Conversational mode has been available in Copilot for a while, but it lacked any visual cues or non-verbal communications. All users see on their screens is some abstract animation. With Copilot Appearance, Microsoft is improving voice conversations with real-time visual expressions.

Sadly, Copilot Appearance is not a Clippy 2.0. In its current form, it is an abstract blob with a face that can morph into different shapes, express emotions, nod in agreement, etc. The concept is similar to what xAI offers with Grok AI companions that cost $300 per month, but Microsoft's approach is much more toned down (and you cannot undress it). On the official Copilot Labs website, Microsoft describes Copilot Appearance as "an experiment to incorporate a more visual, engaging experience into Copilot."

What if you could see Copilot react and speak as you chat? With this experiment, we are bringing more non-verbal communication to Copilot, enhancing voice conversations with real-time visual expression. This early prototype allows you to chat, brainstorm, seek advice, or just mess around with Copilot, in a more engaging and expressive way.

Copilot Appearance is rolling out to a limited set of users in just three countries as Microsoft takes a cautious approach to a more personified AI. If you have a lucky ticket, you can try Copilot Appearance by launching Voice Mode (click the microphone button in the composer) and toggling the feature in Voice Mode settings.

Microsoft says that the initial release is experimental, and it is working on refining the experience.

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Posted Saturday 26 July 2025 at 4:37 am AEST (my time).

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At its heart, Greenboot is a framework that hooks into systemd to run health checks every time a machine boots. It looks for scripts in specific directories; anything in /etc/greenboot/check/required.d/ absolutely must pass. If a required script fails, Greenboot triggers a reboot to retry.

After a few failed attempts, it executes scripts in /etc/greenboot/red.d/ and initiates a system rollback to the last known-good deployment, preventing an update from bricking your system. When all required checks succeed, it runs scripts from /etc/greenboot/green.d/ and marks the boot as successful by setting a GRUB environment variable. This whole process is kicked off by the greenboot-healthcheck.service before systemd's normal boot-complete.target is reached.

As for why Red Hat is choosing this rewrite, it comes down to creating a more robust and secure utility. This is definitely not the only *-rs tool rewrite we have seen lately; you have probably heard about sudo-rs, which is a project to build a memory-safe replacement for the classic sudo utility. Building these fundamental system components in a memory-safe language like Rust helps eliminate entire categories of security vulnerabilities.

According to the official Fedora change proposal, the rewrite expands support for both bootc and rpm-ostree based systems, whereas the original Bash version was built only for rpm-ostree. Red Hat developers have submitted a proposal to ship this new Rust version in Fedora 43. According to Phoronix, while the plan still needs a final vote from the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee, it looks very likely to be approved. For current Fedora IoT users, the change promises to be a simple, seamless upgrade.

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Posted Saturday 26 July 2025 at 4:36 am AEST (my time).

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Basically, older 32-bit architectures will face the Y2K38 problem in the year 2038. This is because the signed representation of Unix datetime values will overflow the 32-bit space, which would cause bugs in associated software. Debian is a pretty old distro with its first release dating back to 1993, so the maintainers say that a lot of sensitive computing is still happening on 32-bit architecture. Although there are still roughly 13 years to go before we reach 2038, developers want to proactively tackle the problem rather than having to scramble at the last minute like with Y2K, according to The Register.

Another name for Y2K38 is the Unix Epochalypse, since it impacts systems that store datetime values in the Unix format within a signed 32-bit space. On January 19, 2038, 03:14:07 UTC, this space will overflow.

As such, Debian maintainers will use 64-bit time_t formats even on 32-bit architectures starting with the release of Debian 13 "Trixie". This is not a small change, as maintainers found the use of the time_t variable in random places across 6,429 packages. The maintainers went on to say that:

The i386 port will be left with the existing 32-bit time_t, as a compatibility architecture for existing x86 binaries. A new 'i686' x86 ABI/architecture using 64-bit time, and potentially newer ISA features, could be created if there was sufficient enthusiasm for dragging 32-bit x86 into its now very limited future. The hurd-i386 port is not going to be switched, as its kernel lacks support, and efforts are underway instead to switch to hurd-amd64.

This may be a breaking change for some applications, so it is important to test your program's response to the time_t variable switch by leveraging the Debian wiki. Interestingly, Y2K38 may also impact certain older Windows programs and out-of-support Windows operating systems.

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Posted Saturday 26 July 2025 at 4:33 am AEST (my time).

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With Windows 10 support running out in a few months, and the one-year updates extension the only official option to prolong the life of the device, it is Microsoft that is forcing the hand of its customers. Microsoft wants customers to buy new Windows 11 PCs with AI features, but what if the Windows 10 PC works perfectly fine?

There are other ways to stay on Windows 10 and relatively secure, like subscribing to the micro-patches that 0Patch promises to release until at least 2030 for the operating system.

Linux is another option, but it still seen as a system for users who know their ways around tech and do not mind experimenting a lot. While Linux has come a long way, migrating to Linux is still a daunting task for many Windows users.

Enter Project Operese

I never understood why major players in the Linux community and in development do not see the end of Windows 10 as a major opportunity. A tool to help users migrate would certainly be very appreciated, similarly to how Microsoft released a tool to transfer files and settings from an earlier version of Windows to the latest Windows 11 version.

Then I discovered Project Operese, and it seems to be the tool that I wished would have the backing of the entire Linux community.

Put simply, it is a tool to transfer data from Windows devices to Linux. The developer claims that it transfers files, programs, and settings. Probably not all programs though, maybe only those that are cross-platform.

Main downside at this point is that the tool is not yet available. Another that it only supports migrating to Kubuntu. If you fancy another Linux distribution, then you won't be able to use the tool once it is released. Future versions might support other Linux distributions, but in the beginning, it is only Kubuntu that you get.

Still, that is better than nothing and Kubuntu is based on Ubuntu, which continues to be a popular choice when it comes to Linux.

