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What a long, strange trip it’s been.

From its inaugural release to today, Android has transformed visually, conceptually and functionally — time and time again. Google’s mobile operating system may have started out scrappy, but holy moly, has it ever evolved.

Here’s a fast-paced tour of Android version highlights from the platform’s birth to present. (Feel free to skip ahead if you just want to see what’s new in the most recent Android 15 update and the still-under-development Android 16 beta release.)

[ Download our editors’ PDF Android business smartphones enterprise buyer’s guide today! ]

Android versions 1.0 to 1.1: The early days

Android made its official public debut in 2008 with Android 1.0 — a release so ancient it didn’t even have a cute codename.

Things were pretty basic back then, but the software did include a suite of early Google apps like Gmail, Maps, Calendar, and YouTube, all of which were integrated into the operating system — a stark contrast to the more easily updatable standalone-app model employed today.

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The Android 1.0 home screen and its rudimentary web browser (not yet called Chrome).

T-Mobile

Android version 1.5: Cupcake

With early 2009’s Android 1.5 Cupcake release, the tradition of Android version names was born. Cupcake introduced numerous refinements to the Android interface, including the first on-screen keyboard — something that’d be necessary as phones moved away from the once-ubiquitous physical keyboard model.

Cupcake also brought about the framework for third-party app widgets, which would quickly turn into one of Android’s most distinguishing elements, and it provided the platform’s first-ever option for video recording.

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Cupcake was all about the widgets.

Android Police Android version 1.6: Donut

Android 1.6, Donut, rolled into the world in the fall of 2009. Donut filled in some important holes in Android’s center, including the ability for the OS to operate on a variety of different screen sizes and resolutions — a factor that’d be critical in the years to come. It also added support for CDMA networks like Verizon, which would play a key role in Android’s imminent explosion.

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Android’s universal search box made its first appearance in Android 1.6.

Google

Android versions 2.0 to 2.1: Eclair

Keeping up the breakneck release pace of Android’s early years, Android 2.0, Eclair, emerged just six weeks after Donut; its “point-one” update, also called Eclair, came out a couple months later. Eclair was the first Android release to enter mainstream consciousness thanks to the original Motorola Droid phone and the massive Verizon-led marketing campaign surrounding it.

Verizon’s “iDon’t” ad for the Droid.

The release’s most transformative element was the addition of voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation and real-time traffic info — something previously unheard of (and still essentially unmatched) in the smartphone world. Navigation aside, Eclair brought live wallpapers to Android as well as the platform’s first speech-to-text function. And it made waves for injecting the once-iOS-exclusive pinch-to-zoom capability into Android — a move often seen as the spark that ignited Apple’s long-lasting “thermonuclear war” against Google.

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The first versions of turn-by-turn navigation and speech-to-text, in Eclair.

Google

Android version 2.2: Froyo

Just four months after Android 2.1 arrived, Google served up Android 2.2, Froyo, which revolved largely around under-the-hood performance improvements.

Froyo did deliver some important front-facing features, though, including the addition of the now-standard dock at the bottom of the home screen as well as the first incarnation of Voice Actions, which allowed you to perform basic functions like getting directions and making notes by tapping an icon and then speaking a command.

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Google’s first real attempt at voice control, in Froyo.

Google

Notably, Froyo also brought support for Flash to Android’s web browser — an option that was significant both because of the widespread use of Flash at the time and because of Apple’s adamant stance against supporting it on its own mobile devices. Apple would eventually win, of course, and Flash would become far less common. But back when it was still everywhere, being able to access the full web without any black holes was a genuine advantage only Android could offer.

Android version 2.3: Gingerbread

Android’s first true visual identity started coming into focus with 2010’s Gingerbread release. Bright green had long been the color of Android’s robot mascot, and with Gingerbread, it became an integral part of the operating system’s appearance. Black and green seeped all over the UI as Android started its slow march toward distinctive design.

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It was easy being green back in the Gingerbread days.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android 3.0 to 3.2: Honeycomb

2011’s Honeycomb period was a weird time for Android. Android 3.0 came into the world as a tablet-only release to accompany the launch of the Motorola Xoom, and through the subsequent 3.1 and 3.2 updates, it remained a tablet-exclusive (and closed-source) entity.

Under the guidance of newly arrived design chief Matias Duarte, Honeycomb introduced a dramatically reimagined UI for Android. It had a space-like “holographic” design that traded the platform’s trademark green for blue and placed an emphasis on making the most of a tablet’s screen space.

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Honeycomb: When Android got a case of the holographic blues.

JR Raphael / IDG

While the concept of a tablet-specific interface didn’t last long, many of Honeycomb’s ideas laid the groundwork for the Android we know today. The software was the first to use on-screen buttons for Android’s main navigational commands; it marked the beginning of the end for the permanent overflow-menu button; and it introduced the concept of a card-like UI with its take on the Recent Apps list.

Android version 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich

With Honeycomb acting as the bridge from old to new, Ice Cream Sandwich — also released in 2011 — served as the platform’s official entry into the era of modern design. The release refined the visual concepts introduced with Honeycomb and reunited tablets and phones with a single, unified UI vision.

ICS dropped much of Honeycomb’s “holographic” appearance but kept its use of blue as a system-wide highlight. And it carried over core system elements like on-screen buttons and a card-like appearance for app-switching.

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The ICS home screen and app-switching interface.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android 4.0 also made swiping a more integral method of getting around the operating system, with the then-revolutionary-feeling ability to swipe away things like notifications and recent apps. And it started the slow process of bringing a standardized design framework — known as “Holo” — all throughout the OS and into Android’s app ecosystem.

Android versions 4.1 to 4.3: Jelly Bean

Spread across three impactful Android versions, 2012 and 2013’s Jelly Bean releases took ICS’s fresh foundation and made meaningful strides in fine-tuning and building upon it. The releases added plenty of poise and polish into the operating system and went a long way in making Android more inviting for the average user.

Visuals aside, Jelly Bean brought about our first taste of Google Now — the spectacular predictive-intelligence utility that’s sadly since devolved into a glorified news feed. It gave us expandable and interactive notifications, an expanded voice search system, and a more advanced system for displaying search results in general, with a focus on card-based results that attempted to answer questions directly.

Multiuser support also came into play, albeit on tablets only at this point, and an early version of Android’s Quick Settings panel made its first appearance. Jelly Bean ushered in a heavily hyped system for placing widgets on your lock screen, too — one that, like so many Android features over the years, quietly disappeared a couple years later.

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Jelly Bean’s Quick Settings panel and short-lived lock screen widget feature.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android version 4.4: KitKat

Late-2013’s KitKat release marked the end of Android’s dark era, as the blacks of Gingerbread and the blues of Honeycomb finally made their way out of the operating system. Lighter backgrounds and more neutral highlights took their places, with a transparent status bar and white icons giving the OS a more contemporary appearance.

Android 4.4 also saw the first version of “OK, Google” support — but in KitKat, the hands-free activation prompt worked only when your screen was already on and you were either at your home screen or inside the Google app.

The release was Google’s first foray into claiming a full panel of the home screen for its services, too — at least, for users of its own Nexus phones and those who chose to download its first-ever standalone launcher.

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The lightened KitKat home screen and its dedicated Google Now panel.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android versions 5.0 and 5.1: Lollipop

Google essentially reinvented Android — again — with its Android 5.0 Lollipop release in the fall of 2014. Lollipop launched the still-present-today Material Design standard, which brought a whole new look that extended across all of Android, its apps and even other Google products.

The card-based concept that had been scattered throughout Android became a core UI pattern — one that would guide the appearance of everything from notifications, which now showed up on the lock screen for at-a-glance access, to the Recent Apps list, which took on an unabashedly card-based appearance.

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Lollipop and the onset of Material Design.

JR Raphael / IDG

Lollipop introduced a slew of new features into Android, including truly hands-free voice control via the “OK, Google” command, support for multiple users on phones and a priority mode for better notification management. It changed so much, unfortunately, that it also introduced a bunch of troubling bugs, many of which wouldn’t be fully ironed out until the following year’s 5.1 release.

Android version 6.0: Marshmallow

In the grand scheme of things, 2015’s Marshmallow was a fairly minor Android release — one that seemed more like a 0.1-level update than anything deserving of a full number bump. But it started the trend of Google releasing one major Android version per year and that version always receiving its own whole number.

Marshmallow’s most attention-grabbing element was a screen-search feature called Now On Tap — something that, as I said at the time, had tons of potential that wasn’t fully tapped. Google never quite perfected the system and ended up quietly retiring its brand and moving it out of the forefront the following year.

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Marshmallow and the almost-brilliance of Google Now on Tap.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android 6.0 did introduce some stuff with lasting impact, though, including more granular app permissions, support for fingerprint readers, and support for USB-C.

Android versions 7.0 and 7.1: Nougat

Google’s 2016 Android Nougat releases provided Android with a native split-screen mode, a new bundled-by-app system for organizing notifications, and a Data Saver feature. Nougat added some smaller but still significant features, too, like an Alt-Tab-like shortcut for snapping between apps.

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Android 7.0 Nougat and its new native split-screen mode.

JR Raphael / IDG

Perhaps most pivotal among Nougat’s enhancements, however, was the launch of the Google Assistant — which came alongside the announcement of Google’s first fully self-made phone, the Pixel, about two months after Nougat’s debut. The Assistant would go on to become a critical component of Android and most other Google products and is arguably the company’s foremost effort today.

Android version 8.0 and 8.1: Oreo

Android Oreo added a variety of niceties to the platform, including a native picture-in-picture mode, a notification snoozing option, and notification channels that offer fine control over how apps can alert you.

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Oreo adds several significant features to the operating system, including a new picture-in-picture mode.

JR Raphael / IDG

The 2017 release also included some noteworthy elements that furthered Google’s goal of aligning Android and Chrome OS and improving the experience of using Android apps on Chromebooks, and it was the first Android version to feature Project Treble — an ambitious effort to create a modular base for Android’s code with the hope of making it easier for device-makers to provide timely software updates.

Android version 9: Pie

The freshly baked scent of Android Pie, a.k.a. Android 9, wafted into the Android ecosystem in August of 2018. Pie’s most transformative change was its hybrid gesture/button navigation system, which traded Android’s traditional Back, Home, and Overview keys for a large, multifunctional Home button and a small Back button that appeared alongside it as needed.

Android 9 introduced a new gesture-driven system for getting around phones, with an elongated Home button and a small Back button that appears as needed.

JR Raphael / IDG

Pie included some noteworthy productivity features, too, such as a universal suggested-reply system for messaging notifications, a new dashboard of Digital Wellbeing controls, and more intelligent systems for power and screen brightness management. And, of course, there was no shortage of smaller but still-significant advancements hidden throughout Pie’s filling, including a smarter way to handle Wi-Fi hotspots, a welcome twist to Android’s Battery Saver mode, and a variety of privacy and security enhancements.

Android version 10

Google released Android 10 — the first Android version to shed its letter and be known simply by a number, with no dessert-themed moniker attached — in September of 2019. Most noticeably, the software brought about a totally reimagined interface for Android gestures, this time doing away with the tappable Back button altogether and relying on a completely swipe-driven approach to system navigation.

Android 10 packed plenty of other quietly important improvements, including an updated permissions system with more granular control over location data along with a new system-wide dark theme, a new distraction-limiting Focus Mode, and a new on-demand live captioning system for any actively playing media.

Android 10’s new privacy permissions model adds some much-needed nuance into the realm of location data.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android version 11

Android 11, launched at the start of September 2020, was a pretty substantial Android update both under the hood and on the surface. The version’s most significant changes revolve around privacy: The update built upon the expanded permissions system introduced in Android 10 and added in the option to grant apps location, camera, and microphone permissions only on a limited, single-use basis.

Android 11 also made it more difficult for apps to request the ability to detect your location in the background, and it introduced a feature that automatically revokes permissions from any apps you haven’t opened lately. On the interface level, Android 11 included a refined approach to conversation-related notifications along with a new streamlined media player, a new Notification History section, a native screen-recording feature, and a system-level menu of connected-device controls.

Android 11’s new media player appears as part of the system Quick Settings panel, while the new connected-device control screen comes up whenever you press and hold your phone’s physical power button.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android version 12

Google officially launched the final version of Android 12 in October 2021, alongside the launch of its Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones.

In a twist from the previous several Android versions, the most significant progressions with Android 12 were mostly on the surface. Android 12 featured the biggest reimagining of Android’s interface since 2014’s Android 5.0 (Lollipop) version, with an updated design standard known as Material You — which revolves around the idea of you customizing the appearance of your device with dynamically generated themes based on your current wallpaper colors. Those themes automatically change anytime your wallpaper changes, and they extend throughout the entire operating system interface and even into the interfaces of apps that support the standard.

Android 12 ushered in a whole new look and feel for the operating system, with an emphasis on simple color customization.

Google

Surface-level elements aside, Android 12 brought a (long overdue) renewed focus to Android’s widget system along with a host of important foundational enhancements in the areas of performance, security, and privacy. The update provided more powerful and accessible controls over how different apps are using your data and how much information you allow apps to access, for instance, and it included a new isolated section of the operating system that allows AI features to operate entirely on a device, without any potential for network access or data exposure.

