The Windows 11 2022 Update has been released, but behind the scenes, Microsoft is constantly working to improve the newest version of Windows. The company frequently rolls out public preview builds to members of its Windows Insider Program, allowing them to test out — and even help shape — upcoming features.

Skip to the builds

The Windows Insider program is divided into four channels:

• The Canary Channel (new in March 2023) is where platform changes (such as major updates to the Windows kernel and new APIs) are previewed. These changes are not tied to a particular Windows release and may never ship at all. Little documentation is provided, and builds are likely to be very unstable. This channel is best for highly technical users.
• The Dev Channel is where new features are introduced for initial testing, regardless of which Windows release they’ll eventually end up in. This channel is best for technical users and developers and builds in it may be unstable and buggy.
• In the Beta Channel, you’ll get more polished features that will be deployed in the next major Windows release. This channel is best for early adopters, and Microsoft says your feedback in this channel will have the most impact.
• The Release Preview Channel typically doesn’t see action until shortly before a new feature update is rolled out. It’s meant for final testing of an upcoming release and is best for those who want the most stable builds.

The Beta and Release Preview Channels also receive bug-fix builds for the currently shipping version of Windows 11. See "How to preview and deploy Windows 10 and 11 updates" for more details about the four channels and how to switch to a different channel.

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Return to Service is one of the many enterprise-focused improvements Apple introduced in iOS/iPad OS 17. It’s a new device management tool designed to help IT manage remote fleets of iPhones and iPads, and it should make it much easier to handle transient deployments and semi-shared devices.

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Ah, reminders. I'm not sure how I'd possibly function without 'em. (What were we talking about, again?)

I rely on reminders for almost everything imaginable — making sure I respond to an important message, tackle a pressing task, and perform all sorts of embarrassingly mundane day-to-day chores that are both business-based and personal. (Putting on one's pants technically counts as both, right?)

And goodness gracious, lemme tell ya: Google's got some incredibly useful ways to set yourself reminders in different areas of Android. Most of 'em are options you'd never even encounter if you didn't know where to look.

But once you uncover 'em, holy moly, can these purpose-specific brain jigglers be invaluable for the mushy-minded among us.

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Large language models (LLMs), the algorithmic platforms on which generative AI (genAI) tools like ChatGPT are built, are highly inaccurate when connected to corporate databases and becoming less transparent, according to two studies.

One study by Stanford University showed that as LLMs continue to ingest massive amounts of information and grow in size, the genesis of the data they use is becoming harder to track down. That, in turn, makes it difficult for businesses to know whether they can safely build applications that use commercial genAI foundation models and for academics to rely on them for research.

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Private browsing. Incognito. Privacy mode.

Web browser functions like those trace their roots back more than a decade, and the feature — first found in a top browser in 2005 — spread quickly as one copied another, made tweaks and minor improvements.

But privacy-promising labels can be treacherous. Simply put, going "incognito" is as effective in guarding online privacy as witchcraft is in warding off a common cold.

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AWS CEO Adam Selipsky on Tuesday premiered the star of the cloud giant's ongoing re:Invent 2023 conference: Amazon Q, the company's answer to Microsoft’s GPT-driven Copilot generative AI assistant.   

Selipsky’s announcement of Q was reminiscent of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote at Ignite and Build, where he announced several integrations and flavors of Copilot across a wide range of products. 

“Amazon Q can handle all of the basic productivity tasks that Copilot can, but can also be used to work across a wide range of apps across the stack, which should appeal to IT managers who want to limit the number of assistants that need to be monitored,” said Keith Kirkpatrick, research director of enterprise applications at The Futurum Group. 

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The UK competition authority has objected to Adobe's proposed $20 billion acquisition of cloud-based design company Figma, on grounds that it might stifle innovation.

According to the results of an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Adobe's refusal to provide concessions to alleviate worries about the deal has led to findings that the acquisition would eliminate competition and remove Figma as a  threat to Adobe's main products, Photoshop and Illustrator.