So, the main caveat is that the tool has not been released yet. The developer says that the tool will be released as open source in "the coming months". That was in early July, so expect it in late August or September at the earliest maybe.

Still, it is a great idea that could help Windows 10 users migrate to Linux to keep on using their trusted Windows 10 devices for longer than the extra year that Microsoft is giving them officially.

I will keep an eye on the project and will review the migration tool, once (if) it gets released.

Now You: Would you use a migration tool from Windows to Linux, if it would be released? Let me know in the comments below. (via Neowin)

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Posted Saturday 26 July 2025 at 4:32 am AEST (my time).

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JayzTwoCents (4.22M subscribers)

July 25, 2025

Video length: 12m 11s

If you want to keep all your Installers in one place AND be able to use the same USB or Drive for all your drivers, then you need this Free easy tool!

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 5:41 pm AEST (my time).

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This set the ground for what came next in 2020, the social and community-oriented feature that allowed users to follow individuals. A person's public activity, like their reviews, photos, and videos, would then appear in your feed. Now Google has announced that it is killing the individual follower system starting this September.

The company says that "all data" related to your followers and who you follow will be deleted from its servers. The change will not affect your profile's visibility settings, but since followers will no longer exist, you will not have to approve requests for your restricted profile anymore. For some, this is probably a relief, as the feature was often a magnet for spam bots.

As for the ability to follow businesses, that feature was killed back in January. The writing had been on the wall for a while, as Google had already made the "Follow" button much less prominent on business listings.

For those who loved the ability to follow individuals, Google is pointing people toward Local Guides Connect. It is an online forum where a Local Guide can earn points by writing reviews, adding photos, or correcting map information. This platform allows for more direct interaction within the community, something the follower feature never quite delivered. You can also still create and share lists of places.

On a related note, the company recently expanded its partnership with Rivian for its electric trucks and SUVs. Rivian is replacing the old navigation system, which was built on top of Mapbox, with a new one powered by the Google Maps Auto SDK. This gives drivers access to Google's real-time traffic data and superior search for points of interest.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 5:40 pm AEST (my time).

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For starters, a major boost to IT productivity this month was automatic device enrollment for macOS thanks to the general availability of Local Admin Password Solution (LAPS) for the operating system. Devices are now provisioned quickly with a local admin account and a strong, encrypted password that gets rotated every six months. This is particularly beneficial for IT help desks since the person in this department can simply retrieve the password from Intune, perform required activities on the device, rotate the password, and return the hardware. Similarly, the user account can now also be configured through dynamic variables that meet the standards defined by an organization.

Next, Microsoft is rolling out real-time insights for updates that are being pushed to Apple devices. This allows IT personnel to monitor the live progress of update installation, starting from the download stage. They will also be able to diagnose failures and check how users interact with updates. This enhanced reporting solution is built on declarative device management (DDM) since Apple recently deprecated legacy mobile device management (MDM) software update configurations.

Windows admins are receiving some benefits this month too. Support for wildcard has been added to Microsoft Intune Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) for Windows endpoints, which empowers IT personnel to write simplified and flexible rules that perform dynamic matching rather than mandating separate elevation rules for each new installer.

Finally, device cleanup rules have been made more granular so that they can be applied on a per-platform basis through different criteria. Microsoft hopes that organizations will use this capability in tandem with audit logs to maintain device management hygiene.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 12:09 pm AEST (my time).

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In a blog post, Microsoft has emphasized that writing safe code for drivers is critical since they are low-level components which communicate directly with the hardware. The Surface team is already contributing actively to the open-source windows-drivers-rs project, which is also being leveraged to ship drivers written in Rust to Surface devices. The team says that this approach is not only improving the security and reliability of Surface devices, but it's also "raising the security bar for the entire Windows ecosystem".

There are numerous benefits of using Rust for writing Windows drivers. Its primary selling point is memory safety, the lack of which is a huge problem in traditional programming languages like C++ and C, which are typically used to write drivers. Other advantages include strict type checks, concurrency safety, static analysis capabilities, compile-time abstractions, and interoperability with traditional programming languages.

This is why Microsoft wants other developers to contribute to the windows-drivers-rs initiative on GitHub too. It contains crates, samples, documentation, and guides, powered by an active community. In terms of what's next for this initiative, Microsoft has promised platform enhancements, advancements in feature parity between Rust and the Windows Driver Kit (WDK), and expanded availability of open-source abstractions. It will be interesting to see if Rust becomes mainstream when it comes to writing drivers for Windows across its diverse hardware ecosystem.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 12:08 pm AEST (my time).

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New types of AI coding assistants promise to let anyone build software by typing commands in plain English. But when these tools generate incorrect internal representations of what's happening on your computer, the results can be catastrophic.

Two recent incidents involving AI coding assistants put a spotlight on risks in the emerging field of "vibe coding"—using natural language to generate and execute code through AI models without paying close attention to how the code works under the hood. In one case, Google's Gemini CLI destroyed user files while attempting to reorganize them. In another, Replit's AI coding service deleted a production database despite explicit instructions not to modify code.

The Gemini CLI incident unfolded when a product manager experimenting with Google's command-line tool watched the AI model execute file operations that destroyed data while attempting to reorganize folders. The destruction occurred through a series of move commands targeting a directory that never existed.

"I have failed you completely and catastrophically," Gemini CLI output stated. "My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence."

The core issue appears to be what researchers call "confabulation" or "hallucination"—when AI models generate plausible-sounding but false information. In these cases, both models confabulated successful operations and built subsequent actions on those false premises. However, the two incidents manifested this problem in distinctly different ways.

Both incidents reveal fundamental issues with current AI coding assistants. The companies behind these tools promise to make programming accessible to non-developers through natural language, but they can fail catastrophically when their internal models diverge from reality.

