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iOS 15.1 will bring new features to iPhone 13 Pro (left) and iPhone 13 Pro Max.

October 18 update below. This post was first published on Saturday, October 16.

Apples latest keynote took place today, Monday, October 18. And as expected there were MacBook Pro laptops with new Apple Silicon powering them.

But new AirPods were announced as well, which require updated software to support them, especially if they have new features on board. So, does this mean iOS 15.1 is almost here and if so, when and what will it bring?

October 18 update. Well, there was no mention of when iOS 15.1 would arrive, not a single solitary whisper, in the keynotenot surprising as it was fast-paced, jam-packed and ran at around 49 minutes.

But Apple has now revealed when its coming.

In a news report at apple.com/newsroom that accompanied the announcement of the AirPods third-generation, Apple has confided:

AirPods require Apple devices running iOS 15.1, iPadOS 15.1, watchOS 8.1, tvOS 15.1, or macOS Monterey, all available as free software updates next week.

Thats the week commencing Monday, October 25. But, though no exact date is given, theres a further clue as to when iOS 15.1 will land, because Apple says that the third-gen AirPods are available to order from right now and will be available in store from next Tuesday, October 26.

So, there we have it. It is inconceivable that Apple would release a product without the software required to run it being available, so the very latest Apple could release iOS 15.1 is next Tuesday.

Apple does like to release its software updates on a Tuesday, but my guess is that iOS 15.1 will be released in good time for the very first AirPods (3rd-generation) going on sale.

In which case, we can expect the update to be released on Monday, October 25, at 10AM Pacific.

Oh, and one more thing, as they say. An iOS 15.1 feature that every single human being with a Mac and an iPad is looking forward to is Universal Control, which lets you merge your two devices in a supremely cool way, controlling the iPad from the mouse on the adjacent Mac.

Apple has now confirmed that its not coming right now (after all, it needed macOS Monterey and thats here next week, too, for the AirPods as well as anything else). On the Apple website its been confirmed that this update is coming later this fall.

Lets not lose heart, though. After all, the Apple Watch was announced as coming this fall with no date attached and it turned up just a matter of days, just three weeks, after the iPhone 13 which was announced at the same time. So, maybe its just a week or three before Universal Control arrives in another iOS 15 update.

That doesnt mean its going to be the very next update, of course, as if any bugs surface which need urgent squishing, or if there are other features weve forgotten about which need to be added before then, well, we can expect more updates sooner.

Apple is making iOS 15.1 the next big update, and given its arrival in just a matter of days, I dont think iOS 15.0.3 is likely to see the light of day. Then again, anything is possible.

In the meantime, back to the great features we can expect in iOS 15.1 when its released just a short week from now...

Key features of iOS 15.1: SharePlay

SharePlay will finally launch, it seems. Over the past few years, Apple has often promised a key feature before launch only for it to slip back from the first edition of software, or to be re-labelled as being in beta, that is, not quite ready but good enough for us all to try.

The essence of this feature is FaceTime. When youre on a FaceTime call, and youre talking about a song or album you love, you can share it in the call. Open Apple Music and it can sync to everyones devices. Everyone on the call can add songs to a queue with shared play, skip and other controls. This will work for video as well, so you can open and play video content from Apple TV, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, TikTok, Paramount+ and more. For a watch party it works differently from audio but the result is the same: everyone enjoying the same content simultaneously.

Youll also be able to share your screen with others on FaceTime calls, turning Apples video chat app into a Zoom challenger.

Key features of iOS 15.1: Lossless Audio

Lossless Audio means hi-fi sound on your iPhone or iPad, not to mention HomePod and HomePod mini. Which is the important bit here. Thats because it comes with HomePod 15.1 which will deliver support for Lossless and Dolby Atmos playback on the smart speakers.

If all this seems a bit dj vu, its because this is a feature which was promised in an earlier beta and then removed.

iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are among the phones about to get ProRes features.

Key features of iOS 15.1: ProRes Video

This will appeal to keen videographers: ProRes Video capture. Apple ProRes is a high-quality video compression format which is widely used professionally. Now, its coming to iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max in the native camera app.

But it takes up a lot of storage, which is likely the reason that its limited to 1080p quality at 30 frames per second on the 128GB storage iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max models. If you have higher storage capacity on your Pro, then 4K ProRes recording at 30fps is possible.

Key features of iOS 15.1: What else?

