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From the editors of Computerworld, this enterprise buyer’s guide helps IT staff understand what the various unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) options can do for their organizations and how to choose the right solution.

Android dominates smartphone usage throughout the world — in every region except North America and Oceania. Thus, businesses in many regions are likely to support and issue Android devices to employees as their mainstay mobile devices. Even in areas where Apple’s iPhone dominates or is comparable in market share, businesses are likely to support or issue Android devices at least as a secondary option.

Google has a certification called Android Enterprise Recommended that focuses on enterprise concerns around performance, device management, bulk device enrollment, and security update commitments. Google publishes a tool to help IT see which devices meet that certification in various regions, as well as explore supported Android versions and end dates for security updates.

But as Computerworld columnist JR Raphael has shown, the Google enterprise compliance checker is not kept up to date, so it cannot be relied on by itself. It’s also not clear that Google is enforcing compliance after products get certified. Bottom line: Android Enterprise Recommended is a starting point for narrowing your options, not a definitive filter.

Apple tightly controls the iPhone and its iOS operating system, which gives IT strong assurance about software updates, security patches, device capabilities, and manageability. By contrast, the Android world is highly diverse, with dozens of manufacturers using Google’s Android platform but offering varying levels of quality and support, and in many cases few or inconsistent OS and security updates. The use of Android thus requires more effort by IT in selecting and supporting mobile devices.

For that reason, iPhones are more likely to be the official business platforms (what are called corporate-liable devices) for devices that enterprises buy for their employees, even in regions where Android dominates. But it is typical for companies to let employees use their personal devices for work (what are called employee-liable devices or bring-your-own devices [BYOD]), providing access at least to work email and calendars, and often to web-based services.

So how does IT choose which Android devices to buy and/or support for its users? This article gets you started.

In this article:

• Recommendations for best Android devices in business
• Security considerations for Android devices
• Functional considerations for Android devices
• Vendor considerations for Android devices around the world
• Vendor considerations for front-line Android devices

Recommendations for best Android devices in business

For knowledge workers and general-purpose busines usage, there’s just one Android manufacturer with global device availability and enterprise-class (even military-grade) security, plus multiyear software and security updates after purchase: Samsung. That makes Samsung the best (and often only) choice for corporate-liable Android devices in every region. Its enterprise-grade models (what Samsung calls Android Secured by Knox) include the Galaxy S, Galaxy A5x, Galaxy A3x, Note, XCover, Z Flip3, and Z Fold3 series. For these models, security updates are promised for five years after initial release; Samsung publishes information on which models are currently receiving updates.

But Samsung devices do have issues to be aware of, including the use of Samsung’s proprietary interface and its proprietary apps (though you can still use the standard Google apps), both of which can require extra IT support for those more familiar with Google-standard Android devices. Columnist Raphael also objects to some of Samsung’s practices around privacy and advertising. Still, no other Android manufacturer offers the combination of security and availability that Samsung does.

Google’s Pixel 8 series phones are similarly secure, but without the proprietary UI and apps. Google promises seven years of security updates after initial release (up from five years for the previous Pixel 7 models). However, the Pixel 8 series is available in just 22 countries: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States (except Puerto Rico).

Motorola’s enterprise-class Android devices, such as the Edge models, are similarly secure. They’re available in 65 countries, including most of Europe, much of Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Canada, the US, and the UK. Where Motorola falls a bit short is in update support: It commits to just three years for security updates and to just one major Android OS version update.

In most countries, these recommended devices are often too pricey for rank-and-file employees and for their businesses to buy for users other than executives or those handling very sensitive information. Fortunately, there’s a set of Android vendors that offer a range of inexpensive and moderately priced phones that provide good quality and adequate security: Nokia, OnePlus, Oppo, Sony, and Xiaomi. Samsung also has several moderately priced phones with adequate security, and Motorola has the Moto G. As shown later in this article, these vendors’ prevalence varies significantly across and within regions.

Why these recommendations? And what other options does IT have or may get user pressure to support? The sections that follow explore the essential factors: security, updates, device capabilities of concern to business use, and vendor availability in various regions of the globe. There’s also a section on special-purpose front-line Android devices.

Security considerations for Android devices

In the early days of Android, security was a major IT concern. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry had set high standards in the 1990s and early 2000s for mobile security, whereas the early Android (and iOS) devices fell far short of IT expectations. Apple and then Samsung moved to make mobile security at least as good as BlackBerry’s in the early 2010s, and Google followed suit a few years later by making encryption standard in Android and then making container-based separation of work and personal data and apps a standard part of 2015’s Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. By 2017, the Android platform had strong security capabilities. More sophisticated capabilities became available through both hardware and software extensions, such as Samsung’s Knox platform in 2013 for its enterprise devices and Google’s Android for Work (later renamed Android Enterprise) for the rest of the Android world. Android Enterprise support became a standard feature in 2018’s Android 9.0 Pie.

Today, IT can count on all Android devices having the basic level of security needed. But some users — such as high-level executives who deal in sensitive corporate data, or operations staff managing critical infrastructure or supply chains — need more security. And that affects your enterprise Android device options.

There are three security levels to consider, and many organizations will need more than one in place:

Basic security: This level is appropriate on personal devices permitted to access basic corporate systems like email.

The basic security level provides device encryption, password enforcement, remote lock and wipe, and sandboxed execution of security functions.

All current Android devices support this level, with even just a basic management tool like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 in place.

Moderate security: This level is appropriate for when IT requires or allows personal devices to be used for corporate access and apps, as well as for corporate-issued devices allowed to also be used for personal purposes.

The moderate security level provides the basic level plus separation of work data and apps from personal data and apps via containers, via a unified endpoint management (UEM) platform that supports Google’s Android Enterprise platform or, only for Samsung devices, Samsung Knox. Tip: Compare the leading UEM platforms’ capabilities in Computerworld’s guide.

All current Android devices with at least 3MB of RAM support work/personal separation, but some UEM platforms may require that the devices run newer versions of Android than are deployed at your organization.

Advanced security: This level is appropriate for executives, human resources professionals, finance professionals, and anyone dealing with critical data and systems access such as in government, defense/military, finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure like utilities, energy, and transport.

The advanced security level provides the moderate level plus chip-based security enabled to reduce unauthorized access by spies and hackers, as well as compliance with the US’s recent Common Criteria security standard.

Chip-level security detects hacks to the operating system, firmware, memory, and other core systems, and locks down or shuts down the device as a result, via Android’s Keystore service. Such hardware-level security is not an Android Enterprise Recommended requirement, but it is essential for military-grade security.

Only a few devices use chip-level security to protect system integrity: Samsung’s Android Secured by Knox phones use Arm’s TrustZone chip for its Trusted Boot, Google’s Pixel series uses its own Titan-M chip for its Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), and Motorola says all its Android devices use Arm’s TrustZone chip for its Strongbox. (Apple’s iPhones have this capability too via the Secure Enclave.) The other Android vendors did not respond to my inquiries about their security capabilities but appear not to support hardware-based security, based on their websites’ specification data.

The Common Criteria standard imposes specific security approaches that the US government thus knows it can rely on across devices; it’s also been adopted by multiple other countries. Although also not an Android Enterprise Recommended requirement, Common Criteria is a good advanced-security standard for IT to use anywhere in the world.

Android models from multiple vendors comply with Common Criteria: a few from Google, Huawei, Motorola, Oppo, Samsung, and Sony, as well as some front-line specialty devices from Honeywell and Zebra Technologies. Apple’s iPhone also complies. Common Criteria keeps a current list of validated devices; be sure to open the Mobility section to see which phones comply.

Government security certification for Android

IT organizations may want to look to government certifications to determine their Android device selections for sensitive uses. When Apple and Samsung both gained US Defense Department, UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and Australian Signals Directorate approval for use of their enterprise-class devices in the mid-2010s, it was huge news — breaking BlackBerry’s longstanding monopoly on government approval.

Today, such announcements are rare, and governments instead focus on ensuring that approved UEM platforms are in place to manage the widely used iPhones and Android phones. But recently the US Department of Defense has approved several Samsung phones and some front-line Android devices from Honeywell and Zebra Technologies for sensitive uses, as it moves to using the Common Criteria standard. And the Australia Signals Directorate has approved several Samsung phones recently as well.

The troubling security questions around Huawei’s Android devices

IT will not find Huawei devices in Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended database. Google removed them in 2019 after public allegations from the US government that Huawei devices were spying on users via backdoors on behalf of the Chinese government. These concerns are not new: In 2012, I was having drinks with several US intelligence officials and defense contractors at an off-the-record conference of CIOs where they raised the same fears about Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese computer and telecom manufacturers. Back then (under the Obama administration), US intelligence officials were quietly warning corporate CIOs about Huawei’s massive spying operations across its whole technology stack.

Those fears about Huawei’s alleged being a conduit for spying are no longer quiet, with both the Trump and Biden administrations since speaking publicly. Multiple other governments have also made the same accusations, which Huawei denies.

Because Huawei devices are popular in several markets — China, of course, but also in many parts of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and South America — concerned IT departments may want to use management tools to deny Huawei and other distrusted devices access to their resources. Be sure to check whether your management tool can block access based on device vendor. According to their websites, UEM platforms that can block devices by vendor include BlackBerry UEM, Microsoft Intune, and VMware Workspace One.

Security and OS update assurances for Android devices

IT typically wants assurances that devices will get security updates and OS updates for several years, to reduce the risk of being hacked via old devices that haven’t kept up their defenses. Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended certification requires only one future OS upgrade. For security updates, it has no minimum, requiring only that vendors publish their update commitments on their websites — and that information can be hard to find.

In my survey of Android vendor sites, three to five years is typical for Android security update commitments on business-class devices, and one to three future Android OS versions is typical for OS updates. (By contrast, Apple typically provides seven years of security updates and five years of iOS updates.) The stingiest Android vendors in terms of OS updates are Motorola, Oppo, and Xiaomi, which commit to just one major Android upgrade for their enterprise-class models. Google and Samsung have the best update commitments.

Vendors’ published update commitments for business-class Android devices include:

• Google: seven years of security updates, three years of OS upgrades
• Motorola: three years of security updates, one year of OS upgrades
• Nokia: three years of security updates, two years of OS upgrades
• OnePlus: four years of security updates, three major OS upgrades
• Oppo: three years of security updates, one year of OS upgrades
• Realme: three years of security updates, two major OS upgrades
• Samsung: “at least” four years of security updates, three “generations” of OS upgrades
• Vivo: three years of security updates, three years of OS upgrades
• Xiaomi: three years of security updates, one major OS upgrade

I could not find update information at the Honor, Huawei, Infinix, Itel, and Tecno sites, and the companies did not respond to my requests for information.

For certified devices, you can also use Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended tool to narrow down by what date various vendors’ specific models’ security updates will end. Just keep in mind that the tool may not have recent models. I also recommend you verify whether vendors do what they promise by getting some older devices and seeing how recent the available security updates are: Have they kept up the promised duration?

Finally, keep in mind that cellular carriers can override, slow, or block updates in many countries, overriding whatever promises the device vendor has made. For example, Google notes on its Pixel page that Pixel phones bought directly from Google often get updates sooner than those bought through a carrier. That carrier control is a longstanding reality, well pre-dating modern mobile devices, with only Apple able to have fully wrested control over updates from the carriers.

Functional considerations for Android devices

After narrowing down the pool of Android devices for potential support or purchase, the next step is to identify minimum requirements that necessitate specific configurations of those devices and perhaps eliminate some candidate models completely. These factors include:

• Android version: Your UEM platform or corporate apps and cloud services may require a minimum version of Android to function correctly or to comply with their security standards.
• RAM and storage capacity: Some devices offer minimal capacity to offer a cheap price. But that can hamper performance, especially for personal/work separation. A good minimum for corporate-issued devices is 8MB of RAM and 64GB of storage, to provide sufficient capacity for running multiple apps and switching among them with no performance hit. (Google’s official minimum is 3MB of RAM and 32GB of storage to support Android Enterprise.)
• Multiple-SIM support. People who work in multiple countries or must use their own SIM card for personal use and a corporate one for business use should use devices that offer two SIM trays or use, where carriers support them, eSIMs that are stored digitally on the devices. Expect to find differences in multi-SIM support even for the same model phone across countries and carriers, so purchase carefully to ensure you have all the needed variations.
• Some users work in tough environments where you’ll want tougher phones better able to withstand changes in air pressure, humid and wet conditions, heat and cold, and drops, bangs, and scrapes. That could mean using ruggedized devices, buying ruggedized cases for common devices, or avoiding devices with characteristics, like very thin materials or folding screens, that are more likely to be damaged. For maximum durability, ruggedized phones or cases should conform to the American Mil-Std-810G standard or the newer Mil-Std-810H standard.

