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YouTube has arrived on the Apple Vision Pro, though it’s not thanks to Google

February 3, 2024
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There's been a lot of chatter this week about just how many apps are available inside the Apple Vision Pro, and it seems third-party developers are taking up the challenge of filling in any notable gaps in the app selection.

As per MacRumors, developer Christian Selig has released a dedicated YouTube app for the Vision Pro, called Juno for YouTube. Notably, it's the only YouTube client on the headset, as Google hasn't released an official app.

Costing $ 4.99, the app comes with a number of useful features, including options to resize and reposition the playback window, as well as dim the area surrounding the video for that virtual cinema theater feeling inside mixed reality.

As we already know, Google has specifically said it doesn't currently have plans to develop a YouTube app for the Vision Pro. For the time being, the only official way to get at YouTube in the Apple headset is to load it up through Safari.

There might be an app for that

Juno for YouTube app — It’s a better experience than the YouTube website (Image credit: Juno for YouTube)

Initial worries over app availability on the Vision Pro were somewhat assuaged as the device went on sale, with news that more than 600 apps are on the way soon (though the current selection is much smaller).

We've already seen Adobe make the leap into mixed reality, with its Firefly AI app. You can use it to create images generated by artificial intelligence, from any text prompt – with the end results floating in front of your eyes.

However, there are notable holdouts, including Netflix and Spotify, as well as Google. While YouTube does allow developers some access to its inner workings, that's not the case with Netflix or Spotify, so don't expect third-party clients for them.

Clearly the limited number of people who actually have an Apple Vision Pro is making software developers think twice about whether or not to support the hardware – but based on our time with the headset, it's likely to get more popular very quickly.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

February 2, 2024
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Google Maps is getting a dose of generative AI to let users search and find places in a more conversational manner, and serve up useful and interesting suggestions.

This smart AI tech comes in the form of an “Ask about” user interface where people can ask Google Maps questions like where to find “places with a vintage vibe” in San Francisco. That will prompt AI to analyze information, like photos, ratings and reviews, about nearby businesses and places to serve up suggestions related to the question being asked.

From this example, Google said the AI tech served up vinyl record stores, clothing stores, and flea markets in its suggestions. These included the location along with its rating, reviews, number of times rated, and distance by car. The AI then provides review summaries that highlight why a place might be of interest.

You can then ask follow-up questions that remember your previous query, using that for context on your next search. For example, when asked, “How about lunch?” the AI will take into account the “vintage vibe” comment from the previous prompt and use that to offer an old-school diner nearby.

Screengrabs of the new generative AI features on Google Maps showing searches and suggestions — (Image credit: Google)

You can save the suggestions or share them, helping you coordinate with friends who might all have different preferences like being vegan, checking if a venue is dog friendly, making sure it is indoors, and so on.

By tapping into the search giant’s large-language models, Google Maps can analyze detailed information using data from more than 250 million locations, and photos, ratings and reviews from its community of over 300 million contributors to provide “trustworthy” suggestions.

The experimental feature is launching this week but is only coming to “select Local Guides” in the US. It will use these members' insights and feedback to develop and test the feature before what’s likely to be its eventual full rollout, which Google has not provided a date for.

Does anyone want this?

Users on the Android subreddit were very critical of the feature with some referring to AI as a buzzword that big companies are chasing for clout, user lohet stated: “Generative AI doesn't have any place in a basic database search. There's nothing to generate. It's either there or it's not.”

Many said they would rather see Google improve offline Maps and its location-sharing features. User, chronocapybara summarized the feelings of others in the forum by saying: “If it helps find me things I'm searching for, I'm all for it. If it offloads work to the cloud, making search slower, just to give me more promoted places that are basically ads, then no.”

However, AI integration in our everyday apps is here to stay and its inclusion in Google Maps could lead to users being able to discover brand-new places easily and helping smaller businesses gain attention and find an audience.

Until the features roll out, you can make the most of Google Maps with our 10 things you didn't know Google Maps could do.