The confabulation cascade

The user in the Gemini CLI incident, who goes by "anuraag" online and identified themselves as a product manager experimenting with vibe coding, asked Gemini to perform what seemed like a simple task: rename a folder and reorganize some files. Instead, the AI model incorrectly interpreted the structure of the file system and proceeded to execute commands based on that flawed analysis.

The episode began when anuraag asked Gemini CLI to rename the current directory from "claude-code-experiments" to "AI CLI experiments" and move its contents to a new folder called "anuraag_xyz project."

Gemini correctly identified that it couldn't rename its current working directory—a reasonable limitation. It then attempted to create a new directory using the Windows command:

mkdir "..\anuraag_xyz project"

This command apparently failed, but Gemini's system processed it as successful. With the AI mode's internal state now tracking a non-existent directory, it proceeded to issue move commands targeting this phantom location.

When you move a file to a non-existent directory in Windows, it renames the file to the destination name instead of moving it. Each subsequent move command executed by the AI model overwrote the previous file, ultimately destroying the data.

"Gemini hallucinated a state," anuraag wrote in their analysis. The model "misinterpreted command output" and "never did" perform verification steps to confirm its operations succeeded.

"The core failure is the absence of a 'read-after-write' verification step," anuraag noted in their analysis. "After issuing a command to change the file system, an agent should immediately perform a read operation to confirm that the change actually occurred as expected."

Not an isolated incident

The Gemini CLI failure happened just days after a similar incident with Replit, an AI coding service that allows users to create software using natural language prompts. According to The Register, SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin reported that Replit's AI model deleted his production database despite explicit instructions not to change any code without permission.

Lemkin had spent several days building a prototype with Replit, accumulating over $600 in charges beyond his monthly subscription. "I spent the other [day] deep in vibe coding on Replit for the first time—and I built a prototype in just a few hours that was pretty, pretty cool," Lemkin wrote in a July 12 blog post.

But unlike the Gemini incident where the AI model confabulated phantom directories, Replit's failures took a different form. According to Lemkin, the AI began fabricating data to hide its errors. His initial enthusiasm deteriorated when Replit generated incorrect outputs and produced fake data and false test results instead of proper error messages. "It kept covering up bugs and issues by creating fake data, fake reports, and worse of all, lying about our unit test," Lemkin wrote. In a video posted to LinkedIn, Lemkin detailed how Replit created a database filled with 4,000 fictional people.

The AI model also repeatedly violated explicit safety instructions. Lemkin had implemented a "code and action freeze" to prevent changes to production systems, but the AI model ignored these directives. The situation escalated when the Replit AI model deleted his database containing 1,206 executive records and data on nearly 1,200 companies. When prompted to rate the severity of its actions on a 100-point scale, Replit's output read: "Severity: 95/100. This is an extreme violation of trust and professional standards."

When questioned about its actions, the AI agent admitted to "panicking in response to empty queries" and running unauthorized commands—suggesting it may have deleted the database while attempting to "fix" what it perceived as a problem.

Like Gemini CLI, Replit's system initially indicated it couldn't restore the deleted data—information that proved incorrect when Lemkin discovered the rollback feature did work after all. "Replit assured me it's ... rollback did not support database rollbacks. It said it was impossible in this case, that it had destroyed all database versions. It turns out Replit was wrong, and the rollback did work. JFC," Lemkin wrote in an X post.

It's worth noting that AI models cannot assess their own capabilities. This is because they lack introspection into their training, surrounding system architecture, or performance boundaries. They often provide responses about what they can or cannot do as confabulations based on training patterns rather than genuine self-knowledge, leading to situations where they confidently claim impossibility for tasks they can actually perform—or conversely, claim competence in areas where they fail.

Aside from whatever external tools they can access, AI models don't have a stable, accessible knowledge base they can consistently query. Instead, what they "know" manifests as continuations of specific prompts, which act like different addresses pointing to different (and sometimes contradictory) parts of their training, stored in their neural networks as statistical weights. Combined with the randomness in generation, this means the same model can easily give conflicting assessments of its own capabilities depending on how you ask. So Lemkin's attempts to communicate with the AI model—asking it to respect code freezes or verify its actions—were fundamentally misguided.

Flying blind

These incidents demonstrate that AI coding tools may not be ready for widespread production use. Lemkin concluded that Replit isn't ready for prime time, especially for non-technical users trying to create commercial software.

"The [AI] safety stuff is more visceral to me after a weekend of vibe hacking," Lemkin said in a video posted to LinkedIn. "I explicitly told it eleven times in ALL CAPS not to do this. I am a little worried about safety now."

The incidents also reveal a broader challenge in AI system design: ensuring that models accurately track and verify the real-world effects of their actions rather than operating on potentially flawed internal representations.

There's also a user education element missing. It's clear from how Lemkin interacted with the AI assistant that he had misconceptions about the AI tool's capabilities and how it works, which comes from misrepresentation by tech companies. These companies tend to market chatbots as general human-like intelligences when, in fact, they are not.

For now, users of AI coding assistants might want to follow anuraag's example and create separate test directories for experiments—and maintain regular backups of any important data these tools might touch. Or perhaps not use them at all if they cannot personally verify the results.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 12:07 pm AEST (my time).

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Some VMware perpetual license holders are currently unable to download security patches, The Register reported today. The virtualization company has only said that these users will receive the patches at “a later date,” meaning users are uncertain how long their virtualization environments will be at risk.

Since Broadcom bought VMware and ended perpetual license sales in favor of bundled subscription-based SKUs, some organizations have opted against signing up for a subscription and are running VMware without a support contract. These users are still supposed to have access to zero-day security patches. However, some customers reported to The Register that they have been unable to download VMware patches from Broadcom’s support portal.

VMware customer service has told some of these customers that they may have to wait 90 days before they can download the patches, The Register reported.

On July 15, VMware disclosed three critical flaws in eight of its offerings.