Heres something that a lot of people have got hot under the collar about: Auto Macro Mode Toggle, If youve tried Macro mode on the iPhone 13 Pro or Pro Max, youll know that the results are astonishingly good but that the execution of the switch to Macro is automatic, rather than controlled by the user. As you bring the iPhone camera in close, it recognizes what youre doing and switches to the ultrawide camera automatically, to create the brilliant Macro effect. But that switch causes a visible shift, a blurring effect as the lens switch happens.

Move too far away and youll be switched out again. Personally, I have never had an issue with this, it works great for me, but Id agree that extra control is better and the new software includes a toggle to turn the auto Macro effect off.

Virtual Vaccination cards will be implemented in the update, which is also very cool. Oh, and the fix for Unlock with Apple Watch, so your Watch could tell the iPhone to unlock when it sees youre wearing a mask was due for this update but has already arrived in iOS 15.0.1.

There could be more changes, such as the implementation of fixing the call issue which some users have found where audio drops followed by the call itself (currently sorted by toggling Airplane mode on and off again).

iOS 15.1 will benefit other iPhones, like the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13.

When will we see iOS 15.1?

My guess is it will land in the next few days, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. Apple does like to release software on a Tuesday. The software may be mentioned at Mondays shindig. Of course, it could be later: even assuming AirPods 3 are announced on Monday, it will take days before they go on sale, probably on Friday, October 22 or (more likely) Friday, October 29.

So, theres still plenty of time for iOS 15.1 to launch. None the less, I think its imminent.

Read the original:
Apple iOS 15.1: Next iPhone Update Will Have 3 Awesome New Features - Forbes

Employees come and go, often taking their knowledge with them. There are also times when just a handful of employees know how to do something and dont have time to provide a mass tutorial. Thats where Scribe comes in. Its software records movement and clicks and converts them into a step-by-step guide in less than a minute with screenshots and text that is editable and shareable. The information can be recorded from a Chrome extension or desktop app and also live in a repository until it is needed.

Today, the company launched with $30 million in venture capital, including a new $22 million round of Series A funding that was led by Tiger Global Management. A group of existing investors also participated in the investment, including Amplify Partners, which led Scribes $8 million seed round at the beginning of 2021, Haystack Ventures, XYZ Venture Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Morado Ventures and SEV.

Co-founder and CEO Jennifer Smith, formerly of McKinsey & Company and Greylock Partners, formed the San Francisco-based company a couple of years ago with entrepreneur and former Google engineer Aaron Podolny after seeing a knowledge gap in how operational work was done.

Smiths background is in organization and operations work. She talked to more than 1,200 founders about how software was bought and sold, and what they wished existed and learned that not much had changed in this area in a decade.

The process is still being done manually, she told TechCrunch. There is not a standard way to communicate how to do something. With Scribe, it is a standard. You can click the record button, do the task and it auto generates step-by-step instructions.

Scribe has been heads-down since it was founded, but the software is now being used by over 10,000 organizations globally as a way to share with others how to do something. These include use cases by organizations outside of those initially targeted by Smith and Podolny, like governments and schools.

In addition to the investors mentioned earlier, angel investors involved include former Microsoft chairman John Thompson, Adobe chief product officer Scott Belsky, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta and Opendoor CEO Eric Wu. As part of the investment, Amplify Partners general partner Mike Dauber joins Scribes board of directors.

Scribe is the latest company to attract venture capital for efforts to capture and share digital processes. For example, in August, Tango raised $5.7 million for its Chrome extension that auto-captures workflow best practices so that teams can learn from their top performers.

Ross Fubini, managing director of XYZ, said Scribe was building a company that makes something complex look easy. He credits Smith for helping many marquee startups ramp up their enterprise selling during her time at Greylock and believes that she and her team are creating a product that is doing the same: showing them how to do their job better.

And companies will pay for that, he added. This is just the first part of the journey. When we talk to companies describing problems on creating documentation, we see that bottom-up part. We are here to put in yet more money into the company so that Jennifer and her team can keep doing the work, build the go-to-market and get paid for that value.

Meanwhile, Scribe has both a free version and pro/enterprise plans, and averages nearly 50% reduction in non-productive time spent learning how to do a process.

Smith intends to use the new funding to scale the team to respond to customer demand that is coming from startups all the way to Fortune 500 companies. The companys 20-person employee base is a majority of women and underrepresented minorities, something Smith is proud of as she focuses on building an inclusive, culture- and talent-first organization, she added. She will also invest in R&D and product development that is coming down the pipeline.

We want Scribe to be the new common standard for sharing how to do something, Smith added. We take inspiration from Zoom and Slack, which have both become standard and lexicon. Its really about driving that reach and distribution with colleagues and customers.

