科技新闻

Nearly 100 million of the world’s 1 billion iPhone users have already installed iOS 15, according to Mixpanel. Here are 20 of the most obscure or exciting features those who have chosen to install Apple’s new mobile OS can now access.Easier upgrades Every enterprise user will benefit when upgrading their iPhone to iOS 15, which provides unlimited iCloud storage for up to three weeks when setting up a new device. Open Settings>General>Transfer or Reset iPhone to use this. Enterprise users also benefit from Apple’s all-new declarative management MDM system.To read this article in full, please click here

Microsoft provides Windows users with two tools that offer malware scanning and repair services, should those scans turn up anything in need of fixing. One is named MSRT; the other runs an executable called MSERT.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

Salesforce unveiled the latest steps in its plan to connect Slack’s team collaboration platform with its Customer360 product suite on Tuesday, as it seeks to create a “digital HQ” for customers.Salesforce bought Slack for $27.7 billion last year to provide a collaborative layer around its various apps;  the acquisition officially closed two months ago. The company unveiled an initial set of integrations last month, promising new ways to access Salesforce Sales, Service, and Marketing Clouds from the team collaboration app, as well analytics tool Tableau.To read this article in full, please click here

If you received an Apple email letting you know you’ve been upgraded to iCloud+ at no additional charge, you’re not alone. So, what is iCloud+? What do you get, and why should you use it?What is iCloud+? Announced at WWDC 2021, iCloud+ is a suite of additional services designed to supplement the existing features of Apple’s online iCloud service. Despite its name, it doesn’t cost any more than before but is only available to those on paid plans. The free 5GB tier doesn’t get these additional features. The upgraded service adds useful security enhancements, including iCloud Private Relay (still in beta), Hide My email, and improved support for HomeKit Secure Video.To read this article in full, please click here

Slack is rolling out a video and audio messaging tool that lets workers send short recordings to colleagues instead of scheduling lengthy meetings — another example of the growing trend toward "asynchronous" communications.Users create short recordings — “clips” — they can send via direct messages or into channels to be accessed by colleagues whenever it's convenient. Recipients can then respond in whatever format suits them best, be it video, audio or text.[ Related: Next-gen digital whiteboards: 7 shared canvas apps for visual collaboration ] The clips, which are live-captioned, can be slowed down or sped up as desired when they're accessed. And the text from automatically generated transcriptions of video and audio is also searchable within Slack’s app.To read this article in full, please click here

It wasn’t so long ago that Uber started a revolution in work: managing workers—or is it freelancers?—via an algorithm-driven app. The gig economy was born. Its promise was to save consumers money and enable anyone with a car to earn quick, easy cash. And, of course, to make Uber’s founders and investors rich.That was then. We know better now.Oh, the model is more popular than ever. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, food delivery services exploded: 60% of US consumers now order delivery or takeout once per week from DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub-Seamless, or their minor competitors. There’s only one little problem. All those gig economy promises turned out to be lies—an important lesson for smaller firms that might be tempted to try to mimic all that “success.”To read this article in full, please click here

Microsoft last week announced the availability of the next edition of perpetual-license Office for commercial and government customers.Dubbed "Office LTSC 2021," as in "Long-term Support Channel," the new Office suite was built as a subset of the feature catalog of Office 365 (and its more expensive, expansive sibling, Microsoft 365) that, once released, will live unchanged until it exhausts support."Keep in mind that Office LTSC 2021 includes only some, but not all, features that are available in versions of Office that come with a Microsoft 365 (or Office 365) plan," Microsoft warned in a support document. "Office LTSC 2021 won't receive any new features now that it has been released."To read this article in full, please click here

As experts stay busy trying to figure out what exactly the next “new normal” might look like, organizations are already working hard to build it. And while every business is leveraging IT to solve unique challenges and take advantage of new opportunities, some trends are becoming prominent:• The workplace is getting more, not less, distributed, and hybrid workforces demand reliable, flexible mobility.• Business tools are rapidly evolving. Real-time video and online collaboration tools are good examples, moving from “nice to have” to “business-critical” in less than 18 months.• Data is now an organization’s most valuable commodity, and it’s increasingly at risk from costly cyberattacks that are multiplying in frequency and complexity. As businesses continue to invest in technology, they are keeping these challenges in mind. An obvious first step is to ensure employees are equipped with the latest notebook PCs to take on present and future challenges.AMD Ryzen™ PRO 5000 series mobile processors meet today’s high expectations, and make that decision easier, offering business users:• Powerhouse performance to maximize productivity;• Long battery life to support hybrid work;• Layers of modern security features to keep data and devices safe while working from anywhere; and• Maximum productive uptime with simple deployment and management solutions for IT admins.To read this article in full, please click here