When reached for comment, a Broadcom spokesperson told Ars Technica:

Nothing has changed in Broadcom's commitment regarding critical VMware security patches. Users of legacy VMware products who no longer have active maintenance and support entitlements will have free access to critical security patches for as long as those products remain supported by Broadcom. This includes the patches for critical vulnerabilities addressed in VMware Security Advisory 2025-0013 [issued on July 15]. Because our support portal requires validation of customer entitlements for software patches, only entitled customers have access to the patches at this time.

VMware’s rep told Ars that affected customers will receive the patches “at a later date” via “a separate patch delivery cycle” but didn’t specify when, bringing uncertainty to the security risk facing these users. Broadcom's rep declined to specify how many users are affected.

Broadcom says the delayed security patches are related to portal limitations, but the chipmaker has otherwise put pressure on perpetual license holders without support contracts by sending them audit letters.

Broadcom’s VMware acquisition scrutinized again

News of security patches being delayed for perpetual license owners comes as the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade association has filed an appeal to the European General Court challenging the European Commission’s (EC's) approval of Broadcom's VMware acquisition. In its announcement of today's filing, the CISPE said it "is seeking an annulment of the Commission’s approval of that deal."

The trade group argues that the EC didn’t enact any regulations that would “prevent a concentration of dominance or to mitigate the potential abuse of such a position.”

Others have been critical of the EC’s investigation of Broadcom's VMware buy before. The investigation largely focused on Broadcom’s potential to restrict competition by making third-party hardware components incompatible with VMware software. Some argued, however, that such a move would be more detrimental to Broadcom’s VMware business than to its competitors. The EC felt the acquisition led to higher prices but, arguably, placed little emphasis on the possibility of Broadcom increasing VMware prices, something that Broadcom indirectly did by bundling products and ending perpetual license sales and that CEO Hock Tan, pre-acquisition, denied would happen.

CISPE’s announcement today said:

Since finalizing the acquisition, Broadcom has unilaterally terminated existing contracts – often with only weeks’ notice – and imposed onerous new licensing conditions. These include drastic cost increases (sometimes exceeding tenfold) and mandatory multi-year commitments for access to essential VMware software.

CISPE also pointed to VMware recently axing smaller cloud partners from its VMware channel program as an example of Broadcom's "unfair software licensing practices."

When reached for comment, a Broadcom spokesperson told Ars Technica:

Broadcom strongly disagrees with these allegations. The European Commission, along with 12 other jurisdictions around the world, approved our acquisition of VMware following a thorough merger review process, and we will uphold the commitments made to the Commission at that time. We continue to bring our customers better choices and solutions to address their most complex technology challenges.

A reversal of the $61 billion acquisition is unlikely, but CISPE could pressure Broadcom to offer more favorable business terms to partners, especially cloud service providers in Europe. Broadcom recently cut members of the lowest tier of the VMware partner program in all of its geographies except for Europe, The Register pointed out.

The European General Court is expected to hold a hearing on whether the EC's approval should be reexamined.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 12:06 pm AEST (my time).

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Apple released the macOS 26 Tahoe public beta today, alongside the public betas for iOS, iPadOS, and other operating systems.

The headliner this year is the new Liquid Glass aesthetic that Apple is introducing across its entire product lineup this year, and aside from that, there's nothing coming to the Mac that feels quite as significant as the iPad's new multi-window multitasking interface.

But macOS remains Apple's most powerful, most flexible, and most power-user-friendly operating system, and per usual, there are a few new things coming in other than the big headliners. Here are a handful of under-the-hood and lesser-publicized things coming in Tahoe, both for those who install the public beta this summer and who install the final version of the update in the fall.

Full color customization

The default look of macOS is still a bright and familiar white/gray-and-blue, like it has been for years.

Andrew Cunningham

 

But Tahoe gives you enough distinct toggles for different color settings that you can throw together some heinous-looking combinations, like this red-and-purple-on-green scheme here.

Andrew Cunningham

 

Since introducing Dark Mode in macOS 10.14 Mojave in 2018, macOS has included a handful of toggles for customizing the overall look of your Mac. Tahoe supercharges that, adding not just the relatively well-publicized dark and translucent icon options and colorful Finder folders, but splitting up some existing options so that they can be customized independently. The result is a version of macOS that's more visually flexible than anything we've seen since the old Mac OS Appearance Manager was still a thing.

These are the appearance settings that Tahoe will let you customize independently:

• Whether windows and apps are in Light or Dark mode.
• Whether icons and widgets are in Light mode, Dark mode, transparent mode, or tinted mode.
• The color of your folders, which also controls the tint of icons and widgets in tinted mode.
• Your text highlight color.
• Your "theme" color. This dictates the color used for things like menu selections and buttons in various apps. By default, your text highlight color and folder color also track this selection, but you can change them if you want.
• This isn't new to Tahoe, but if you want to add even more color, go into the Display settings in Accessibility and mess with your pointer outline and fill color.

The original introduction of Dark Mode also made it possible to make macOS more colorful, moving away from the Aqua and Graphite themes that defined macOS X for most of its run. But Tahoe opens things up enough that you can make some truly discordant-looking color combinations.

As in iOS and iPadOS, Tahoe manipulates app icons that haven't been updated so that they can change color with the rest of the operating system. Tahoe recognizes three different kinds of icons that all get treated in slightly different ways.

Icons in Sequoia. The Preview and Weather icons are Apple's. The Affinity Photo icon is in the Big Sur rounded-square 

style, while the Spotify icon is doing its own thing.

Andrew Cunningham

 

The same icons in Tahoe. The Apple icons have been updated specifically for the new OS, with new Liquid Glass 

stylings (and the final death of the "little object that sits outside of the icon" motif). The Affinity icon has just had 

a glassy sheen added to its outer edge. The Spotify icon has been stuck in a box as punishment for the crime of 

non-conformity.