Last year, Adobe revealed its intention to acquire Figma, whose  platform is designed to enable collaborative app and website design, for $20 billion. Figma is viewed as a significant competitor to Adobe in the design software arena.

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If you blinked during the prelude to Thanksgiving 2023, you might not have noticed the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) announcement that the first wireless chargers to support Qi v.2.0 (and Apple’s MagSafe) are about to ship.

This matters to Apple watchers because many of the first products to appear will be compatible with Apple’s iPhone 15, as these are the first Qi2-certified smartphones. This should also be good news for busy mobile professionals who keep their iPhone on a wireless charging pad when at their desk.

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Enterprise VR/AR hardware vendor Varjo has launched its latest mixed-reality headset, promising levels of realism that surpass consumer-focused devices — and at a price that puts the device in line with Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro.

Varjo targets the highest of high-end virtual reality and augmented reality (VR/AR) use cases, including training simulations for airplane pilots and design reviews for global car manufacturers. It’s an approach that pushes the boundaries of immersive technologies, the company says, with prices to match: individual Varjo headsets can often run into five-figure sums.

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The European Commission (EC) has put Amazon on notice that regulators believe its proposed $1.4 billion acquisition of robot vacuum cleaners (RVCs) iRobot may leave its European competitors in the dust.

EU legislators are worried that purchasing the makers of the popular Roomba vacuum, which Amazon said it aimed to do in August, might cause the online retail giant to restrict or discourage the sale of competitive products on its European websites.

The commission sent a formal statement of objections to Amazon this week after it opened an investigation in July into the potential implications of the deal — originally valued at $1.7 billion before a reevaluation dropped the price.

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Two weeks ago at its Ignite event, Microsoft made something of a snoozy announcement: the company was rebranding its generative AI-based Bing Chat and calling it Copilot instead.

Ho-hum. Another day, another change in the company’s branding strategy. Par for the course, right?.

But the announcement was more consequential than you might think. It signaled Microsoft has thrown in the towel on the internet search war with Google and is turning its full attention to AI.

Copilots everywhere

To understand why, let’s take a look at Microsoft’s innocuous-sounding announcement. The company is renaming Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise, both of which will now be called Copilot. From a branding perspective, it makes perfect sense because it unifies all of the company’s genAI efforts under one brand. Microsoft already has several AI tools under the Copilot moniker, including Copilot in Windows, Copilot for Microsoft 365 (currently only available for enterprise customers), and Microsoft Security Copilot, with others to be released.

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Google’s dominance in the search arena has given rise to two major antitrust lawsuits from the U.S. government, which allege that the company has manipulated the market to maintain that dominance, to the exclusion of its competitors and the detriment of the public at large.

The first lawsuit, targeting Google's search business, kicked off in mid-September, with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) calling its first witnesses, and a second trial against the tech giant, focusing on advertising, is scheduled for next year.

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Once upon a time, everybody seemed to believe autonomous vehicles (AVs) would soon be wheeling themselves merrily on every road.

That didn’t happen.

Though we still expect these things to arrive on streets eventually, how they do so won’t be straightforward, and it’s questionable whether private ownership is even a desirable aim. Shared AVs seems like a more promising approach.

Even before we get to that, here are six problems the Apple Car – and anyone else developing such vehicles – must solve.

Saving the world one car at a time

The car you drive is a giant chunk of steel, iron, plastic, aluminium, glass, rubber, precious metals and more. Not all of these materials are as readily available as they once were and the energy used in manufacturing a vehicle is an estimated 2.7MWh/car, according to the European Automobile Manufacturer’s Association (ACEA).

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Alibaba is shutting down its quantum computing research laboratory as part of the company’s ongoing restructuring efforts.

The closure of the lab will result in about 30 job losses but the equipment will be donated to Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, where the company is based, a company spokesperson reportedly told Bloomberg.