Read more:
Scribe launches knowledge-capturing software that gets employees on the same page - TechCrunch

George Cox| PC Periodicals

Many professions, such as video editing, sound mixing, graphic designing, etc., requires multiple devices to work on simultaneously. In addition, many people use multiple devices for entertainment and work side by side. If you are in such a situation, it might be frustrating for you to switch between devices with different mouse and keyboard for every device.

To overcome such difficulties, many users stack their keyboards on top of each other. However, it is not a feasible solution. Instead of that, you can use much better options that I am going to describe in this article.

In this article, I will walk through several ways to control two computers with one keyboard and mouse. These will allow you to use your mouse without borders and keyboards to function on multiple devices. So, let us start looking at the top ways to control two computers with one keyboard and mouse.

Mouse without Borders (http://aka.ms/mm) is a software product that makes you the captain of your computer fleet by allowing you to control up to four computers from a single mouse and keyboard. This means that with Mouse without Borders you can copy text or drag and drop files across computers. It was developed by a Microsoft developer Truong Do, as an experimental project. The Microsoft Garage Mouse without Borders application is available for Windows OS at Microsoft Store for free.

After downloading and installing the application, you can configure it as per your preference. From the dashboard of the Microsoft Garage Mouse without Borders, you can drag and arrange your devices in the same order as they are placed physically from left to right. This would ensure that you can correctly hop your mouse pointer to the adjacent systems screen.

Generally, Microsoft Garage Mouse without Borders application works well, but it might start to stutter when three or four devices are connected. Still, features such as clipboard sharing allow you to copy and paste between connected devices. You can also drag and drop the items from one device to another without any issue.

If you are having trouble using the Microsoft Garage Mouse without Borders for controlling your multiple Windows PCs, you can use next best software alternative, Input Director. Although installing and setting up the Input Director is a bit intensive than the Microsoft Garage Mouse without Borders, especially for beginner users.

Input Director comes with a lot of security features that let you determine which computer systems are allowed to join the network. In addition, you can create customized hotkeys for different devices. Drag and drop from one device to another, copy and paste from one device to another, and many more advanced features are available on Input Director. Unlike Microsoft Garage Mouse without Borders, Input Director is not freely available to use for commercial purposes. However, you can use it free for personal use.

If you are uncomfortable using the software programs to control two computers with one keyboard and mouse, you can use a very good hardware alternative, the KVM Switch. The KVM Switches are not new and used by users for a long time before the software applications came into existence. The KVM Switch would simply let you switch the mouse and keyboard control to another device with an A/B switch.

The KVM switch is basically a box that you connect each of your computers monitor cable, mouse, and keyboard to the various ports. Then just flip the switch to which computer you wish your monitor, mouse, and keyboard to be connected to for input or viewing. This is one of the easier methods of sharing your devices.

There are multiple configurations of connections available, and can control several different computers.

It might be absurd to use the remote desktop to manage devices placed side by side, but it is one of the most straightforward solutions to control two computers with one keyboard and mouse. If all the devices you want to manage are Windows 10 based, you do not require any third-party application to control them remotely. Windows 10 comes with a fantastic in-built Remote Desktop application that helps you efficiently manage the devices.

Multitasking with several devices can be tedious, especially when you are using cross-platform devices. With the options listed in this article, you can easily switch between

the devices and control two (or more) computers with one keyboard and mouse.

Stay protected!

George Cox is the owner of Computer Diagnostics and Repair. He can be reached at 346-4217.

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How to control two computers with a single keyboard and mouse - St. George Daily Spectrum

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Free Music Making Software Market is Set To Fly High in Years to Come EcoChunk - EcoChunk

Oct 16th 2021

DAKAR, DUBAI, ISTANBUL, NEW YORK AND SINGAPORE

ON OCTOBER 8TH two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel peace prize for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression. The Kremlin congratulated Mr Muratov for being brave, which he is. Six of his colleagues at Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper he founded in 1993, have been murdered.

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Ms Ressa is brave, too. Her news organisation, Rappler, started as a Facebook page in 2011. It is one of very few in the Philippines that criticises Rodrigo Duterte, a president who urges the police to kill suspects without trial. At least ten journalists have been murdered since Mr Duterte came to power. In 2016, when he was president-elect, he said: just because youre a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if youre a son of a bitch.

The Nobel award recognises a sad truth. Globally, freedom of expression is in retreat. The bluntest methods of silencing dissent are widely wielded: autocrats and criminal gangs often use the sword against the pen (or bullets against bloggers). Many governments also lock people up for peacefully expressing their views.