Vendor considerations for Android devices around the world

Regional differences in vendor sources can be a factor in the devices IT chooses to provide and/or support. Those differences can both steer local companies to specific Android phone vendors and require multinational companies to consider such variations when formulating their approved-device lists for employee-liable devices and in the choice of corporate-liable devices they furnish.

In addition to Apple, there are 14 current Android vendors with 1% or more usage share in at least one region: Google, Honor Device, Huawei, Infinix Mobility, Itel Mobile, Lenovo-owned Motorola Mobility, Nokia, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme Chongqing Telecommunications, Samsung Electronics, Tecno Mobile, Vivo Mobile Communication, and Xiaomi. Although LG discontinued its Android business in July 2021, enough devices are still in use to show up in usage charts, most notably in South America, and so they may still need IT support.

Business purchase and BYOD patterns for Android

Usage share in business, versus overall consumer usage, is likely to skew more toward the major vendors, but data on enterprise mobile market share — whether for corporate-provided or BYOD devices — is not available even from IDC, which specializes in tracking installed-product market share across a wide range of enterprise categories.

Still, IDC analyst Kiranjeet Kaur notes that in much of the world, businesses other than multinational companies struggle to justify the expense of purchasing Samsung’s enterprise-class Android Secured by Knox phones and Apple iPhones — or, where available, even Motorola’s slightly less expensive Edge Fusion and Ultra phones or Google’s Pixel phones — for anyone but executives. So their IT organizations tend to issue adequately securable Android phones from broad-market vendors that offer models across a wider range of prices. Such Android vendors are also more likely to have business-oriented marketing and sales teams in key markets than the other Android vendors, she adds.

I classify OnePlus, Oppo, and Xiaomi (and Nokia in East Africa and Sony in Japan) as broad-market vendors that offer at least some business-appropriate models. Google, Motorola, and Samsung also offer sub-enterprise models for broad-market business use.

In most of the world, individuals who use their own phones for work — BYOD users — typically pick the cheaper Android phones, because in most markets the enterprise-class devices simply are unaffordable. In many rich countries like Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, both IT and individuals favor enterprise-class devices from Apple and Samsung. But in much of Europe — including rich countries like Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands — the mix is broader than Apple and Samsung, with lower-cost, more consumer-focused Android vendors like Xiaomi having significant traction among users overall.

IT organizations — especially in multinational companies — tend to avoid the low-cost Chinese vendors often favored by individual consumers in many parts of the world for price reasons. Why? Because on those low-cost devices, “the app experience can be shaky and can’t implement features properly, or apps don’t install properly,” IDC’s Kaur says. That poor quality for the only devices many employees can afford does pose a challenge for IT when supporting BYOD.

I classify Honor, Infinix, Itel, Realme, Tecno, and Vivo as vendors of Android phones that are iffy for business use around app compatibility. And I advise against Huawei devices due to longstanding concerns over Huawei’s alleged spying, as noted earlier.

Where IT will encounter the major Android vendors

Samsung and Apple are the major phone vendors in nearly every market, which combines with their higher security capabilities to make them standard devices in multinational companies.

However, South Korea-based Samsung has very little usage share in China, whose government policies favor Chinese vendors and where Samsung’s China Android business strategy failed due to Samsung’s own mistakes. Samsung’s share in Japan is also quite low, as it has been for more than a decade. US-based Apple has very little share in India, largely around cost but also due to the government’s Make in India policies that favor products made in India; in 2017, Apple started making iPhones in India due both to that pressure and to seek a manufacturing alternative to China, where the vast majority of its devices are still made.

Some regions have major vendors not seen widely or at all elsewhere. For example:

• Tecno and Infinix have sizeable usage shares in Africa, and both have increasing shares in some Asian countries and in Latin America.
• Motorola is significant in South America and has pockets of adoption in Europe.
• Huawei is significant in Africa, Mexico, China, India, and parts of Southeast Asia, but overall it has lost about half its market in two years.
• Oppo, Realme, and Vivo have notable presences in much of Asia and in parts of the Middle East.
• Xiaomi is a significant vendor in much of the world — especially in Asia, Europe, Mexico, the Middle East, and South America — but is barely present in the US, Canada, and Oceania.

By contrast, some well-known names don’t have significant presence outside a handful of markets, falling below the 1.0% threshold globally:

• Google’s Pixel devices have little global usage share but have shown growth in developed countries, topping out in New Zealand at 12.4%, followed by Japan at 5.4% and by Canada at 5.1%, with lower presence in Australia, the UK, and the US, as well as in several European countries.
• The well-reviewed OnePlus devices have minor usage share globally, though they are found in various countries across the world, including China, India, Israel, Norway, and Sweden.
• Chinese manufacturer Honor has a notable presence in a handful of countries — including China, Czechia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and several Central American countries — but it is essentially invisible globally. It also uses its own MagicOS, based on Android 14 and proprietary apps, leaving broad compatibility a question mark.

The tables below, all based on usage data from StatCounter (based on web access from devices), show which mobile phone vendors have 1% usage share or more across various regions, highlighting the major vendors in each. It also shows the shares of those vendors in select countries in each region, showing the diversity within each region that could affect IT support decisions.

Although the data is from April 2024, the percentages have been fairly stable for several years, with the greatest variations among those with the smallest percentages, which often move around in that large bottom tier.

Global mobile usage share ≥1%AppleSamsungXiaomiOppoVivoRealmeHuaweiMotorolaTecnoWorldwide28.024.011.45.75.03.53.52.31.6 All numbers are percentages Africa mobile usage share ≥1%SamsungTecnoAppleHuaweiInfinixXiaomiOppoItelRealmeAll Africa30.612.912.47.37.26.44.84.91.7Ethiopia46.819.04.34.710.21.3—3.7—Ghana22.720.916.35.913.01.7—8.2—Kenya22.817.93.42.89.04.26.73.05.6Morocco34.31.416.47.34.619.34.4—1.9Nigeria11.226.28.43.621.83.63.06.4—Senegal37.422.022.03.41.52.81.03.0—South Africa50.9—16.013.4—3.73.5—— All numbers are percentages Asia mobile usage share ≥1%AppleSamsungXiaomiOppoVivoRealmeHuaweiOnePlusAll Asia20.019.114.29.29.15.93.71.7China22.41.313.05.86.4—20.61.4Hong Kong48.229.58.5—1.1—3.8—India4.013.820.711.518.013.2—4.6Indonesia11.417.015.217.513.07.1——Japan60.27.54.32.31.1—2.1—Malaysia30.715.010.911.810.35.212.0—Pakistan4.415.46.612.212.93.64.6—Philippines15.713.410.013.812.411.65.8—Singapore33.022.85.54.81.71.02.4—South Korea26.867.6——————Taiwan57.220.83.66.22.3———Thailand31.920.66.814.413.34.92.4—Vietnam33.126.19.617.96.13.5—— All numbers are percentages Central America and Caribbean mobile usage share

(Selected countries — no overall regional roundup data is available.)

≥1%SamsungAppleHuaweiMotorolaXiaomiHonorLG*Costa Rica25.026.56.45.110.75.3—Dominican Rep.27.934.32.03.28.8—3.5Guatemala40.121.74.68.311.15.8—Jamaica45.443.4—1.51.3——Panama34.920.25.8—14.58.4— All numbers are percentages
*LG no longer sells Android devices; this reflects old devices still in use Europe mobile usage share ≥1%AppleSamsungXiaomiHuaweiOppoMotorolaRealmeGoogleAll Europe32.130.914.23.82.72.31.61.3Austria38.532.97.54.3————Czechia25.026.321.94.6—2.83.0—France29.131.713.94.03.6——1.2Germany34.033.810.93.51.21.0—1.6Greece13.029.332.06.2—1.02.4—Italy29.329.514.14.35.52.22.11.1Netherlands38.735.66.12.12.81.4—1.0Norway61.724.01.61.9—1.4—1.2Poland13.833.222.64.33.67.75.5—Portugal30.129.215.64.74.5———Romania25.243.28.56.13.04.4——Russia29.417.321.54.81.3—6.0—Spain20.327.628.73.86.91.01.9—Sweden55.727.92.91.7—1.4—1.2Switzerland51.027.44.72.52.3——1.2Ukraine29.119.027.82.42.72.02.1—United Kingdom49.230.12.14.4—2.8—3.1 All numbers are percentages Middle East mobile usage share

(Selected countries — no overall regional roundup data is available.)

≥1%SamsungAppleXiaomiHuaweiOppoVivoRealmeInfinixEgypt25.211.813.28.018.52.210.04.1Israel49.825.815.9—————Saudi Arabia19.634.28.85.14.66.04.13.6Türkiye17.118.911.93.32.0———UAE22.819.517.63.98.55.45.12.2 All numbers are percentages North America mobile usage share ≥1%AppleSamsungMotorolaGoogleXiaomiAll North America54.825.14.62.92.1Canada61.024.21.55.11.1Mexico23.222.915.2—11.7United States56.525.24.33.01.4 All numbers are percentages Oceania mobile usage share ≥1%AppleSamsungGoogleOppoXiaomiHuaweiMotorolaAll Oceania53.927.46.02.91.21.01.0Australia57.425.85.02.61.3—1.1Fiji16.966.9—2.12.61.5—New Zealand41.932.412.44.3—1.7— All numbers are percentages South America mobile usage share ≥1%SamsungMotorolaAppleXiaomiHuaweiLG*TecnoAll South America36.216.816.114.41.71.41.3Argentina50.626.110.04.7—1.8—Brazil34.918.318.414.5—1.8—Chile31.59.022.114.24.92.0—Colombia24.612.222.320.64.9—1.5Peru31.09.510.224.07.41.3— All numbers are percentages
*LG no longer sells Android devices; this reflects old devices still in use Vendor considerations for front-line Android devices

For specialty uses — such as ruggedized devices in the field or special-purpose devices in retail and logistics — there’s a different set of front-line Android vendors for what Google calls dedicated devices. Zebra Technology, Motorola, Kyocera, and Honeywell are perhaps the most well-known, but there are many others.

These devices are typically provided as an integrated solution, combining specific hardware devices with required specialty features like scanners and a software or cloud suite customized for the enterprise’s tasks, such as inventory management in retail, shipment tracking in logistics, medication distribution in healthcare, or sensor reading in utilities.

As you can see at Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended tool, these front-line devices tend to use older versions of Android than consumer and knowledge-worker devices do, largely because of the customizations made. As with most special-purpose gear, stability is critical, so having a flow of feature updates can be a negative, unlike for general-purpose usage.

This article was originally published in October 2022 and updated in June 2024.

Box has unveiled a new set of features in Box AI that includes an integration with GPT-4o, support for image and spreadsheet files and the Box AI for Metadata API.

In addition, the cloud content-management company announced that end user queries in Box AI for Hubs, Documents, and Notes will be unlimited for organizations that are part of its Enterprise Plus plan.

Box said the following enhancements to Box AI, a suite of capabilities launched last year that comprise of generative AI models natively integrated into the company’s Content Cloud, will take place later this year: Support for the new GPT-4o that will help the company’s AI-powered content portal Box Hubs, support for additional file types including natural language queries on image file formats, and the ability for developers to extract “key information from documents at scale” via Box AI for Metadata API.

Company CTO Ben Kus said in a news release that the “combination of AI and unstructured data represents the biggest untapped opportunity in enterprise IT.”

Thomas Randall, director of AI market research at Info-Tech Research Group, said in an email that Kus is “right that the combination of AI and unstructured data is a large opportunity. What is missing from this statement is the solution’s ability to unify such data across different siloes. While organizations stand to benefit from optical character recognition for discovering and summarizing unstructured data, the real value is also ensuring the solution can discover and unify that data from across different systems.”

If an organization uses only Box for document storage, he said, “the problem is solved. If a company is using Box, SharePoint, Dropbox, or any number of other document management systems, organizations risk producing inconsistent business decisions based on disparate data.”

In terms of the overall launch, Randall said that “there is nothing important from a technology innovation perspective. Instead, the importance lies in Box needing to launch its own generative AI function to retain competitive market share. Already, organizations are starting to leverage smaller best-of-breed solutions that offer generative AI-driven knowledgebase and document management systems alongside document information extraction and unified business intelligence. In this context, Box will likely not experience a huge drive in new customer acquisition for their generative AI features alone.”