According to reports from Chinese media and cited by Bloomberg, Alibaba has had an active presence in the quantum computing market  since 2015, with its now shuttered Quantum Lab Academy offering an 11-qubit quantum cloud platform to help educate both employees and students about the technology. It’s believed that the company has invested around $15 billion in emerging technologies such as quantum computing.

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Creating a great place for IT professionals to work takes more than offering top salaries and benefits. It means making a commitment to employees’ well-being and career growth, providing challenging work, supporting a diverse workforce, and fostering a positive and inclusive culture.

And lately it means making IT an integral part of the business itself. The best organizations recognize the importance of technology in achieving their goals, partnering with IT pros to innovate and drive the business forward.

For the 30^th year, Computerworld publisher Foundry surveyed large, midsize, and small organizations to find the top IT employers. Read our special report to see which companies made our list and what makes them such desirable places to work. To read the Best Places to Work in IT 2024 report in PDF format, download it below.

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In a runup to its annual re:Invent conference, AWS on Sunday unveiled Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client virtual desktops in a bid to offer cheaper PC alternatives to price-sensitive enterprise customers.

The cloud-based Thin Client starts at $195 a piece, will use the same hardware as the Fire TV Cube, and is targeted at enterprises, including call centers and payment processing centers, which deploy large numbers of PCs, the company wrote in a blog post.

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There’s a standing joke in the executive team at BCU that every strategy or initiative built to service the Credit Union’s 350,000-plus members runs through IT.

Whether it’s maintaining uptime, rolling out digital banking and payment services, or delivering seamless customer experiences, the 77-person-and-growing IT organization is at the epicenter of BCU’s business strategy and innovation, making it a dynamic and rewarding place to pursue an IT career.

And the results are no joke: The team oversaw 150 successful projects in the past year, the two most notable being a conversion of a legacy monolithic middleware environment into a modern microservices architecture, plus the transition to a full agile value stream methodology for project delivery. Both initiatives enable the IT organization to be more responsive to fast-changing business strategy and the needs of its members and employees.

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“IT that just works” is the mantra of the IT organization at Kinaxis, a Canada-based maker of supply chain planning software. The slogan is written on T-shirts; promoted during meetings; dropped into casual conversation; and, perhaps most importantly, serves as the core design principle guiding all digital experiences.

Whether a project involves equipment setup, employee onboarding, or finessing the user experience for its core software, Kinaxis’ IT organization goes the extra mile to simplify interactions and elevate user engagement. Sometimes the quest for quality and innovation takes longer, but it’s what defines the Kinaxis IT culture.

“We empower people and give them permission to go for something really good,” says Yvonne Holland, CIO at Kinaxis, which ranks fifth among midsize companies in Computerworld’s “Best Places to Work in IT 2024” survey. “When they’re designing solutions, they aren’t afraid to push for excellence. And they’re working on projects that are more interesting because of the design principles they’re applying.”

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UKG was built on the melding of two distinct camps — Ultimate Software and Kronos Software — which merged in early 2020 to create a workforce management and HR software powerhouse. The merged company’s commitment to diversity, for both workforce representation and promoting different perspectives and ideas, is a hallmark of UKG’s IT organization, reflected in everything from its hiring choices and its hybrid work model to fostering collaboration and cross-pollination across teams.

“We sell diversity wrong in the United States — it’s really about bringing in different people with different points of view,” says Scott Howitt, chief digital officer at UKG, ranked No. 3 among large companies in Computerworld’s “Best Places to Work in IT 2024” survey. “Because of cultural experience, gender experience, or age experience, people see problems in different ways. Diversity gives us the opportunity to come out with better outcomes, because we consider all the angles.”

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Buried inside just about every smartphone is a capability that few people take advantage of but that I have come to rely on: the ability to turn my phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot. And since I got a 5G-capable phone — and 5G mobile networks have become reliably available in many places my day takes me — I can supercharge my hotspot with enough data and speed for my entire crew.