Android version 13

Android 13, launched in August 2022, was simultaneously one of the most ambitious updates in Android history and one of the most subtle version changes to date.

On tablets and foldable phones, Android 13 introduced a slew of significant interface updates and additions aimed at improving the large-screen Android experience — including an enhanced split-screen mode for multitasking and a ChromeOS-like taskbar for easy app access from anywhere.

The new Android-13-introduced taskbar, as seen on a Google Pixel Fold phone.

Google

On regular phones, Android 13 brought about far less noticeable changes — mostly just some enhancements to the system clipboard interface, a new native QR code scanning function within the Android Quick Settings area, and a smattering of under-the-hood improvements.

Android version 14

Following a full eight months of out-in-the-open refinement, Google’s 14th Android version landed at the start of October 2023 in the midst of the company’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro launch event.

Like the version before it, Android 14 doesn’t look like much on the surface. That’s in part because of the trend of Google moving more and more toward a development cycle that revolves around smaller ongoing updates to individual system-level elements year-round — something that’s actually a significant advantage for Android users, even if it does have an awkward effect on people’s perception of progress.

But despite the subtle nature of its first impression, Android 14 includes a fair amount of noteworthy new stuff. The software introduces a new system for dragging and dropping text between apps, for instance, as well as a new series of native customization options for the Android lock screen.

Android 14 includes options for completely changing the appearance of the lock screen as well as for customizing which shortcuts show up on it.

JR Raphael / IDG

Android 14 provides a number of new improvements to privacy and security, too, including a new settings-integrated dashboard for managing all your health and fitness data and controlling which apps and devices can access it. And it adds in a more info-rich and context-requiring system for seeing exactly why apps want access to your location when they request such a permission.

Beyond that, Android 14 features a first taste of Google’s AI-generated custom wallpaper creator, though that’s available only on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro to start.

You can generate all sorts of interesting wallpapers in seconds via Android 14’s AI generator feature — but only on the Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro for now.

JR Raphael / IDG

The software also sports a series of significant accessibility additions, such as an enhanced on-demand magnifier, an easier way to increase font size in any app, improved support for hearing aid connections, and a built-in option to have your phone flash its camera light anytime a new notification arrives.

Android version 15

Google technically released Android 15 in September 2024, but in an unusual twist, that was only the launch of the software’s raw source code. The new Android version didn’t show up even on the company’s own Pixel devices until just over a month later, in mid-October.

With Google increasingly offering Android enhancements outside of the formal operating system context, some of the more interesting updates in recent months are not connected directly to Android 15 itself. For instance, the Android Circle to Search system and new theft protection features have shown up throughout 2024 for devices running even older Android versions.

As for Android 15 itself, though, the update introduces a number of noteworthy new features — including a system-level Private Space option that lets you keep sensitive apps out of sight and accessible only with authentication. The software also further enhances the multitasking systems introduced in Android 13 with the new option to keep the large-screen-exclusive Android taskbar present at all times and the new ability to launch specific pairs of apps together into a side-by-side split-screen with a single tap.

Once you set up Android 15’s new Private Space feature, certain apps appear in a special protected — and optionally hidden — area of your app drawer.

JR Raphael / IDG

Beyond that, Android 15 includes a redesigned system volume panel, a new option to automatically reenable a device’s Bluetooth radio a day after it’s been disabled, and a Pixel-specific Adaptive Vibration feature that intelligently adjusts a phone’s vibration intensity based on the environment.

Adaptive Vibration and a redesigned volume panel provide welcome upgrades to the Android audio experience.

JR Raphael / IDG

Add in a new charging-time connected-device-control screen saver, a space-saving app archiving option for infrequently used apps, and a long-under-development predictive back visual that lets you see a peek at where you’re headed before you get there — and this small-seeming update is actually shaping up to be a pretty hefty update progression.

Android version 16 (beta)

In a major change from recent Android upgrade cycles, Google decided to go with two new Android versions per year as of 2025 — starting with the spring’s Android 16 update and then following with another release later in the fall. (It’s not entirely clear yet if the second annual update will get its own full number or act as an extension of the Android 16 moniker, but Google says it’ll be a “major” release.)

True to that promise, the first Android 16 beta arrived in late January, and Google’s slowly but surely been following it up with additional updates that pave the way for its final public rollout sometime in the second quarter.

So far, the most significant features in Android 16 are shaping up to be Live Updates — a new type of notifications designed to support persistent, ongoing alerts, similar to what Apple does with iOS’s Live Activities — along with a variety of enhancements to Android’s Quick Settings interface. We’re also seeing early signs of development around a series of changes seemingly aimed at making Android a more capable desktop operating system (hmm…) along with the beginnings of a new native system for notification summaries (something you can actually accomplish this instant, incidentally, with the right type of creative thinking).

Android 16 also has the usual array of under-the-hood improvements around performance, privacy, security, and the all-around Android-device-using experience. For instance, the latest Android 16 beta includes support for a more advanced standard of hearing aid support as well as stronger network security protection and more stringent guidelines around how apps adapt to larger-screen environments.

Android 16 requires apps to adapt more intelligently to large-screen settings (as seen at right) as opposed to just maintaining an awkwardly narrow phone-like form (as seen at left).

Google

The final Android 16 rollout is expected to begin sometime in April or May — which would line up with the timing of this year’s Google I/O conference, perhaps not coincidentally — though with the way device-makers have been flailing with Android update deliveries lately, it’s anyone’s guess as to how long it’ll take for the software to reach devices outside of Google’s own Pixel products.

This article was originally published in November 2017 and most recently updated in March 2025.

In a strategic move that could reshape the future of computing, Nvidia is establishing the Nvidia Accelerated Quantum Research Center (NVAQC) in Boston, where the worlds of quantum hardware and AI supercomputing will converge to tackle what many consider computing’s final frontier.

The initiative represents one of the most significant corporate investments in quantum computing to date, potentially accelerating the timeline to practical, real-world quantum applications.

When it comes to managing and supporting Apple devices in business and enterprise environments, the most common tool or service that comes to mind is mobile device management (MDM). While MDM is one of the most powerful and necessary tools Apple IT pros need — and getting even more powerful with the addition of generative AI — it should never be thought of as the only tool.

That’s because supporting a fleet of Macs is more complex than doing so with iPhones or iPads.

The Mac has been around a lot longer and has traditionally been a much more open device/platform. Users can install software without relying on Apple’s App Store; it’s possible to work with the underlying technology with access to tools and the command line; macOS supports scripting and automation in multiple forms; deploying content and apps to Macs can be done in multiple ways, depending on specific needs; and macOS supports multiple user accounts (network user accounts, in particular).

In a nutshell, that’s a lot to manage. With that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of 60 tools — yes, 60 — across all parts of the Mac environment that could be useful for IT admins, depending on their environment and needs.

Apple’s tools

Apple provides a number of important tools for enterprise IT, so let’s start with them. 

Support App — Support is an iOS app that walks you through troubleshooting steps for a variety of issues. It also lets you speak or chat with AppleCare. This is aimed mostly at consumers, but still has a place as a worthwhile troubleshooting tool.

AppleCare for Enterprise — As the name suggests, this is a business focused version of Apple’s standard AppleCare support and warranty extension service.

Disk Utility — Built into macOS, Disk Utility lets you view the various volumes and partitions and drives (internal and external) connected to a given Mac. It allows you to edit, reformat and attempt to repair them if there’s an issue with a particular device or volume. It’s a real workhorse and the first tool to reach for to deal with storage issues.

Apple Business Manager — Apple Business Manager is the hub for creating and managing users based on an external directory like Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) or Google Workspace. It also is a hub for deploying and managing devices (including for zero-touch deployment), implementing MDM, and managing other deployment tasks. Its use is essentially mandatory.

Apple Business Essentials — A stripped down version of Apple Business Manager that provides similar user and device management; it’s intended for smaller organizations.

AppleCare Enterprise — Is another one where the name says it all. This is a subscription that allows you to get business and enterprise level support, including priority on-site service and next-day device replacement. 

Activity Manager — Preinstalled on all Macs, this app does exactly what it says: it shows you real-time information on the apps and service running on Mac, and allows you to kill processes if necessary.

Pkgbuild, productbuild (and hdiutil ) — Pkgbuild is a command line utility for creating package files that can be used to deploy apps, settings and content to Apple devices. Similarly, productbuild can create installers focused on a single app with no extraneous content. Hdiutil, on the other hand, allows you to manipulate disk images.

Apple Configurator — There are two versions of this tool. One runs on Macs and configures multiple Apple device simultaneously, the other is an iPhone version that allows you to quickly enroll Macs in an MDM service.

Feedback Assistant — As you’d expect, this allows you to send feedback to Apple. It also serves a source of major news about new releases, including the full release notes for software updates.

Network and directory tools

One of the chief realities of supporting Apple devices in the enterprise is that they will need to integrate well with tools designed around a Windows-centric mindset. Apple does an excellent job making its products good multi-platform enterprise citizens, but these tools can help fill some gaps.

Parallels Mac Management/Microsoft SCCM — Parallels Mac Management is a software plug-in that allows users to manage Mac and Windows computers using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). It can also be used to manage Parallels Desktop virtual machines (VMs).

NoMAD — Short for “No More Active Directory,” it describes itself as a project to create a “macOS menu bar application that provides all the functionality of being bound to AD, and more, without having to be bound.”

UMAD — UMAD (Universal MDM Approval Dialog) is open-source software that provides a custom interface to simplify migrating from one Mac MDM to another

Xcreds — XCreds enhances the Mac login window to allow users to login with Azure, Google Cloud, Okta, or any OpenID Connect passwords. XCreds verifies the user identity provider and saves tokens to the user keychain for validation that the cloud password is in sync with the local password. 

Certificate Request — Certificate Request is a utility for macOS that allows you to request and install digital certificates directly from Active Directory. It makes requesting and managing certificates a one-touch process for use in configuring wireless, Mail, VPN, and other services on macOS that require certificates issued by Active Directory.

Signing Manager — Signing Manager  provides a system for securing code and package-signing certificates, including iOS, macOS, watchOS, and iPadOS app signing without disrupting the current workflow. 

Diagnostic, maintenance, repair and optimization tools

Like most hardware, Macs and other Apple devices require periodic maintenance to perform at their best and to troubleshoot any  problems.

Atomic — This is a tool for examining a Mac’s on-board RAM and identifying problems with installed memory. Since Apple Silicon uses a unified SOC, this is more often a useful tool for Intel-based Macs. 

Techtool Pro — This is a comprehensive set of tools that support disk/volume repair and testing for underlying hardware problems.

Parallels Toolbox is a suite of 50 diagnostic tools for the Mac created by Parallels as an independent product separate from the company’s  virtualization and SCCM-integration tools. 

Disk Drill — Disk Drill is a data recovery solution for macOS and iOS.

Paragon — This is a set of suites/apps designed to detect hardware-induced problems on Apple devices and provide comprehensive disk/volume management beyond what’s available in Disk Utility. It also provides for secure data removal as well as iOS device storage management.

DiskWarrior — For decades, Disk Warrior has remained arguably the best disk and data recovery tool available for techs to use in repair and recovery efforts.

Drive Genius — Prosoft’s Drive Genius provides disk monitoring tools as well as storage management and recover options; it can also automate problem and malware detection.

DaisyDisk — DaisyDisk is a tool for visualizing the current disk usage on Macs; it can help determine what’s taking up shard drive pace and what can be removed to reclaim disk space.

Clean My Mac — MacPaw’s Clean My Mac is useful for performing all manner of maintenance tasks and fully removing unneeded apps and data to keep a Mac running at its best. It can also be used to troubleshoot problems and prevent some security threats.

Clean My Mac for Business — The enterprise version of Clean My Mac is designed to accomplish the same tasks as its consumer counterpart but for an entire fleet of Macs. It can be an adjunct to MDM or, for smaller organizations without dedicated IT staff, it can perform several key functions of MDM.

Clean My Phone — MacPaw’s Clean My Phone does the same kinds of tasks as Clean My Mac, except on the iPhone.

CCleaner — CCleaner provides a range of maintenance and support tools that are available for macOS, iOS, and other computing platforms.

Disk Clean Pro — Available in the macOS App Store, this utility provides automated monitoring and management of storage, file, and image use on a Mac. 

Mac Cleaner Pro — This tool helps visualize, manage and free up storage space on a Mac. Pear Cleaner is the companion app that allows you to do the same on an iOS device.

Malware/Threat detection tools

Cybersecurity is one of the biggest challenges IT departments face. There was a time (when Apple devices commanded so little market share) that they had “security by obscurity” because it wasn’t worth the effort for malicious actors to target them. That’s no longer the case.

Pareto Security — Pareto focuses on the small-business market with a non-invasive malware and security threat monitoring where traditional MDM might not be an available option for your small business.

Suspicious Package — A package management solution that allows you to create, edit and inspect packages. 

Intego — Intego provides a number of different security tools, including malware detection, secure device wipe, network traffic content monitoring, and VPN service.

AVG Security — AVG is a well-known player in the device and data security management. For Macs, it provides malware-detection tools and additional security features to block potential phising attacks, content blocking and firewall features.

Avast — Like others on this list, Avast provides malware detection, content filtering, accessory (webcam) blocking, and ad blocking. 