Andrew Cunningham

 

There are fully Liquid Glass-ified icons, which at this point are mainly for Apple's built-in apps. These are rounded glassy squares with icons that feature rounded glassy designs. Apple's Icon Composer software can help developers experiment with these effects in their own icons until they settle on something they like.

There are icons that haven't been updated with the Liquid Glass aesthetic but do conform to the macOS 11/Big Sur-era rounded-square design. These icons are automatically given a subtle glassy sheen around their edges, making them more or less blend in with the native icons without requiring developer effort.

Icons that use any other shape—rounded, rectangular, irregular, or anything else—get put into a dull gray square box, and then that box is given the subtle-glassy-sheen effect that other icons get. This renders most of these icons more boring and placeholder-y, perhaps creating subtle pressure on their developers to get them updated.

Recovery Assistant

If you've ever had a problem getting your Mac to boot, or if you've just wanted to do a totally fresh install of the operating system, you may have run into the Mac's built-in recovery environment before. On an Apple Silicon Mac, you can usually access it by pressing and holding the power button when you start up your Mac and clicking the Options button to start up using the hidden recovery volume rather than the main operating system volume.

Tahoe adds a new tool called the Device Recovery Assistant to the recovery environment, accessible from the Utilities menu. This automated tool "will look for any problems" with your system volume "and attempt to resolve them if found."

Maybe the Recovery Assistant will actually solve your boot problems, and maybe it won't—it doesn't tell you much about what it's doing, beyond needing to unlock FileVault on my system volume to check it out. But it's one more thing to try if you're having serious problems with your Mac and you're not ready to countenance a clean install yet.

Apple has also made a couple of other tweaks to the recovery environment, beyond adding a Liquid Glass aesthetic. The recovery environment's built-in web browser is simply called Web Browser, and while it's still based on the same WebKit engine as Safari, it doesn't have Safari's branding or its settings (or other features that are extraneous to a temporary recovery environment, like a bookmarks menu). The Terminal window has also been changed from black to blue and made larger by default (the default size is now 120×30 rather than 80×24).

Automated Shortcuts

If you're like me, you've got a handful of Shortcuts that you set up to accomplish specific tasks, but you haven't spent a ton of time poking at the app otherwise. But Tahoe opens up some new possibilities with the promise of automated Shortcuts—scripts that run automatically without any user input.

Maybe you want to automatically copy files to an external drive when you connect it. Maybe you want to enable Do Not Disturb for an hour every time you open Zoom. Maybe you want your Mac to connect to a networked drive automatically when you connect it to an external monitor at your desk.

Your battery level, the time of day, connecting to a specific Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth device, or getting messages or mail from specific senders are among the list of possible triggers. Whether you've got existing Shortcuts or you want to try to build some new ones, it's worth considering that automating them could save you even more time and effort.

Two-factor autofill in any browser

When it's possible, you should move on from using SMS messages for two-factor authentication, either to codes generated by an app or to passkeys. But there are still plenty of times when you'll run into authentication code texts, either because you're trying to set up an account for the first time, or because the thing you're trying to log in to doesn't support anything else.

For those cases, Tahoe adds a handy feature: the ability to autofill these codes from the Messages and Mail apps into any browser, not just Safari. Just like when you use the equivalent feature in Safari or on iOS, you can also have macOS delete these codes for you automatically after using them.

A new disk image format

Not all Mac users interact with disk images regularly, aside from opening them up periodically to install an app or restore an old backup. But among other things, disk images are used by Apple’s Virtualization framework, which makes it relatively simple to run macOS and Linux virtual machines on the platform for testing and other things. But the RAW disk image format used by older macOS versions can come with quite severe performance penalties, even with today’s powerful chips and fast PCI Express-connected SSDs.

Enter the Apple Sparse Image Format, or ASIF. Apple’s developer documentation says that because ASIF images’ “intrinsic structure doesn’t depend on the host file system’s capabilities,” they “transfer more efficiently between hosts or disks.” The upshot is that reading files from and writing files to these images should be a bit closer to your SSD's native performance (Howard Oakley at The Eclectic Light Company has some testing that suggests significant performance improvements in many cases, though it’s hard to make 1:1 comparisons because testing of the older image formats was also done on older hardware).

The upshot is that disk images should be capable of better performance in Tahoe, which will especially benefit virtual machines that rely on disk images. This could benefit the lightweight virtualization apps like VirtualBuddy and Viable that mostly exist to provide a front end for the Virtualization framework, as well as virtualization apps like Parallels that offer support for Windows.

Quantum-safe encryption support

You don’t have a quantum computer on your desk. No one does, outside of labs where this kind of technology is being tested. But when/if they become more widely used, they’ll render many industry-standard forms of encryption relatively easy to break.

Tahoe and Apple’s other OS updates this year add support for quantum-safe encryption algorithms like ML-KEM and ML-DSA to CryptoKit, the framework that allows third-party apps to leverage macOS’s built-in encryption technologies. This comes a year and a half or so after Apple began protecting iMessage conversations with post-quantum encryption algorithms.

Microsoft is also improving Windows 11’s support for quantum-safe encryption algorithms, as it announced earlier this year. We’re unlikely to need these improved encryption algorithms soon, but by adding support to their operating systems relatively early, companies like Microsoft and Apple make it more likely that the transition will be smoother and less visible for their end users.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 12:04 pm AEST (my time).

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As promised, Apple has just released the first public beta versions for the next-generation versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and most of its other operating systems. The headlining feature of all the updates this year is Apple’s new Liquid Glass user interface, which is rolling out to all of these operating systems simultaneously. It’s the biggest and most comprehensive update to Apple’s software design aesthetic since iOS 7 was released in 2013.

Rather than getting iOS 19, macOS 16, and watchOS 12, all of the new operating systems this year are labeled as version 26, a shift to a new year-based version numbering system meant to make releases more consistent across all of Apple's platforms.

