to prove that its efforts come from a place of genuine care and concern for our planet and its people, but there will always be those that are happy to label any work towards a more sustainable future as greenwashing to appease the public.
I also like to take things with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I fear that condemning any and all efforts to improve on current policies will demotivate privately-owned companies from making any additional improvements in the future. Let’s not settle for just the bare minimum, but let's also use our common sense and not sabotage genuine efforts towards improving our planet for the generations that will inherit it.
Can Microsoft be doing more? Absolutely, and as one of the driving forces in computing alongside Apple, I demand additional features and policies to reduce carbon emissions, as well as proof of ethical material sourcing and manufacturing, and a promise that the desire for profits won’t come at the detriment of our planet’s health. My expectations are kept low, but I remain hopeful that our pursuit of fresh technology won’t be a driving force behind ecological collapse.
A new month brings a roundup of updates from Google, which applies to all of its products that feature its Google software loaded on.
You may already see these as a notification on your Pixel 6 or Samsung S22 Ultra as a required update. These are similar to Microsoft's efforts for monthly updates in Windows 11, where small refinements or bug fixes are grouped into one download package.
But these updates aren't limited to Android – Chromebook, Chrome OS, WearOS, Android Auto will all have this update, ready to download and install as well.
Improvements to the Play-as-you-download feature to let gamers start playing mobile games while the app download continues to reduce waiting times.
New Features to help you discover the Apps & Games you love.
Optimizations allow faster and more reliable download and installation.
New features to the Play Pass and Play Points programs.
Enhancements to Google Play Billing.
Continuous improvements to Play Protect to keep your device safe.
Various performance optimizations, bug fixes, and improvements to security, stability, and accessibility.
If the update hasn't shown as a notification on your Google device, go to Settings > About > Software Update, and a box should appear, listing the March 2022 update.
These monthly updates are always recommended, as they can help improve privacy, quash bugs and bring in features across your Google devices, from your smartphone to your car.
But with Google rumored to host another I/O event where it announces new updates to all of its products and software releases, we may see a substantial monthly update on the horizon soon.
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