Apple is rebuilding Apple Music as a full native app with the first beta of macOS Monterey 12.2. 9to5Mac reports: Back in 2019, when Apple introduced macOS Catalina, the well-known iTunes was replaced by the Music app to better reflect the company's strategy on iOS and tvOS. However, although under a new name, the Music app on macOS retained the iTunes backend, which was basically a bunch of web content loaded into an app. While this works for most users, having web content within apps makes the experience less fluid. Luckily Apple is finally changing this with macOS Monterey 12.2 beta, which includes some big changes to the Music app backend.

As first noted by Luming Yin on Twitter, Apple Music in macOS 12.2 beta now uses AppKit -- which is macOS' native interface framework. 9to5Mac was able to confirm based on macOS code that the Music app is now using JET, which is a technology created by Apple to turn web content into native apps. Some parts of the Music app were already native, such as the music library. But now Mac users will notice that searching for new songs in Apple Music is much faster as the results pages are displayed with a native interface instead of as a webpage. Scrolling between elements has also become smoother with the beta app, and trackpad gestures are now more responsive.

The U.K.'s antitrust watchdog has given the clearest signal yet that interventions under an upcoming reform of the country's competition rules will target tech giants Apple and Google -- including their duopolistic command of the mobile market, via iOS and Android; their respective app stores; and the browsers and services bundled with mobile devices running their OSes. From a report: So it could mean good news for third-party developers trying to get oxygen for alternatives to dominant Apple and Google apps and services down the line. Publishing the first part of a wide-ranging mobile ecosystem market study -- which was announced this summer -- the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said today that it has "provisionally" found Apple and Google have been able to leverage their market power to create "largely self-contained ecosystems"; and that the degree of lock-in they wield is damaging competition by making it "extremely difficult for any other firm to enter and compete meaningfully with a new system." "The CMA is concerned that this is leading to less competition and meaningful choice for customers," the watchdog writes in a press release. "People also appear to be missing out on the full benefit of innovative new products and services -- such as so-called 'web apps' and new ways to play games through cloud services on iOS devices."

Private emails show Microsoft wheeling and dealing to get into the App Store. From a report: Remember when Apple pretended like it would let cloud gaming services like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia into the App Store, while effectively tearing their business models to shreds? Know how Microsoft replied that forcing gamers to download hundreds of individual apps to play a catalog of cloud games would be a bad experience? In reality, Microsoft was willing to play along with many of Apple's demands -- and it even offered to bring triple-A, Xbox-exclusive games to iPhone to help sweeten the deal. That's according to a new set of private emails that The Verge unearthed in the aftermath of the Epic v. Apple trial.

These games would have run on Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) platform, streaming from remote server farms filled with Xbox One and Xbox Series X processors instead of relying on the local processing power of your phone. If the deal had been made, you could have theoretically bought a copy of a game like Halo Infinite in Apple's App Store itself and launched it like any other app -- instead of having to pay $14.99 a month for an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription with a set catalog of games and then needing to use Microsoft's web-based App Store workaround. But primarily, Microsoft was negotiating to bring its Netflix-esque catalog of xCloud games to the App Store, at a time when Apple had gotten very touchy about cloud gaming in general.

The emails, between Microsoft Xbox head of business development Lori Wright and several key members of Apple's App Store teams, show that Microsoft did start with a wide array of concerns about stuffing an entire service worth of Xbox games into individual App Store apps as of February 2020. Wright mentioned the "Complexity & management of creating hundreds to thousands of apps," how they'd have to update every one of those apps to fix any bugs, and how all those app icons could lead to cluttered iOS homescreens, among other worries.

For their fifteenth International Day Against DRM this Friday, the Free Software Foundation's "Defective by Design" campaign is "calling on you to help us send a message to purveyors of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)".

And this year they're targeting Disney+ The ongoing pandemic has only tightened the stranglehold streaming services have as some of the most dominant forms of entertainment media, and Disney+ is among the worst of them. After years of aggressive lobbying to extend the length of copyright, based on their perceived need to keep a certain rat from entering the public domain, they've now set their sights on "protecting" their various franchises in a different way: by shackling them with digital restrictions. If Disney's stated mission is to keep "inspiring hope and sparking the curiosity of all ages", using DRM to limit that curiosity remains the wrong move.

