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News feeds, a.k.a. RSS/Atom, have been said to have gone the way of the dodo. In its place has risen curated news services, initially like Flipboard. Pretty soon, however, that was no longer enough and companies, including Google, have started riding on the AI train to spread the news around. The latest to hop on board is Microsoft but not via its existing MSN News app. Instead, it has just silently released Hummingbird, offering “stories for you” as selected by AI.

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The Apple Music tripod just lost one of its legs. When the service launched in 2015, Apple promoted three foundations that made Apple Music unique: music streaming, Beats Radio, and the social hub Connect. Now Apple will have to revise history to show that the service stands only on two legs. As of today, Apple Music Connect is practically shutting down, save for a few traces, leaving artists less connected with their fans.

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When Samsung announced its own take on the AI-powered smart assistant, there were naturally some doubts as to Samsung’s ability to carry through its vision. The botched launch of Bixby and other criticisms made it even less certain that the company will be able to deliver what it promised. One of those is support for languages other than Korean, Chinese, and English. The good news: that’s partially being delivered. The bad news: it’s only available for a very select few.

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Google isn't really one to shy away from competing platforms if it means making its products available there regardless. In fact, it even gains a strategic advantage, as seen in its presence on iOS. It isn't always on par with, say, Android but it eventually gets there. The latest to get feature parity between the two mobile platforms is Google Lens, whose visual search feature is now available directly from the Google Search app on iOS.

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If Wikipedia has become notorious for being the Internet’s information rabbit hole, YouTube is its video counterpart. Thanks to Google’s famous algorithms, your YouTube app’s home page can be filled with a nearly endless list of suggestions based on your search and viewing history. Not all of them, however, end up being what their cover images make them out to be. Fortunately, YouTube is taking the guesswork out of the equation by bringing its Autoplay on Home feature to both Android and iOS and for all user tiers.

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There’s no denying that Google is everywhere. And not just on the Web or on Android. It has its apps and services even on rival platforms like Windows, macOS, and iOS. Writing and maintaining apps for all those is no walk in the park and time wasted on pushing pixels could be spent on actually implementing important features. To help itself as well as other developers on that same path, Google has developed the Flutter, now in its first stable 1.0 release, to help build “beautiful native” Android and iOS interfaces from a single codebase.

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It’s an inescapable fact of modern life that more and more people are using the cloud to both store content as well as share them. The cloud, however, requires an Internet connection by its very nature. The bigger the files, the better the network quality required. Internet quality, however, varies and it can make such cloud-based conveniences actually more inconvenient. That is why in India, Google is trying out a new Google Photos Express backup to take the pain and hassle out of keeping photos in the cloud.

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Google and Android have yet again come under fire for another batch of apps that either spread malware or practice fraud from under Google’s and users’ noses. Of course, many took the chance to point out Apple’s closed but effective review process that blocks such apps from even getting into the App Store. But it’s precisely because of that tight process that when misbehaving apps do get in, it’s an even bigger problem.

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Music streaming may have become the most popular, not to mention most lucrative, way people listen to music these days, but not all services cover all music tastes. Sometimes it takes multiple services. Sometimes not even a single one would carry the music you like. Perhaps knowing that there is a lost opportunity there, Spotify is now tipped to be working on a feature that will let you import your own music from your Android phone so you won’t have to veer away from Spotify at all.

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Samsung’s next major firmware update may be its highest profile one yet, easily eclipsing the Android 9 Pie update it would be bringing. And it’s not because everything will be awesome. The update will bring a rebranded Samsung user experience, simply called One UI, that is designed to unify its design language across all its Galaxy smartphones, including future foldable ones. It seems, however, that Samsung has decided to bring along some changes that may not sit well even with its long-time fans.

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Another Thanksgiving, another maddening run to get the best Black Friday sales deals. These days, though, you rarely need to literally run and rampage through stores thanks to online shopping. In fact, some of the deals aren’t even physical things you need to race for to grab before anyone else. So while you recover from the weekend’s festivities and frenzy, why not grab an app or game that’s going to last you more than just one season.

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Another day, another Android malware sighted on Google Play Store. Countless pieces and analyses have been written up regarding Google’s mostly hands-off approach to screening apps and it’s a bitter pill to swallow for Android fans and believers. But while there’s no denying that too many such Potentially Harmful Apps or PHAs have slipped through the cracks, there is also one thing that seems to escape notice: the hundreds of thousands of users that should have all been compromised by these malware-laden Android apps.

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