Norton 360 — Norton is a veteran of the cybersecurity battle. One of the most respected enterprise security vendors, it sports a wide range of personal, small business and enterprise security solutions for Apple and other devices. 

Bit Defender — Bit Defender is an anti-malware company focused on the small business (and consumer) markets. 

Sophos — Another veteran of the security crusade, Sophos provides enterprise malware detection.

Kanji EDR — Kandji is one of the top Apple-specific MDM providers; it’s developed a solution that uses AI to monitor device traffic for patterns of malware or a device-based security threat. It can proactively take corrective action, if possible.

Remote support tools

Remote access tools are essential in today’s IT landscape, particularly as we’re still in a time when remote work remains at relatively high levels. These tools offer various levels of remote support: Putty; Apple Remote Desktop; HelpWise; TeamViewer; GetScreen; and Apple’s Face Time. 

Deployment tools

Munki — Munki and its related tools are excellent options for deploying software and packages to Macs in an enterprise environment.

MIST — Mist is a Mac utility that automatically downloads macOS firmwares and installers.

Payload-free Package Creator — A tool for creating, inspecting and managing macOS packages.

ProfileCreator — An open-source macOS app, Profile Creator offers a way to create standard or customized configuration profiles.

InstallApplications — InstallApplications is an open-source tool that can dynamically download packages for use with InstallApplication. This is handy for DEP bootstraps, allowing you to have a significantly reduced initial package that can easily be updated without repackaging the original.

S.U.P.E.R.M.A.N. — S.U.P.E.R.M.A.N. optimizes the macOS update experience for businesses.

Onboarding tools

DFU Blaster — This tool from TwoCanoes can be used to put a Mac into DFU mode with the press of a single button and restore any version of macOS the Mac system can support.

DEP Notify — DEPNotify is a small, light-weight notification app that was designed to let your users know what’s going on during a DEP enrollment.

MDS — Also from TwoCanoes, this tool can set up and provision Macs out of the box; it sports zero-touch configuration, similar to what’s available with MDM or Apple Business Essentials. It can also manage local storage and Recovery mode/volumes. 

Backup and restore 

Erase-install — This open -ource script automates downloading macOS installers and optionally erasing or upgrading macOS in a single process.

Carbon Copy Cloner — The grandaddy of back up, restore and disk cloning, Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich has been a trusted Mac support tools for decades. CCC Mobile Backup is the iOS sister to Carbon Copy Cloner; it the handles volume management, encryption, verification, and backup versioning.

User self-service options

Self-service options that allow users to find the answers they need on their own (and that allow IT to communicate directly with users), have become key tools as users have grown more technically literate. Responding this way saves a lot of overhead, and it gives users a safe/curated resource instead of something random they might find by searching Google or asking ChatGPT for help.

Hello-IT — Hello-IT is a set of self-support apps that can be provided by IT services to end users.

swiftDialog — Another open-source tool, swiftDialog creates user-focused messaging and notifications.

Virtualization tools

Virtualization is at a crossroads on macOS at the moment. Intel Macs could easily virtualize Windows to run Mac and Windows apps side by side. But Apple Silicon Macs, since they aren’t x86-based, pose problems. It’s possible to virtualize the ARM version of Windows and Parallels has announced an emulation feature to run x86 Windows versions, but the feature is in an early beta state at the moment. 

Virtualization can also be used to create macOS VMs for testing and related purposes. This ability continues on Apple Silicon, but there are some limitations, particularly if you need to virtualize older macOS versions.

VirtualBox — VirtualBox is Oracle’s free virtualization tool. It isn’t anywhere nearly as full featured as other options, but it avoids potential costs. There are preview builds of the software for Apple Silicon, but they currently only support running ARM-based Linux distributions. 

Parallels Desktop — Parallels makes the premier virtualization software for macOS and has even been named an authorized and trusted solution by Microsoft. The company offers various versions of Parallels Desktop, including Pro, Business and Enterprise editions that deliver varying feature sets and remote deployment and management of VMs in a business or enterprise environment. You can use Parallels to virtualize ARM versions of Windows with, as mentioned, support for x86 versions a work in progress.

VMWare Fusion — Fusions feels like the forgotten middle child of virtualization. It gets more updates than VirtualBox and can run ARM-based versions of Windows and Linux (though not macOS), but its feature set isn’t as robust as Parallels — particularly for enterprise environments.

I’ll admit that this list is quite long (and took a while to compile), but every tool here will be useful in some way to many enterprise operations, big and small. The key is to find the tools that you need as an Apple IT Pro and decide which works best in your specific environment.

Adobe is working with Microsoft to develop an AI agent that can generate graphics and design content from within the Microsoft 365 interface.

The Adobe Express Agent, still under development, will allow users to create and embed graphics directly within productivity applications such as Word and PowerPoint, according to Aubrey Cattell, vice president for Adobe’s Creative Cloud Developer Platform and Partner Ecosystem.

The company touted the move during this week’s Adobe Summit, but has not said when the generative AI (genAI) tool would be released; it will ultimately be available to Microsoft 365 customers as a Copilot plugin. 

“We’re building it in partnership with [Microsoft] as they kind of build out their strategy for all third-party agents,” Cattell said.

The agent can create an image for the document, suggest options to generate images, or ask questions. Users can specify within the 365 chatbot interface what images they want  to embed in documents, and the tool will then generate them.

Adobe already has a cloud-based Adobe Express app, which uses generative AI (genAI) to create content for documents, flyers, social media posts and resumes. The tool runs in browsers and mobile devices. 

The Adobe Express Agent is different, as it takes cues from a Word or PowerPoint document and can understand user intent, allowing it to create “something that’s more visual here to express ideas,” Cattell said in an interview.

“You can draw the context from what’s in the document to help you generate something that’s more germane,” Cattell said.

Once users request an image, the agent relies on Adobe’s Firefly text-to-image and text-to-design generative AI model to create content. For example, users might have a concept of a social media post or an ad campaign, which can be described to the Adobe Express Agent.

“It would generate that image and you could just drag it right into your document or into your PowerPoint presentation,” Cattell said.

A basic version of Adobe Express is already available for free. (Adobe has also integrated it  into Wix for website creation, and in Box to store and edit images.)

Adobe has also shipped an Adobe Express custom GPT for ChatGPT where users can request a template using the conversational interface. But there’s an advantage to integrating the agent with the Microsoft 365 interface.

“It’s literally a Copilot to the artifacts that knowledge workers are creating — [it] is super powerful and definitely levels us up,” Cattell said.

He stressed that Adobe’s platform strategy is to “be where our users are in the places where they’re getting work done.”

Besides creating more engaging content, Adobe’s tools are designed to be safe, understanding that organizations or creators can’t afford “oops” moments, said Liz Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“These are truly agentic additions to a worker’s day,” Miller said. “For Adobe, agents are interactive, they reason, they are autonomous, they take action. This definition is wildly important, not just for Adobe but for their customers as well.”

Signal is standing its ground to protect its app’s security, threatening on Wednesday to leave France if encryption backdoor requirements are enacted, just as it said it would do in Sweden.

“Those hyping this bad law have rushed to assure French politicians that the proposal isn’t breaking encryption. Their arguments are as tedious as they are stale, as they are laughable. For those catching up, let’s review the basics: end to end encryption must only have two ends—sender and recipients. Otherwise, it is backdoored,” wrote Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker in a post on X.

“Whatever method is devised to add a third end—from a perverted PRNG in a cryptographic protocol, to vendor-provided government software grafted onto the side of secure communications that allow said government to add themselves to your chats—it rips a hole in the hull of private communications and is a backdoor.”

The Signal CEO added: “This is why, as always, Signal would exit the French market before it would comply with this law as written. At this moment especially, there is simply too much riding on Signal, on our being able to forge a future in which private communication persists, to allow such pernicious undermining.”

Whittaker shared similar thoughts when government officials in Sweden last month attempted a similar end run around encryption. 

Like all legislative bodies, the French legislators are debating various approaches to encryption and it’s not yet clear whether they will end up demanding an encryption backdoor. 

But even setting aside the French authorities’ ultimate decision, Whittaker’s argument about the cybersecurity disaster that will result from undermining encryption is valid.

“Communications don’t stay within jurisdictional boundaries, which means a hole created in France becomes a vector for anyone wanting to undermine Signal’s robust privacy guarantees anywhere,” Whittaker wrote. “Instead of contending with unbreakable math, they only have to compromise a French government employee, or the vendor-provided software used to sideload government operatives into your private chats.”

This encryption backdoor argument is also hitting many other governments globally. Apple, for example, is currently appealing an encryption backdoor demand from the UK, and the United States is chiding those same UK officials for even trying to demand an encryption backdoor. 

The underlying issue here is not limited to government encryption backdoors. If either side of an encrypted conversation is intercepted, the same problem occurs. The Ukrainian military, for example, is now fighting an aggressive phishing campaign that plants malware, oftentimes a keylogger, that bypasses the encryption even more effectively than would a backdoor.

Endpoint interception has also turned around and bitten the cyber crooks themselves. Europol officials in December stumbled on a cyberthief that cleverly used an app that made messages disappear a few minutes after being read. But, given that experienced thieves know enough to not trust other thieves, one of the recipients screen-captured a discussion about money-sharing with his colleagues. That act made all of his encrypted messages readable for law enforcement. 

Many issues with backdoors, say analysts

Analysts are concerned about the growing demands for backdoors. Aisling Dawson, digital security industry analyst at ABI Research, saw Whittaker’s post and said that many government encryption proposals “fail to display an understanding of the technical implications of such a backdoor” and that these governments “face the prospect of increasing numbers of organizations exiting their marketspace, triggering economic losses and reducing the number of security vendors within the ecosystem, or creating the potential for legal and judicial challenges to proposed regulatory action.”

Dawson also saw the encryption backdoor attempts as dangerous. 

“The use of terms like ‘side-client scanning’ within these proposals are complicating and perhaps deliberately obfuscating governments’ intentions with regard to these new proposals which is, at its core, a desire for more backdoors into vendors’ secure communications,” Dawson said. “Piercing through vendors’ cryptographic wall to create a governmental backdoor creates a hole, and it seems fantastical to believe cybercriminals and malicious attackers won’t also attempt to exploit that hole.”

Dawson also argued that there are legal issues raised by backdoors, above and beyond cybersecurity and privacy concerns.

“France’s proposal raises challenges when it comes to prospective defendants challenging any evidence obtained via surveillance through an encryption backdoor, given that the bill inhibits disclosure of any surveillance operations to defendants,” Dawson said. “This fundamentally runs against defendants’ right to hear and challenge evidence placed against them per their ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] Article 6 fair trial rights.”

Other analysts shared similar concerns.

Fred Chagnon, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, said the encryption backdoor approach being debated by the legislators in France is somewhat different than what some other governments are considering.

“France wants to take a different approach with a ‘ghost participant,’ which would allow government entities to silently join encrypted conversations, basically creating a backdoor in real time,” Chagnon said. “Governments need to engage with these [encryption] providers to find a solution that doesn’t fundamentally weaken security instead of pushing for regulations that force companies to break their own encryption.”

And Anshel Sag, a principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, has more general concerns about the government activities throughout Europe around encryption.

“I think this is an unsettling trend we’re starting to see from European governments, the UK’s request of Apple being a similar issue. Backdoors are inherently problematic because they simply give bad actors opportunities to take advantage of those backdoors as well,” Sag said. “Additionally, they create a false sense of security and safety that is no longer there because of the backdoor. Backdoors are simply antithetical to the security and safety that so many of these companies have built their reputations on.”

The European Commission has concluded that Google’s search service violates the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) by favoring its own products and services at the expense of competitors.

The commission also considers the Google Play app store to be in breach of the DMA, partly because fees are too high and partly because developers are not allowed to steer consumers to other distribution channels.

Oliver Berthell, Google’s competition director, fired back after the decision by writing a post — “EU competition rules hurt consumers and businesses” — on the official blog The Keyword.

Google’s parent company Alphabet now risks fines of up to 10% of its global turnover, equivalent to nearly $35 billion.

EU regulators also hit out at Apple in the second of Wednesday’s two rulings.

If you want to understand why making it impossible to encrypt your iCloud data is a huge invitation to organized crime, I have two stories to share. The first involves a surveillance-as-a-service firm getting pwned, the second relates to a new wave of phishing focused malware migrating from Windows to macOS. 

These twin tales emerge in perfect step to maniacal government attempts to insert back doors inside encrypted data, arguing that doing so will make us safer. They won’t, of course — they’ll just make cybercrime easier, particularly for criminals armed with phished credentials who want to insert their own surveillance software inside your unencrypted online data stack. 

This comprises a perfect storm, a cauldron of misery, all being mixed up and destined to doom users everywhere.  

Not the first, not the last: SpyX

TechCrunch caught the Have I Been Pwned story that a consumer-grade spyware outfit called SpyX was breached last year. The 25th in a series of mobile surveillance-as-a-service “firms” to be breached since 2017, the company had almost two million records when the breach occurred, including data concerning Apple users.

SpyX didn’t report the breach when it happened in June 2024, which is why Have I Been Pwned exposed it.

What is SpyX? In this particular manifestation, the stalkerware is sold as a service so parents can track their kids. (It is apparently also used by suspicious partners to spy on their significant others.)