Microsoft ending OS support could spell disaster

Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 aren’t the only ones that have gotten the boot from Microsoft, as the tech giant is planning on ending support for Windows 10 in 2025.

Not only is this putting a significant amount of users out of an unsupported OS but, as analyst firm Canalys puts it, could cause an environmental disaster. This is due to the current laptops running Windows 10 that don’t fit the hardware requirements for Windows 11, which means that those laptops would most likely not be recycled. That’s an estimated 240 million PCs becoming e-waste.

Users will have the option to pay for prolonged support, like with Windows 7 before it, but that only extended the lifespan by three years and each year saw rising costs for paying users.

It remains to be seen how Microsoft will handle this potential catastrophe, especially since in recent years the corporation has seemed to become more proactive in terms of sustainable and easily repaired hardware, as well as other environmental issues.

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December 1, 2023
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Amazon has redesigned its Alexa mobile app with a focus on improving the software’s layout and reorganizing key sections.

The tech giant has been incrementally making changes to Alexa throughout 2023 like the time it added a new Home Shortcuts Bar. But instead of drip-feeding users, Amazon seemingly saw fit to roll out the rest of the update in one big push.

The first thing you’ll notice is the Home tab is more structured than before. As TheVerge points out, the old app had a random assortment of “Most Relevant” and “Recently Used” items on the Home tab. The layout is more compartmentalized with a Shortcuts carousel at the top, an Activity section in the middle, and Favorites at the bottom taking up a large amount of space.

According to Amazon, Shortcuts “organizes devices by category and” displays commonly-used features like Routines. If you don’t use certain features, users can customize the carousel to better suit their needs. That area will even show you the current status of your smart home gadgets. The availability of the status readouts is a bit strange, however. The announcement states it will first come to users who have “20 or fewer devices” before expanding to others in the coming months.

Easily-accessible information

Activity cards will display “time-sensitive information” like reminders or upcoming alarms. Looking at the preview image, upcoming events are placed at the front. The rest will be hidden although you can tap See All to expand the menu.

Favorites offer quick access to frequently used devices, so you can control them with a single tap. At the time of this writing, eight device types are supported including smart lights, locks, and cameras just to name a few. Amazon says it has plans to expand this list later down the line.

The Devices page has been revamped too, effectively becoming the app’s new settings menu. Groups, located at the top of this page, pool all the connected hardware in a house’s room together for easier configuration. But if you prefer to tweak them individually, each gadget will appear in the list below. Amazon also took the time to upgrade the software’s search function. Now you can sort devices by alphabetical order, the date they were added, their name, or using certain keywords.

Availability

The updated Alexa app is making its way to Android and iOS, however, we should mention the latter will have an exclusive feature called Map View.

This tool creates a digital floor plan of your house and then pins all your connected smart home gadgets so you can see where everything is located. It will only be available to a select group as a preview in the United States. No word on when it’ll see a widespread release or if it’ll roll out to Android although we did ask Amazon for more details. This story will be updated at a later time.

Until we hear back, check out TechRadar's list of the best smart speakers for 2023.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

November 22, 2023
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Stability AI, the developer behind the Stable Diffusion, is previewing a new generative AI that can create short-form videos with a text prompt.

Aptly called Stable Video Diffusion, it consists of two AI models (known as SVD and SVD-XT) and is capable of creating clips at a 576 x 1,024 pixel resolution. Users will be able to customize the frame rate speed to run between three and 30 FPS. The length of the videos depends on which of the twin models is chosen. If you select SVD, the content will play for 14 frames while SVD-XT extends that a bit to 25 frames. The length doesn’t matter too much as rendered clips will only play for about four seconds before ending, according to the official listing on Hugging Face.

The company posted a video on its YouTube channel showing off what Stable Video Diffusion is capable of and the content is surprisingly high quality. They're certainly not the nightmare fuel you see on other AI like Meta’s Make-A-Video. The most impressive, in our opinion, has to be the Ice Dragon demo. You can see a high amount of detail in the dragon’s scales plus the mountains in the back look like something out of a painting. Animation, as you can imagine, is rather limited as the subject can only slowly bob its head. The same can be seen in other demos. It’s either a stiff walking cycle or a slow panning shot.