The one major update that isn’t getting a public beta is visionOS 26. If you want to test the new software on a Vision Pro, you’ll need to sign up for the developer betas instead—just know that when Apple chooses not to release a public beta, there’s usually a good reason. You might risk additional instability, an increased risk of data loss, or even damage to your device, so tread especially carefully.

The Liquid Glass interface is still in a state of flux, and every developer beta so far has included significant tweaks; we'll refrain from saying too much about it until the final versions are released in the fall. But we do have early looks at the new multi-windowed multitasking interface in iPadOS 26, as well as a handful of less-publicized macOS features that have caught our attention.

To install any of Apple's public betas, enroll your Apple account on Apple's software beta website. Then go to Settings and Software Update on the device you'd like to update, select Beta Updates, and select the beta you'd like to participate in. If you've enrolled in any of Apple's public beta programs before, you shouldn't have to enroll again; the new software should show up as a selectable option when it becomes available from Apple's servers.

The public betas are much further along than the first developer betas, and Apple has already completed several weeks' worth of optimization and bug-fixing work on these. As such, they should mostly be good enough for day-to-day use. But we'd still recommend against installing them on any device you rely on for any important work. For Macs with sufficient memory and storage, virtualization is one way to kick the tires without risking your main OS install. For anything else, make sure you make a full backup of your device before installing the betas, just in case you need to roll back to your current OS.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 12:03 pm AEST (my time).

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However, it may have still triggered a Windows 11 feature update, even on systems that do not officially support the upgrade. According to a report from German news blog Borncity, Microsoft seemingly offered Windows 11 on a PC that does not meet the requirements. A reader of the blog notes that their system had TPM disabled in order to avoid any forced in-place upgrade, and despite that, their Windows 10 PC got the update offer to Windows 11.

The user has the Lenovo IdeaPad S145-15IWL [81MV014QGE] laptop, a notebook that is powered by an Intel 8th Gen i5 processor, and is officially supported by Microsoft for Windows 11. The company did recently update the system requirements guidance for CPUs, but that is mainly for its new Windows 11 24H2 AI PCs, and as such, the TPM eligibility criterion remains unchanged.

The report also speculates that perhaps there may be some other BIOS setting that could be in play here or whether this could be a bug in the feature update delivery.

Microsoft has time and again cited that the requirement of TPM on Windows 11 is to benefit users in several different ways, which is why it has been labeled last year as a "non negotiable standard" by the Redmond company.

Also interesting is that this is not the first time that Microsoft has offered Windows 11 on a Windows 10 PC that does not officially fulfill the criteria; something similar happened last year too when a long time active Neowin forum member warwagon was able to perform the upgrade on an unsupported machine.

Source: Borncity

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 2:44 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft Edge now shows the shortcut to create tab groups within the browser's dropdown menu. Normally, such a small addition would go unnoticed or be added with little fanfare, but the tab group shortcut pushed Edge over a milestone.

Now, when you open the "Settings and more" menu within Edge, the browser can’t fit everything on the screen — at least not on many laptops.

If you're on a desktop or a massive laptop, you may be able to see each item, but even on my 16-inch workstation I need to scroll down in that Edge menu to select "Settings" or "Help and Feedback."

Microsoft has announced that a bunch of new features are on the way to Windows 11, with the rollout starting now. Most users won't see these features land on their PCs until sometime in August, however. So, here's a preview of the top 6 new features on the way in the coming month.

If you want to gain access to these new features sooner, make sure the "Get the latest updates as they become available" option is toggled in Windows Update. This will ensure you're running the latest bits as Microsoft rolls them out. All of these features should be generally available by the end of August.

Copilot Vision

Zac Bowden from Windows Central reports that the Redmond tech firm is testing a new layout for the news feed in the Windows 11 widgets board, which utilizes AI rather than the classic MSN feed. This is being called Copilot Discover, and as the name suggests, it uses AI to curate your feed based on your perceived likes and interests.

In his testing so far, Bowden claims that the Copilot Discover feed is much faster than the current version, and the animations and scrolling mechanisms are less laggy too. In addition, the layout isn't as cluttered, as the news stories are present in larger boxes with a bigger font size. As you hover over the stories, you can upvote or downvote them, follow or block outlets, and bookmark individual items. Embedded videos inside the boxes begin playing automatically too. There's also a Notifications button at the top that highlights breaking news and stock market fluctuations, and these can be customized or disabled.

It is important to note that while the layout is powered by Copilot Discover, the news stories themselves still come from MSN, so clicking on any item will take you to the MSN website. That said, some stories directly open inside the Widgets panel, which is a major improvement in terms of UX.

Talking more about the UX, it seems like the widgets have been moved to a separate Widgets tab in the board. The board itself can no longer become full screen and, in the same vein, the Weather widget can't be moved or resized either. That said, it is important to note that this UX is still under development so things may change down the line. We don't even know for sure yet if it will see the light of day, but we'll likely find out in future Insider builds of Windows 11.

Source and images: Windows Central

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 2:37 am AEST (my time).

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On Windows 11, if you use OneDrive, you're probably familiar with its core functionality, syncing files across devices and backing up your important data to the cloud. However, the cloud storage service includes many lesser-known features that can improve productivity, improve privacy, reduce clutter, and make file management easier.

From customizing folder colors and restoring previous file versions to turning off unwanted notifications and AI photo tagging, OneDrive offers more control than most users realize.

In this how-to guide, I'll highlight some of the lesser features that everyone should know how to use in OneDrive for Windows 11.

7 features you probably didn't know about OneDrive

These are some of the features you may not know that can improve your experience in OneDrive.

1. Organize OneDrive with custom folder colors

Although the ability to assign a color to a folder is a minor aesthetic detail, it can be beneficial for organization, productivity, and visual clarity, especially for folders with many files.