But these old-fashioned forms of repression are increasingly reinforced with or replaced by newer techniques. Freedom House, a think-tank, reports that in the past year efforts to control speech online escalated in 30 of the 70 countries it monitors, and receded only in 18 (see map). Many autocrats and would-be autocrats look with envy at China, where the Communist Party has overseen the construction of a walled-off information sphere, within which criticism of those in power can barely be seen or heard. None can copy it exactly, but many are deploying digital tools to curate the information that reaches their citizens.

Some autocrats still believe that suspending internet services completely is a good way to stymie critics, particularly in an emergency. In 2020 there were at least 155 regional or national internet shutdowns in 29 countries, according to Access Now, an NGO. More than a hundred of those took place in India. But shutdowns batter economies and make strongmen look crude. In 2011 a panicked Hosni Mubarak, Egypts dictator, tried to quash a revolution by switching off the internet. Outrageand boredomspurred even more Egyptians onto the streets. Mr Mubarak was ousted.

Chinas model is more sophisticated. Its national firewall blocks access to foreign social media and a host of other sources of information. Armies of human censors scan Chinese websites. Controls are constantly refined. In 2009 the government suspended internet access almost entirely in Xinjiang, a western region, following riots there. Now the internet is up again but police force Uyghurs, an oppressed minority, to install mobile apps that spy on all their online activity. They can be locked up for downloading a foreign product such as Skype, or software that lets them visit foreign sites such as Facebook.

Any government can order an internet service provider to blacklist sites it doesnt like. Turkey blocks nearly 470,000 sites. It added 59,000 to the list last year. But creating a firewall even remotely like Chinas is hard, even for governments willing to spend billions. One reason is that Chinas internet infrastructure was built, from the outset, with these kinds of controls in mind. The party was blocking sites as early as 1996, when only about 150,000 Chinese were online.

Another reason Chinas controls have proven so effective is that it has a domestic market big enough to support home-made alternatives to every major international website. There is plenty of content inside the firewall to keep Chinese web users entertained, so it chafes less. The sheer size of the Chinese market also reduces the economic costs of walling off the national web. Meanwhile, the Communist Party has extraordinary powers to boss domestic web firms around. Companies such as Tencent, a social-media giant, and Baidu, a search engine, have to hire, train and manage most of the censors who keep Chinas internet spotless.

China also exports software and hardware that help other regimes build a more authoritarian internet. Iran is a happy customer. Officials there cite Chinas great firewall as a model to emulate. Iran already blocks popular foreign services such as Twitter and Telegram. But its pious leaders think it has not gone far enough. The government has been working to create an alternative internet known as the National Information Network. The idea is that all its services would be hosted on domestic servers, with access linked to national identity cards.

Russias plans for purging the domestic internet of free thought are among the most ambitious. Vladimir Putin claims that the global internet is a tool of the CIA. In 2019 he signed an internet sovereignty law with the proclaimed goal of protecting Russia from online threats to its security. That law ordered all providers to install technology that allows the Kremlin to track, filter and reroute traffic.

Gregory Asmolov of Kings College London says that although Russia is ramping up its controls years after China began doing so, it is benefiting from being able to plug in much more modern kit. Roya Ensafi at the University of Michigan says the government is growing keen on tools that make websites slow to load, instead of completely unreachable. That renders them useless for distributing photos and video (the kinds of content the Kremlin finds most troublesome). It is more difficult for clever web users to get around than old-fashioned methods of blocking sites, and more difficult for organisations that monitor and publicise cases of online censorship to detect.

The Russian government is also trying to nudge its citizens to stop using big websites headquartered abroad. It is throwing money at Rutube, an alternative to YouTube owned by Gazprom, the state gas giant. Blocking YouTube is not yet feasible; ordinary Russians would be outraged if they could no longer watch cooking shows and celebrity tittle-tattle on it. But if enough content is herded onto Rutube, it might one day be possible to shut down YouTube without too much backlash.

Meanwhile, all new mobile phones sold in Russia must be set to use Yandex, a Russian search engine, by default. The government plans to require all public-sector workers, including teachers and university professors, to use only Russian email and messenger services while doing their jobs.

Other governments are also trying to persuade users to ditch foreign sites. The United Arab Emirates steers residents towards messaging apps with murky origins (at least one is connected to a government-backed firm). When members of Indias ruling party fell out with Twitter earlier this year they began encouraging their supporters to use Koo, a local alternative. In January spin doctors working for Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said they would no longer communicate using WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook. They encouraged people to sign up for Bi P, a product of Turkcell, a big Turkish telecoms company.