As a Microsoft Patch Lady, I’ve been patching computers and servers for more than 20 years. We started with a process that wasn’t well planned. We had no set day or time for when patches were released, and no way to centrally manage and deploy updates. Over the years Microsoft has moved to a more dependable deployment plan and the ability to manage updates through platforms ranging from Windows Update to Windows Software Update Services to Cloud services.So things should be better now, right? We’ve had 20 years to get this right.And yet, here’s what I’ve seen regarding patching in just the last week.We are now on three months and counting of continuing issues with printing caused by patches. (This month included yet another fix for another print spooler vulnerability.) I’ve seen businesses dealing with new side effects directly impacting printing and, interestingly enough, these are businesses that didn’t have problems with earlier updates. This month, Windows 10 peer-to-peer networks appear to be the most affected. (FYI: The trigger for all of these printer issues seems to be older Type 3 printer drivers. Moving to type 4 drivers might help if that’s an option for you.)To read this article in full, please click here

Apple ships the latest iteration of its operating systems for iPads and iPhones today, but some (though not all) of the most enterprise-friendly features won’t be ready on day one.What you get with iOS 15/iPadOS 15 Despite the extent of this list, you will still be gaining a slew of new features when you do upgrade your operating system(s). Focus, for example, will help you keep your head down to get things done, while the new design of Safari at present seems like great news to anyone else creating browsers for iOS. Maps gives new views, including 3D views, and you’ll get much better sound during FaceTime calls. Photos gets much better at identifying and sharing memories selected from \ your collection. Live Text, a slew of privacy protecting features, and excellent improvements to Contacts, Notes and Reminders — including support for tags — should give most iPhone and iPad users plenty of useful new tools.To read this article in full, please click here

One of the biggest enterprise additions to iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 is a significant change to Apple’s MDM (mobile device management) protocol. Earlier MDM changes primarily focused on adding new management, security, or deployment features, extending what MDM could enforce. Declarative management, introduced at the company’s developer conference in June, is the first change that modifies the protocol itself.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

This week's Patch Tuesday was an unusual update from Microsoft and we have added Windows, the Microsoft development platform, and Adobe Reader to our "Patch Now" schedule. These updates are driven by the zero-day patch (CVE-2021-40444) to the core Microsoft browser library MSHTML. In addition to leading to significant remote code execution worries, this update may also lead to unexpected behaviours in legacy applications that depend on or include this browser component. Be sure to assess your portfolio for key apps that have these dependencies and perform a full functionality test before deployment. (We have identified some key mitigation strategies for handling ActiveX controls and for protecting your system during your testing and deployment phases.)To read this article in full, please click here

I imagine the A15 processor inside the iPad mini may deliver similar performance to what it can achieve inside the smaller iPhone. We don’t have the benchmark data to prove this assumption yet, but it's possible — assuming Apple hasn’t downclocked the chip.To read this article in full, please click here

What’s that one productivity tool you simply couldn’t live without? For me, it’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the voice recognition package that, despite its many quirks and frustrations, has saved me countless hours of keyboard time over the past 15 years.This week I set out to find a NaturallySpeaking equivalent for other business professionals. I posted a simple question on Twitter and the sourcing site Qwoted: “What’s the one digital productivity tool you would take if you had to be marooned on a desert island (presumably with internet access)?” I got way more responses than I could handle.To read this article in full, please click here

I got a briefing this week on the impressive Poly E70 conference room camera and X70 (with built-in speakers). They are impressive pieces of hardware, but they only work with Zoom at the moment (though Teams certification is coming). And that lack of interoperability between conferencing platforms continues to make every device in this class a far riskier buy than they should be. In the context of this Poly announcement, let’s explore why conferencing services providers don’t understand what networking and telecom companies figured out more than three decades ago. In short: this stuff has to be able to interoperate. To read this article in full, please click here