In the Apple ecosystem, the way SpyX reportedly works is to tap into people’s iCloud backups, where it quietly grabs any of your most personal unencrypted information. While this exploit also requires assailants to get hold of the target’s Apple Account data, it is important to note that in the UK government spooks seem to be demanding access without that key.

But for surveillance-as-a-service firms, the fact that you can’t use Advanced Data Protection to secure iCloud data in the UK makes undermining account security the essential next step.

Have you been pwned?

The thing is, your Apple Account ID can protect your data from such attacks, which is why you should always use a complex alphanumeric one and never share it.

However, as everyone with the even slightest bit of interest in security knows, security is only as secure as the weakest part — usually the human using the device. That, in a nutshell, is why phishing attacks are so popular, and why those attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated. Criminals know that if they can find some way to scam your account login details out of you they can jump inside your digital shoebox and grab lots of yummy information about you, your life, even your financial situation.

They don’t even need to use this data themselves; this stuff sells for good money on the Dark Web. Apple’s systems are renowned for being secure, which is why Apple IDs were being sold there for $15 a pop back in 2018.

Get a Mac

If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed that Apple experienced over 25% growth in Mac sales in Q4 2024, far ahead of the PC industry average, which reflects a growing Mac market share for the company.

If market analysts know that, and we know that, then well-resourced criminals are certainly cognizant of this data, which is why they’re moving to Mac. (To be fair, they have been for a while, it’s just that Windows seems to be an easier target.)

But that gravy train is switching platforms, and so are the bad guys. Cybersecurity firm LayerX recently identified a new scareware campaign jumping from Windows to Mac. These attacks are basically a phishing attack designed to trick users into entering their credentials into fake Microsoft security alerts served up via compromised websites.

The idea is to scare users into sharing their login details. 

Jaron Bradley, director of Jamf Threat Labs, explained how Mac users should approach this new attack vector. “Users should never enter their iCloud credentials outside of the official Apple website. They should also be cautious when encountering flashing warnings that prompt them to call a phone number to resolve a supposed threat. These calls often lead to scammers who promise to fix a fake issue in exchange for a fee and credit card information,” he wrote.

Open up

He’s right, because once criminals get your code, they can access your iCloud data (if left unencrypted). They can, in theory, then also infest your iCloud with the kind of scary surveillance software SpyX sells, instantly crafting a backdoor to your digital existence.

Rogue nations in which iCloud data cannot be encrypted, (not that we know who they are), leave their populations wide open to such attacks, closing the best door to protect against them.

And as these twin tales show, these threats aren’t even imaginary, they’re already here. Moral of the tale? Perhaps it’s time to return to on-device iPhone backups and to make use of Apple’s own tools to encrypt data before you put it in iCloud. 

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I live in the future, at least as far as language translation technology is concerned. 

During the past couple of months, I’ve spent most of my time in Italy and Mexico. During all that time, I understood Italian and Spanish — thanks to the Live Translation feature of my Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Announced in September, “Live Translation” is based on Meta’s Llama 3.2 AI model and is currently limited to US and Canada users enrolled in Meta’s Early Access Program. 

The feature translates audible French, Spanish, and Italian into audible English in the glasses and typed English on the app — and shows the wearer’s English translated into the selected language. 

When I first arrived at the Catania airport in Sicily, I turned on Live Translation by saying, “Hey, Meta: Start Live Translation.”

The first thing I heard using this feature was airport employees directing travelers. They spoke in Sicilian-accented Italian, but I heard: “European passport holders please enter this line; all others go here.” 

From that point on, I turned on Live Translation from time to time and was able to understand simple things people might be telling me. In a few cases, I translated my own words into Italian (first speaking in English, then reading the translation in the app in Italian).

It’s not perfect. It also translates English into English (and sometimes mistranslates English to English). It can fail to translate words spoken nearby. At other times, it will translate words spoken across the room when people are talking to each other, not to me. 

Ray-Ban Meta glasses also do another neat translation trick. While using Live AI, another Early Access feature, you can look at a sign in a foreign language and ask what it means in English, and it will speak the English translation. 

Despite the language glitches, this is a clear glimpse of the future for all of us — the very near future. 

Apple AirPods

Bloomberg reported on March 13 that Apple will add live language translation to iOS 19 for AirPod users. 

According to the report, the user’s AirPods capture foreign language speech and speak the English translation into the ears of the AirPod wearer. Then, when the user speaks English, the iPhone speaker plays the translation into the foreign language via Apple’s Translate app. 

The feature is expected to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June and released in the fall.

The languages to be supported have not been reported, but Apple’s Translate app supports 20. And Apple is by no means first to market with language translation earbuds. 

Google Pixel Buds

Google has included live translation through its Pixel Buds and Pixel Buds Pro earbuds since October 2017. 

The feature does what I described for the Apple AirPods: It delivers translated foreign-language speech through the Pixel Buds while outputting translated English words through the phone speaker. That’s what happens in Conversation Mode. When users switch to Transcribe Mode, they can get a live transcription of the translated foreign language, which is useful for listening to business presentations, attending speeches, or watching movies. 

The Pixel Buds’ language translation feature works via the excellent Google Translate app. In Conversation Mode, it supports more than 100 languages; Transcribe Mode, however, only supports four languages: French, German, Italian, and Spanish. 

Language translation requires an Android device running Android 6.0 or later that’s Google Assistant-enabled, including non-Pixel phones. However, if you do have an advanced Pixel phone, the translation gets much better. 

Compatible Pixel phones (especially models with a Tensor processor) offer Live Translate with text messages, through the camera, in videos, and even during phone calls. 

A world of translation products

Language translation features that go in the ears come in many varieties. 

The TimeKettle WT2 Edge/W3 is highly rated. It supports 40 online languages and 13 pairs of offline languages, enabling two-way simultaneous translation that eliminates the need for alternating speech patterns. The system achieves up to 95% translation accuracy through its AI platform, according to the company. 

The Vasco Translator E1 supports an impressive 51 languages and uses 10 different AI-powered translation engines. The system allows up to 10 people to join conversations using the mobile app. 

The Pilot by Waverly Labs translates the wearer’s words to others and also translates replies back to the wearer’s language.

Smart glasses that translate are also available. 

• The Solos AirGo 3 Smart Glasses perform real-time language translation via the SolosTranslate platform and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

• Brilliant Labs’ Frame AI Glasses are open-source AR glasses that can translate languages seen in the environment, recognize images and provide information about them, and search the internet for results. The glasses use augmented reality to display translations directly in the user’s field of vision. They integrate with OpenAI, Whisper, and Perplexity technologies. 

• TCL AR Glasses can live-translate conversations, offering an integrated heads-up display for showing the translation. 

Other form-factors exist, too, including the TimeKettle X1, K&F Concept Language Translator Device, ili Wearable Translator, Vasco Translator E1, TimeKettle WT2 Edge, and Timekettle ZERO Language Translator.

All these products demonstrate that the technology for traveling the world and being able to hold conversations, read signs and understand people in foreign languages is already here, and has been for a while. 

Going mainstream

What’s about to change is the arrival of this feature in totally mainstream products. Something like 100 million people use their Apple AirPods almost every day. Meta expects to sell more than 10 million Ray-Ban Meta glasses by the end of 2026, by which time Live Translation and Live AI will be offered to all users globally. 

What’s really happening is that we’re heading for a world in which every wearable speaker — earbuds, headphones, smart glasses, and more — will give us live language translation on command or even automatically.

The worst thing about this emerging trend is that, in the future, far fewer people will bother to learn foreign languages, relying instead on AI. 

But the upside is that language barriers between people on our planet will be essentially erased, and people will more easily understand one another. That’s got to be a good thing. 

In the meantime, live translation tech has been a radical and welcome game-changer for me as I travel the world as a digital nomad. Partnering with AI, I can speak foreign languages I never learned. 

An industry generative artificial intelligence (genAI) alliance, the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), on Wednesday announced that xAI, Nvidia, GE Vernova, and NextEra Energy were joining BlackRock, Microsoft, and Global Infrastructure Partners as members. But given that the announcement specified no financial commitments or any other details, analysts doubted it would make much of a difference.

Still, even though the massive global momentum behind genAI is unlikely to be changed by the announcement, the addition of the two energy companies to the group was an implicit acknowledgement that the ever-increasing power requirements of genAI data centers need serious attention.

Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, said that the massive resources behind this initiative, including Blackrock, which reported in January that it held assets worth $11.6 trillion, making it the world’s largest money manager, can make the difference.

Sales of virtual reality (VR) headsets fell by 12% in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to a new report from analyst firm Counterpoint. The decline markers the third year in a row sales have fallen — and it is mainly on the consumer side that demand is low.

The best performer is Meta, which has a 77% market share, followed by Sony, Pico, DPVR, and Apple.

When it comes to Apple, interest in the pricey Vision Pro has increased among business users. But the headset, which went on sale just over a year ago, is still only available in 13 countries and territories.

Counterpoint expects demand for VR headsets to remain low this year, though interest in smart glasses with augmented reality (AR) capabilities is expected to increase significantly.

With its latest Digital Markets Act (DMA) action against Apple, the European Commission (EC) proves it is bad for competition, bad for consumers, and bad for business. It also threatens Europeans with a hitherto unseen degree of data insecurity and weaponized exploitation. The information Apple is being forced to make available to competitors with cynical interest in data exfiltration will threaten regional democracy, opening doors to new Cambridge Analytica scandals.

This may sound histrionic. And certainly, if you read the EC’s statement detailing its guidance to “facilitate development of innovative products on Apple’s platforms” you’d almost believe it was a positive thing. Gee, you might think, now those no-mark, cheap not-so-smart watches will offer some of the features Apple invented. But the positive spin of a press release puts a gloss over a tide of darkness.

What Europe wants

• Device manufacturers and app developers will be provided with improved access to iPhone features that interact with connected devices (e.g. displaying notifications on smartwatches), faster data transfers (e.g. peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections, and near-field communication) and easier device set-up (e.g. pairing). 
• To force this interoperability, developers will gain “improved access to technical documentation on features not yet available to third parties, timely communication and updates, and a more predictable timeline for the review of interoperability requests.”

The words, “not yet available” do a lot of heavy lifting in the above. They basically require that, when developing new features, Apple must also develop those features to be compatible with competitive system for no cost. That’s going to raise the cost of development and slow the introduction of new features in the EU.

The specification decisions are legally binding. Apple is required to implement them in accordance with the conditions set out in the decisions, European regulators explained, adding that Apple still has the right to independent judicial scrutiny.

I don’t know whether Apple will exercise that right, but it should. Seriously, if commissioners really believe this will be good for tech, innovation, or competition across the region, their hallucination shows the extent to which our political classes are utterly disconnected from the reality most of us endure. It is also noteworthy that Apple is the only tech firm these demands are being made of.

Europe gives your privacy away

I’m not just talking about the notion that Apple must permit sideloading on iPhones and offer support for app services outside of the App Store. I’ve almost accepted there’s merits to that. There might even be solutions to the dangers it also provides. But in this case, I’m looking at a reprehensible set of additional demands being levied against the company in the region.

One of the worst of these is that notifications, until now end-to-end encrypted on your devices, will be shared with manufacturers of “connected devices” in unencrypted form. Ostensibly, that is so manufacturers can work with those notifications and weave them into their own product experiences. But in practice, it means your notifications can be exfiltrated from your device and transported to servers beyond your control.

Once that information is out there, it is no longer protected and will give those with access to it (likely including data-mining firms) even closer insight into what you do, where you go, and who you are.

It’s a measure that absolutely conflicts with GDPR rules, which is why companies with an at-best questionable record on respecting customer privacy such as Meta have been requesting such access. Apple also claims some companies are making interoperability requests that abuse the DMA system.

A threat to security?

You won’t need to dig deep to see how this kind of data was abused before. Now it will be again, this time using more powerful generative AI (genAI) technology to generate insights, results, plans, personalized posts and highly targeted ads.

Don’t even get me started on how the exfiltration of data could also be used by foreign intelligence services. I’m sure the Commission spent time considering that before it decided to carve a massive hole at the heart of privacy and security on the world’s most trusted and secure mobile platform.

Why wouldn’t the kind of information gathered by data brokers using these “connected devices” be of use to, say, a hostile intelligence service attempting to track troop or munitions movements? 

Apple can protect us against this kind of threat, you say? Not under the DMA. Because when it comes to security patches for services/on-device features used by competitors, Apple will need to not only test its patches on its own devices, but on theirs (at its own expense).

In some cases, such as when attempting to put a stop to hostile data extraction, third-party developers may complain, Apple will have to investigate, and the complaint may end up on the desk of some European mandarin for final adjudication. As a result, sometimes essential software updates might take days, weeks, or even months to gain approval, leaving customers exposed to abuse in the meantime.

Is that what you call security? 

That’s not Apple’s fault, either, it’s how this part of the DMA implementation has been designed.

What Apple said

Apple isn’t at all happy. In a statement, it said: “Today’s decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple’s ability to innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to give away our new features for free to companies who don’t have to play by the same rules. It’s bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users.” 

There are several other iniquitous measures contained in Europe’s flawed judgement. For example, Apple will be forced to hand over access to innovations to competitors for free from day one, slowing innovation. This is going to make product introductions in Europe much slower. The implementation also gives unqualified European officials the power to micromanage what Apple does and what software it gets to release.