In the early stages

Limitations don’t stop there. Stable Video Diffusion reportedly cannot “achieve perfect photorealism”, it can’t generate “legible text”, plus it has a tough time with faces. Another demonstration on Stability AI’s website does show its model is able to render a man’s face without any weird flaws so it could be on a case-by-case basis.

Keep in mind that this project is still in the early stages. It’s obvious the model is not ready for a wide release nor are there any plans to do so. Stability AI emphasizes that Stable Video Diffusion is not meant “for real-world or commercial applications” at this time. In fact, it is currently “intended for research purposes only.” We’re not surprised the developer is being very cautious with its tech. There was an incident last year where Stability Diffusion’s model leaked online, leading to bad actors using it to create deep fake images.

Availability

If you’re interested in trying out Stable Video Diffusion, you can enter a waitlist by filling out a form on the company website. It’s unknown when people will be allowed in, but the preview will include a Text-To-Video interface. In the meantime, you can check out the AI’s white paper and read up on all the nitty gritty behind the project.

One thing we found interesting after digging through the document is it mentions using “publicly accessible video datasets” as some of the training material. Again, it's not surprising to hear this considering that Getty Images sued Stability AI over data scraping allegations earlier this year. It looks like the team is striving to be more careful so it doesn't make any more enemies.

No word on when Stable Video Diffusion will launch. Luckily, there are other options. Be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best AI video makers for 2023.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

November 8, 2023
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Microsoft’s Bing AI may be close to finally getting plug-ins, a feature that has been experimented with before, and will make the chatbot considerably more versatile and powerful (in theory, anyway).

Windows Latest reports that the update to add plug-ins has rolled out to a ‘small’ number of Bing Chat users over the weekend, and the tech site was one of those to get access.

Note that it appears the rollout is only happening for those using the Canary version of Microsoft’s Edge browser (and Windows Latest only got the feature in that preview release, not in the finished version of Edge).

We’re told that the AI currently offers five plug-ins to testers and you can pick any three of those to use in a session. If you want to change plug-ins, you’ll need to start a new Bing Chat session.

Windows Latest carried out some testing with a couple of those plug-ins, and the results seemed useful, with the OpenTable add-on providing some restaurant recommendations in a query.

Other plug-ins available in testing include Kayak, Klarna, and a shopping add-on for buying suggestions – we’ve already got you covered there, of course, especially for the imminent Black Friday sale – but it may be the case that different plug-ins appear for different users.

Analysis: Faster and better

Eventually, of course, there will be a whole load of plug-ins for the Bing AI, or that’s certainly Microsoft’s plan, although they’ll doubtless be rolled out in stages over time. One of those will be the much-awaited ‘no search’ function that was switched to be implemented via a plug-in not so long ago. (This allows the user to specify that the AI can’t use search content scraped from the web in its responses).

We’ve seen plug-ins in a limited test rollout before (in August), but they were pulled, so this is effectively a return of the feature – hinting it might arrive sooner rather than later.

Fingers crossed, and the good news is that Windows Latest observes that these new plug-ins seem to be more responsive and work better than the old efforts (performance-related concerns are likely one of the reasons that the test plug-ins got pulled earlier this year).

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October 31, 2023
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Google is updating its search engine and Lens tool with new features to help students visualize and solve tricky math problems.

We’re not talking about basic arithmetic either. The upgraded Google Search can now tackle more complex forms of math like calculus and trigonometry. All you have to do is type in the equation or integral into the text bar at the top or take a picture of your homework with Lens. You’ll then see a series of step-by-step instructions explaining how to solve it with the answer at the bottom. Geometry is also supported with the company recommending people use Google Lens to solve those since they can have diagrams. You won’t be able to draw shapes into the search bar so uploading a photo of the equation is your best bet.