When it comes to generative AI and the organization, curation, and publishing of content, Amy Machado, senior research manager at IDC, said, “Everyone is still trying to figure it out. Not just the tech suppliers like Box, but also the end user organizations who are wondering, ‘How much value am I getting out of this, and how much am I willing to spend?’ It is not like we are in full production, and everybody knows how to price it, and everybody knows what is going to cost.”

The reality, she said, is that “we are in this kind of cool experimentation phase, and I think that having the query limit was putting pressure on end-users to really experiment if they had cost fears. It was a smart move by Box to eliminate the query cap for it allows enterprise customers to experiment and figure out how they can use this technology and get real value and benefit out of it.”

Box said that “access to GPT-4o for products such as Box Hubs, as well as well as support for new file types including images and spreadsheets in Box AI, is planned to be available later this year and will be included in Enterprise Plus plans.”

Meanwhile, Box AI for Metadata API is now in beta for customers on Enterprise Plus plans. The company said pricing will be announced closer to general availability, along with pricing for other Box AI platform API calls and end user metadata queries in the core Box application.

Randall said that the enhancements will be a welcome addition for “Box customers and prospects already considering Box. However, Info-Tech first recommends that organizations have an AI governance strategy in place to ensure that solutions like Box AI are utilized in appropriate contexts. Organizations need to review that the data Box AI is pulling from is not inconsistent, saving the solution from hallucinating or providing incorrect responses.”

An organization’s user base, he said, “should also be trained on prompt engineering and suitable use cases. The danger is that these tools are rolled out to an untrained workforce, who then become over-reliant on generative AI and lose sight of the proper use of the solution: as an assistant only.”

Adobe wants to make it easier to store, access, and “remix” marketing assets with the addition of a new content hub in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). 

The content hub is accessible as part of AEM Assets, Adobe’s digital asset management tool, and connects with GenStudio — a separate app for managing marketing content. Unveiled last year, GenStudio is currently in trial by customers.

The content hub has several main features.

Users can search and browse for assets using smart tags that automatically provide key terms for an image. Here, AI is used to detect the contents, such as objects featured, settings (such as “outdoors”), or colors.

Adobe’s lightweight content creation and editing app Express is integrated to make changes to existing assets. Express can be opened directly from within the content hub to make quick changes, creating variations to meet different use cases. This also enables access to Firefly generative AI features in Express that Adobe said will make it even easier to change content. 

“That becomes a really awesome tool for marketers in downstream cases to quickly make a change…without having to flip through five different software [applications],” said Haresh Kumar, senior director for strategy and product marketing for Adobe Experience Manager. Any change made to an asset can then be sent for approval before being used, he said, shortening a process that could otherwise take days.  

Within the content hub, users can also manage permissions for sensitive assets and apply governance controls to ensure AI-generated content meets brand standards. The hub also contains analytics to track asset usage across an organization and understand how content is used. 

Organizations typically store 44TB of data in their digital asset management system, according to a recent IDC survey, with another 143TB scattered across individual user devices, corporate shared drives, and social media platforms, said Marci Maddox, research vice president for digital experience strategies at IDC. 

“Adobe’s Content Hub addresses this issue by promoting reuse and reducing inadvertent duplication of creative efforts,” said Maddox. “By breaking down content silos and fostering collaboration, the content hub empowers teams to work more efficiently, leverage existing assets effectively, and ultimately, deliver a more cohesive brand experience with digital media.”

The creation of digital assets is vital for an organization to tell a “personalized, contextual and relevant story to an increasingly discerning audience,” said Liz Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research. “It can also be pure chaos. This is why features like Content Hub are a proving to be a welcome resource for customer experience teams not traditionally part of a digital asset management workflow.”

Miller said that the hub complements the broader AEM Assets application, which serves as the “big firepower solution” when it comes to digital asset management. 

“Content Hub acknowledges that not every nail requires the biggest hammer out there,” she said. “For informal engagement hubs, they need a hammer…, just a smaller, easier one to wield.”

The Content Hub is now generally available to Adobe AEM Assets customers.

More Adobe news:

• Adobe introduces AI assistant to help enterprises exploit data held in PDFs
• Adobe to adapt terms of service on genAI training after customer backlash
• Adobe Experience Platform gets AI assistant for customer data insights

Google has released a tool designed to allow enterprises the management the security of worker’s browser setups.

Chrome Enterprise Core, released on Wednesday, allows organisations to configure and manage Chrome browsers across their organization. The free-of-charge cloud-based utility also offers a mechanism for organisations to gain better visibility into Chrome browser deployments.

Chrome Enterprise Core (formerly Chrome Browser Cloud Management) enables IT teams to configure and manage browser policies, settings, apps and extensions from a single console.

The technology works across mobile and desktop devices, allowing management of Chrome browsers on various devices and platforms.

Policy configuration options allow administrators to set and enforce policies, such as blocking potentially problematic browser extensions.

Browser-based vulnerabilities are on the rise from threats such as phishing man-in-the-browser attacks and cryptojacking – hence the need for tighter browser security controls in enterprise environments.

“A solid browser security tool will help to harden browser settings, monitor and control the usage of extensions and plug-ins,” said VimalRaj Sampathkumar, technical head for UK and Ireland at ManageEngine. “This filters websites that are appropriate for work, and isolates malicious files, securing organizations from browser-based cyberattacks”.

A strong browser security strategy can prevent cyberattacks by removing high-risk add-ons, extensions, and plug-ins. Using management tools ensures compliance by hardening browser settings and identifying vulnerabilities, according to Sampathkumar.

Suzan Sakarya, senior manager, EMEA security strategy at web security vendor Jamf told Computerworld that browser management helps security teams avoid some of the headaches associated with administering browser extensions.

“Organisations can tailor their browsers so it meets both user experience goals and security requirements,” said Sakarya.

Security teams can set policies to gain more visibility into their browser fleet, Sakarya explained: “For example, users could be required to request and gain approval before downloading extensions. As a result, security teams know what extensions are being installed and, more importantly, can restrict or block their usage if needed.”

Browser management tools also allow organisations to see which browser versions are being used. “Security teams can then identify devices running outdated software and quickly address the problem,” Sakarya concluded.

Pushing policies from the cloud

Google’s new features mean that admins can now also push policies to users that sign into Chrome on iOS, a technology that works on both managed and unmanaged browsers.

“On an unmanaged browser, only the profile is managed, offering clear separation between a managed work profile and a user’s personal profile,” Google said, adding that this aspect of the technology supports the bring-your-own device trend common for mobile usage in many enterprises.

Other enhancements to the technology enable management of browsers by groups, with the possibility to roll out of different policies to in-house software developers or to sales teams, for example. The utility now offers the ability to deploy JSON custom configurations from the cloud.

Chrome Enterprise Core also supports an upcoming security events logging analytics tool, due to become generally available to Chrome Enterprise Core shops in July and already available to WorkPlace Enterprise customers. The technology can be used to provide early warnings about data leaks, whether they are deliberate or accidental.

“All data transfers are scanned against 50 default DLP [Data Loss Prevention] detectors scanning for sensitive content and generating insider and data insights reports on activities like users with high content transfer, domains with high content transfer, domain categories with high content transfer and most common sensitive data types,” Google explained in a blog post.

Chrome Enterprise Core also allows internal IT teams to collect crash prevalence reports, allowing teams to analyse potential browser issues within their organization.

More Google news:

• Google Workspace gets new genAI pricing options, Vids app
• Google brings Gemini AI to the classroom
• Google adds a premium option for Chrome Enterprise

Just because you can do it doesn’t always mean you should — and when it comes to app sideloading on iPhones and iPads in Europe, (and elsewhwere), IT must take steps to lock down their devices to ensure only trustworthy apps and data make it to Apple devices used across the company. That’s the first takeaway from my conversation with Hexnode CEO Apu Pavithran.

Hexnode is one of the growing number of companies in the Apple enterprise ecosystem; it creates its own device management solutions to protect devices.

Apple could get like Android in a bad way

Pavithran recognizes Apple’s growing space in enterprise tech. “Apple has significantly transformed its footprint in enterprise IT over the last decade, with the rise of Macs and iPhones in corporate environments stemming from their user-friendly design and strong security focus,” he said. “Both are crucial for enhancing employee productivity and experience, especially with remote work.”

But, to him, the move to open Apple’s platforms to sideloading in the EU poses challenges that need to be locked down. “Forced sideloading could open the door to risks like fake apps, malware, and social engineering attacks that have long plagued the Android ecosystem,” he warned.

Pavithran also stressed that users need to be cautious in their use of any third-party stores that may emerge in Europe. 

Enterprise users have to protect themselves

That caution extends also to enterprise IT, which must take time to thoroughly review these stores, the companies and the developers behind them — and pay particular attention to what permissions are requested by the stores and apps.

“Enterprises can’t afford to be complacent about sideloading risks,” he said. “Mobile device management (MDM) is now the bare minimum to block rogue app downloads and enforce strict policies. But MDMs alone won’t cut it…. We also need zero-trust security constantly verifying every user and device. Ongoing employee training is also critical to empower people to identify potential threats from third-party app stores. Only a multi-layered approach can protect enterprises in this new sideloading era.”

Users need time to learn the risks

Some might say that sideloading has always been possible on Android, arguing that the Apple ecosystem is exaggerating the threat. That claim seems to ignore the ample evidence of platform fragmentation and malware that impacts Android users.

“Android users have had years to adjust to the risks and practices associated with third-party app stores. iOS users might be less familiar with these risks, making them more susceptible in these early days,” he said. “Many users may not fully understand the risks of sideloading or how to verify an app’s trustworthiness and intentions.”

Apple’s approach to sideloading reflects the tightrope it must walk.  Sure, there’s an element of struggle to preserve at least some of its lucrative App Store business, but the company also recognizes the need to ensure at least minimal safeguards are in place to protect the majority of its users who don’t have the time, knowledge, or interest to empower fully informed security decisions. 

The company knows that it prevented $1.8 billion in value of App Store fraud in 2023 alone, so it recognizes the risks. It will take time for iOS users to get to understand how with sideloading at least some of the security responsibility will shift to them.

So, where does this leave enterprise IT?

A changing environment for apps

One thing we do know is that once Europe’s sideloading stores appear, the people running them will do everything they can to convince Apple’s users to purchase things from those stores. 

To do so, they’ll try a range of approaches, likely including exclusive app distribution deals, discounts on sales, and focused marketing campaigns. In the first instance, these stores will be chasing users, not sales, which means convincing people to part with their credit card details to make a purchase. (They will be hoping to get those who do make a purchase more engaged over time.)

That means the environment will be both competitive and attractive, even as the users themselves might not yet appreciate what’s happening.

Enterprise IT will want to prevent a free-for-all on company-owned devices, which means they’ll use MDM systems (such as the ‘allowMarketplaceAppInstallation’ restriction) to prevent installation of unauthorized apps or from stores that haven’t yet passed corporate security review.

Vigilance is the cost of liberty 

One thing that’s certain is the move to embrace sideloading in Europe is likely to add new layers of complexity to Apple’s ecosystem. IT will need to lock down access to third-party stores pending review, and will need to embrace zero-trust security principles and frameworks to minimize the available attack surface.

“Regardless of how the sideloading landscape evolves, admins must remain vigilant,” Pavithran said. “They need to keep a close eye on emerging threats and trends in the here and now. But they must also monitor regulatory developments that could dramatically reshape Apple’s mobile ecosystem and security approaches down the road. Staying on top of the immediate realities and potential future disruptions will be key for effective mobile security management.”

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

I sure do love me a good time-saver. And sometimes, the best time-savers of all are the ones that are right under the surface of our favorite apps and services, just waiting to be seen — and/or remembered.

I’ll admit it: Even as someone who uses and thinks about Android more than any sane human should, I frequently find myself surprised by how often I stumble onto something that I knew about at some point but long ago forgot to keep using. It happens almost shockingly often — and it’s happened yet again, my dear friend, with a powerful shortcut system built right into Android and supported by oodles of my favorite apps.

The system is called, rather fittingly, app shortcuts. It’s been around since 2016’s Android 7.1 release, and it was originally framed as a response to Apple’s once-buzzworthy 3D Touch feature on the iPhone.