It’s a field day for Apple’s biggest competitors.  It is noteworthy that Apple is the only company to have such demands made of it under so called ‘Specification Tools’ provided to European regulators under the DMA.

What makes this weird is that even though other companies are also subject to the DMA’s interoperability requirements, it is only Apple that is being forced to share its innovations. It means Apple must give away its intellectual property to competitors for free — even though those competitors are not obliged to follow the same rules. That seems to be an incredibly one-sided application of process that ignores the 250,000+ APIs Apple already offers developers so they can build products on its platforms.

Who pays for all of this? 

You — users worldwide — will pay for Europe’s folly. You see, while Apple will now be forced to pay staffers to test software changes across all its own devices and across third-party and competing services and products in Europe, it will not be able to pass on that charge to those competitors.

To get some scale to this, Apple already has 500 engineers in Europe working on DMA compliance.  The new DMA findings mean it will need to hire even more, and if the competitors aren’t paying for those people, and Europe is not paying for those people, then it will be you paying for those people. 

This likely means more expensive Apple products, as Apple users globally are forced to pay to support rules that actually make their digital lives less secure, while also opening up access to their personal information to some of the worst companies in the world.

What about business?

This affects enterprise users as well. Sure, some companies (particularly one household name) will make billions exploiting this personal information. But others will immediately find themselves struggling with a newly inflated threat environment that means they’ll have to, among other things, limit what employees do with the devices they use and put policies and protections in place against casual data exfiltration.

Endpoint security, already a challenging space, will become even more difficult to guarantee, as that harmless seeming smart home device with seemingly benign access to your notifications turns out to be sending your notifications and location data to rogue nation states. 

How does that protect your business? It doesn’t. How does that help your business grow? It won’t. 

Better use Lockdown Mode — until Europe bans it.

State-sponsored failure

I’ve always been pro-Europe. The freedom to move between member states and the opportunity to settle in them was an important benefit for most of my life, until it was thrown away with Brexit. But this new set of European rules absolutely illustrates the dumb decision-making that drove so many in my country to vote to leave the bloc. It’s yet another chink in the battle-weary armor of privacy and security. It’s yet another in what seems an unyielding series of state-mandated enshitifications that erode platform security, damage personal privacy, and threaten business and commerce globally, not just in Europe.

The effect of this mass data exfiltration is a threat to democracy. The only beneficiaries will be dodgy AI firms trying to monetize your data for their advantage. None of this is good. All of it is wrong. And globally, we are all poorer for it. 

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

When you receive an email with an invoice, wouldn’t it be nice if it automatically saved the file to your finance folder, logged the amount in your tracking spreadsheet, and notified your manager? That’s exactly what Microsoft Power Automate can do, along with a host of other automated actions.

Like its competitors IFTTT and Zapier, Power Automate allows business professionals of all stripes to create automated workflows involving a series of tasks across certain applications or services — even those from different vendors — that send notifications, ask for and offer approvals, and handle rote tasks automatically, with no coding required. The automation tool is part of what Microsoft calls its Power Platform, a suite of AI-enabled and AI-enhanced process automation tools.

Power Automate taps into enterprise apps and services via components called “connectors.” Microsoft offers more than 1,000 prebuilt, certified connectors, and you can build custom connectors to other apps.

While anyone with a Microsoft account can use Power Automate for free on a limited basis, business users will need a paid subscription to access key connectors and tools. Power Automate is included with most Microsoft 365 enterprise plans, so you may well already have access to it; if not, separate Power Automate plans start at $15 per user per month.

Here’s what you need to know to get up and running with Power Automate.

In this article:

• Understanding the basics
• Getting started
• Your first automation: Email filing
• Adding AI power: Copilot and AI Builder
• Making your flows reliable
• The last word

Understanding the basics

Often with a service like Power Automate, you get a bit of the writer’s “staring at a blank page” syndrome, where you don’t even know where to begin. What’s even possible? Fortunately, Microsoft offers templates that show a bunch of a different possibilities: surf over to its templates gallery to get a sense of what you can do, from saving email attachments in a SharePoint library to recording form responses from a Google Sheet (yes, really!).

But the templates are just a starting point. You’ll want to write something customized for your own workflows, I’m sure. Before we dive into building automations (or “flows” as they’re called in Power Automate), let’s get comfortable with what we’re working with.

Think of Power Automate as your personal digital assistant that can work across your applications. There are three main types of automation you can create:

• Cloud flows are like having an assistant in the cloud, constantly watching for things to happen in your online apps like Outlook, SharePoint, or Teams. There are actually three types of these cloud flows: automated, instant, and scheduled, which do about what you think they’d do.
• Desktop flows are like having someone sit at your computer, clicking and typing for you in desktop applications like Excel or specialized business software.
• Business process flows are more like having a guide that walks you through complex procedures step by step, ensuring nothing gets missed.

Each type serves a different purpose, and you’ll likely use a combination of them as you become more comfortable with automation.

Getting started

Let me walk you through setting up Power Automate for the first time. The process is straightforward, but there are a few important details to pay attention to.

First, open your web browser and go to microsoft365.com. If you’re not already signed in, use your work email and password. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you see the Microsoft 365 app launcher (a square icon with nine dots) in the top left corner.

Click the app launcher; this opens a panel showing all your available Microsoft 365 apps. Don’t worry if you don’t see Power Automate right away — scroll down and look for it. The icon looks like a multicolored right arrow. If you don’t see it, use the search bar at the top of the app launcher pane.

Click on Power Automate to open it. The first time you open it, you might see a brief tutorial. Feel free to go through it or click Skip if you prefer to dive right in. When the whole app opens, you’ll see a welcome screen with templates and suggestions.

Power Automate’s Home screen is brimming with suggested flows and tutorials.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Take a moment to look at the left navigation bar: this is where you’ll find your flows, templates, and connections later.

Your first automation: Email filing

You probably noticed in the previous screenshot that Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI tool, is now integrated with Power Automate. That means you can describe an automation you’d like to create in natural language, and Power Automate will generate a flow based on your prompt. But Copilot isn’t available to all Power Automate users, and it’s helpful for everyone to know how to build a flow from scratch; that’ll make it easier to adjust and improve any AI-generated flows.

So, let’s start with something everyone needs: automatically organizing emails. Let’s assume you’re in charge of receiving applications for something at work — maybe it is an internship, or perhaps you’re running a scholarship program and you are managing the entries. I’ll show you how to create a flow that stores files attached to emails in SharePoint and tracks them in a neat, centralized list. This is a perfect first flow because it’s both useful and teaches several important concepts.

From the Power Automate home page, look for the button in the left navigation bar labeled Create and click it. (You can alternatively click My flows first, then look for the New flow button up top.)

You’ll see several options. For this flow, we want the whole automation to run without us having to start it, so select Automated cloud flow.

Choose Automated cloud flow on the left for your first flow.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

This opens the flow creation wizard. Name your flow Scholarship Applications.

Next, you choose a trigger, which is the event that will start your flow. In the trigger search box, type Outlook new email and select When a new email arrives. You will be able to add conditions to make it more specific later.

Name the new flow and choose a trigger.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Click Create to continue. The trigger appears in the middle of a blank canvas in Power Automate.

Next, we add steps. The flow executes one step at a time, and each step is an action that the flow will perform once triggered. But first we need to configure the start of our sequence and add a couple of parameters so we can nail down which types of emails we’re looking for and what about them we want Power Automate to do.

Click the When a new email arrives trigger and look at the parameters tab. You’ll want to add four important advanced parameters, which you’ll be able to see in the window by clicking Show all.

Adding advanced parameters to the new email trigger.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

You want to add the following:

• Include Attachments: set to Yes
• Subject Filter: type in Scholarship application
• Folder: set to Inbox (click the folder icon and select Inbox from the pop-up menu)

Then just click back over on the canvas area to save those changes.

Let’s keep adding actions. Click the + sign below your “When a new email arrives” trigger, and the “Add an action” pane appears.

Let’s add our new action by searching for Create item. It will have the SharePoint logo attached to it to let you know it’s related to SharePoint Online. Click on Create item to add it to your canvas.

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Adding an action after the trigger will tell the flow what to do next.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Now you can configure the action a little more granularly. You need to give the SharePoint Create item action a couple of parameters, because otherwise it won’t know what SharePoint site you want to use for this flow, nor will it know which list to use and augment as new emails and attachments arrive.

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Configuring the SharePoint action item.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Go ahead and select the SharePoint site you want to use, and then select the list you want for this flow. You might need to go over to your SharePoint site first and create a new list for use with this flow; once you do, it should appear in a drop-down list automatically when you click the List Name field. (It may take a few minutes to show up.) You’ll also want to add a text column in your SharePoint list called “Message Content” — this is where the automation will store the body of the email message for you.

You’ll also want to add a couple of advanced parameters to your Create item action:

• Click Show all to show the choices.
• Under Limit Columns by View, select All Items.
• Under Title, type / (slash) and select Insert dynamic content from the pop-up menu. On the pane that appears to the right, select From under “When a new email arrives.”
• Under Message Content, type / and select Insert dynamic content, then select either Body or Body Preview under the Outlook “When a new email arrives” list in the pane on the right. (Body Preview might not be immediately visible. To find it, type body in the search box up top and it will appear among the options.)
• Under “Content type Id,” select Item.

Setting up advanced parameters of the SharePoint action item.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Click the canvas to close the parameters screen and save your changes.

Next, we need to add a condition. A condition affects the behavior of an action when another factor is true or false. In this case, we want the condition to say that the next two actions have output from the previous action applied to them — specifically, we want the attachment from the new email received to be applied to each of our next two subsequent actions.

Click the + sign under the Create item action. On the “Add an action” screen, search for apply to each and then click the Apply to each option that comes up under Control.

Adding an “Apply to each” control.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

In the “Select an output from previous steps” field, type / and select Insert dynamic content, then select Attachments to the right. This tells Power Automate to use the attachment for each of the next actions it’s going to take.

Attaching the attachment to the next actions.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Click on the canvas to save the “Apply to each” control. At this point, your flow should look like the figure below.

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Our flow now has a trigger, an action, and a condition.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Next, click the + sign below the “Apply to each” action and add another action. (This ought to be a pretty familiar routine for you at this point.)

Here, we need to get the attachment — but we need to use the Outlook “Get Attachment” and NOT the SharePoint “Get attachments.” This is a key distinction. So when you search for get attachment, make sure to pick the one in the Outlook subsection.

Then, in the parameters section, hit / and choose Insert dynamic content in each field, and add Message Id to the Message Id field and Attachments Attachment ID to the “Attachement [sic] Id” field. Both of these items are under the Outlook “When a new email arrives” list in the pane that appears on the right, but they might not be immediately visible. To find them, type the first few letters of each in the search box up top and choose the item from the list that appears.

Filling out the parameters for the Get Attachment action.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Click back on the canvas when you’re done to save your changes.

Now, for the final action, click the plus sign below the Get Attachment item, search for add attachment, and choose Add attachment from the SharePoint list. Here, you need to add parameters again, which you should be getting used to as well. You’ll want to add:

• Site Address: pick your SharePoint site.
• List Name: pick the SharePoint list.
• Id: hit the / key, choose dynamic content, and select ID from the SharePoint list.
• File Name: hit the / key, choose dynamic content, and then choose Attachments Name from the Outlook list.
• File Content: hit the / key, choose dynamic content, and then choose either Content Bytes or Attachments Content from the Outlook list.

Filling in the parameters for the “Add attachment” action.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Finally, click Save in the top right of the overall Power Automate window to keep the flow saved in your account. The final flow should look like this:

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Our first flow is complete!

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Your flow is now ready to test. Use the Test button to try it out. You’ll be asked how you want to test — select Manual, and then send yourself an email with an attachment and put “scholarship application” in the subject line. The flow will report back to you onscreen and show you how long it took to process and what happened at each step.

Note: you may receive errors about a duplicate filename. This relates to the fact we’re not trying to rename individual attachment names when we save them into SharePoint, so if you get a bunch of PDFs from different individuals all called “application” or something similar, Power Automate is telling you the names are duplicated and it isn’t renaming them. This is fine for our purposes, since we are saving the attachments to individual list items, so we’ll always know who they’re from regardless of the filename.

Other errors may result from how your specific Microsoft 365 tenant is configured, but you can often find a workaround. For example, using the Body item in the Message Content field in this flow works fine in my tenant, but when my editor tested it in her tenant, the flow failed, flagging ‘item/MessageContent’ as the source of the error. When she substituted Body Preview in that field, the flow ran flawlessly. So if you hit an error when you start building your own flows, it’s worth looking for a similar item you can substitute.

You’ll know the flow is working when you get green arrows at each step. You can also head over to your SharePoint list, and you should see your message added to the list. The email address of the sender will be in the first column, the message body in the second, and then when you click the individual item, you’ll see the attachments listed there — just click on them to open them up.

Viewing the final result of the automation in SharePoint.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Voila! You’ve just made your first flow and organized a bunch of stuff out of your inbox into a single place where you can share the load with co-workers.

Adding AI power: Copilot and AI Builder

Now let’s make things really interesting by adding artificial intelligence to your flows. This is where automation becomes truly powerful, handling tasks that traditionally required human review.