Autocrats reckon that having more citizens on domestic services will make it easier to police what they say. They are also using new software to spy on citizens no matter which devices they own or which websites they visit. Freedom House says 45 countries in its sample were found to have used such spyware at some point in the past 12 months; it calls this a crisis for human rights.

In July investigators for more than a dozen newspapers said they had obtained 50,000 phone numbers of people who they believe were being considered for surveillance by clients of NSO Group, an Israeli firm that helps governments snoop on mobile devices. The governments included those of Mexico, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. The list of people who may have been surveilled included journalists, politicians and human-rights activists. A British judge ruled in May that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, even used spyware to monitor his ex-wife. Snaffling personal data from peoples devices not only helps governments smear critics. It also discourages whistle-blowers and other people with important stories from speaking to journalists, for fear their identities will leak.

All this whizzy technology is increasingly combined with new laws to chill speech. Last year police in at least 55 of the 70 countries monitored by Freedom House investigated, arrested or convicted someone because of posts made on social media. That was the highest number of any year since the index was launched 11 years ago. They include a woman in Thailand who was sentenced to 43 years in jail for sharing clips from a podcast that criticised the monarchy (her initial sentence, of 87 years, was reduced because she pleaded guilty). Thailand is among several countries which have used computer crime laws to greatly expand the types of speech that can be considered criminal.

Lately web firms, not users, have been the target of most new rules. One increasingly common requirement is that they must store user data in the country in which it is generated, where governments can more easily get at it. China has required this since 2017. Other jurisdictions that have passed or are drafting similar legislation include Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Bangladesh.

Indias government is especially keen to tame digital firms. It is demanding that WhatsApp identify who first sends any message on its platform, which would require removing the end-to-end encryption that protects its users privacy. New rules which came into effect in February require big social-media firms to establish offices within Indias borders, and appoint local representatives. These people face up to seven years in prison if their employers do not comply with local rules. These include taking down within 36 hours content the government deems threatening to public order, decency, morality or national security. To say that such vaguely worded statutes are open to abuse is putting it mildly.

In Turkey Mr Erdogan was accusing journalists of spreading fake news long before Donald Trump made it fashionable. Now his ruling Justice and Development party is considering making the publication of disinformation on social media a crime punishable by up to five years behind bars. The government doubtless hopes it will help keep a lid on dissent. Kerem Altiparmak, a human-rights lawyer, notes that the government has already succeeded in taming Turkeys press. He says if authorities can now subdue social media the free flow of information will end.

Last year Turkey gave individuals and companies the right to demand that tech firms delete some information about them. This supposedly emulates the right to be forgotten held by citizens of the European Union, but safeguards against abuse of the new system are weak. By the end of 2020 nearly 40,000 news reports had been blocked or removed from the web by court order. These include a story about an adviser to Mr Erdogan who forged his high-school diploma, messages posted to a forum about the presidents wifes luxury handbag, and articles about a wrestling champion who was convicted of rape. The web censors have occasionally ended up chasing their own tails. Earlier this year, after one court blocked access to a story concerning a tender secured by a friend of Mr Erdogans son, a second court blocked access to news reports about the first courts decision.

In a few cases new rules aim not to delete speech, but to ensure that governments own propaganda stays put. Leaders of all stripes took fright when, in January, big social-media sites suspended Donald Trumps account for inciting insurrection. In September Brazils president, Jair Bolsonaro, signed an update to internet rules narrowing the circumstances under which firms can remove posts that they believe breach their in-house moderation policies. Mexicos senate majority leader has proposed a law that would allow the countrys internet regulator to restore posts and accounts that social media firms have decided to take down. In June Nigeria began blocking Twitter after it deleted a message from the president, Muhammadu Buhari, alluding to Nigerias civil war, in which perhaps 1m people died, and warning modern secessionists that they would be treated in the language they understand.

Autocracies will doubtless continue to combine high- and low-tech ways of suppressing online speech. During tense times in Egypt police have sometimes stopped people on the streets and demanded they unlock their phones, to see if they have shared anything subversive. Soldiers in Myanmar have been carrying out similar duties since the army launched its coup in February. Freedom House finds that last year people in 41 countries were beaten up or killed because of things they had said online. In a speech in 2019 Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, warned online critics outside the country that they risked reprisals. His words carried especial menace, since Rwandan dissidents abroad have often met untimely ends. Those making noise on the internet do so because theyre far from the fire, he said. If they dare get close to it they will face its heat.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Walls of silence"

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Governments are finding new ways to squash free expression online - The Economist