This year, we'll be using one of Disney's own means of spreading their "service" and the DRM bundled with it: their mobile app. If you're an existing user of the Google Play (Android) or Apple App Stores, you can support the International Day Against DRM by voicing your objection to Disney's subjugation of their users. Streaming services like Netflix and Peacock have the same issues, but by targeting a newer one with such massive investment and capital behind it, we can make sure that we're heard. Disney+ is new: that gives it time to change.

Disney+ is placed near the top of the most frequently downloaded apps on both the Google Play and Apple App Stores. We invite you to write a well-thought objection to Disney's use of DRM, with a fitting review. It is the perfect way to let the corporation, and other users intending to use its services know Disney's grievous mistake in using DRM to restrict customers who already want to view their many films and television shows. It will give you a chance to give them the exact rating that any service that treats its users so poorly: a single star.

DRM isn't the only problem with the Disney+ app. It's also nonfree software. If you're not already an Android or iOS user, we don't recommend starting an account just to participate in this action. You can also choose to send an email to Disney executives following our template.
They're urging supporters to also share the actions they've taken on social media using the tag #DayAgainstDRM. (And there's also an IRC channel "to discuss and share strategies for anti-DRM activism," with more anti-DRM actions still to come.

"While some aspects of the struggle have changed, the core principles remain the same: users should not be forced to surrender their digital autonomy in exchange for media."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, Canadian police announced that car thieves have been using AirTags to track vehicles they want to steal. York Regional Police (which serves an area north of Toronto) revealed that it has investigated five incidents in the past three months in which thieves have hidden AirTags on vehicles parked in public. Later, the thieves tracked down their targets to steal the cars at their leisure.

Other Bluetooth-based trackers have been available for some time now, but the ubiquity of Apple devices (which communicate with AirTags via Apple's Find My app) means it's generally faster and more accurate to track something remotely via an AirTag than a rival device like a Tile. And while they undoubtedly make it easier for users to recover lost stuff, the tags are being exploited by criminals. Apple did build some anti-stalking functions into AirTags -- if your Apple device detects that you're being followed by an unfamiliar device, it will alert you, as long as you're running iOS 14.5 or newer.

Mozilla announced last week via a support article that its Firefox Lockwise password manager app will reach end-of-life on December 13th. The final release versions are 1.8.1 (iOS) and 4.0.3 (Android) and will no longer be available to download or reinstall after that date. The Verge reports: What started in 2018 as a small experimental mobile app called Lockbox ended up bringing a way to access saved passwords and perform autofills on iOS, Android, and desktop devices to a small but enthusiastic following of Firefox fans. The app was also later adapted as a Firefox extension. It seemed like it was apt to stick around for the long run.

The support article recommends that users continue accessing passwords using the native Firefox browsers on desktop and mobile. In an added note on the support site, Mozilla suggests that later in December, the Firefox iOS app will gain the ability to manage Firefox passwords systemwide. The note alludes to Mozilla adopting the features of Lockwise and eventually integrating them into the Firefox browser apps natively on all platforms.

Long-time Slashdot reader tlhIngan writes: We know Spotify has many complaints about Apple, specifically how Apple Music competes with Spotify. This has resulted in many complaints about unfair competition from Spotify, enough to bring about the scrutiny of European regulators. However, it appears Spotify might be the architect of their own complaints, from not supporting AirPlay 2 (which they rapidly backtracked on due to customer complaints), to now, not supporting the HomePod natively.

Apple introduced third-party support for the HomePod, which allows the speaker to natively play audio from streaming services without requiring an iOS device. Most notably, when the list of providers supporting the feature was announced by Apple, Spotify was conspicuously absent. Now Apple users are demanding Spotify add support for HomePod or they are switching to Apple Music.

An anonymous reader writes: Given the widespread understanding that sophisticated hackers are regularly using zero-day vulnerabilities to break into high-value systems, why is it that when I search for "zero day" on Australia's most popular job search engine only one "real" job comes up? Is the security of the Internet totally dependent on dedicated hobbyists, part-time showboats, and people willing to take meagre bug bounties (on average paying $3,650 for a critical vulnerability) instead of selling their findings (sometimes for millions of dollars) to dubious buyers?
Are they all in-house security people hunting for zero-days as part of their regular responsibilities? Share your own thoughts in the comments.

Where are all the jobs preventing zero-day exploits?