Google Search's new math tutor on mobile — (Image credit: Google)

Additionally, you can type in word problems for physics questions. Google Search will highlight the “known and unknown values” and then show you the correct formula to use for that particular equation. As an example, if you need to find out the average acceleration of a cyclist going down a hill, it’ll tell you the specific kinetic formula needed.

Google Search helping with physics — (Image credit: Google)

The math update is currently live on desktop and the mobile app. Google states you can type the phrase “math solver” in the search bar to try out their new experience on desktop. However, when we did, nothing popped up. It's possible this could be referring to future expansion, but we're not sure. Either way, feel free to directly type the math problem into the search bar. You don’t need to bring up anything else.

Advancement in science

Alongside the mathematics help, Google is rolling out interactive 3D models for certain fields of science such as physics, biology, and chemistry. The diagrams will let you zoom into an object as well as provide definitions of what you’re looking at.

At the time of this writing, the patch doesn’t appear to be widely available. We saw interactive 3D models for basic concepts like individual parts of a cell and periodic elements, but nothing for specific types of cells or molecules. You can look up a model for an oxygen atom, but not a carbon dioxide molecule for instance. What’s more, nothing had a definition. It was just the model.

We reached out to Google asking if this patch is seeing a global release or will only be available in a few countries like the United States. We’ll update this story if we hear back.

Undoubtedly, this will help students advance in their courses. But don't forget about the hardware. If you're in the market for a computer, be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best student laptops for 2023.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

October 30, 2023
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Microsoft has recently held multiple events where it’s made it known that it’s serious about AI, and following the grand unveiling of its new AI assistant, Windows Copilot, the company has now introduced another AI bot, Cocreator, to help generate images in the iconic Paint app.

TweakTown reports that that Cocreator’s been known about in the Windows-sphere since test versions of the feature were released through the Canary and Dev channels in September, two release channels of the Windows Insider Program which allows users to sign up to it to preview potential Windows versions and features to give feedback before they are widely released. After these releases, a version was released via the Beta channel (a third Windows Insider release channel) and, just last week, a Cocreator version made its way through the Release Preview channel (the fourth and final release Windows Insider channel that sees features before they’re integrated into upgrades for all users).

Cocreator is powered by Dall-E, like Bing Image Creator, and works in a similar way. You give Cocreator a description of what you’d like to see composed, select the art style if you have one in mind, and Cocreator will try to create it.

TweakTown calls the results “impressive” and other early reactions to the new tool are positive, partly due, no doubt, to it utilizing the latest version of OpenAI’s Dall-E.

One of the first demonstration opportunities was spotted and posted by X (formerly Twitter) user PhantomOfEarth, who found a new 'first run' tutorial to take you through using Paint Cocreator for the first time in Windows version 11.2309.28.0 (in Canary and Dev).

Windows 11 Update showing on laptop in an office — (Image credit: TechRadar)

Latest Paint app update in WIP Canary/Dev (11.2309.28.0) adds a new first run experience for Paint Cocreator. https://t.co/pjmpcKa4iA pic.twitter.com/X1I8aaHT4HOctober 24, 2023

How to try Paint Cocreator for yourself

Cocreator is still being tested it seems, and to be able to try it, Microsoft asks you to sign up to the waitlist in the Cocreator side panel – and once approved, you should receive an email. Microsoft doesn’t elaborate what panel this is, but Nerds Chalk writes that you can alternatively get Paint Cocreator by first being in the Windows Insider Program (to which you’ll have to sign up to if you’re not) and install the latest Canary or Dev build. Then you should be able to update your Paint app through the Microsoft Store > Library.

Whichever route you take, Cocreator is still being tested and the version you’ll see will be a preview one, prone to possible changes and developments. That said, with Cocreator being spotted in the Release Preview channel, it should appear soon in a Windows 11 update. The new Paint has already been something of a favorite among its fans, and this development will definitely make it a better-equipped creator playground. It’s already seen a major revamp with the addition of a layers feature and now Cocreator.