And that, as I wrote at the time, is the true Achilles’ heel of Android’s app shortcuts: The system tries too hard to emulate Apple’s original approach in that area instead of focusing on what makes sense for Android and would provide the best possible experience in our preferred environment. Heck, looking back at what I said about the shortcuts all those years ago seems almost eerily prophetic and like a too-perfect prologue to what we’re talking about today:

Their presence is completely hidden, with no visual cues whatsoever; you’d have to happen to long-press an icon to find them, and even then, you might not fully grasp what happened or why those items appeared. Users who know about the options are likely to forget they exist and underutilize them, too, as often happens with non-obvious commands in a user interface. Out of sight, out of mind — it’s a very real phenomenon.

And here we are, many years later, talking about how so many of us forget to take advantage of these time-saving treasures. The especially tricky thing about Android’s app shortcuts is that even if you do remember that they exist in general, you never know which apps take full advantage of the system and which don’t — or when any given app is updated with a richer set of shortcut options — unless you just haphazardly press icons every few weeks to see what, if anything, happens.

When you do press the right icons, though, you’re bound to be delighted by the bounty you unearth. And with a teensy bit of tinkering, you can make some of those shortcuts even more useful.

So enough of my blathering: It’s time to discover — or perhaps rediscover — the productivity-boosting potential of Android’s app shortcuts.

[Psst: Love shortcuts as much as I do? My Android Shortcut Supercourse will teach you even more advanced time-saving tricks for your phone. Sign up now for free!]

Android app shortcuts 101

Real quick, first, we need to back up for a quick primer on what exactly Android’s app shortcuts are and how you can put ’em to use: At the simplest possible level, Android app shortcuts are basically just direct links to specific functions within apps on your phone — ways you can get to individual actions or areas within an app without having to go through the typical process of opening the app up, plopping around through its menus, and tapping multiple commands to get where you want to go.

See?

A list of available app shortcuts for the Google Keep Android app.

JR Raphael, IDG

You can access app shortcuts by pressing and holding your finger down on any app’s icon — either on your home screen or in your app drawer — for about a second. And here’s where the true time-saving potential comes into play: You can also place any of the shortcuts you encounter directly onto your home screen for even easier one-tap access. Just press and hold the shortcut you want when you see it appear, then drag it into any open space in your home screen and let go.

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JR Raphael, IDG

So where might this be helpful? Well, in plenty of places, you goofy ol’ goat. Let’s talk some specifics.

Your Android app shortcuts superlist

Like a proper deranged geek-scientist, I’ve been sifting through dozens upon dozens of different productivity-oriented apps to identify some of the most broadly useful and yet woefully underutilized app shortcut actions available on Android today. Ready to find something new and useful that’s probably already on your phone?

Here we go:

1. Google Docs

Unearth those bashful app shortcuts for the Google Docs Android app, and you can move straight into a new document or open up the search function to find what you need within your existing documents without first having to open up the app and poke around.

2. Google Sheets

Press your favorite fingie down onto the Sheets icon to reveal similar shortcuts for starting up a new spreadsheet or searching for existing items within that arena.

3. Google Drive

Long-pressing on the Drive Android app gives you direct links for searching, uploading a new file, or — one of my personal favorites — scanning a physical document via your phone’s camera.

4. Gmail

Gmail sports hidden Android app shortcuts for starting a new message or jumping directly into any account’s inbox (provided that you have multiple accounts connected to your phone, of course).

5. Google Calendar

Press and hold the Google Calendar app’s icon, and you’ll find a simple shortcut for creating a new event as well as for creating a new Google-Tasks-connected task.

6. Business Calendar

If you’re using Business Calendar — my personal favorite Android calendar app and my go-to recommendation for an upgraded Android calendar experience — you can see those same new event and new task shortcuts by long-pressing that app’s icon.

7. Google Tasks

Speaking of Tasks, pressing and holding that app will surface a one-tap shortcut for creating a new task directly within the service.

8. Todoist

If you’re using Todoist — a much more feature-rich Tasks alternative and one of the best cross-platform productivity apps around — don’t feel left out. Long-pressing its icon will reveal swift shortcuts for starting new tasks as well as for searching through your existing tasks and opening the app directly to your tasks inbox or today view.

9. Google Keep

Note-takers, take note: Google’s Keep Android app has a handy collection of note-creating shortcuts, including one-touch commands for firing up a new text note, photo note, list note, or audio note — all tucked quietly away within its icon.

10. Google Messages

You can long-press Google’s Android Messages app to waltz your way directly into any recently viewed message thread without having to first open up the app and hunt around to find it.

11. Slack

With Slack, long-pressing the app’s icon will reveal single-tap shortcuts for jumping directly into any recently accessed workspace or conversation connected to your phone.

12. Google Phone

Speaking of speaking to people, pressing that squishy phalange of yours down onto the official Google Phone app’s icon will give you one-touch shortcuts for dialing any recent contacts you’ve called — no app-opening or other steps required. (The Google Phone app comes preinstalled by default on Pixels and certain other devices but can be downloaded and used on any Android device.)

13. Google Meet

Got Meet? Save yourself steps by pressing and holding its icon to find single-step shortcuts for starting a new meeting, sending a video to someone else in your Meet contacts, or starting a call with a specific recent contact from your list.

14. Google Contacts

Long-press the Contacts app to find shortcuts for adding a new contact or opening a contact you’ve interacted with recently on your phone. (Like the Google Phone app, Google Contacts comes preinstalled by default on Pixels and certain other devices but can be downloaded and used on any Android device — and that’s a wise move to make, in general, especially if you’re using a Samsung product.)

15. Google Clock

The official Google Clock app on Android has app shortcuts for starting a stopwatch or a timer right from your home screen as well as for creating a new alarm without all the usual effort. (Once more, if you’re using a device where the app isn’t already installed by default, you can just go grab it from the Play Store!)

16. Trello

My fellow Trello fanatics, this one’s for you: The Trello Android app icon holds shortcuts for starting a new card with a single tap or for jumping into any recently opened board associated with your account.

17. Notion

Notion is an awesome app for organization and efficiency, and you can make yourself more efficient yet by embracing the hidden shortcuts for starting a new page or pinning a page within its Android app icon.

18. Recorder

Pixel pals, listen up: In a just-added new convenience, pressing and holding the icon for Google’s excellent Pixel Recorder audio transcription tool will now show you a simple shortcut for starting a new recording without having to first wade your way into the app.

19. Google Maps

In the Android Maps app, you can launch guided navigations to any of your saved places (including “home,” “work,” and “that deli where I eat so much salami I can’t move”) by pressing your finger to the app’s icon and then selecting the spot you want.

20. TripIt

TripIt is one of the best Android travel apps out there, and long-pressing its icon presents you with an easy way to get to your list of upcoming trips as well as any pending travel alerts and updates.

21. Chrome

Long-pressing the Chrome Android app icon will surface options for zipping right into a new tab — or incognito tab, even — right from your home screen. (Bonus: The same is true for Firefox and other Android browser apps, too!)

22. Camera

On both Pixels and Samsung Galaxy devices, press and hold the Camera app icon to find simple shortcuts for skipping over the rear-facing camera interface that typically comes up when you open the app and instead moving right into the front-facing camera view or a video-recording mode.

23. Google Photos

In what may be the most useful Android app shortcut of all for me, personally, pressing and holding the Photos icon will present you with a one-tap path to hopping straight into your screenshots for incredibly easy on-demand access.

24. Google Files

Need to get to your downloads in a jiff? Long-press the Google Files app icon to transport yourself there without any detours. (This is specific to the Google Files app, which isn’t the same as the My Files app Samsung sticks onto its devices but can be installed and used there — or on any other Android device — as well.)

25. Nest

The Nest app gives you shortcuts to commonly opened connected gadgets, so you can skip right over to the control panel for your home office camera or deskside Smart Display without all the usual steps.

26. YouTube

The next time you’re wasting time watching panda videos during the workday watching very important work-related videos on your phone, remember that a long-press on the YouTube app icon will let you skip straight into the service’s search function as well as your subscriptions screen.

27. Pocket Casts

For your on-the-go podcast listening pleasure, the superb Pocket Casts app has hidden roads directly to its search screen as well as to your subscriptions collection, an “up next” player area, and a collection of new releases from podcasts you follow.

28. Venmo

If you use Venmo for paying vendors and/or velociraptors, make yourself a mental note that its icon holds hidden shortcuts to the send and request functions along with a transfer-to-bank option for any incoming payments.

29. Settings

On Pixels, the Android Settings app has handy shortcuts for hopping straight into certain commonly used areas of your system settings — such as the Wi-Fi and Battery sections.

30. Play Store

Last but not least, the Play Store app has a supremely helpful shortcut for popping right into the “My Apps” area of the Play Store — where you can peek through any pending updates to your various installed applications and apply ’em immediately. So long, cumbersome menu-wading!

This list could go on more or less indefinitely, depending on what specific Android apps you use, but you get the idea. And if you want to take this same concept even further, there’s an easy way to expand your Android app shortcuts on a completely customized level and make ’em even more useful yet.

The power is officially in your hands. Embrace it wisely — and this time, don’t forget to keep using it.

Get even more advanced shortcut knowledge with my free Android Shortcut Supercourse. You’ll learn tons of time-saving tricks for your phone!

If you’re a Slack user, you’ve probably noticed some differences in the way the chat app looks and works. The company refreshed the user interface of its desktop app last year and has continued to make minor adjustments since then.

These UI tweaks are meant to help you navigate your workspace and collaborate with your teammates more efficiently. Here’s how to make the best use of the new design.

In this article:

• Get around quickly with streamlined navigation
• Jump-start collaboration with the ‘Create new’ button
• Optimize your workspace for maximum efficiency

Get around quickly with streamlined navigation

As Slack added more features over the years, its interface got more cluttered and confusing. So its updated interface features a simplified navigation bar that surfaces the most used items while keeping everything else a click or two away.

Slack’s Home view provides an overview of your workspace.

Howard Wen / IDG

The bar along the left is the main way you navigate Slack. By default, you’ll see buttons marked Home, DMs, Activity, Later, and More. Each shows a different view in the second column — what Slack calls the sidebar — or lets you take specific actions.

Home: This view gives you an overview of the activity in your Slack workspace.

At the top of the sidebar are options that give you quick access to ongoing conversations:

• Unreads: shows all unread messages from your channels and direct messages (DMs) in the main panel of your workspace.
• Threads: shows all the message threads that you’re taking part in.
• Drafts & sent: shows your message drafts and messages you’ve sent.

You can hide any of these items from the Home view sidebar. We’ll cover this and other customization options later in the story.

Next are sections for Channels (which lists the conversation groups you’re a member of), Direct messages (listed by the names of teammates you have DMs with), and Apps that are installed on your Slack workspace. If you’ve marked any channels or DMs with a star, you’ll also see a Starred section, and there may be other sections in your workspace as well.

You can drag-and-drop the section names to rearrange their order, or click the down arrow to the left of any section name to collapse that section for a cleaner view.

If you’re on a paid plan, you can create custom section names. See below for more details.

To filter your conversations, click the upside-down, striped triangle at the top right of the sidebar. You can filter your conversations by those that you haven’t read, in which you are mentioned, or by the section they’re categorized under.

DMs: This view lists all your direct messages. They’re ordered chronologically, with the most recent at the top.

Click DMs in the navigation bar to see all your direct messages in reverse chronological order.

Howard Wen / IDG

Activity: This view lists recent activities in your channels and direct messages. Click the options across the top of the sidebar to sort them by messages in which you’re @ mentioned, threads you’re participating in, reactions to your messages, and more.

Later: This view lists the messages and threads that you have marked “Save for later” or asked to be reminded about at a set date or time. You can also use this view to create new reminders for yourself: click the + sign at the top right of the sidebar and fill out the panel that appears with a date, time, and description for the reminder.

More: Click the three-dot icon to open a menu with additional views. These include Automations, Huddles, Canvases, Files, Channels, People, and External connections. Click any menu item to see all items of that type — for example, Files shows all files that have been shared in your DMs or channels, Channels lets you browse all the channels in your Slack workspace, and People shows all the members of your workspace.

The More button gives you access to a variety of useful views.

Howard Wen / IDG

If you belong to multiple Slack workspaces, you may see an additional navigation bar to the left of the main nav bar. This has a button for each workspace you’re a member of so you can easily switch between them. A small icon at the top left of the Slack app window (“Show/Hide workspace switcher”) lets you toggle the additional nav bar on and off.