Long-time tlhIngan writes: Tim Sweeney is at it again. The CEO of Epic Games blasts Apple and Google and calls for a universal app store that works across all platforms. Naturally, he's proposing that Epic Games manage the store across iOS, Android, Xbox, PC, Nintendo and Sony. Bloomberg (paywalled) has more details. "What the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms," said Sweeney in an interview at the Global Conference for Mobile Application Ecosystem Fairness in Seoul, South Korea. "Right now software ownership is fragmented between the iOS App Store, the Android Google Play marketplace, different stores on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, and then Microsoft Store and the Mac App Store." Sweeney added that Epic Games is working with developers and service providers to create a system to allow users "to buy software in one place, knowing that they'd have it on all devices and all platforms."

"There's a store market, there's a payments market, and there are many other related markets. And it's critical that antitrust enforcement not allow a monopolist in one market to use their control of that market to impose control over unrelated markets." He went on to accuse Apple of complying "with oppressive foreign laws" while "ignoring laws passed by Korea's democracy." "Apple must be stopped," he says.

If Apple can't improve the reliability of its software, the next big thing won't matter, argues Dan Moren in an opinion piece for Macworld. From the report: Uneven distribution: As sci-fi writer William Gibson famously said, "the future is already here -- it's just not evenly distributed." While Gibson's comment resonates mostly on a socio-economic level that is borne out by Apple's not inexpensive technology, it's also embodied geographically by the company's work: if you're interested, you can see which Apple features are available in which regions. Many of these, of course, are due to restrictions and laws in specific regions or places where, say, Apple has not prioritized language localization. But some of them are cases where features have been rolled out only slowly to certain places. [...] It's surely less exciting for Apple to think about rolling out these (in some cases years old) features, especially those which might require a large degree of legwork, to various places than it is for the company to demonstrate its latest shiny feature, but it also means that sometimes these features don't make it to many, if not most of the users of its devices. Uneven distribution, indeed.

To error is machine: It's happened to pretty much any Apple device user: You go to use a feature and it just doesn't work. Sometimes there's no explanation as to why; other times, there's just a cryptic error message that provides no help at all. [...]

Shooting trouble: Sometimes what we're dealing with in the aforementioned situations are what we call "edge cases." Apple engineers surely do their best to test their features with a variety of hardware, in different places, with different settings. [...] Nobody expects Apple to catch everything, but the question remains: when these problems do arise, what do we do about them? One thing Apple could improve is the ease for users to report issues they encounter. Too often, I see missives posted on Apple discussion boards that encourage people to get in touch with Apple support... which often means a lengthy reiteration of the old troubleshooting canards. While these can sometimes solve problems, if not actually explain them, it's not a process that most consumers are likely to go through. And when those steps don't resolve the issues, users are often left with a virtual shrug.

Likewise, while Apple does provide a place to send feedback about products, it's explicitly not a way to report problems. Making it easier for users to report bugs and unexpected behavior would go a long way to helping owners of Apple products feel like they're not simply shouting their frustrations into a void (aka Twitter). If Apple can't improve the reliability of its software [...] it at least owes it to its users to create more robust resources for helping them help themselves. Because there's nothing more frustrating than not understanding why a miraculous device that can contact people around the world instantaneously, run incredibly powerful games, and crunch data faster than a supercomputer of yesteryear sometimes can't do something as simple as export a video of a vacation. While Moren focuses primarily on unfinished features to help make his case, "there is also a huge problem with things being touched for no reason and making them worse," says HN reader makecheck. "When handed what must be a mountain of bugs and unfinished items, why the hell did they prioritize things like breaking notifications and Safari tabs, for instance? They're in a position where engineering resources desperately need to be closing gaps, not creating huge new ones."

An example of this would be the current UX of notifications. "A notification comes up, I hover and wait for the cross to appear and click it," writes noneeeed. "But then some time later I unlock my machine or something happens and apparently all my notifications are still there for some reason and I have to clear them again, only this time they are in groups and I have to clear multiple groups."

"Don't get me started on the new iOS podcast app," adds another reader.

iOS 15.2 has been released today, bringing a new feature called Communication Safety in Messages that is able to detect and automatically blur nude images that are sent or received by children. It's one of several Child Safety features Apple announced over the summer. As MacRumors notes, it's "not the same as the controversial anti-CSAM feature that Apple plans to implement in the future after revisions." From the report: Communication Safety is a Family Sharing feature that can be enabled by parents, and it is opt-in rather than activated by default. When turned on, the Messages app is able to detect nudity in images that are sent or received by children. If a child receives or attempts to send a photo with nudity, the image will be blurred and the child will be warned about the content, told it's okay not to view the photo, and offered resources to contact someone they trust for help. When Communication Safety was first announced, Apple said that parents of children under the age of 13 had the option to receive a notification if the child viewed a nude image in Messages, but after receiving feedback, Apple has removed this feature. Apple now says that no notifications are sent to parents.