In this example, let’s ask Copilot to create a flow that automatically processes invoices using AI Builder, a Power Platform feature that creates AI models that automate your business processes. What’s cool about this example is that you’re going to build it simply by describing what you want in natural language, and as part of the resulting flow, Power Automate will integrate AI Builder actions, which use generative AI to review and extract information from existing data and then do something with it.

Note: You’ll need an AI Builder credit allocation or a premium Power Automate license to work with this section.

Create a new flow in Power Automate, and then click Describe it to design it. You’ll get the following screen as a result:

Type in natural language to have Copilot generate a workflow based on your prompt.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

Now, in the large box in the center of the screen, just describe the flow you want to create. I’ll give you some language here, which you can either cut and paste yourself into the wizard, or you can change any part of it you like simply by customizing the prompt.

Example: When a new invoice file is created in SharePoint, I want to use AI Builder to extract information from the invoices. Specifically, I want to extract the invoice number (highly recommended), date, total amount, vendor information, and line items (if needed). Once that information has been extracted, I want the information to be added to a list in SharePoint, with the AI-extracted fields mapped to list columns, and also including the processing date and status. I also want to send an email to accounting to notify them of the presence of the invoice, and that email should include extracted data in the email body, have the original invoice file attached, and should also have links to the SharePoint entry. I also want some error handling to check if AI extraction succeeded, and if it didn’t, I want an email to notify me of the failure and also to create a task for manual review.

Once you’ve got the prompt set, click the arrow at the bottom right of the prompt window to enter it. Depending on how you customized your prompt, you’ll get something like the following flowchart, reflecting Power Automate’s interpretation of your prompt:

You can take an AI-generated flow and then expand and fine-tune it.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

That’s it! You can click Next below the suggested flow and then click each action as we did before to configure the specific SharePoint libraries, lists, and files involved as well as the email contents and bodies.

Making your flows reliable

Reliability is the cornerstone of successful automation. While creating flows is exciting, ensuring that they continue to work flawlessly is what separates effective automation from frustrating setbacks. Let me walk you through how to build robust, dependable flows that you can trust.

First, think about error handling as you build your flow. After each major action, take a moment to consider what might go wrong. Maybe an email won’t send, a file won’t upload, or data won’t process correctly. These potential failure points need safeguards.

This is where Run after settings become your best friend. You can create an action that responds to what happens during a previous step in the sequence: when the step is successful, when it fails, when it’s skipped, when it times out, or some combination of the above. Think of this as your flow’s safety net.

For example, you could set up an action that sends you an email notification if a previous action fails, is skipped, or times out. Click the + sign after an action to add a new step. Search for and select Send me an email notification. Type in a subject line for the notification (which could include the Subject line from the original email, via the / key, dynamic content pane) and some body text indicating that the flow did not complete successfully.

Next, right-click the new action in the flow and select Run after from the pop-up menu. The action’s pane opens to the Settings tab. Scroll down to the “Run after” section. You’ll see the name of the action immediately above it in the flow. Click that action to expand it, then check Has timed out, Is skipped, and Has failed. Uncheck Is successful.

If you like, you can add other previous actions to this list by clicking Select actions and selecting the actions you want, then expanding and checking/unchecking the status options under each action. In this way, you can set up a single “Run after” step for all the previous actions in a flow, or you can create different “Run after” steps for different actions in the flow.

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Setting up ‘Run after’ actions and options.

Jonathan Hassell / Foundry

By setting up “Run after” responses, you’ll be prepared when something does go wrong. Set up notification actions to alert you immediately if a step fails. Create incident tickets so your team can track issues. Keep a log of errors in a spreadsheet for pattern analysis. And don’t forget about retry logic — sometimes a second attempt is all that’s needed to succeed.

Parallel branches are another powerful tool for reliability. By clicking the + symbol between steps and choosing Add parallel branch, you can create simultaneous operations. This is perfect for running independent processes, maintaining backup procedures, or sending out secondary notifications. Think of it as having multiple backup plans running simultaneously.

Finally, let’s talk about monitoring — your early warning system for potential issues. Create a daily monitoring flow that runs automatically. Have it check your flow history and look for any failures. Set it up to send you a daily digest summarizing what’s working and what needs attention. Include success rates so you can spot trends before they become problems.

Your monitoring system should also include smart alerts. Set up notifications for critical failures that need immediate attention. Configure warnings when performance starts to slip. Track usage statistics to ensure you’re making the most of your automation resources.

Remember, reliability isn’t about preventing every possible problem — it’s about having systems in place to catch issues early and resolve them quickly. With these practices in place, you can build flows that don’t just work today but continue working reliably long into the future.

The last word

Microsoft Power Automate provides a service like Zapier and IFTTT that is well integrated with both Microsoft 365 and many other popular cloud services used by individuals and businesses alike. While I’m not exhaustively comparing Power Automate to IFTTT and Zapier, Microsoft shops and especially organizations already in bed with Microsoft 365 may find integrating flows into their daily work easier and more user-friendly.

Whatever the situation, using flows can mean the difference between forgetting subtle but critical details in business workflows and having all of your bases covered.

This article was originally published in October 2019 and updated in March 2025.

Windows comes loaded with a lot of applications, but to be honest, they aren’t all the best. There are better tools out there, and you don’t have to spend any money to get them. 

These are must-have applications I always find myself installing on any new PC –— they’re all free, open source, and will instantly upgrade any Windows experience. Even better, they can boost your productivity at work or just streamline the way you use your PC at home.

Each of these is also lightweight and bloatware-free: No annoying features that get in your way, no ads bothering you, and no heavy application grinding away slowly while you wait for it to open — just a collection of useful, community-created tools that respect you and do their jobs well. Now, this is what PC computing was meant to be.

Want more useful Windows apps and PC-related tips? Sign up for my free Windows Intelligence newsletter. Plus, I’ll send you free Windows Field Guide downloads as a bonus when you sign up!

1. Everything

Everything is the best file-search tool on Windows, hands down. Unlike the built-in file search feature in the Start menu or File Explorer, Everything finds, well, everything, in an instant. And while those search results are just for file names, it’s still an incredibly fast and lightweight way to find anything on your PC. I find it absolutely indispensable.

Everything is the best Windows file search tool — bar none.

Chris Hoffman/IDG

2. PowerToys (especially PowerToys Run)

Microsoft PowerToys is an incredible collection of tools I recommend to everyone. There are so many useful PowerToys in this package, and many of them feel like upgrades to built-in Windows experiences — like the “Advanced Paste” tool that lets you convert text you copy from Microsoft Word to Markdown formatting as you paste it to FancyZones (which is basically the Windows “Snap” feature on steroids).

But the best upgrade in the package just might be PowerToys Run. It’s an alternate launcher for Windows — you could use it instead of the Start menu, pressing a key combination (like Windows+Space) to open it.

And, unlike the Start menu, PowerToys Run actually respects your choice of default web browser and search engine, rather than forcing you to use Bing and Edge. That’s reason enough to use it, though it can also do so many other things — such as finding notes in your OneNote notebooks, switching to windows by their name, searching your browser history, and more.

PowerToys Run is the launcher Windows should include.

Chris Hoffman/IDG

3. Open-Shell (but Start11 is more polished)

Don’t like the standard Windows Start menu? Open-Shell is a completely free, open-source replacement that will work well on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.

That said, Open-Shell isn’t the most feature-filled application. Start11 is definitely the best Start menu replacement — if you’re willing to spend $10 to $15. (It’s the one application I’m mentioning here that isn’t open source, but it’s inexpensive and very polished.)

Whichever option you choose, you can customize and personalize your Start menu — and you won’t see ads or forced changes as Microsoft keeps updating Windows and tweaking the menu. It’s a great way to make Windows 11 behave more like Windows 10, too.

4. EarTrumpet

Do you find yourself adjusting the volume of individual apps? I do — especially when participating in online meetings. Windows has this functionality, but it takes a few clicks and some scrolling to find. 

EarTrumpet makes it much easier. After installing it, you’ll get a convenient system tray icon where you can access application volume sliders in just a single click. Simple.

EarTrumpet lets you control application volumes in a snap.

Chris Hoffman/IDG

5. ShareX (or Greenshot for quick screenshots)

The Windows Snipping Tool is getting pretty good, especially on Windows 11, where it also has built-in screen recording features. But ShareX is still more powerful — and it also brings easy screen recording to Windows 10.

ShareX is packed with useful features. It can take a scrolling screenshot of a document, or record a video and save it as an animated GIF. It lets you annotate images — and you can even configure it to automatically upload the images you capture to a server when you’re done. It’s a serious power-user tool for capturing screenshots.

Greenshot, another classic screenshot tool, is still a great pick for quick screenshots. However, it’s no longer actively updated like ShareX.

6. Sumatra PDF

Sumatra PDF is an incredibly lightweight app for viewing PDF files. It launches with lightning fast speed, and it’s a nice minimal tool. It doesn’t include the serious security features Adobe uses to “sandbox” PDF code, but it doesn’t need to. Instead, Sumatra PDF stays secure by refusing to support scripting and other advanced document features that make PDFs more like web pages than traditional documents.

In other words: If you want to complete an interactive government form with built-in code, you’ll want another PDF reader. But if you just want to read a PDF document the old-fashioned way? Sumatra PDF is perfect — and fast.

Sumatra PDF helps you avoid those PDFs getting lost in a pile of browsers, too. It can even read eBook files!

For simple and minimal document viewing, Sumatra PDF is the best.

Chris Hoffman/IDG

7. NanaZip (or 7-Zip)

7-Zip is a classic free file archiver tool — a nag-free alternative to WinRAR and WinZip. It can open nearly anything you can throw at it, including RAR files, 7Z files, and TAR files. But 7-Zip is getting a little long in the tooth, and it shows — the interface just feels outdated.

That’s one reason why I prefer NanaZip, which is based on the same underlying 7-Zip code, but offers a more modern interface that feels at home on the latest version of Windows. More importantly, NanaZip automatically updates itself, unlike 7-Zip, ensuring you’ll always have the latest security patches installed without micromanagement.

8. Notepad++

The classic Notepad application is much too basic. On Windows 11, it’s more powerful with features such as tabs — but it also asks you to sign in with your Microsoft account. It’s weird.

Notepad++ is a major upgrade. This lightweight text editor has tabs — even on Windows 10 — and it sports syntax highlighting for programming and scripting. It’s useful even if you just need to tweak HTML regularly, like I do, and the Find and Replace feature works well. Plain and simple, it’s packed with useful features that will come in handy for when you need to work with plain-text files.

Notepad++ is the best plain-text editor for Windows PCs.

Chris Hoffman/IDG

9. Paint.NET

Microsoft is making Paint more powerful, but if I am being honest, it is starting to feel like an AI image generation playground. Paint.NET, on the other hand, is an incredible tool and a secret weapon I’ve used my entire career: a completely free, easy, and lightweight way to quickly edit images and screenshots.

Paint.NET is packed with features that Paint doesn’t have, and it feels more like a tool for getting image work done. 

10. VLC media player (and MusicBee)

Microsoft’s bundled Media Player app is fine, but VLC media player is even better. It can play nearly any type of video or audio file you throw at it — no configuration necessary. It’s also jam-packed with useful features, but you don’t have to use them. Out of the box, it’s just a simple, practical media player.

And if you still have a local music library? MusicBee is the best library-style player for managing that MP3 collection.

More classic Windows-tweaking apps

There is no need to settle for a PC that doesn’t work exactly how you want it — sometimes, all you need to take your PC to the next level is knowing where to look for the right apps. For more ways to improve your Windows experience, check out this guide on the easiest way to install apps on a new Windows PC.

Want even more Windows productivity and tweaking tips? Sign up for my free Windows Intelligence newsletter. I’ll send you three new things to try each Friday. Plus, you’ll get free copies of Paul Thurrott’s Windows Field Guides as a special welcome gift.

New PCs introduced Tuesday by Dell sport high-powered Nvidia GPUs designed to help workers test AI models before deployment.

The new AI PC lineup includes laptops and desktops with Nvidia’s latest Blackwell Ultra and Blackwell GPUs, which provide the muscle needed to test compute-intensive AI models. AI PCs are designed to run generative AI tools and models more efficiently than standard PCs.

[ Related: More AI PC news and insights ]

“These AI developer PCs will make it much easier for developers to prototype, to test and even scale their models into production environments,” said Kevin Terwilliger, vice president and general manager for consumer, commercial and gaming PCs at Dell.

The announcement coincides with Nvidia’s rollout of its latest GPU Blackwell Ultra at the GTC conference in San Jose. The GPU is the successor to the red-hot Blackwell GPU, which racked up $11 billion in sales in the most recent quarter.

The Pro Max series of workstations bring hardware previously used in data centers to desktops. “These systems will redefine AI developer experiences by really bridging the gap between desk side experimentation and enterprise scale AI deployment,” Terwilliger said.

The new Pro Max with GB300 packs the tightly coupled Blackwell Ultra GPU and Grace CPU, both made by Nvidia. It includes 784GB of unified system memory — 288GB HBM3e memory and 496GB of LPDDR5X memory.

Developers can test and prototype AI models with up to 460 billion parameters on the Pro Max with GB300. The system delivers 20 petaflops of performance with the FP4 data type, which is a low-precision measure for inferencing.