Jump-start collaboration with the ‘Create new’ button

To post a message or create a new collaboration area in your workspace, you don’t need to navigate to a particular location — you can do it from anywhere in Slack by clicking the Create new button. It’s the + icon on the lower left of your workspace, just above your profile headshot. You’ll see several options for starting collaboration areas in your workspace.

Use the Create new button to start new collaboration areas quickly.

Howard Wen / IDG

Message: Compose and post messages. A new, blank message will open in the main panel of your workspace. In its To: field, type the name of the channel where you want to post the message, or type the name of a teammate you want to DM. A dropdown lists suggested channels and teammates that you can select.

Huddle: Start a video or audio chat. On the panel that opens, you’ll be prompted to type (or select from a dropdown list) the name of a teammate to start the huddle with.

Canvas: Available only with a paid plan. Start a workspace where you can create, manage, and share content with your teammates. We cover this feature in more depth later in the story.

Channel: Start a new group conversation with your teammates. You’ll be prompted to type a name for a new channel where you and your teammates can collaborate, and to designate whether the channel is public (anyone in your workspace can join it) or private (members must be invited to join).

Optimize your workspace for maximum efficiency

Slack’s new interface is highly customizable, which means you can tweak it to show exactly what you want to further increase your productivity.

Customize the navigation bar and Home view

For starters, you can control what buttons appear on your nav bar on the left. In the bar, click the three-dot icon above More. At the bottom of the menu that opens, click Customize navigation bar.

This opens the Preferences panel. Make sure Navigation is selected on the left. Then select the items that you want to appear on the nav bar by checking the box next to each item. If an item is left unchecked, it will still be accessible from the navigation bar by clicking the three-dot icon.

Check the items you want to appear on the navigation bar.

Howard Wen / IDG

To customize what appears in your Home view, click Home on the left side of the Preferences panel and make your selections.

Create custom sections in the sidebar

This feature is available only with a paid plan.

You can create custom sections that appear in the sidebar in Home view. Then you can move channels, direct messages, and installed apps into a custom section. For example, you could create a custom section for a specific project and then place the channels, DMs, and apps related to this project inside this custom section.

Click Home on the navigation bar. In the sidebar, move the pointer over one of the existing section names — Channels, Starred, or Direct messages — and click the down arrow that appears to its right. On the menu that opens, select Create > Create section. You’ll be prompted to type in a name for your new section, and you can optionally pick an emoji to represent it.

Creating a custom section for the sidebar.

Howard Wen / IDG

Your new custom section will appear in the sidebar. You can drag-and-drop channels, direct messages, and apps into it. And you can drag-and-drop your custom section to reorder it further up or down the sidebar list.

Customize the workspace theme

You can change the color scheme of your Slack workspace by choosing a theme that you find easier to read or simply more pleasing visually. Themes really come in handy when you’re a member of multiple workspaces — you can apply a variety of themes to your workspaces to help differentiate them at a glance.

To get started, click your profile picture at the bottom left of the Slack window and select Preferences. On the Preferences panel, click Themes on the left, which opens the Color Mode settings.

Selecting a theme for a workspace.

Howard Wen / IDG

Select a predesigned theme: You’ll see a variety of predesigned Slack themes, from single colors to lively color combos. Click a theme to apply it to your workspace. When you leave the Themes tab or close the Preferences pane, you’ll be asked to confirm that you want to keep the new theme.

Create a custom theme: Click the Custom theme tab. You can then select the colors for the specific elements of your Slack window and tweak some visual effects. If you want to let AI design your theme, click Surprise me.

Creating a custom theme.

Howard Wen / IDG

Only you can see the custom theme you’ve created; it won’t change the theme for others in your workspace. But you can share it with others. Next to “Theme colors,” click the Share button to copy a link to your theme. You can paste this link in a message and send it to someone. When they click the link, they can apply your theme to their Slack workspace.

OpenAI has been testing its ChatGPT Mac desktop app among paying subscribers for the last few weeks. Now, it has opened its new desktop app to anyone with a Mac.

Coming so soon after Apple announced at WWDC that ChatGPT will be integrated within Siri and some apps across its platforms, the introduction must be a sign of the times. Apple’s decision to support ChatGPT and other generative AI (genAI) platforms across its ecosystem should expose millions of users to tools they might not have yet tried out.

A nice integration for Mac users

If you’ve already used ChatGPT on a browser or through other applications, you’ll be familiar with what it can accomplish. The smart chatbot can help get things done, source information, improve your work, and much more. (Though, as always, be careful of any hallucinations or errors that might crop up.)

The integration seems to be a solid combination of the ease-of-use of the Mac and the powerful tools within ChatGPT. In effect, that means the tools within the chatbot are easily available from almost anywhere on your Mac.

It is just the beginning, of course, as Apple has already promised deeper integration between its platforms and ChatGPT as an adjunct to Apple Intelligence. Announced at this month’s developer conference, Apple described plenty of uses for the technology, including in Writing tools.

What can the ChatGPT app do on a Mac?

In a series of short videos shared via OpenAI’s Twitter/X feed, the company described some of what you can achieve. On your Mac, the Chat GPT app can:

• Respond to the well-known and familiar Option-Space shortcut to invoke a ChatGPT query.
• Take a screenshot of a specific window or your entire screen to request feedback or advice on what is there — for example, when seeking to improve code.
• Search past ChatGPT conversations for specific items.
• Quickly and easily ask about anything on your computer using copy and paste.
• And of course, as you engage in conversation, you can refine and improve the exchange to produce more useful results.

You do gain access to standard Voice Mode (so you can speak to ChatGPT). But OpenAI has already promised a new version of Voice Mode powered by GPT-4o will be introduced in the coming weeks. That version will introduce the new audio and video capabilities introduced within GPT-4o.

“Whether you want to brainstorm a new idea for your company, prepare for an interview or have a topic you’d like to discuss, tap the headphone icon in the bottom right corner of the desktop app to start a voice conversation,” the company said.

The trickle becomes a flood

While ethical, environmental, and trust issues continue to delay the kind of rapid deployment of AI aficionados had originally anticipated, there’s little doubt usage will accelerate as platforms like Apple’s weave support inside them.

For most enterprises, this demands implementation of device management systems to help protect against unapproved use of these tools, particularly around confidential data. Apple is responding to this need with device management controls in macOS to constrain use of Apple Intelligence/OpenAI. It is already possible to manage app installs on Macs using MDM systems.

The new app is available for Apple Silicon (M-series) Macs running macOS 14 or later. Similar apps are already available for iPads and iPhones, but not Windows, where they’re expected later this year. You can download the Mac app here. 

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OpenAI has delayed the release of ChatGPT’s much-anticipated new Voice Mode feature, saying it needs another month” to refine the technology before offering it to a limited group of users in an alpha test.

“We had planned to start rolling this out in alpha to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but need one more month to reach our bar to launch,” the  company said in social media platform X.

It said it “needs one more month to reach our bar to launch.”

OpenAI was more optimistic back in May, when it showcased Voice Mode during the Spring Update event at which it launched the faster and more capable GPT-4o large language model.

“We plan to launch a new Voice Mode with these new capabilities in an alpha in the coming weeks, with early access for Plus users as we roll out more broadly,” it said then, referring to users of its $20/month ChatGPT Plus subscription service.

With the introduction of GPT-4o, OpenAI said it was able to cut the voice response to time around 320 milliseconds, from 5.4 seconds for GPT-4, creating a more natural and real-time conversational experience.

Safety and scalability concerns take center stage

OpenAI gave two reasons for the launch delay: safety and scalability.

It emphasized its commitment to responsible AI development and the need for the model to effectively “detect and refuse certain content.” This suggests concerns about potential misuse of the technology for generating harmful or offensive speech.

Scalability also appears to be a hurdle. OpenAI said it aims to ensure the feature functions smoothly for millions of users while maintaining real-time responsiveness. This requires robust infrastructure capable of handling the increased processing demands.

“Exact timelines depend on meeting our high safety and reliability bar,” the company added in the post. “We are also working on rolling out the new video and screen sharing capabilities we demoed separately, and will keep you posted on that timeline.”

More competition for ChatGPT

OpenAI’s delay in Voice Mode rollout creates an interesting scenario in the burgeoning field of AI voice capabilities.

Competitors like Anthropic, with its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, have already showcased voice-enabled interaction during demos.

Similarly, Google’s AI research arm, DeepMind, has been making strides in voice-based AI with its LaMDA language model,.

“Anthropic has joined this year’s intense AI race with models designed to compete head-on with recent announcements from OpenAI and Google,” said Neil Shah, VP for research and partner at Counterpoint Research. “Generative AI is a blue ocean opportunity, and each company, including Anthropic and OpenAI, will need to target specific use cases and segments. Anthropic, for example, is focusing on coding, writing, and workflow optimization.”

Beyond dedicated AI models, large language models such as Bard (Google AI) and Jurassic-1 Jumbo (AI21 Labs) are also constantly evolving, with some incorporating basic functionalities for voice interaction and response generation.

Even Microsoft’s Copilot programming assistant has begun to integrate voice-based guidance for developers.

OpenAI’s iterative approach: safety first

OpenAI’s decision to prioritize safety and scalability reflects a cautious yet responsible approach. Launching a powerful voice-enabled AI requires careful consideration of potential risks and ensuring the technology can handle widespread use without compromising performance.

“As part of our iterative deployment strategy, we’ll start the alpha with a small group of users to gather feedback and expand based on what we learn,” said the company.  

This iterative approach allows them to refine the model based on real-world user interactions and mitigate potential issues before a wider release.

While the delay may disappoint some users eager to experience Voice Mode, it does show a certain caution in the face of recent criticism of OpenAI’s attitude to safety. It has been working to restore confidence in that area with a series of appointments to its new safety and security committee.

New Copilot+ PCs are officially on the shelves and Microsoft’s marketing is all about explaining that these laptops include Windows 11 AI features you can only use on this sort of system.

But what exactly does that mean in practical terms? Here’s exactly what you get on one of these “next-generation AI PCs” today.

Copilot+ PCs are more than just “AI”

Before we get to the AI features, there’s one thing to know: the marketing isn’t focusing on the most interesting things about these PCs. AI hype aside, these are the first truly competitive Arm-based Windows PCs. They offer dramatically improved battery life and performance.

With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite hardware, it looks like the PC world finally has hardware that will go toe to toe with Apple’s Arm-based M-series Macs. And that’s making Intel sweat, too: Just look at the huge battery life improvements Intel is teasing for its next-generation Lunar Lake chips.

While everyone’s talking about AI, the big story is all-day battery life with snappy performance — all with compatibility with most existing Windows apps. That’s a big deal for business users (and a big deal for PC users in general).

That’s good news, because the AI features on these Copilot+ PCs feel a bit like a work in progress. They’re more of a demonstration of what’s possible: Application developers will be able to tap into the fast neural processing unit (NPU) to add AI features into their Windows applications.

There’s just one problem: Most AI tools do all the hard processing work in the cloud, which means you could just as easily run them on a Chromebook or iPad as you could on a powerful Windows PC. Will lots of applications switch to doing that AI number-crunching on your PC hardware instead?

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The Microsoft Recall factor

Then there’s this: The Copilot+ PC’s biggest and splashiest feature, Recall, isn’t even available at launch. Faced with privacy and security-related criticism, Microsoft frantically scrambled to remove Recall days before launch so it could be delayed.

Microsoft still says Recall will launch on these PCs in the coming months. But first, it will be tested in preview form with Windows Insiders.

When it launches, Recall will take screenshots of your PC’s display every five seconds. Then, you can choose to use plain language queries to search those Recall snapshots. You’ll be able to type things like, “Find that PowerPoint presentation about the quarterly budget. It had a chart with some orange bars.”

Without Recall, the Copilot+ AI PC features aren’t extremely impressive — they’re neat and nice to have, but there’s nothing here you’d race out and buy a new PC for (except the long battery life, which is impressive — but that has nothing to do with AI).

Paint Cocreator upgrades your drawings with AI The Cocreator tool in Paint makes for a great on-stage demo, but you’ll get more professional and realistic results with a cloud-based AI image creation tool.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

On Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft Paint has a “Cocreator” feature that will upgrade your drawings with AI as you draw. This feature uses the NPU hardware in a Copilot+ PC to do the AI-image-generating.

This is different from the existing “Image Creator” feature in Microsoft Paint, which uses Microsoft’s Image Creator — ultimately relying on OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 model running on cloud servers. All Windows 11 PCs have access to that, while Copilot+ PCs have both buttons on Paint’s toolbar.

