All posts tagged: software

The Top New Features in Apple’s iOS 27 and iPadOS 27

The Top New Features in Apple’s iOS 27 and iPadOS 27

Published by skeptic

While the news coming out of WWDC 2026 is not as dramatic as last year’s iOS 26 update, where the new Liquid Glass redesign caused a big stir, Apple’s presentation still made waves. During the WWDC keynote, Apple walked through the new changes coming to the next version of its mobile operating systems, iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. These updates will roll out to iPhones and iPads later this year, likely in September. iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 focus largely on stability improvements that enrich the everyday usability of the operating systems. There are several smaller quality-of-life improvements, but the big highlight is the Siri AI upgrades. Here’s everything you need to know. Is Your iPhone or iPad Compatible? AccordionItemContainerButton Apple sometimes cuts a few older devices from support list with every new iOS or iPadOS version, supposedly due to hardware age. (Apple typically supports iPhones and iPads for six to seven years.) But there’s good news this year. iPhones from 2019 and newer—the iPhone 11 and up, including the iPhone SE (2nd Gen)—will support …

Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2026

Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2026

Published by skeptic

Apple held its annual Worldwide Developer Conference today. WWDC is the event in which the company uses its keynote address to announce lots of changes coming to its software platforms on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. Apple has been chasing the artificial intelligence boom for the past few years, though many of its promised AI features across its platforms have been delayed or have not quite panned out into a full-fledged suite. To rectify that, Apple entered into a partnership with Google to use its Gemini AI as a backbone to power Apple Intelligence. After years of wondering how that partnership might manifest, Apple revealed that vision today. Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi said that Apple’s keynote presentation would focus on three main things: platform improvements, updates in trust and safety, and a “big leap forward” in Apple Intelligence and Siri. The big focus was on changes to Apple’s Siri virtual assistant that make it feel more like a modern AI chatbot. The rest of the AI features have been implemented broadly across Apple’s …

Apple’s iPhone Camera App Is Getting an AI Upgrade in iOS 27

Apple’s iPhone Camera App Is Getting an AI Upgrade in iOS 27

Published by skeptic

Your iPhone camera app will look a little different this fall. On Monday at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California, Apple showed off new features in its next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 27, and changes are afoot for the camera app. Notably, instead of just shifting between Photo and Video tabs, there’s now a new option: Siri AI. Before, to trigger Siri’s Visual Intelligence feature, you had to press the Camera Control button. When you pressed it, Siri could see what you’re pointing the iPhone camera at and deliver contextual assistance—like Google Lens—such as adding dates from a concert poster to your calendar or helping identify a plant. Now that the feature is visibly baked into the camera app, Apple hopes it will be easier to find and use. This kind of visual AI assistance is a key feature of smart glasses and AI pendants with cameras, allowing users to access AI assistance with a single tap without having to explain or type anything, since the cameras do the work. …

Agentic AI solved coding — and exposed every other problem in software engineering

Agentic AI solved coding — and exposed every other problem in software engineering

Published by skeptic

Agentic AI is now a core part of the engineering process, driving massive execution leverage and helping us generate more code than ever before. Yet, a difficult question I’ve increasingly heard from business leaders is: if we’re shipping code faster than ever, why aren’t our products improving at the same rate? The reason is that writing code was never the rate limiter. Defining the right requirements, integrating with complex systems, and maintaining software under real-world conditions has always been the hard part. And when agents flood an organization with lots of new code, the hard part only gets harder. Agents compress execution time. They do not compress ambiguity, accountability, or operational complexity.  As AI-generated code scales, human review is becoming a massive new bottleneck, and engineers are losing the context needed to catch agent mistakes. The companies that understand this will move forward deliberately and even create new roles because of AI. The ones that don’t will default to a simpler, far more destructive conclusion: Reduce headcount and increase AI spend. The playbook Irreversible structural …

How to Share a Link to a Particular Phrase

How to Share a Link to a Particular Phrase

Published by skeptic

This is very handy when you want to share an excerpt of writing in context, a concept that is totally lost if you just take a screenshot with a highlight. How This Works This feature is made possible by a web standard called Text fragments. It’s been built into browsers for years now; it’s just not the kind of feature that made a lot of headlines at the time. The feature basically creates a URL that includes enough information for your browser to find the highlighted text portion. If you copy a URL made this way and paste it into a document so you can study the link’s structure, you can see how this works. In the simplest cases, the URL will include the entire highlighted portion. That works fine for short fragments, but for long passages, the URL gets ungainly pretty fast. When you’re linking to longer text fragments, the URL includes a reference to the beginning and end of the excerpt. Either way, the URL tells your browser not only which page to …

Has Microsoft Lost Its Mojo (Again)?

Has Microsoft Lost Its Mojo (Again)?

