Martin Brinkmann

The European Commission announced today that it has opened non-compliance investigations against Apple, Alphabet, and Meta. The three companies make up one half of six gatekeeper companies under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

So-called gatekeepers have a strong position in a market, which may give them an unfair advantage over competing platforms and services. Platforms such as Windows, Google Android, and iOS are gatekeepers, but so are YouTube, Google Search, Google Ads, Chrome, or Safari. The full list of gatekeepers is available here.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-seven in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft announced two new Surface devices for business yesterday. The new Surface Pro 10 for Business and the Surface Laptop 6 for Business are up to two times faster than their predecessors according to Microsoft. They are optimized for AI and come with the Copilot key.

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Google Chrome users may once again enforce dark mode support for web content in the web browser. The feature has been in the making for a long time. Sofia talked about it more than five years ago here on BetaNews.

While Google did add support for a dark Chrome interface in the past, it never rolled out the option to display darker versions of webpages.

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Microsoft announced the migration of the Microsoft Edge built-in PDF reader to Adobe PDF technology last year. The change would allow Edge users to view PDF documents using Adobe's engine.

Microsoft and Adobe promised back then that this would improve things by providing "a unique experience" with "higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance" and even stronger security and better accessibility.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-six in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft is rolling out improved versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 to users in the European Economic Area. These give users more customization options, such as the ability to remove Microsoft Edge or Bing Web Search entirely from the operating system.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-five in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft announced that it is retiring the Windows Subsystem for Android next year. The company did not reveal why it made the decision. Rumors suggest that it did not generate the revenue that Microsoft hoped it would to become sustainable.

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Third-party cookies are on their way out. Google plans to disable third-party cookie support in Chrome for all users later this year. Mozilla and Apple announced plans to drop support for third-party cookies in their browsers, Firefox and Safari, as well.

Microsoft announced its plans for a third-party cookie-less future this week. Third-party cookie support is eliminated in Microsoft Edge in the near future.

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Genealogy website MyHeritage launched OldNews this week. The subscription-based service offers subscribers access to "hundreds of millions of historical newspaper pages from around the world," according to the official announcement on the MyHeritage blog.

The main focus of the archive is newspapers from the 1800s and 1900s. The built-in search is the heart of the site. You may enter a name, event, or keyword, and limit results to a publication year or publication place.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft will show Windows 11 upgrade prompts to more Windows 10 devices. After pushing another round of prompts to home users, it is now pushing them to domain-joined devices that are not managed.

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Microsoft released a new build to the Beta insider channel for Windows 11 this week. The build does not introduce any spectacular new features to the operating system, but it addresses several annoying issues.

One of them has plagued me on my HP EliteBook laptop for several weeks. Whenever I booted into Windows 11 on the device, the taskbar would not show up initially. It took several seconds, sometimes even a bit longer, before it finally appeared on the screen.

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A reboot is required after the installation of many updates for Windows. This is definitely the case for the monthly cumulative security updates, but also for other updates. Windows 11 displays popups to the user when a restart is required, which can be disruptive.

Sometimes, Windows may even restart the computer automatically, which can lead to data loss and other unwanted outcomes. At other times, it may not give the user a choice to reboot without installing the update.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

If you still run older versions of Windows 11, you may be upgraded automatically and without any say in the matter. It is still a mystery why Microsoft is not revealing the name of the next feature update for Windows 11. It could be the Windows 11 2024 Update.

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Devices that still run older versions of Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system will be upgraded to Windows 11 version 23H2 automatically, according to Microsoft.

The announcement was posted on the official Windows 11 version 23H2 release health website. There, Microsoft notes that the latest version of its Windows 11 operating system is entering a new rollout phase.

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Microsoft has fixed a puzzling issue in the latest version of its Edge web browser. Some users reported that Microsoft Edge was importing open tabs from Google Chrome automatically on their devices about two weeks ago.

While Microsoft Edge does have a preference to do so, the users claimed that the preference was set to off on their devices.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-two in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft introduced several upcoming features in developer builds this weeks. From Notepad's AI integration to AI Super Resolution. AI in Notepad may be used to get an "explanation" for the selected text. AI Super Resolution promises improved gaming performance and visuals.

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