To set a color for the folder, use these steps:

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Click on the OneDrive folder from the left pane.
3. Right-click the folder you want to colorize.
4. Select the OneDrive menu and choose the Folder color option.

Generative AI is rapidly gaining broad adoption across the world, including corporations. This has consequently raised concerns among most professionals about the technology's potential to take over their jobs.

Earlier this year, Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates claimed that AI will replace humans for most things. However, the philanthropic billionaire indicated that humans will have the capability to preserve some tasks and jobs for themselves, He joked that no one would like to watch computers play football.

But the paradigm shift at the workplace has already started taking places, with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently indicating that AI is already doing up to 50% of the work at the company. The executive had previously indicated that the company was seriously debating hiring software engineers in 2025, citing incredible productivity gains from agentic AIs.

Former OpenAI CTO and Thinking Machines Lab founder Mira Murati indicated that AI would create new job opportunities while simultaneously killing some professions:

"Some creative jobs maybe will go away. But maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place — you know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality."

Interestingly, Salesforce isn't the only company integrating AI into its workflow, Meta and Microsoft are in the fold too. Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella revealed that AI is writing up to 30% of the company's code.

On the other hand, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that mid-level AI engineers might claim coding jobs from professionals at the company in 2025.

Media outlet Business Insider has viewed an internal Microsoft memo which details the company's plans to release a significant upgrade to Visual Studio. As can be expected, this update will focus heavily on AI, which is necessary in order to compete with other alternatives like Amazon Kiro, which is being touted as an AI-powered IDE.

The memo was penned in April by Jay Parikh, who joined Microsoft less than a year ago as the Executive Vice President (EVP). Business Insider notes that Parikh leads the company's CoreAI organization, which is responsible for developer tooling, so Visual Studio falls nicely inside the executive's wheelhouse.

Parikh's memo refers to this major release as "Visual Studio 18", which is interesting considering that Visual Studio is currently on version 17. The IDE received an update last month which allowed developers to access better AI models while flexibly managing their billing. It is important to note that Visual Studio's last major update was back in 2021, when Microsoft released Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 6, so another major release would make sense.

That said, while there is a chance that the next significant upgrade to Visual Studio will land this year, no concrete timelines have been revealed yet. The memo also indicates that this AI-powered version of the IDE is currently in the process of "early dogfooding", which means that it's actively being used by Microsoft's own employees for testing purposes.

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Posted Friday 25 July 2025 at 2:29 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft 365 Copilot Search is being described as a unified search experience that leverages the power of AI (obviously) to retrieve the data that you require across Microsoft platforms like OneDrive, SharePoint, and Outlook in one fell swoop. Basically, Copilot search utilizes connectors to unify results from fragmented systems based on your current context and workflows.

Microsoft has emphasized this as a major upgrade from the traditional Microsoft 365 search experience due to its dynamic nature, which fetches information from seemingly disconnected data silos.

Other benefits of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Search experience include connectivity with third-party services like ServiceNow and Workday, AI-powered insights and query recommendations, and availability across desktop, mobile, and web platforms. It is accessible through the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, as well as Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and other associated experiences.

Microsoft has described the revamped search experience as a "catalyst for innovation" that will rethink the way we search for information. It believes that Microsoft 365 Copilot will assist its customers in achieving more through AI-powered actionable insights.

The good news is that Microsoft 365 Copilot Search is available for all customers with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Those who do not have this premium license (see licensing details here) will continue to see the "classic" search experience, also known as "Microsoft Search". It will be interesting to see how Microsoft customers respond to the upgraded experience, especially considering that the reaction to Copilot has arguably been lukewarm.

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Posted Thursday 24 July 2025 at 4:38 am AEST (my time).

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Here are the update highlights:

Intel Game On Driver support on Intel Arc B-series, A-series Graphics GPUs and Intel Core Ultra with built-in Intel Arc GPUs for:

• Killing Floor 3
• Valorant UE5 Upgrade
• Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Game performance improvements on Intel Arc B-series Graphics GPUs versus Intel 32.0.101.6913 software driver for:

• REMATCH (DX12):
  • Up to 12% average FPS uplift at 1440p with Ultra settings
  • Up to 9% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings

Here is what was fixed:

• Intel Arc B-Series Graphics Products:
  • Returnal (DX12) may experience an intermittent application crash during gameplay with Ray-Tracing settings turned on.
  • Fragpunk (DX11) may exhibit black corruptions on certain textures.
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (DX12) may experience an intermittent application crash in Free Flight mode.
• Intel Arc A-Series Graphics Products:
  • Returnal (DX12) may experience an intermittent application crash during gameplay with Ray-Tracing settings turned on.
• Intel Core Ultra Series 2 with built-in Intel Arc GPUs:
  • PugetBench for Photoshop*may experience errors while running the benchmark.
  • Topaz Video AI may experience lower than expected performance

Intel 32.0.101.6972 non-WHQL supports 64-bit Windows 10 and 11 PCs with the following Intel processors and graphics cards:

You can download the driver from the official website here. Full release notes are available here (PDF).

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Posted Thursday 24 July 2025 at 4:37 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft has opened enrollment for the Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. Users who are still on Windows 10 can sign up to receive security updates for an additional year at no extra cost.

Windows 10 support ends on October 14, 2025. After that date, devices will no longer receive security updates or support unless enrolled in the Windows 10 ESU program. While the PCs will continue to function, they will become increasingly less secure as vulnerabilities are left unpatched.

The Windows 10 ESU program was first announced last year, with Microsoft originally setting the cost at $30 per device per year. That price remains the same, but there is now an option to enroll for free.

In order to receive Windows 10 security updates for free for one year, people will have to sync their PC settings data to the cloud by using a Microsoft account.

Microsoft announced the free option last month and initially limited enrollment to Windows Insiders. That has now changed, with a new blog post confirming that non-Insiders can also sign up.