To think, Microsoft was ready to send the basic (but much-loved) Paint into retirement a few years ago, but it might prove to be one of the most successful apps that draws users to Windows yet. I have many fond memories of playing around in Paint when I was a kid, and with its pack of new features, maybe it’ll ignite the imaginations of children and adults alike today.

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October 5, 2023
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Bing Chat has received a substantial update, now integrating OpenAI’s most recent text-to-image model DALL-E 3. Best of all, it’s available to everyone for free.

As it’s laid out in Microsoft's announcement post, DALL-E 3 is a big upgrade to previous generations because it’s able to produce more “realistic and diverse images” thanks to improvements made in three areas.

The AI is now able to adhere to a text prompt more closely than before when producing content. Microsoft recommends adding as much detail as possible to ensure the final image sticks close to your vision. Due to the extra precision, outputs will be more coherent or “logically consistent”. Sometimes creations from other models like Stable Diffusion look downright weird. Bing's new update improves on this front.

Also, tweaks were made to DALL-E 3 so it can accurately portray unique art styles that meet your standard of creativity, according to the company.

Image 1 of 4

Bing Chat DALL-E 3 generation — (Image credit: Future)

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Bing Chat DALL-E 3 generated hand — (Image credit: Future)

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Bing Chat DALL-E werewolf — (Image credit: Future)

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Pixel art parrot — (Image credit: Future)

Above are some samples we created ourselves to give you an idea of what the AI can now do. Using the generative engine is really simple. You can head on over to either Bing Chat or the Bing Image Creator website, enter a prompt in the text box, give it a few seconds, and you're done. It's just that easy.

Security upgrade

Besides the performance upgrade, Microsoft has added two security features to Bing Chat aimed at maintaining ethical usage. Every output will come with a Content Credential and an “invisible digital watermark” stating it was generated by Bing Image Creator as well as the date and time it was made.

Content Credential notice — (Image credit: Future)

The company is also implementing a “content moderation system” to remove images deemed “harmful or inappropriate”. This includes content “that [contains] nudity, violence, hate speech, or illegal activities.” Something not mentioned is you can’t generate pictures featuring famous figures. We asked Bing to create something with President Joe Biden in it. But we were told we couldn’t as it violates the service’s policy.

Work in progress

As impressive as Bing Chat is now, it is still a work in progress. Like other AI engines, Microsoft’s model still has difficulty drawing hands. It’s not as bad as when you had Stable Diffusion generating gnarled hands back in early 2023. However, you may notice an extra digit or two. In fact, the werewolf image above actually has five fingers on its right hand while it only has four on the left.

Generated image of hands with an extra finger — (Image credit: Future)

We do want to warn you that you may experience some slowdown in AI image-generation output. We certainly did although Bing Chat picked up speed after a few minutes. In the worst case, the AI will refuse to do anything because it can't process new requests.

If you want to take generative AI on the go, be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the four best art generator apps for iPhone.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Posts tagged "thanks"

YouTube has arrived on the Apple Vision Pro, though it’s not thanks to Google

There might be an app for that

You might also like

Google Maps could become smarter than ever thanks to generative AI

Does anyone want this?

You may also like

Your local Apple Store might close early thanks to the Vision Pro launch

You might also like

PC gamers will finally lose support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 thanks to Valve dropping them

Microsoft ending OS support could spell disaster

You might also like

Your Alexa mobile app finally makes more sense thanks to a recent update

Easily-accessible information

Availability

You might also like

Generative AI could get more active thanks to this wild Stable Diffusion update

In the early stages

Availability

You might also like

Bing AI could soon be much more versatile and powerful thanks to plug-ins

Analysis: Faster and better

You might also like …

Google Search can help you with your math homework thanks to new update

Advancement in science

You might also like

Microsoft Paint is becoming a digital art powerhouse thanks to this new AI assistant

How to try Paint Cocreator for yourself

You might also like:

Bing Chat can now create more realistic images thanks to DALL-E 3 AI upgrade

Security upgrade

Work in progress

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