The Pro Max with GB10 includes Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU — a generation behind the Blackwell Ultra — and the Grace CPU. Developers will be able to work with AI models with up to 200 billion parameters on a  PC that delivers 1 petaflop of FP4 performance.

The systems are slated to be available later this year, include Nvidia’s DGX Base OS or Ubuntu Linux, and will be preconfigured with Nvidia’s AI software.

Desktop prototyping makes it easy to determine the size and performance of AI models, according to Terwilliger. “Once you right size it for the data set, then it’s appropriate to then scale it into the data center,” he said.

Some Dell customers need a secure test environment where they can tune some of their own data, said Matt Toolan, a Dell spokesman. For example, customers have tested different digital assistants to determine whether chat capabilities and responses were meaningful and on target, Toolan said.

Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, was skeptical about Dell’s claim of using Pro Max PCs to scale AI models to data centers.

Instead, the AI tools more about making the deployments of on-device AI smoother, Sag said. “I don’t really think PC workloads are really useful for data-center scale deployments. I do believe Dell is uniquely positioned to enable hybrid AI that are entirely on-premise,” Sag said.

Dell also announced Pro Max laptops with RTX Pro GPUs based on the Blackwell architecture. The company claimed the PCs will be up to 36% faster than the previous-generation Precision PCs.

The Dell Pro Max laptops have “tandem” OLED displays, haptic touchpads, lattice-less keyboards and 8-megapixel IR cameras. The systems come with Intel Core Ultra Series 2 or AMD Ryzen processors, offer screen sizes from 14-in. to 18-in., and will ship later this year. 

Dell did not provide pricing information for the systems.

If you’re looking for an AI PC, why wouldn’t you be looking for a Mac?

After all, Apple’s systems are built for privacy and security and, thanks to Apple Silicon, are now quite capable of running big generative AI (genAI) models swiftly in-house — and at a fraction of the energy costs of Windows-based systems. While a move to Apple won’t suit every company or even every situation, it’s absolutely true that the platform is a viable one for AI, and has remained so for some time.

To understand how viable Macs are for running AI in your business, consider the recently-launched M3 Ultra Mac Studio. Apple made impressive claims for these systems on launch. It told us its highest-end Mac Studio was 16.9 times faster than the M1 Ultra Mac Studio at generating tokens using a large language model (LLM) with hundreds of thousands of parameters. That neat claim was recently put to the test when YouTuber Dave Lee showed us that the most highly specified M3 Ultra Mac Studio is capable of running a 671-billion-parameter AI model natively on the system at under 200 watts of energy. (He used DeepSeek RI, of course.)

A supercomputer on your bookshelf

That’s an amazing statistic; it means you can run a powerful genAI models using DeepSeek on a system that fits on a shelf above your desk, which must be a compelling proposition to any enterprise purchaser considering deployment of an in-house self-hosted system for AI. It’s even more impressive when you consider that comparable performance on traditional PCs would require multiple GPUs and consume 10 times as much energy. 

(You might be able to find some way to put together a PC-based cluster to deliver the same kind of performance, but it is arguable that you’ll still spend the $14,000 you’d need to drop to get the most powerful Mac desktop. (In some cases, you might not need quite as much of a system.)

What this all means — or should mean — is that the enterprise landscape is ripe for Apple. After all, the company’s devices are private by design, secure by nature, and deliver performance and energy consumption advantages other PCs at the same price points don’t match. Not only do they deliver this, but they also have the processor horsepower it takes to run AI natively.

If you just need to run smaller AI models, then an M4 MacBook Air also has you covered, allowing most businesses to now consider Mac-based and self-hosted AI deployments for a range of use cases.

Apple, the perfect endpoint AI solution

While buffeted by bad news elsewhere in its business, the Mac has become a bright star for Apple, thanks to Apple Silicon. While Apple Intelligence might have let the company down, Apple Silicon has not. That matters quite a lot, given a recent report from IDC Research claiming that four-in-five (80%) of PCs sold this year will be AI PCs, though there are some challenges to that.

Apple helps meet those challenges, of course. IDC’s survey revealed that while nearly all organizations are using or intend to use cloud-based AI platforms, the security and data privacy inherent to these systems remains the biggest challenge to broad deployment, even more than cost.

While most business users are looking at the ever-expanding plethora of enterprise-focused cloud-based AI systems, they are really concerned about what happens to their data when shared in the cloud, particularly in regulated industries where compliance matters, such as healthcare.

That’s driving many enterprises seeking to deploy AI to search for solutions that let them deploy genAI tools on endpoints — self-hosted AI that runs natively on a device they own and have in their own office, in other words.

That, of course, is what Apple’s Macs — and certainly its Mac Studio — are more than capable of doing. 

AI models for the few

There’s a lot more to running AI in business than text summaries, automated writing tools, Microsoft Copilot, or even super-smart Webex AI bots; enterprise users are seeking to build or buy their own bespoke AI packages capable of learning from their own heavily curated business data and helping them with their business. That’s not software that necessarily comes in a box (digital or otherwise), but is software that, at best for ultimate privacy and security, runs natively on the device.

Apple Silicon is more than up to the task. (And you get an annual free OS upgrade of what is arguably the most secure operating system, too.)

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AI PCs — devices that directly integrate AI capabilities into hardware and software — are rapidly taking over the PC market; some analysts have gone so far as to designate 2025 the “Year of the AI PC.”

HP is the latest vendor to join the fray. It announced today at its HP Amplify 2025 partner conference that it has completely redesigned its mobile and desktop computers to meet the demands of mainstream enterprise workers, and its fully revamped portfolio is now populated with AI PCs.

“The way we work now is more demanding than ever,” Cory McElroy, HP’s VP for commercial product management, said in a press pre-briefing. “The expectations are different. It’s not enough that devices work well; we need our devices to anticipate our needs and actually help us through our day-to-day.”

The new enterprise devices include both laptops and desktops. Here’s a brief look at the offerings:

ProBook 4 AI PCs

The HP ProBook 4 G1i and ProBook 4 G1a (the “i” and “a” indicate whether the device is powered by an Intel or AMD processor) target remote workers and road warriors who, HP said, “need to get productive with advanced tech, AI workstyles, and multilayered security.”

They offer up to 32GB SDRAM and up to 1TB of storage, with the option to add a second SSD of up to 256GB to the AMD version. Each processor version can be configured with a 14 inch or 16 inch display.

EliteBook 6 AI PCs

The EliteBook 6 G1i and EliteBook 6 G1a are designed for frontline professionals and office support staff, HP said, and offer multiple display sizes: 13 inch, 14 inch, and 16 inch screens for the Intel model, and 14 inches or 16 inches for the AMD versions.

Although they don’t qualify as Copilot+ PCs, they are robustly configured with up to 64GB of DDR5 SDRAM and up to 2TB of storage.

Both Intel and AMD models are equipped with enhanced conferencing and collaboration features, including Poly Camera Pro, which now uses the NPU for many of its advanced features to save power.

EliteBook 8 AI PCs

The EliteBook 8 series offers neural processing unit (NPU) options capable of up to 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS), qualifying some models to be designated Copilot+ PCs and, HP said, providing up to 224% better power efficiency and 43X faster AI image generation than previous generations without NPUs. The series offers up to 64GB DDR5 memory, up to 2TB of storage, and, as with all of HP’s PCs, endpoint security is built in.

McElroy pointed to “new levels of serviceability and intentional design,” as the mobile devices are modular. “Once the bottom cover is removed, vertical components such as battery, fans, storage or other key elements can be much more easily removed than in previous traditional designs,” he explained, to make it easier for enterprise IT to maintain the devices.

HP’s desktop series, EliteDesk 8, is now AI-powered as well, and the company also said it is the world’s first business desktop PC portfolio to protect against quantum computer hacks.

Further, the new HP EliteStudio 8 AiO G1i is the first commercial all-in-one PC with integrated keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) ability through HP Device Switch, allowing users to control, toggle between, and manage multiple devices via a single console. HP calls it an ideal tool for employees constantly moving around the office.

Select models of EliteBook, EliteDesk and EliteStudio also qualify as Copilot+ PCs, making them particularly appealing to enterprise buyers looking to refresh to Windows 11. Microsoft has strict requirements for machines designated Copilot+ PCs: They must run Windows 11, have an NPU capable of 40-plus TOPS, at least 16GB of RAM and a minimum of 256GB of solid state drive (SSD) storage or universal flash storage (UFS).

An onboard ‘AI Companion’

The new devices come with a built-in ‘AI Companion’ that can retrieve, filter and summarize files and create content, among other tasks, all without the need for an internet connection.

Users can leverage the AI Companion in two ways: In ‘on-device’ mode, the companion uses a local large language model (LLM) for the most private AI experience or when the user needs to work offline, McElroy explained. Alternatively, they can switch to ‘cloud mode’ when they need the “latest and greatest” from industry-leading models online.

The companion allows users to snip an image from their screen and use that snip as a prompt. Other new capabilities planned for the spring include what HP called “intuitive voice and text commands,” and built-in keylogger protection to help keep data secure.

“When you have the right tools, work doesn’t have to feel like work,” McElroy noted. “By enabling new AI experiences, new ways of working and the ability to do things faster, we’re powering dynamic change so the entire company can be more productive and fulfilled for their day to day.”

A recent Windows 11 security update is causing unexpected issues for enterprise customers, including the unintentional removal of Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant from affected systems, creating potential workflow disruptions for organizations that have integrated the AI tool into their operations.

The update, KB5053598 (OS build 26100.3476), released during March’s Patch Tuesday, applies to all editions of Windows 11 version 24H2 and was primarily intended as a security fix. However, Microsoft has acknowledged it contains a flaw that causes the Copilot app to be “unintentionally uninstalled and unpinned from the taskbar” on some devices.

“We’re aware of an issue with the Microsoft Copilot app affecting some devices. The app is unintentionally uninstalled and unpinned from the taskbar,” Microsoft said in an advisory.

Impact on enterprises

For organizations relying on Copilot integration, Microsoft recommends that affected users reinstall the app from the Microsoft Store and “manually pin it to the taskbar” while a permanent fix is developed.

The company clarified that the Microsoft 365 Copilot app remains unaffected by this issue, which may provide some relief to enterprise customers who have invested in the premium AI assistant version.

More concerning for enterprise IT administrators, the update conflicts with Citrix Session Recording Agent (SRA) version 2411, potentially removing January 2025 security updates from systems running this enterprise software.

This regression in security posture could leave systems vulnerable to already-patched exploits, creating additional workload for IT departments that must now carefully manage the update process.

“Devices that have certain Citrix components installed might be unable to complete installation of the January 2025 Windows security update,” the advisory added. Affected systems may initially apply the security update but fail during restart with an error message stating, “Something didn’t go as planned. No need to worry – undoing changes.”

This issue presents a significant challenge for enterprise customers who rely on Citrix virtualization solutions. IT departments must now choose between maintaining security patches and ensuring the operational continuity of critical business applications.

However, the software major stated that this issue likely affects a “limited number of organizations as version 2411 of the SRA application is a new version.”

The company emphasized that home users are unlikely to be affected by Citrix-related problems, as the software is primarily deployed in enterprise environments.

Broader implications

The incident highlights the ongoing challenges of maintaining operating system integrity while rapidly deploying new features and security patches. For enterprise customers, who often maintain strict change management protocols, unexpected application removals, and conflicts can cause significant operational disruptions.

Many organizations have been gradually adopting Copilot as part of their productivity strategy, with some still evaluating its enterprise value. This unintended removal may give pause to IT decision-makers considering broader deployment of AI assistants within their environments.

The bug also underscores the complexity of modern operating system updates, which must account for countless hardware configurations and third-party software interactions. Enterprise customers often delay updates precisely to avoid such issues, creating a delicate balance between security and stability.

Workarounds and solutions

For organizations affected by the Copilot removal, Microsoft’s temporary solution requires manual intervention, potentially creating additional work for IT support teams in large deployments. The company has not provided an estimated timeline for a permanent fix.

Regarding the Citrix compatibility issue, Microsoft recommends that enterprise customers running SRA version 2411 delay the installation of KB5053598 until a resolution is available. For organizations that have already deployed the update and encountered problems, a rollback to the previous version may be necessary.

The update also affects Windows on Arm users who play the Roblox game.

The Microsoft advisory said that such users will be unable to download and play the game from the Windows Store after installing this update, though Microsoft notes the game remains accessible via direct download from Roblox’s website.

While this may seem like a minor issue, it demonstrates how seemingly unrelated applications can be affected by operating system updates.

Microsoft indicated that it is “working on a resolution to address this issue.” The company typically addresses such conflicts through subsequent patches, though enterprise customers may need to implement temporary workarounds in the meantime.

This incident serves as a reminder for enterprise IT departments to maintain robust testing environments and phased deployment strategies for Windows updates, particularly when running specialized software like Citrix SRA. Organizations should also consider documenting their custom application configurations to better identify potential conflicts with future updates.

Finding and summarizing information may not sound like the sexiest task for generative AI — until you need an article you posted on social media but can’t remember the exact word or phrase you used, or you want to answer a quick how-to question without plowing through a lengthy software manual.

There are a lot of ways to set up large language models (LLM) to answer queries based exclusively on information you give them. One of the easiest, which involves no coding at all, is to use a service like Google’s NotebookLM or ChatGPT Projects.