Published by skeptic

You went down the coding agent rabbit hole last November along with everyone else? It was an intense time for the nerds. I spent a lot of time talking to coding agents during that holiday. And it’s been an absolute rocket ship of a ride since then. Claude Code seems to have gotten the thunder there, beating Codex, and frankly, Copilot. A few years ago Microsoft’s Copilot coding tool seemed to stand at the head of the pack. Now it’s Claude Code. I would respectfully disagree. Coding models are part of it, but Microsoft is a great place for developers. Windows is an open platform on open hardware where people can build anything. Microsoft wants Scout to be adopted by productivity workers and even consumers. AI agents make mistakes and have hallucinations. How many errors will people tolerate? That’s a good question. I don’t know. Trust but verify. Give it a small task, and then try it out, and see if it works. And then, “Oh it hasn’t done anything wrong. I’ll give it read-only …

Meet Microsoft Scout, Your AI Coworker That Never Logs Off

Meet Microsoft Scout, Your AI Coworker That Never Logs Off

Published by skeptic

Soon, your coworkers in Microsoft Teams might not all be human. Scout, an always-on AI agent announced at Microsoft’s Build developer conference on Tuesday, can go through your work messages, calendar, and email inbox to automate tasks, reschedule meeting conflicts, and draft professional-sounding responses. Microsoft more or less built an enterprise agent on top of OpenClaw, the AI tool that riveted San Francisco’s early adopters at the start of 2026. Scout is designed specifically to be an assistant for office folks, who can send commands directly in Teams as if the agent was a carbon-based coworker. Scout is part of Microsoft’s larger, agent-first transformation, automating how knowledge workers use software and inserting AI assistants into daily office interactions. “Your company essentially hires your assistant,” says Omar Shahine, the newly appointed corporate vice president of Microsoft Scout. “The whole point of having a personal assistant is that they’re working when you’re not working.” So, while you’re munching on some Doritos and gossiping next to the office vending machine, Scout is busy blocking off calendar time for …

How to Edit, Merge, and Split PDFs With Free Online Tools

How to Edit, Merge, and Split PDFs With Free Online Tools

Published by skeptic

More than 30 years after Adobe came up with it, the PDF file—portable document format—remains essential for archiving, sharing, and publishing. It’s a file type that can be opened by just about anyone on virtually any mobile or desktop device, while preserving the formatting, colors, and layout of the original document. Given the ubiquity and popularity of the PDF, it’s no surprise that commercial PDF software tools are in high demand. But you don’t necessarily have to pay to process these documents, especially for basic editing operations. A host of PDF tools are available on the web that will let you quickly and easily manipulate your documents for free (with more advanced features and usage limits available for a price). There’s nothing to download, nothing to install, and nothing to pay, and they’re perfect for small-scale edits. We’ve picked three of the best online PDF app suites below, together with three common tasks you can do with them. While these sites are all well established and reputable, use some common sense with the documents you …

Do You Actually Need to Pay for Transcription Software?

Do You Actually Need to Pay for Transcription Software?

Published by skeptic

This is, without a doubt, more work than setting up Wispr Flow. When you’re done, though, you have a working application with no monthly subscription. I recommend trying it out. A Few Other Free Alternatives Like I said before: AI transcription and LLMs are both widely available technologies. It should be no surprise, then, that there are many Wispr Flow alternatives out there right now. For Mac users, the completely free and open source MacParakeet is a great option. It’s open source and completely free to download and use without an account. There’s also no upselling in the application. Transcribing is handled using local models, either Parakeet or Whisper, and a variety of LLMs—both local and online—are supported for the formatting step. That’s the closest completely free app to Wispr Flow I’ve found. VoiceInk, another Mac-only option, is open source and free to use if you download the code from GitHub and compile it yourself. The app otherwise costs $25, one time, after which you can use all features without any ongoing payments. Note that …

Michael Dell courted Trump early. His company has reaped rewards

Michael Dell courted Trump early. His company has reaped rewards

Published by Sam Flores

CEO of Dell Technologies Michael Dell (L) speaks during a roundtable discussion with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Dec. 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong | Getty Images Michael Dell bought into President Donald Trump’s second term early. Now his hardware company Dell Technologies is closing out its best month on Wall Street since its return to the public market in 2018. Since Trump returned to the White House last year, Michael Dell attended the president’s Invest America Roundtable event in June 2025. In December, Trump introduced the computer executive and his wife, Susan Dell, as they announced a $6.25 billion gift for 25 million U.S. children’s Trump Accounts. This month, Trump advised Americans to “go out and buy a Dell.” On Wednesday, the company was awarded a $9.7 billion contract by the Pentagon to provide a suite of software to the U.S. military. The award came after what the Pentagon said was a competitive process, though the deal is being questioned by some experts in …