Here’s the catch: To use this feature, you have to sign into a Microsoft account. While it uses a Copilot+ PC’s local hardware, it doesn’t work offline. For “AI safety” — to ensure the image generation model doesn’t generate anything terrible — the image your PC generates is sent to Microsoft’s cloud servers and only shown to you if it’s approved.

So, while this is neat, it does seem like you might as well just use some kind of cloud-based AI image generation tool. You could likely get better, higher-quality, more realistic results.

Restyle Image in Photos The Restyle tool requires a Microsoft account and an internet connection. 

Chris Hoffman, IDG

The edit view in Windows 11’s Photos app gains an “AI” button on Copilot+ PCs. This launches a tool that lets you “restyle” your photos, using generative AI to change them. For example, you could transform them into the style of an impressionist painting, watercolor art, anime, or cyberpunk.

Once again, this is a neat parlor trick, but this feature is also dependent on Microsoft’s cloud servers for safety checking. You can’t use it offline. And, while I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to fine-tune the prompts, it does seem like the results are much less impressive than you’d get with a state-of-the-art AI image generation model running on more powerful cloud servers, particularly when it comes to professional, business purposes.

Image Creator in Photos The built-in Image Creator requires an internet connection – so why not just use a cloud-based image generation tool?

Chris Hoffman, IDG

The Photos app also gains an Image Creator tool, which you can access from its sidebar. Once again, this AI image generator just isn’t producing the quality of results that you see from a state-of-the-art cloud-based AI image generator, like the results we’re seeing from Midjourney or Adobe Firefly.

As with all the other AI image tools, this won’t work offline — it does the AI image generation work on your Copilot+ PC but has to phone home to Microsoft’s servers before it shows you the image.

Live Captions for real-time transcription and translation Live Captions are displayed on a floating bar at the top of your PC’s screen.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

On a Copilot+ PC, you can get live captions of any audio — audio playing on your PC or spoken audio picked up via your microphone. It adds real-time captions to anything. Just launch the “Live Captions” application from the Start menu.

This does work entirely offline. In fact, that’s one of the advantages: Your average Windows 11 PC has Live Captions, too. The main difference with a Copilot+ PC is that the translation happens on your PC’s hardware itself, so it works offline and will be snappier under bad network conditions.

Additionally, on a Copilot+ PC, this experience has built-in translations. Live Captions can understand 44 different languages and will translate them to English subtitles — something that could be very advantageous in the right sort of business scenario.

Windows Studio Effects for your webcam Windows Studio Effects are neat, but most of them can also be found on Intel laptops released earlier this year.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Copilot+ PCs offer Windows Studio Effects for real-time webcam effects in your meetings. You can blur your background or fake eye contact so it looks like you’re always looking directly at your webcam.

These particular features aren’t new, and they’re found on those first-generation AI PCs powered by Intel Meteor Lake chips as well. On a Copilot+ PC, however, there are also “Illustrated,” “Animated,” and “Watercolor” options that can add a generative AI-powered filter to your webcam image in real time. Your mileage may vary, but I found those creative filter effects to be very subtle. And they seem more relevant for playful, personal purposes than for professional company calls.

Overall, though, Windows Studio Effects are nice to have for online meetings — especially tweaks like eye contact and background blurring. And, because they use the NPU, they don’t slow down your PC or drain its battery.

What about Copilot? Copilot doesn’t use Copilot+ PC hardware to do anything extra.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Like first-generation AI PCs, Copilot+ PCs have a Copilot key on their keyboard for quickly launching Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant. That’s all they have. The Copilot experience doesn’t use the Copilot+ PC hardware in any way. It all runs entirely on Microsoft’s cloud servers, just as it does on current Windows 11 or Windows 10 PCs.

In fact, the Copilot PC is less integrated with Windows 11 in some ways. These machines have the “new” Copilot application Microsoft recently announced — it’s not a sidebar anymore, it’s a floating window. However, it’s also a progressive web application, and it doesn’t integrate with Windows at all. That means you can’t say “Turn on dark mode,” or “Empty my recycle bin.” Perhaps those features will arrive in the future. Either way, all Windows 11 PCs will get this new Copilot app experience eventually. But there’s nothing special here for Copilot itself.

Third-party NPU experiences

Microsoft and Qualcomm are proud of the neural processing unit (NPU) in these Copilot+ PCs. They’re capable of 40+ TOPS — that’s “trillion operations per second.”

Beyond features integrated into Windows itself, the idea is that this baseline level of NPU performance allows app developers to integrate AI features in their Windows apps. While a Copilot+ PC is something unique now, future hardware from Intel (with Lunar Lake, launching later this year) and AMD (with Strix Point, also launching later this year) will deliver that kind of NPU performance as well. At that point, all new Windows PCs will meet this requirement.

It’s not just about Windows. It’s about what third-party apps can do with this hardware.

There’s not a lot available yet. For example: While Adobe Photoshop does now have a native Arm version that can run better on the Snapdragon X Elite hardware, the Adobe Firefly AI image generation features built into Photoshop still uses Adobe’s cloud servers — not the NPU.

Should you buy a Copilot+ PC?

The big reason to buy one of these first Copilot+ PCs is for the combination of battery life and strong day-to-day performance. If it’s time for a new PC, they’re worth a look.

If you’re just looking for AI, I would consider waiting — there’s not a lot here yet. And if you’re particularly interested in Recall, good news: It’s not out yet, and when it does arrive in a few months, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to pick up a Copilot+ PC on sale. Score.

Eventually, though, all new Windows laptops — whether they have Intel or AMD x86 chips, Qualcomm Arm chips, or an Arm chip from another manufacturer — will meet these “Copilot+ PC” specifications and be capable of running these AI experiences.

The only question is if you want to be an early adopter.

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To get things done using the power of the US government, President Theodore Roosevelt used to advise, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” No need to rage and roar to accomplish what you want — instead, rely on the considerable power of the federal government to get things done.

How things have changed. These days when it comes to reining in Big Tech, the motto of Congress has essentially become “Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” Call a public hearing, rant and rave about the untrammeled power of major tech players — then do nothing.

Take, for example, the recent mid-June hearing in which the House Committee on Homeland Security grilled Microsoft President Brad Smith about how the company allowed Chinese government-supported hackers to carry out what The New York Times calls “a devastating hack of federal government networks” while maintaining its business presence on Chinese soil.

At the hearing, Congress members demanded that Microsoft harden its security, and questioned its commercial presence in China. Then the hearing ended. Congress had spoken loudly — perhaps not nearly as loudly as it should have, but at least it was more than a whisper.

After that? No big stick. In fact, no stick at all. Microsoft continues to have the largest share of the federal government’s IT budget. And it still hasn’t faced any consequences for allowing Chinese hackers to run wild through government networks. 

However, there’s some evidence that Microsoft might finally face real pushback from the feds, including possible revenue losses. To see why that may happen, let’s first take a deeper look at the Chinese hack and Microsoft’s presence in China.

Storm-0558 runs amok

A year ago, the Chinese-government sponsored espionage group Storm-0558 conducted an audacious feat of hacking — it broke into the email accounts of high-level government officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), all of whom help oversee the US relationship with China.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. Some 25 US government agencies were hit; 60,000 emails from the State Department alone were stolen by the hackers.

As I detailed earlier this year, the attack was made possible by stunning acts of incompetence. The Chinese hackers used a cryptographic key to carry out the exploit — a key created in 2016 that was supposed to have been retired in 2021 but wasn’t. Why didn’t Microsoft retire it? Because the company couldn’t make its consumer keys more secure, and so rather than solve the problem, it left the key lying around in an insecure place. Storm-0558 stole it, used it to forge user credentials, and then used those credentials to hack into government email accounts.

In April, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) delivered a  blistering report, blaming the hack on a “cascade of Microsoft’s avoidable errors.” The report said the company “failed to detect the compromise of its cryptographic crown jewels on its own, relying instead on a customer to reach out to identify anomalies the customer had observed.”

The report, according to The Washington Post, exposed Microsoft’s “shoddy cybersecurity practices, lax corporate culture and a lack of transparency.”

Microsoft’s presence in China

Meanwhile, while China hacks Microsoft, Microsoft keeps a presence in China. Smith told Congress that the company’s commercial presence there accounts for an estimated 1.4% to 1.5% of its overall sales. That might not sound like much, but the company’s revenue for the fiscal year ending in March 2024 was $236.6 billion, meaning Microsoft took in approximately $1.5 billion from its Chinese office.

Given Chinese hacking of Microsoft and its customers, including the federal government, Congress members at the hearing asked why the company kept its presence in China, especially since the revenue represents such a small part of the company’s overall sales.

“Is it worth it?” Rep. Carlos Gimenez, (R-FL), asked bluntly.

Smith gave an answer only a lawyer could love — or understand, for that matter. The Times paraphrased the answer this way: “Mr. Smith argued that Microsoft’s business in China served American interests by protecting the trade secrets of Microsoft’s American customers operating there and learning from what’s going on in the rest of the world.”

Got it? Me, neither. The real reason is simpler: Microsoft didn’t become the world’s most valuable company (or second-most valuable company, depending on the day) by leaving money on the table, even if it’s only 1.4% of its total sales.

The ‘not-a-gotcha’ hearing

Smith’s grilling was pretty tame. Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS), telegraphed that before the questioning began. “This is not a gotcha hearing,” he assured Smith.

After it was over, not much seemed to have changed. Microsoft continues to be a target for Chinese hackers, and the company still has a Chinese office. And Microsoft continues to reap billions from the federal government including, ironically, for cybersecurity services.

But there are some small signs that perhaps Microsoft could eventually face consequences for lax security practices.  Multiple tech industry groups that include Microsoft competitors have launched a lobbying campaign, arguing that having the federal government rely so heavily on a single vendor for tech products and services is inherently a cyber risk.

In a letter to top government officials and Congress, they argued that best security practices require that the government “switch to a multi-vendor environment” —  in other words, stop relying so heavily on Microsoft and let other companies in on the action.

There’s evidence that at least some in Congress are listening. In late May, Sens. Eric Schmitt, (R-MO), and Ron Wyden, (D-OR), sent a sharp letter asking the Pentagon to back off from a plan to expand its use of Microsoft products: “We write with serious concern that the Department of Defense (DoD) is doubling down on a failed strategy of increasing its dependence on Microsoft at a time when Congress and the administration are reviewing concerning cybersecurity lapses that led to a massive hack of senior U.S. officials’ communications….

“We are deeply concerned that DoD is choosing not to pursue a multi-vendor approach that would result in greater competition, lower long-term costs, and better outcomes related to cybersecurity.”

The DoD, of course, doesn’t need to heed the letter. But Microsoft is clearly starting to feel some heat. Smith told Congress that in response to the Chinese hack, Microsoft launched what he calls “the single largest cybersecurity engineering project in the history of digital technology.” 

If that’s true, and if it stops future attacks like the Chinese one, Microsoft will likely be sitting pretty. I wouldn’t expect the feds to cut back on Microsoft contracts. But if he’s wrong and there’s another major hack, I’d bet that for once Congress will speak loudly, carry a big stick — and cut back on government contracts with the company.

In the US, artificial intelligence (AI) regulation is a hot mess.

There are about 650 proposed state bills in 47 states and more than 100 federal congressional proposals related to AI, according to Multistate.ai. New York alone is home to 98 bills and California has 55. Then there are the executive orders from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that have spun off many working groups and galvanized several government regulatory agencies.

When regulations are codified in so many ways by so many sources in so many places, the chance for conflicting directives is high — and the result could stifle business and leave loopholes in protections.

AI’s complexity adds to the confusion as do the numerous aspects of AI that warrant regulation. The list is lengthy, including job protection, consumer privacy, bias prevention and discrimination, deepfakes, disinformation, election fraud, intellectual property, copyright, housing, biometrics, healthcare, financial services, and national security risks.

So far, the federal government has dragged its feet on AI regulation, seemingly more focused on party politics and infighting than in crafting useful measures. As a result, Congress has not been an effective tool for structuring regulation policy.

The time for congressional action on AI regulation was two or three years ago. But with little being done federally, the states, particularly California, are attempting to fill the breach.

California jumps out front

California is out in front on consumer protections for AI. In 2018 — even before the public arrival of generative AI (genAI) in late 2022 — the state passed a transparency law that requires disclosure when genAI tools are used for deceptive communications to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction, or to influence a vote in an election. California has also passed laws on bias prevention in AI-based pre-trial criminal justice tools, deepfake use in electoral campaigns, and banning the use of facial recognition to analyze images captured by police body cams. (The state is nearing the possible release of additional consumer protections introduced in draft form late last year.)