Below I’ll take a look at four genAI web platforms, the strengths of each, and how they perform on sample tasks like searching through a software manual.

4 sample tasks

I tested several platforms on four different types of questions:

• Querying software documentation
• Searching my own LinkedIn posts
• Finding a variable ID for a specific topic
• Getting information about professional conferences

4 generative AI platforms

There are an increasing number of options for no-code “chat with your data.” I looked at four of the best known and most popular: Google’s NotebookLM, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Projects, Anthropic’s Claude Projects, and Perplexity Spaces.

NotebookLM is a dedicated app; the other platforms are more general chatbots that allow users to group and save chats, additional files, and custom instructions related to topics of their choice. These groups are called projects or spaces, depending on the service.

Google NotebookLM

NotebookLM has several advantages:

1. There’s a free version.
2. You don’t have to write special prompts for it to search specifically through the info you upload.
3. It returns citations along with its answers by default, so you can see the source text excerpts it used for its responses.
4. You can give it URLs to read as source material.

NotebookLM is probably best known for generating realistic audio podcasts from your notes, but it’s also quite good at answering questions.

Workflow: Upload your content into a notebook and start asking questions.

Users with free accounts can upload files of up to 500,000 words per source and 50 sources per notebook, or 200MB total for local uploads. And free accounts can have up to 100 notebooks and ask 50 questions per day. Paid Plus users get 500 notebooks, 300 sources per notebook, and 500 queries per day.

Privacy: Google says it won’t use your uploaded files or chat to train its models. Enterprise NotebookLM users via Google Cloud also won’t have their feedback reviewed by human reviewers. Regardless of any privacy policies, though, know your employer’s AI policies for any work-related items.

Sharing: Free users can share full notebooks, which include complete source documents, with specific users. Paid users can share either full notebooks or chat-only notebooks with specific users. Number of allowable shares depends on your account level.

How it performed: Tied for the top spot at 4.5 out of 5.

OpenAI ChatGPT Projects

ChatGPT Projects is available to all paid subscribers — Plus, Enterprise, and Pro. OpenAI says projects are good “for ongoing work, or just to keep things tidy.”

Until recently, projects could only use the GPT-4o LLM; but lately o3-mini and o3-mini-high have shown up as options. Free users without access to Projects can upload files to regular chats and bookmark those to get a somewhat similar experience.

Unlike NotebookLM, ChatGPT probably won’t give you links to see the original text cited in its answer unless you give it specific instructions to do so. (And even then, it might not.) In return, though, its answers will likely be more nicely formatted and arranged.

Workflow: Create a new project by finding Projects in the left nav (you’ll only see this if you’re a subscriber), hovering over it, and clicking the + sign. Give your project a name, and you’ll see a chat interface along with options to add files and custom instructions.

There is a limit to the number of files that can be uploaded, according to ChatGPT help files, but that limit isn’t specified.

Privacy: You can opt out of having your data used to train OpenAI models in account Settings > Data Controls.

Sharing: Projects aren’t shareable. Use Custom GPTs, which can use “instructions, extra knowledge, and any combination of skills,” instead. Those require paid accounts and can be made public or shared to anyone with the link.

How it performed: Tied for the top spot at 4.5 out of 5.

Anthropic Claude Projects

I’m a big Claude fan for a lot of use cases, as I like its writing style, its ability to write R code, and how it follows instructions. But Claude Projects, available only to paid subscribers, has some drawbacks for cases like this.

Anthropic says, “Each project includes a 200K context window, the equivalent of a 500-page book.” That sounds like a lot, but Claude projects have a smaller capacity than the other options I tested. And the answers can degrade if you push up against the limits. Claude Projects is only available for paid accounts.

If you program and use GitHub, Claude can connect to your GitHub account, making it easy to pull in coding or documentation files, which can be very handy. However, if you are interested in using online information in your queries, Claude Projects can’t yet access the internet beyond GitHub or your own Google Docs.

Update: A few days after this article was published, Anthropic announced that web search is available as a preview feature for paid users in the US. We haven’t tested it to see how that might work in Projects.

Alexey Shabanov at Testing Catalog reports that Anthropic is testing a feature called Harmony, which would let Claude access a local directory of files “allowing the AI to read, index, and analyze content within the directory.” How that might expand context for project queries isn’t clear.

Workflow: Create a new project by clicking on Projects toward the top of the left navigation — or going straight to claude.ai/projects — and then the Create Project button at the top right. Name the project, describe its purpose, click Create, and you’ll get a conventional chat interface on the left and an area to add project instructions and files on the right.

Privacy: Anthropic says its default is to not use your chats and data to train its models.

Sharing: There’s no sharing unless you’re a Claude Teams subscriber.

How it performed: 3 out of 5, largely because it got a 0 for one test when my data exceeded its project storage limit.

I’m not sure I would pay $20/month just for projects here, but I subscribe for other reasons and appreciate having them.

Perplexity Spaces

Perplexity also has a free version, which excels at targeted searches of information that’s already on the web, such as software or hardware documentation. You can give Perplexity a domain, for example https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/, and it will search all the content there. (NotebookLM also accepts URLs but for individual pages, not a domain.) This is extremely useful when online software documentation is scattered across many small files on the web.

You need a paid subscription to upload your own files to Spaces and to use top-tier LLMs. If you don’t want to pay, you can upload files to a regular Perplexity chat (maximum of 10 per day).

Workflow: Create a new space by clicking on Spaces in the left nav — or by going directly to perplexity.ai/spaces — and clicking the Create a Space box. A dialog box pops up asking for a Space title, optional description, and optional custom instructions. There’s a chat interface on the left and context section on the right that includes your custom instructions, a files upload section, and a links upload section.

Privacy: You can opt out of having your data used to train Perplexity’s own models in your profile settings.

Sharing: Paid users can have up to 5 collaborators; Enterprise Pro, unlimited.

How it performed: 2.5 out of 5. To be fair, though, my tests didn’t look at Perplexity’s major strength: web search. If you want to combine you own data with web searching, Perplexity would do much better.

During testing, it also felt like Perplexity was least able to figure out what I wanted, at least when using its default “Auto” LLM. It’s always good to be as specific as possible with LLM queries, but I found this to be especially true with Perplexity.

Tests and results

Here’s a summary of how the tools performed in my tests. Read on for details.

TaskNotebookLMChatGPT ProjectsClaude ProjectsPerplexity SpacesSimple tech docs search1110.5Vague social media query10.510Variable ID lookup1101Find a conference0.510.51Find conference sessions110.50Ranking4.54.532.5 1 = correct response, 0.5 = partially correct, 0 = incorrect or no response Test 1: Simple tech documentation search

Question: “What’s the easiest way to get rid of extra white space in text?”

Info source: Documentation for the stringr package in the R programming. Stringr includes a handy str_squish() function to delete excess white space.

Results: Claude, NotebookLM, and ChatGPT answered with str_squish(), which I consider the correct answer. Perplexity assumed I only cared about space at the beginning and end of the text and not in the middle. After a follow-up question, it also found the best function.

Test 2: Somewhat vague search of my social media posts

This was a more difficult task, but something similar to what people might want help with in the real world.

Question: “I really liked an article about LLMs written by Lucas Mearian at Computerworld. Please tell me the specifics based on my LinkedIn posts that I uploaded.”

Info source: 2 years of my LinkedIn posts.

Results: NotebookLM and Claude nailed their responses, each offering two options including the one I wanted. ChatGPT gave me somewhat related articles, but not the one I wanted. (I’d been looking for “What are LLMs, and how are they used in generative AI?”)

Perplexity with its default Auto LLM didn’t give me anything useful, claiming “there is no specific mention of an article about Large Language Models (LLMs) written by Lucas Mearian.”

Test 3: Find a US Census table ID for a specific topic

A lot of businesses use the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) for demographic information. With thousands of available data variables, it can be hard to find one that has the information you want. This type of query could represent a lot of other data lookups businesses might want to do with their own data.

Question: “What is the best variable to use to find information about the percent of workers who work from home?”

Info source: I downloaded and filtered several listings of ACS table variable IDs (filtered because a couple of the lists were too large), along with a general explanation of ACS tables from the Census Bureau website. Since some of these platforms don’t accept CSV files in projects, I saved the variable data as tab-delimited .txt files.

Expected response: Kyle Walker, director of the Center for Urban Studies at Texas Christian University and author of the tidycensus R package, used the DP03_0024P variable in one of his examples, so that’s what I was expecting in a correct answer.

Results: NotebookLM, ChatGPT, and Perplexity all gave me results I could use. (Unexpectedly, I learned that there is more than one correct answer — ChatGPT and Perplexity both found other variables that include the percent of people working from home.)

Claude couldn’t compete on this one, since my three .txt files with data totaling less than 800KB exceeded its “project knowledge” limit.

Test 4: Ask about professional conferences

This test featured two questions for two different data sources: Ask about a conference that might fit my needs, and then ask about conference sessions at one specific conference.

Question 1: “I’m looking for IDG events that will talk about artificial intelligence. I’d like them to be within a 2-hour flight or so from Boston.”

Info source: The IDG global events calendar PDF.

Expected result: The most complete correct answer would cite FutureIT New York in July and FutureIT Toronto April 30 – May 1. Work+ in Nashville at a 2:50 flight would also be a reasonable suggestion.

Results: ChatGPT nailed it with both its more advanced o3-mini-high model and its general 4o LLM, returning the two events that exactly match the criteria.

Perplexity’s Sonar LLM returned both events as well as the CIO100 conference in Arizona, although acknowledging that one is beyond a 2-hour flight.

NotebookLM got it partially right, suggesting FutureIT New York and Work+ in Nashville (which it accurately said was “reasonably close to Boston” — true, it’s less than 3 hours away). However, it missed Toronto.

Claude with its older Sonnet 3.5 model returned both matching events, along with “UK Events for reference, though outside your travel range” — but did not include Nashville. Claude with its newer Sonnet 3.7 in its default setting was worse, finding only one that matched, a couple of others in the US, and two in Europe (noting that those were outside the travel range). When I changed Sonnet 3.7 from its default to “extended” reasoning, it gave a better response: both the New York and Toronto events as well as a virtual event.

Question 2: “Tell me all the sessions at the NICAR conference for people who are already proficient in spreadsheets — that is, they are not beginners, but they want to improve their spreadsheet skills.”

Data source: Text file of the full NICAR data journalism conference schedule.

Results: NotebookLM gave me more than a dozen interesting suggestions involving Google Sheets, Excel, and Airtable, with only one that might not have been relevant. It was definitely more than I would have found by simply searching the conference web page for “Excel” and “Sheets.” Plus, because I could click to zoom into the exact schedule text it cited, it was easy to check for hallucinations.

Brainstorming is one area where many experts say LLMs can shine. I plan to upload other conference schedules to NotebookLM in the future to make sure I don’t overlook potentially useful sessions.

ChatGPT also came up with 12+ sessions that could be of interest, arranged by date and time and more nicely formatted. Claude proposed slightly fewer, but all seemed to match.

Perplexity was disappointing, claiming: “While the provided information does not explicitly list sessions for those proficient in spreadsheets, several sessions at the NICAR 2025 conference could be beneficial for improving spreadsheet skills or learning advanced data analysis techniques.” It suggested only three.

Recommendations

Generative AI cloud services can be a helpful, no-code way to answer questions about your own information — both finding info you know exists and helping you discover new insights.

If you want a platform that’s easy, free, and cites sources so you can check for hallucinations, Google’s NotebookLM is an excellent choice.

If you already subscribe to ChatGPT, its projects are worth a test. They’re set up to handle a wider range of requests than simply Q&A, and ChatGPT’s responses are often better formatted and easier to read than NotebookLM’s. If you’re a free user, you can upload files to conventional ChatGPT chats and get similar capabilities.

Claude may be a good option if you don’t have large amounts of data per project and you’re already subscribing, especially if you want it to answer questions about data in a GitHub repository. If one response is unsatisfactory, try changing model settings.

I found Perplexity to be more compelling for answering questions about information on the web, especially for use cases like software help where the info is spread over a lot of different files within a domain such as slack.com/help. However, I’d probably go with NotebookLM or ChatGPT for local data.

The launch this weekend by Baidu of a native open-source multimodal foundation model called ERNIE 4.5 and a reasoning model, ERNIE X1, could lower AI adoption barriers, intensify competition, and reshape pricing strategies across the industry, an analyst said Monday.

In order for that to occur, said Thomas Randall, research lead for AI at Info-Tech Research Group, “the success of these models will depend on performance validation, developer adoption, and enterprise trust. However, they signal a global AI race where cost-efficiency and accessibility become as important as raw capability.”

The Chinese tech giant said in a release that the introduction of the two offerings “pushes the boundaries of multimodal and reasoning models,” adding that ERNIE X1 “delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price.”

It is now clear that Google Assistant will be replaced by generative AI (genAI) tool Gemini in most Android-based phones. The process is expected to begin shortly and be completed before the end of the year, according to the official Google blog The Keyword.

Mobile phones running Android 9 or earlier will not be affected by the decision, as they would likely run into problems using Gemini.

In addition to smartphones, Gemini will also be integrated into tablets, smart watches, televisions, monitors, cars and headphones, according to 9to5Google.