Apple removed the notification option because it was suggested that parental notification could pose a risk for a child in a situation where there is parental violence or abuse. For all children, including those under the age of 13, Apple will instead offer guidance on getting help from a trusted adult in a situation where nude photos are involved. Checking for nudity in photos is done on-device, with Messages analyzing image attachments. The feature does not impact the end-to-end encryption of messages, and no indication of the detection of nudity leaves the device. Apple has no access to the Messages.

Peloton, the makers of an internet-connected exercise bike, saw their stock price drop 35% overnight on Thursday, reports CNBC. "At least four Wall Street investment firms downgraded the stock following Peloton's dismal fiscal first-quarter financial report... Peloton's stock has fallen 63% year to date."

The company had cut its annual revenue forecast — by $1 billion — and lowered its projections for both profit margins and paying subscribers. Bloomberg reports: At best, Peloton currently expects to have 3.45 million connected fitness subscriptions by the end of the fiscal year. It had previously called for 3.63 million. And gross profit margin will be 32%, compared with an earlier forecast of 34%. All that will add up to a loss of as much as $475 million, excluding some items....

On a more upbeat note, the company hinted that it plans to launch new products in the coming weeks and months. Peloton has been working on a rowing machine and a heart-rate monitor that attaches to a wearer's arm, Bloomberg News has reported.
The article suggests Peloton's business was hurt by the end of lockdowns, supply-chain constraints, and the cost of freight. But they also point out another factor. "Like several other companies, Peloton also blamed Apple Inc.'s ad-related privacy changes, which have made it more difficult to target shoppers based on their interests." Apple's new Ad Tracking Transparency feature (or "ATT") now first asks users to deny or allow apps to track their activity for the targeted advertising which had apparently been boosting Peloton's business.

And tlhIngan (Slashdot reader #30,335) tipped us off to a larger trend, since Gizmodo reports that Peloton "isn't the only company that has pointed accusingly at Apple lately." When reporting its third quarter earnings at the end of October, Facebook (now called Meta) — which depends on targeted ads for almost 98% of its revenue — said that ATT had decreased the accuracy of its ad targeting. The feature also increased "the cost of driving outcomes" for advertisers, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explained, and made it harder to measure those outcomes. "Overall, if it wasn't for Apple's iOS 14 changes, we would have seen positive quarter-over-quarter revenue growth," Sandberg said.

On Sunday, the Financial Times reported that ATT had cost Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube an estimated $9.85 billion in lost revenue in the second half of this year. That's an 87% increase year over year.

A year after releasing the first preview build of its Chromium-based Edge browser for Linux, Microsoft is announcing its general availability. From a report: The new release supports a variety of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE. Microsoft announced Linux on Edge's availability milestone during the first day of its Ignite IT Pro conference. As of the release of Edge for Linux to the "stable" (mainstream user) channel, Edge is now available on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux. As it did when introducing the new Edge on macOS, Microsoft has been positioning Edge on Linux as more of an offering for IT pros and developers who want to test web sites than as a browser for "normal" users on those platforms. However, any user on any supported platform can use the new Edge.

Just a few days after releasing iOS 15.1 and iPadOS 15.1, Apple has seeded the first betas of iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2 to developers for testing purposes, with the update adding promised iOS 15 features like App Privacy Report. MacRumors reports: App Privacy Report is one of the iOS 15 additions that Apple showed off at WWDC. It's a new privacy feature that's designed to allow users to see how often apps have accessed their sensitive info like location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts across the last seven days. It's also set up to show which apps have contacted other domains and how recently they've contacted them so you can keep an eye on what apps are doing behind the scenes.

Auto Call, the feature that lets call emergency services with a series of button presses, has been updated in iOS 15.2. You can now press the side button rapidly multiple times to initiate, or hold down the side button and the volume button together. There's now a longer eight-second countdown before a call is placed, which is up from the prior three-second countdown. Other features and/or changes include a new card-style appearance to Notification Summary and the Communication Safety feature. "Communication Safety is built into the Messages app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and it will warn children and their parents when sexually explicit photos are received or sent from a child's device, with Apple using on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments," reports MacRumors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is developing a smartwatch with a front-facing camera and rounded screen, according to an image of the device found inside one of the tech giant's iPhone apps. The photo shows a watch with a screen and casing that's slightly curved at the edges. The front-facing camera -- similar to what you'd see on a smartphone -- appears at the bottom of the display, and there's a control button for the watch on the right side. The image was found inside of the company's app for controlling its new smart glasses launched in partnership with Ray-Ban. The picture was located by app developer Steve Moser and shared with Bloomberg News.