Among other bills, California is formulating a model-level-approach to AI regulation, known as CA SB-1047. The legislation sets its sights on frontier models and the big tech companies that are developing them.

OpenAI defines frontier models as “highly capable foundation models that could possess dangerous capabilities sufficient to pose severe risks to public safety.” SB-1047 would establish a new California agency to regulate large AI models and verify compliance. To be certified, developers would have to provide safeguards, security protections, prevention of critical harms, and built-in a facility that would enable a complete shutdown of the model.

This bill is the one being most closely watched by the tech industry.

Already, AI bills introduced by California and other states “are having a ripple effect globally,” according to The New York Times, quoting Victoria Espinel, CEO of the Business Software Alliance, a lobbying group representing big software companies. Causing its own ripple effect, the European Union adopted the comprehensive AI Act in March; it will be rolled out in stages beginning in 2025.

Follow the EU’s lead

What’s wrong with the US that it is unable to formulate and legislate a unified set of AI regulations like the EU? And do so in a timely manner? Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, has been working on AI regulation with industry leaders, but the effort doesn’t seem to be going anywhere quickly.

We’re well past the point of debating whether regulation is needed, yet many pundits are still arguing the point as if there were some doubt of its necessity. Those in the US in a position to foster comprehensive regulatory policies for AI should come together, roll up their sleeves, and craft policy.

California has done a great job, but its policies are not binding outside of its borders. The US is more freewheeling and supportive of business innovation than many other nations. That can be  one of this country’s strengths. But genAI, and AI in general, has the potential to be as destructive as it can be constructive. We ignore that risk at out peril.

The next 12 to 18 months will see significant AI legislation play out around the globe. The US is in danger of missing that timeframe. It’s time to catch up.

Microsoft broke European Union competition law by bundling Teams with other Office 365 applications, the European Commission said in a preliminary finding published Tuesday. If Microsoft fails to defend itself, the company could face billions of dollars in fines and other penalties.

The EU’s antitrust regulator said it had sent Microsoft a statement of objections outlining its finding that the company had given its Teams communications service an unfair advantage by bundling it with subscriptions to Office 365 and Microsoft 365, the suite of software-as-a-service applications that also includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Teams enables workforce collaboration via video and chat and surged in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching over 300 million global users in 2023.

“The Commission preliminarily finds that Microsoft is dominant worldwidein the market for SaaS productivity applications for professional use,” it said in a news release posted Tuesday.

The company’s practice since at least April 2019 to tie Teams to its core SaaS productivity apps has restricted market competition for similar products as well as defended Microsoft’s own “market position in productivity software as well as its suites-centric model from competing suppliers of individual software,” the Commission concluded.

“In particular, the Commission is concerned that Microsoft may have granted Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice whether or not to acquire access to Teams when they subscribe to their SaaS productivity applications,” the Commission’s said.

Interoperability limits between competing offerings and Microsoft’s apps also bolstered Microsoft’s advantage and prevented its rivals from competing, and in turn innovating, to the detriment of customers in the European Economic Area, the Commission said, referring to the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

Investigation a year in the making

The decision follows a nearly year-long investigation that started last July and was sparked by a July 2020 competition complaint against the software giant by then enterprise messaging application Slack, which has since been bought by Salesforce.

Microsoft first unbundled Teams from its Office suites in the European Economic Area and Switzerland in August 2023 to try to appease EU officials during the investigation, then extended that move worldwide in April.

Neither effort apparently did anything to dissuade the Commission from considering Microsoft in violation of competition rules, a decision that was foreshadowed when the Competition said in May that it planned to include Teams in its inivestigation of Microsoft for anticompetitive practices despite the company’s concessions.

For its part, Microsoft plans to continue to address remaining concerns the Commission has over Teams as it awaits further decisions by the Commission, such as what, if any, financial consequences the company will face.

“Having unbundled Teams and taken initial interoperability steps, we appreciate the additional clarity provided today and will work to find solutions to address the Commission’s remaining concerns,” Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president, said in a statement emailed to Computerworld.

The road ahead

Microsoft now gets a chance to present its defense. However, if it’s unable to sway the Commission from its preliminary decision, it could be forced to pay a fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue under EU law, and the Commission may also impose remedies to end the infringement.

“This EU chargesheet proves what was feared: Microsoft didn’t do enough to provide a level playing field to the Team’s competitors,” noted Pareekh Jain, CEO of EIIRTrend & Pareekh Consulting.

It now has its work cut out for it to unbundle Teams and create interoperability for competitors’ software to avoid penalties and damages, Jain noted.

It’s about a decade since EU regulators last levelled anti-trust charges against Microsoft: Its failure to offer Windows 7 users a choice of browser drew a €561 million (then about $731 million) fine.

To date, Microsoft has racked up around €2.2 billion ($2.4 billion) in fines for tying or bundling products together in a way that was deemed anti-competitive by EU regulators.

The rush to build global cloud infrastructure to support artificial intelligence (AI) has turned Nvidia into a top three tech stock and will likely nurture innovation in processor design and energy creation — but Apple may need to serve itself.

Apple needs to bring more for less

The IEA says global electricity demand to drive data centers will more than double by 2026. That’s even as consumption of AI services such as OpenAI spikes when devices (including new iPhones) gain easy access to them.

To satisfy demand, tech firms must tweak more computational performance and additional energy efficiency from the chips they put inside both servers and edge devices. But this push for efficiency and low power reflects what Apple has been trying to do with its own silicon development for years. Apple Silicon chips were way ahead of the wider industry on both metrics (at least for consumer devices) long before generative AI (genAI) climbed through the Overton Window. 

While attention on server processors rests with Nvidia, the M4 processor inside the iPad Pro could be seen as harbinger of what is to come. At 38 trillion operations per second, we know it has the fastest Neural Engine you can get. Ever modest, Apple has described the M4 iPad as the best AI PC money can buy, and those same processors are also coming to servers.

Apple is now in the server market

The company’s Private Cloud Compute (PCC) system consists of proprietary Apple servers running Apple Silicon chips to provide responses to Apple Intelligence queries.  

While these are only being situated in US data centers at this time (as that’s the only place Apple Intelligence will be made available on launch), it’s easy to expect the company will deploy these highly secure systems globally *except in the EU in the coming months. 

It must. As Apple Intelligence launches globally, Apple will find itself needing to ramp up its international server infrastructure to meet the demands for AI its billion or so customers might make. 

But one data center at a time, server by server, Apple is already in the server market. Motivated by privacy, these Apple servers also meet wider industry needs around energy consumption and performance requirements.

It makes sense for Apple to expand this provision, perhaps even to offer highly secure, low energy server services to enterprise users, but it’s more likely to drive its streaming services while lowering energy consumption.

There’s another chip coming

It is worth noting that Apple hasn’t yet hit a performance ceiling. Very likely to be tumbling off production lines right now, the next iPhone chip is expected to be a 3nm processor. This might deliver even faster Neural Engine performance than you get inside the M4, which means the next iPhone will be capable of handling even bigger calculations at higher speeds for less energy than Apple’s best available current chip delivers now. Apple also has a road map toward 2nm chips, which will maintain that pattern of performance and energy efficiency.

All of this means the company already has a road map toward processor performance that it can now apply to the server market it abandoned in 2011, when it discontinued the Xserve. 

This is true corporate social responsibility

Apple already knows it isn’t good enough to just put high-performance chips inside servers and edge devices if they consume vast quantities of energy. To mitigate this, the company has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in reducing energy consumption across its entire ecosystem, including major investments in renewable energy supply. It will not turn back time.

With that in mind, it will want to widen its ecosystem of low power, high performance iCloud servers, and when doing so it makes sense for it adopt those servers across its other online services over time. After all, if it can build servers and services that can be delivered at lower energy requirements without compromise on performance, why wouldn’t it do so?

For Apple, adoption of these may be an easy win in terms of its environmental performance data. But at what point will these systems become a service offering in their own right? What value could they unlock for the company?

However the eventual story ends, it’s interesting that by focusing on energy efficiency and computational performance for iPhone chips (and the PA Semi purchase), Apple put itself in a good position to meet the then-unseen challenges of server-based AI — and the space between the lines suggests we’re not near the end of that particular story just yet….

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The digital nomad lifestyle — traveling while working via a laptop and the internet — has always come with downsides. 

When you have a home office, you can control your tools and gear. When you’re a digital nomad, you have to compromise. Specifically, you can’t carry a giant display — and you can’t always find fast internet. 

Suddenly, both of these pain points are being erased.

Virtual screens get real

A great many of us need or prefer a very large screen, or several screens; we crave screen real estate for multitasking. (Software developers, who are more prone to digital nomad living than most, tend to favor acres and acres of screen real estate.)

Big screens just weren’t an option for digital nomads — until now. We suddenly have a variety of much-needed new or improved options for giant virtual desktop screens. 

Mike Elgan talks about his digital nomad lifestyle and some of the issues he’s faced, part of his appearance on ‘Today in Tech’ Apple Vision Pro

Apple — which is rumored to have stopped working on its Apple Vision Pro headset in favor of a cheaper, smaller future spatial computing device next year, according to a report from The Information — recently improved its virtual Mac desktop screen feature for existing Apple Vision Pro users. 

At WWDC 2024 earlier this month, Apple unveiled its new visionOS 2.0, which upgrades the virtual Mac display feature. The original version showed a Mac desktop at a resolution of 2560×1440 — less than one 4k monitor. The new version enables the equivalent of two 4k screens connected into a single display that wraps around the user in a holographic semicircle. 

The new feature is nice for existing Apple Vision Pro users, but the platform is still generally too expensive ($3,499), bulky, uncomfortable and Apple-centric for many digital nomads who just want a bigger screen. 

The good news is that other more affordable and lighter-weight options have also emerged. 

Xreal Beam Pro

Xreal last week announced the Beam Pro — a gadget the size and shape of a smartphone that delivers a spatial computing experience to the company’s Xreal AR glasses: Air, Air 2, Air 2 Pro, Air 2 Ultra. 

The device runs on Android 14, uses Xreal’s NebulaOS, and  features a 6.5-in. 2K touchscreen display that allows users to control and interact with augmented reality (AR) content displayed through the glasses. It runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon platform and offers access to apps in the Google Play Store, as well as streaming services and cloud gaming platforms.

The Beam Pro has two 50-megapixel rear cameras, which capture spatial and 3D videos and images. It also has two USB-C ports, allowing the glasses and Beam Pro to be powered simultaneously. The device supports Nvidia CloudXR tech, which uses Nvidia RTX GPUs for rendering.

Best of all, the Beam Pro can be used to connect to laptops or desktops for screen mirroring through its two USB-C ports. 

Xreal Beam Pro costs $200 and there’s a bundle deal with the Beam Pro, plus the glasses, that’s 10% of the price of Apple Vision Pro. Better Xreal glasses raise that price, but even the most expensive bundle costs a fraction of the Apple Vision Pro. 

Rokid AR Lite

The Rokid AR Lite is a new spatial computing platform that combines the Rokid Max 2 AR glasses and the Rokid Station 2 host unit. The Rokid Max 2 glasses weigh just 75 grams and offer a 50-degree field of view with 1080-by-1200-pixel resolution and up to 600 nits of brightness. You can adjust the lenses to match your vision, so you can see clearly despite the particulars of your eyesight.

The Rokd Station 2 runs on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 mobile platform and Rokid’s YodaOS. It enables system-level 3DoF (3 degrees of freedom) tracking and enables you to run up to three apps simultaneously across holographic floating screens. The “Giant Screen Mode” can enlarge a single app up to a 300-in. virtual display.

Sightful Spacetop G1

The Sightful Spacetop G1, which I wrote about more than a year ago, is a Chromebook-like cloud computing laptop with AR glasses instead of a screen. The device gives you the equivalent of a 100-in. display, which appears to float in space in front of you.

The Spacetop G1 is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon QCS8550 platform, which includes a KRYO CPU, Adreno 740 GPU, and AI processing capabilities. It comes with 16GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and runs on the company’s proprietary Chromium-based operating system, Space OS. 

The AR glasses have two OLED display panels that provide 1920×1080 pixels per eye at a 90Hz refresh rate. The glasses offer a 50-degree diagonal field of view and support custom prescription lenses. 

Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, and 5G/LTE support. The base unit features two USB-C ports for peripherals and includes a 5-megapixel webcam, and two open-ear speakers in the glasses to provide the audio. 