You don’t need to run out and buy a 5G phone to turn on a hotspot or even to access 5G networks. You only need a 5G phone to access the fast speeds of 5G. If you come to depend on hotspotting the way I have, though, those blazing 5G speeds are a great reason to upgrade as soon as a 5G network is available to you.

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Twenty-two law enforcement and intelligence agencies from 18 different countries signed an international agreement on AI safety over the weekend, which is designed to make new versions of the technology “secure by design.”

This agreement comes months after the European Union signed its EU AI Act in June, banning certain AI technologies including biometric surveillance and predictive policing, and classifying AI systems that could significantly impact health, safety, rights, or elections as high risk.

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My first computer was an IBM 360 mainframe. To use it, I relied on a 3270 terminal. From there, I quickly moved on to a PDP-11 minicomputer running Unix — where my interface was a VT-102 terminal.

In those days, all the computing power was remote. Then, CP/M, Apple, and IBM PCs changed everything. And the desktop became where power lived. That was then; this is now. Today, we're moving back to remote computing and from the PC to cloud-based Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings such as Windows 365.

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Digital Europe, an advocacy group that represents digital industries across the continent, has released a joint statement ahead of the EU’s AI Act’s final weeks of negotiations, warning that over-regulation could stymie innovation and cause startups to leave the region.

The group’s core argument is that the AI Act now goes beyond its original intended scope, and should instead remain focused on high-risk use cases, rather than being directed at specific technologies. Digital Europe also warned that the financial burden the Act could place on companies wanting to bring AI-enabled products to market could make operating out of the EU unstainable for smaller organizations.

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The Indian government on Friday launched the Global Digital Public Infrastructure Repository (GDPIR) to bring together resources and learnings from G20 members to design and build Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). 

“Its primary aim is to bridge the knowledge gap in the choices and methodologies required for the design, construction, deployment, and governance of DPIs. The GDPIR showcases the information in a standardized format from countries and organizations that have developed DPIs at scale, incorporating elements such as maturity scales, source codes (where available), and governance frameworks,” said a press note released by the government.

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So, you're ready to leave your iPhone for greener pastures — specifically, the bright green hue of Google's Android ecosystem.

It's a major move, to be sure, but it doesn't have to be daunting. Beneath the surface-level differences, Android and iOS actually have a lot in common — and with the right steps, you can switch from an iPhone to an Android device without losing anything significant (including your sanity).

(In case you're looking to move the other way, check out our Android to iPhone switching guide.)

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Many business professionals require highly secure messaging solutions, particularly when they travel. Apple’s iMessage will soon offer a new secure identity verification system enterprise professionals might find useful. It’s called Contact Key Verification.

What is Contact Key Verification?

Apple actually announced the system in 2022. It is now expected to go live across the Apple ecosystem with the release of iOS 17.2 and updates for Macs and iPads.

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Microsoft Forms is a web app that allows users to create various types of forms that gather information from people online and store that data in the cloud for review.

Why is this useful? Surveys, questionnaires, and other interactive forms are a vital part of doing business. They provide a great way to interact with employees, teammates, customers, and potential business partners. You can use online forms to collect customer feedback or business requirements, conduct market research, gauge employee satisfaction, register attendees for an upcoming event, test learners’ knowledge after a training course, and more.

Forms is included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions for individuals and businesses, and a limited version is available for free to anyone with a Microsoft account. In this cheat sheet, we will cover how to use this program to create questionnaires, add specific types of questions, and view and analyze the responses.

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When it comes to thinking about Apple Silicon, any industry insider will tell you that there is a long lead time attached to silicon development — meaning development of the chips inside the most modern devices today probably began several years ago.

Zoom out and think back 13 years to the first real Apple Silicon chip, the A4 processor Apple put inside the iPhone 4 in 2010. That early processor reflected major strategic decisions, including the 2008 purchase of PA Semi and its ongoing work with ARM, which still creates the reference designs Apple uses at the core of its own chips.

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