The watch has a detachable wrist strap and what appears to be a button at the top of the watch case. Its large display mimics the style of Apple's watch -- rather than the more basic fitness trackers sold by Google's Fitbit and Garmin. The camera suggests the product will likely be used for videoconferencing, a feature that would make Meta's device stand out. Apple's smartwatch doesn't have a camera, nor do rival products from companies such as Samsung. Facebook has been planning to launch its first watch as early as 2022, but a final decision on timing hasn't been made yet and the debut could be later, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The company is working on three generations of the product aimed at different release time frames, the person said. The device in the image could ultimately represent a version that is never released, but it's the first evidence of the company's work on the project. Not only does the code inside the software of the watch indicate it'll work with iOS and Android devices, but it may also be used as an input device or accessory for the company's VR and AR headsets.

Apple's privacy rules are "negatively affecting" Facebook, and its business, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed during its most recent earnings call. MacRumors reports: As a quick refresher, starting with iOS 14.5 and all newer versions of iOS and iPadOS, Apple requires that apps ask for users' permission to track them across other apps and websites. Under the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, the latest change gives users a choice on whether they wish to be tracked for ads or other purposes. [...] Continuing on its anti-Apple's privacy rules campaign, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quick to blame Apple for his company's lower than expected growth in the third quarter of the year. Kicking off the earnings call, Zuckerberg said Apple is "negatively affecting" Facebook but that he believes the company will be able to "navigate" the challenges Apple is presenting thanks to its long-term investments.

"As expected, we did experience revenue headwinds this quarter, including from Apple's changes that are not only negatively affecting our business, but millions of small businesses in what is already a difficult time for them in the economy. Sheryl and Dave will talk about this more later, but the bottom line is we expect we'll be able to navigate these headwinds over time with investments that we're already making today." While Zuckerberg and the Facebook executive team hold Apple's changes accountable for this quarter's performance, it may also be an asset. Zuckerberg has in the past stated that ATT could ultimately help Facebook, and it's a sentiment he again repeated during the earning's call. Apple's changes, according to Zuckerberg, are making "e-commerce and customer acquisition less effective on the web." Still, Facebook could benefit from the lessened effectiveness as "solutions that allow businesses to set up shop right inside our apps will become increasingly attractive," Zuckerberg added.

Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, also criticized Apple and its privacy rules, going as far as to claim that the new rules are negatively impacting Facebook while benefiting Apple's own advertising business: "We've been open about the fact that there were headwinds coming -- and we've experienced that in Q3. The biggest is the impact of Apple's iOS14 changes, which have created headwinds for others in the industry as well, major challenges for small businesses, and advantaged Apple's own advertising business." Despite Facebook facing an avalanche of pressure amid leaked internal documents and scrutiny, Sandberg pointed the finger at Apple for Facebook's lackluster performance this quarter. "Overall, if it wasn't for Apple's iOS 14 changes, we would have seen positive quarter-over-quarter revenue growth," Sandberg said.

The latest version of macOS, Monterey, is now available to download, according to Apple. The software has been available in public beta for several months, but today's release means Apple thinks the software is ready for everyday use. From a report: As is tradition, Apple announced its latest version of macOS at WWDC in June. New features include the ability to set Macs as an AirPlay target to play content from iPhones and iPads, as well as Shortcuts, Apple's iOS automation software. There have also been improvements made to FaceTime, as well as a new Quick Note feature. For a full rundown of what's on the way, check out our preview from July, as well as Apple's own feature list.

Unfortunately, some of Monterey's biggest new additions, Universal Control and SharePlay, don't seem to be available at launch. Apple notes that both features will be available "later this fall." Universal Control allows files to be dragged and dropped between several different machines, as Apple's Craig Federighi demonstrated at WWDC. It also will let you control multiple Apple devices including Macs, MacBooks, and iPads, with the same mouse and keyboard. SharePlay will enable shared experiences of music, TV shows, movies, and more while connected over FaceTime. Once it's available, Apple says you can use the feature with Apple Music, Apple TV+ and unnamed "popular third-party services." It's better news when it comes to Safari's redesign, which by default now uses a more traditional interface rather than the controversial new tab design introduced at WWDC.