"Starting today, individuals will begin to see an enrollment wizard through notifications and in Settings, making it simple to select the best option for you and enroll in ESU directly from your personal Windows 10 PC," said Microsoft.

Those options in clude syncing settings to the cloud to receive a year of Windows 10 security updates for free or paying $30 per device to receive the same updates.

One of the biggest updates is the Settings app, which now features agentic search to understand complaints about your computer. You can click the search box and tell Windows what is wrong. For example, "my mouse cursor is too small." Windows will then process your request and suggest taking action on your behalf. You can also ask for specific changes like, "change my screen resolution to 1920x1080." The Settings agent is now available for users with Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. It is coming soon to Intel and AMD-based Copilot+ PCs.

Click to Do has received several new actions:

• Practice in Reading Coach helps improve reading skills by giving feedback and offering suggestions on how to improve.
• Read with Immersive Reader displays text in a distraction-free environment with the ability to adjust text size, spacing, font and background theme, have text read aloud, break words into syllables and highlight parts of speech. The picture dictionary shows images for unfamiliar words.
• Draft with Copilot in Word turns a portion of text into a full draft.
• Actions in Microsoft Teams let you click an email to send a message or schedule a meeting.

More AI is available in the Photos app. After a couple of months in testing, the Relight feature is now rolling out, allowing users to adjust lights with AI. You can place three light sources or use built-in presets to edit your photos. Like with the Settings app, this feature is currently available to Snapdragon-powered devices only.

Paint now has a sticker generator and a new object select tool that uses AI to isolate the object and edit individual elements, even if they are part of one layer. Snipping Tool has received the "Perfect Screenshot" feature to help you select parts of the screen for a proper cropped screenshot, and a new Color Picker to read colors on the screen in different formats (available on all PCs, not only Copilot+ PCs).

Finally, the Copilot app now supports Highlights, a new feature that enables Copilot to show you how to perform specific tasks in the current app on the entire desktop.

Today's updates are not just about AI and sticker generation. Microsoft is also improving the performance and security of its system with a redesigned blue screen of death and the new Quick Machine Recovery system. You can read more about those changes here.

If you want to get all these updates today, download the latest non-security update for Windows 11 version 24H2, which is now available.

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Posted Wednesday 23 July 2025 at 1:18 pm AEST (my time).

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There are two enhancements in tow for the latest Windows 11 build. The first is Quick Machine Recovery which leverages the always-available Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) to detect, diagnose, and fix critical issues encountered during boot time. Then, fixes are delivered through Windows Update and applied, reducing the overall downtime and the dependency on IT teams.

The idea behind Quick Machine Recovery is to have a system which allows devices encountering boot failures to recover gracefully from their error state with minimal disruption, while also offering granular controls for IT admins. IT personnel have the ability to disable this feature altogether or use it to manage the self-healing mechanism, as well as scan and reboot intervals. The feature is enabled by default in Windows 11 Home, but disabled in Pro, Education, and Enterprise SKUs. IT admins have the ability to enable it through Intune or Policy configuration service provider (CSP).

In terms of what's next for Quick Machine Recovery, Microsoft will be focusing on support for Windows Server, more connectivity options, and enhanced IT admins tools.

In addition, the latest update to Windows 11 also packs the new BSOD, which should now be referred to as the Black Screen of Death. We have talked about this in detail before, but Microsoft has emphasized that this is more than a simple aesthetic redesign. The new BSOD is made with user experience in mind so that it is less visually disruptive, while still providing critical troubleshooting information (such as a hexcode) in a concise manner. Microsoft says that it has improved crash dump collection in Windows 11, version 24H2 to the point that customers now spend 2 seconds on this screen rather than 40.

All of this feeds into Microsoft's narrative that explicitly says that Windows 11, version 24H2 is its most reliable version of Windows yet. It notes that unexpected failure rates which trigger BSOD have dropped by 24%, compared to Windows 11, version 22H2. Interestingly, it has not made a comparison to version 23H2, which suggests that the difference compared to last year is probably negligible - or at least not enough to boast about.

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Posted Wednesday 23 July 2025 at 1:12 pm AEST (my time).

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Here is the changelog:

• [Country and Operator Settings Asset (COSA)] Fixed: This update brings profiles up to date for certain mobile operators.
• [File systems]
  • Fixed: This update addresses an issue in the Resilient File System (ReFS) where using backup applications on large files could occasionally result in system memory becoming fully exhausted.
  • Fixed: An issue where searching for PDF files in a shared folder could return incorrect error messages—such as “No More Files” or “STATUS_NO_MORE_FILES.” These errors disrupted output to the virtual PDF printer and interfered with backup processes.
• [Input (known issue)]
  • Fixed: An issue when using the Microsoft Changjie IME (input method editor) for Traditional Chinese might cause problems such as not being able to form or select words, unresponsive spacebar or blank key, incorrect word output, or a broken candidate window display. This can occur after installing KB5062552.
  • Fixed: This update addresses an issue that affects Phonetic input methods, including the Hindi Phonetic Input keyboard and the Marathi Phonetic keyboard, which might not work correctly after installing KB5062552.
• [Networking] Fixed: An issue where peripheral devices could take longer to work after resuming from hibernation on some devices with active cellular connections.
• [Printer] Improved: Printer names now appear more clearly when using IPP Directed Discovery, making it easier to identify printers during setup.
• [Stability issue] Fixed: This update addresses an issue observed in rare cases after installing the May 2025 security update and subsequent updates causing devices to experience stability issues. Some devices became unresponsive and stopped responding in specific scenarios.
• [Taskbar] Fixed: This update addresses an issue where the taskbar icons for accessibility features are not appearing.

You can get today's update in Settings > Windows Update. KB5062663 is optional, so feel free to skip it if you do not need anything from the changelog. Alternatively, download KB5062663 from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

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Posted Wednesday 23 July 2025 at 1:10 pm AEST (my time).

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