Software

Android has, justified or not, earned a reputation of being easily compromised by malware, especially when installing apps from third-party sources. On the desktop side, that has traditionally been Windows’ infamy. In an almost comical but also dangerous twist of fate, those two come together in the Andy Android emulator for Windows. According to reports, the makers of the emulator may or may not be responsible for installing a cryptocurrency (like bitcoin) miner disguised an always running “Updater.exe” program.

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Apple Maps is down in several core ways, with search, routing, and navigation all offline this morning. Apple confirmed that there was an ongoing issue with the mapping service this morning, and says it's investigating the issue.

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Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, is working on a new Web browser called Scout. Unlike its current bowser, Scout will be created with accessibility in mind, enabling users to access content using voice commands. The company describes Scout as an exploration at this point, having revealed it at an event today.

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Personal media server software Plex has updated its live TV interface with a new channel guide. Such a feature seems, on the surface, like it would be a simple thing to offer: it's just a page of live content. However, Plex points out that it isn't that simple, not when you factor in the DVR feature and the maker's multi-layer recording engine.

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Microsoft has a new redesign coming up for Office 365 users. Also going live on the Office.com iteration of Microsoft's productivity suite, this new redesign has three major focuses in all. While two are relatively minor and focus on visuals and efficiency, there's one major change that even Microsoft knows it needs to tread carefully with.

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This morning Google made an official comment on the fabled Android Dark Theme. "We have added support for a Dark theme to be applied to quick settings and launcher under Settings -> Display -> Device Theme," said a Google developer representative. "It will be available in a future Android build." Lucky you, we've already got it for you - sort of.

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The ubiquity of voice-controlled smart assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and even Microsoft Cortana should probably motivate an audit of our platforms’ security features. Because more often than not, the almost overarching powers given to these virtual assistants come at the price of, well, giving them too much power. Cortana may not be the most famous one of the bunch but, considering it’s pre-installed on every Windows 10 PC, especially laptops and tablets, then it has even more potential to do harm, as this McAfee report proves.

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It really seems that Chrome OS is being groomed to be the one OS that runs them all. Well almost all. In addition to its native Chrome-based platform, it now supports Android through Google Play Store and, just recently, Linux. Because of those two, it is also possible to run Windows programs to some extent. CodeWeavers, which develops software for running Windows programs on Mac and Linux, has just shown what could be a better way to run those same programs on a Chromebook.

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Once upon a time, OK not so long ago, browsers such as Chrome and Firefox fought for supremacy over browser extensions. That war has seemingly simmered down but the remnants threaten the security of at least one of them. Chrome browser extensions have, unfortunately, been one of the major sources of malware for its users. Now Google is stepping in and will tighten security by soon preventing extensions from being installed from outside its own Chrome Web Store.

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Today the folks behind Adobe software safety revealed a fix for a flaw for Flash. You might not use Flash actively - you might not even realize it's on your computer (desktop computer, that is,) but there it might very well be. Good news for Apple computer users is this bit of malware seems to be relegated to Windows. Maybe. Very likely, but not certainly.

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iOS and macOS are not going to merge. Apple CEO Tim Cook already set his foot down on that matter. That’s just the TL;DR version, though. The fine print, however, does mention something about a more “unified” experience. At WWDC 2018 earlier this week, SVP Craig Federighi made a not so surprising and still surprising revelation: iOS apps will, in the near future, run on Macs. Not so surprising because it is what rumors and leaks have been leading up to but also surprising because Apple has admitted as much.

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Today we're wrapping up Apple's main WWDC 2018 keynote in as simple a fashion as possible. With what this article explains, I'll touch on the main topics and will offer an expanded look at each topic as it pops up, if you do so wish. For the average user, the announcements Apple made this morning can be summed up in a succinct set of paragraphs.

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