Scott Gilbertson, writing for The Register: The legacy of Internet Explorer 6 haunts web developer nightmares to this day. Microsoft's browser of yore made their lives miserable and it's only slightly hyperbolic to say it very nearly destroyed the entire internet. It really was that bad, kids. It made us walk to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways. You wouldn't understand. Or maybe you would. Today developers who want to use "cutting-edge" web APIs find themselves resorting to the same kind of browser-specific workarounds, but this time the browser dragging things down comes from Apple. Apple's Safari lags considerably behind its peers in supporting web features. Whether it's far enough behind to be considered "the new IE" is debatable and may say more about the shadow IE still casts across the web than it does about Safari. But Safari -- or more specifically the WebKit engine that powers it -- is well behind the competition. According to the Web Platform Tests dashboard, Chrome-based browsers support 94 per cent of the test suite, and Firefox pulls off 91 per cent, but Safari only manages 71 per cent.

On the desktop this doesn't matter all that much because users can always switch to Google Chrome (or even better, Vivaldi). On iOS devices, however, that's not possible. According to Apple's App Store rules: "apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript." Every iPhone user is a Safari/WebKit user whether they use Safari or Chrome. Apple has a browser monopoly on iOS, which is something Microsoft was never able to achieve with IE. In Windows you could at least install Firefox. If you do that on iOS it might say Firefox, but you're still using WebKit. The reality is if you have an iOS device, you use Safari and are bound by its limitations. Another thing web developers find distressing is Apple's slow development cycle. Apple updates Safari roughly every six months at best. Blink-based browsers update every six weeks (soon every four), Firefox releases every four weeks, and Brave releases every three. This means that not only is Apple slow to add new features, but its development cycle means that even simple bug fixes have to wait a long time before they actually land on users' devices. Safari workarounds are not quick fixes. If your website is affected by a Safari bug, you can expect to wait up to a year before the problem is solved. One theme that emerges when you dig into the Web Platform Tests data on Safari's shortcomings is that even where WebKit has implemented a feature, it's often not complete.

Nvidia's new RTX 3080 plan for GeForce Now is probably the biggest upgrade for its cloud-streaming service since it turned on RTX ray tracing for subscribers over two years ago. From a report: The new plan is targeted at more traditional gamers for whom 60fps simply doesn't cut it, and it'll cost $100 for every six months you're signed up. In addition to the RTX ray tracing of the Priority plan, it offers 8-hour sessions, up to 1440p and 120fps gaming on PC and Mac (1600p on MacBooks), 4K HDR 60fps with 7.1 surround audio on Nvidia Shield (using DLSS) and up to 120fps on select Android devices. On iOS, GeForce Now has to use Safari rather than a dedicated app, which likely either can't handle or is too locked down to hit the higher frame rates.) According to the company, MacBooks are the second most popular device it sees used by the service, which isn't surprising given how poor the Mac's gaming is compared to PCs. The new MacBook Pro models, with their 120Hz displays, will be able to take advantage of the higher resolution and frame rates.

As Paul Thurrott reports, Brave is removing Google Search as its default search engine. From the report: Going forward, the Brave web browser will default to Brave Search. "Brave Search has grown significantly since its release last June, with nearly 80 million queries per month," Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich says. "Our users are pleased with the comprehensive privacy solution that Brave Search provides against Big Tech by being integrated into our browser. As we know from experience in many browsers, the default setting is crucial for adoption, and Brave Search has reached the quality and critical mass needed to become our default search option, and to offer our users a seamless privacy-by-default online experience."

Brave Search is built on top of an independent index, and doesn't track users, their searches, or their clicks, the firm says. And starting with Brave 1.3 on desktop and Android, and Brave 1.32 on iOS, it will be the default search engine in the browser, instead of Google, in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It is also replacing Qwant in France and DuckDuckGo in Germany, and Brave says that more locales will be added in the next several months. Existing users can keep their chosen search engine default, of course, and new users who prefer other search engines can configure as needed. Brave Search doesn't display ads today, but the free version of the service will soon be ad-supported. An ad-free Premium version is coming "in the near future," Brave says. Along with this search engine news, Brave announced the Web Discovery Project (WDP), "which it describes as a privacy-preserving system for users to anonymously contribute data to improve Brave Search results," writes Thurrott. "The WDP is an opt-in feature that protects user privacy and anonymity by ensuring that contributed data is not linked to individuals, their devices, or any set of users." It has a GitHub repo available to help you learn more about this system.