The entire system, including the glasses, weighs just 3.08 lbs — great for carrying around in a backpack. The Spacetop G1 is expected to ship in October. 

Big bandwidth gets small

For digital nomads like me who travel from place to place, internet connectivity ranges from great to non-existent. As a write this, I’m staying in a 300-year-old house in Provence. The house is beautiful, but the Wi-Fi is only so-so — until it stops completely, which happens every 20 minutes or so. (The Airbnb listing promised fast fiber.) 

In fact, on Thursday I guest-hosted on Computerworld’s Today in Tech podcast, and had to book a private booth at a great co-working place and maker space here in Provence called The FabLab of Pernes. Without the co-working space, I wouldn’t have been able to do the podcast.)

Suddenly, the days of having to rely on local resources for internet connectivity are numbered. 

SpaceX Vice President of Starlink Engineering Michael Nicolls  last week unveiled a new portable version of its Starlink satellite internet terminal called the Starlink Mini — a small, portable satellite dish with a built-in Wi-Fi router. 

Later, Vice President of Starlink Business Operations at SpaceX Chad Gibbs demonstrated the device from the back of a Cybertruck, going from a brand new Starlink Mini in the box to achieving 180 Mbps in roughly two minutes. 

The Starlink Mini costs $599, $100 more than the regular dish. Current Starlink customers can add Mini Roam to their existing residential service for an extra $30 per month; it provides 50GB of mobile data, with extra data beyond that limit costing more. 

The Starlink Mini is more power efficient than other devices, and it can be powered by a power bank battery — no wall plug needed.The month of June 2024 has radically changed the digital nomad proposition. Suddenly, we can carry gigantic displays and fiber-equivalent internet connectivity in our backpacks. For digital nomads it’s a big-screen, better-connected new world.

Apple’s decision not to introduce Apple intelligence, iPhone Mirroring, or SharePlay Screen Sharing in the European Union this year isn’t surprising, and reflects concerns around privacy far more than being a response to Europe’s decision to act against Apple’s App Store compliance.

The news basically is that Apple has confirmed it will not introduce the Apple Intelligence features it announced at WWDC in EU nations because it has concerns around the application of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). 

Apple Intelligence delayed, App Store gets a DMA slap

“Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year,” Apple told the Financial Times.

At the same time Apple made its announcement, the EU itself announced it will begin to take enforcement action against the company for breach of the DMA. Europe is concerned about elements of Apple’s offer to developers and the fees it charges the small number of developers who are the most successful on the store, arguing this stifles competition. Apple says it has made changes and is “confident” its plans align with that law.

It’s worth noting that the EU recently proposed an incredibly intrusive surveillance law that would break end-to-end encryption. While it looks like those proposals may have been shelved, Apple might have decided to stall while it waits to see what kind of shabby surveillance laws do get passed. 

Privacy or convenience? It’s up to EU

If you think about it, the beauty of Apple Intelligence is that it uses information your device has collected about you in order to function. But the risk of that information existing — even on your device — is that under the DMA, it’s not certain the EU won’t insist on that data, your data, being opened up to competitors. 

That’s a lot of information.

Apple is committed to keeping that information private and secure, but once it exists and is on the device in some form, I expect the company is concerned the DMA could force it to open up the information to third parties who want to compete with their own AI. As we’ve seen since the invention of the Internet, not every company is legitimate, ethical, or trustworthy, and even those that are might not have enough clout to invest in the world’s best security teams to maintain safety on their platforms.

A Pandora’s box chock-full of trouble

I get the sense that Apple’s decision to hold back on Apple Intelligence in the EU reflects the ongoing battle between the two entities as Europe forces Apple to open up a little. Given the source of this speculation, that might be correct, but the analysis misses what’s really at stake: once you have all your personal information turned into usable data on your device, every spook, hacker, fraudster, blackmailer, censor, despot, cop, or secret service operative is going to want to take a look.

That means any weakness in protecting that information opens a Pandora’s box of misanthropy — affecting consumers, corroding trust, and enabling surveillance at a scale no one has seen ever before on our sadly ailing planet. 

Could the EU end up without Apple Intelligence? 

It feels possible EU might never get Apple Intelligence.

Apple says: “We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission (EC) in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.”

According to the Financial Times, Apple seeks “clarity” from the European Commission regarding the level of access it would need to grant to third parties over Apple Intelligence features in order to be DMA-compliant.

However, rather than providing any insight into requirements, an EU rep said companies like Apple are, “Welcome to offer their services in Europe, provided that they comply with our rules aimed at ensuring fair competition.” Which is, of course, what Apple is asking for, it just wants to know how those rules will be applied to its service before launch, rather than working with decisions made after the event.

What isn’t yet clear is the extent to which other AI providers might be affected. Is it possible the European Commission might have just created an obstacle to AI deployment?

Who has the energy for this?

And, of course, the big conversation everyone should be having concerning artificial intelligence is one Europe’s regulators don’t appear to be addressing at all — the energy consumption of AI servers. Combined, the world’s data centers now consume more power in a year than the entire Italian nation, and this is set to increase exponentially. Perhaps waiting until privacy, security, and energy challenges are solved makes sense after all?

One more thing is also certain: That with the removal of these three features the temptation to upgrade to iOS 18 among European users will be lower than ever before, given they comprise the majority of improvements to the OS.

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Data centers are draining more electricity from global power grids than ever before because of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) and general AI processing needs. 

The compute capacity to train large language models, the platforms on which generative AI (gen) and AI run, is now roughly doubling every nine months, according to Epoch AI, an AI research institute. The International Energy Agency forecast that global data center electricity demand will more than double from 2022 to 2026, in large part because of AI and cryptocurrency.

That insatiable demand for energy has tech companies scrambling for alternative sources of energy as well as ways to reduce the energy needs of AI technologies.

One potential emerging solution to the AI-compute dilemma is quantum computing, which vastly surpasses today’s binary computing systems in processing capabilities and energy consumption. Studies have shown quantum computing can increase the performance of AI neural networks for tasks such as natural language processing and image analysis.

“Quantum computing definitely augments the power of AI. For example, AI and quantum computing used together can accelerate drug discovery and personalized pharmaceuticals by years. Quantum computing supports AI-based simulation of clinical drug trials so that the trials take one hour instead of ten years,” said Avivah Litan, a vice president analyst at Gartner.

For example, in February, Insilico Medicine, Zapata AI, and the University of Toronto announced they’d demonstrated the first instance of a generative model running on quantum hardware outperforming state-of-the-art classical models in generating viable cancer drug candidates.

What is quantum computing?

In classical computers, bits programmed as units of data have a possible value of one or zero — hence the term binary code. In quantum computers, data units are programmed with quantum bits, known as qubits, which can represent a one, a zero, or a combination of both zero and one at the same time. At a high level, that trait enables quantum computers to be faster and better at fundamental processing tasks than data processing on classical computing systems that use GPUs or CPUs.

For example, Google’s Quantum AI division built a supercomputer based on its Sycamore quantum processor. Each chip currently holds 70 qubits and can reportedly complete in seconds what would take a CPU- or GPU-based supercomputer of similar size decades to process.

From left to right, Google’s rendition of its Quantum computing platform and its Sycamore quantum processor.

Google

“Quantum artificial intelligence with better algorithms… are faster and more accurate,” CompTIA, a global, nonprofit IT association, stated in a blog.

Commercial quantum platforms, such as Microsoft Azure Quantum, AWS Braket, Google Cirq, and others, allow cloud providers to use quantum comuting as compute service offerings.

“Think of these platforms as quantum computing marketplaces whereby the cloud service providers have partnered with multiple quantum computing vendors to provide access to their hardware, software, QSDKs [Quantum software development kits], etc.,” said Heather West, a research manager with IDC.

“Most of these cloud service providers have not, and thus do not, provide access to their own quantum systems, the exception being Google. AI is not a part or related to these offerings,” she added.

As with any technology, along with the positives there are negatives associated with quantum computing. For example, quantum computing poses a serious threat to the cybersecurity systems relied on by virtually every company, according to CompTIA. The current standard for encryption algorithms, such as RSA or SSL/TLS, relies on the complexity in factoring large numbers into primes, and that’s the type of problem quantum computers are great at solving, CompTIA said.

Startups and established companies continue to accelerate their advances in the quantum computing space. Big tech companies such as Alibaba, Amazon, IBM, Google, and Microsoft have already launched commercial quantum-computing cloud services. Two years ago, Goldman Sachs said it planned to introduce quantum algorithms to price financial instruments as soon as 2026. Honeywell anticipates that quantum will form a $1 trillion industry in the decades ahead.

Quantum computing, meet genAI

Some say quantum computing is a natural partner for genAI and can reduce its energy demands.

For example, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank in Japan is using quantum computing to run genAI-powered programs for financial simulation models of future market movements. The bank partnered with Zapata AI, a genAI company that was spun out of Harvard University’s quantum computing lab in 2017.

Christopher Savoie, Zapata AI’s CEO, sees linear algebra (quantum math) as the solution to perform all kinds of AI tasks, including chatbots such as ChatGPT.

“We’re throwing an obscene the amount of GPU energy at chatbots right now. Are we getting that much business value right now from it? We’re hitting a wall: when are we going to make money with that?” said Savoie, who is a molecular biophysicist.

Savoie pointed to Zapata’s research with Insilico Medicine and the University of Toronto to develop cancer drug candidates using a generative model running on quantum hardware.

“When we used this quantum-based model… we were able to develop cancer drugs the other models didn’t,” Savoie said. “We used quantum models to determine what drugs would block this cancer protein and then non-quantum models. The quantum models found two capable drugs that we synthesized and showed they blocked the cancer protein.

“So, it’s qualitatively better,” he continued. “It’s cheaper, faster, and better — better in that we get faster answers. That’s important in drug discovery. You’re saving a lot of money for pharmaceutial companies if you get your answer the first run around. Or you have a more accurate modeling of trading behavior for a bank.”

Zapata AI’s Orquestra platform was specifically designed to run any AI or machine learning model, including more traditional neural networks as well as the company’s proprietary tensor networks.

Tensor networks can be used to model any quantum circuit and run it on today’s classical computers, giving users an on ramp to the potential benefits of future quantum computers, according to Zapata AI. Tensor networks also come with their own advantages for AI today, including more accurate, efficient, and expressive AI models.

“Every quantum circuit can be written as a tensor product, which means we can do things on GPUs that quantum computers will eventually be faster at doing. Zapata and others have shown that quantum math is better at getting better answers in the context of generative AI,” Savoie.

Specifically, Savoie said, quantum statistics can enhance genAI models’ ability to extrapolate missing information and generate new, high-quality information from big data. Generating genuinely new and high-quality data is very important for industrial use cases, he said. 

Early days yet

IDC’s West said quantum computing fits with complex problem solving, but it’s “not a big data solution.” Quantum computing will be useful for solving specific types of problems, she said.

In quantum computing, a qubit begins in a binary state of 0 or 1, but through a process known as annealing, the qubits become entangled, allowing them to represent many possible answers, always with minimum energy. The process occurs in microseconds.

“Quantum annealers are best suited for optimization problems,” West said. “The complex algebraic/factorization problems include some QML [quantum machine learning] problems, but not all AI problems will be suitable for quantum. Research is being conducted to determine how to integrate AI into [quantum computing] and [quantum] into AI to optimize the compute resources needed to solve some of these problems.”

In large part, quantum computing is in very early stages of development, West noted. That’s because the hardware still needs considerable improvements for gate-based models that allow for the​ execution of quantum‌ algorithms. By applying various gates ​sequentially, complex computations can be carried out.

“There are not any real-world applications for this type of system,” West said. “These systems are only useful for small-scale experimentation and debugging. Quantum [computing is] currently being used for solve some scientific and business optimization problems. It is still too early for the integration of AI. Right now, it is only a hypothetical and experimental.”

SoundHound AI has enhanced its AI-based food ordering capabilities with the acquisition of Allset, an online ordering platform that connects restaurants and local customers.

Financial terms of the deal, announced Thursday, were undisclosed.

Allset is a food ordering platform designed for local pick-up, working with nearly 7,000 restaurant partners nationwide, including Joe & The Juice and Charleys Cheesesteaks.

Speech-to-meaning

SoundHound, a voice AI and speech recognition company, was founded in 2005 and went public in 2022. The company develops speech recognition, natural language understanding, music recognition, and search technologies.

In 2023, SoundHound generated $45.9 million in revenue, a 47% year-on-year increase. The vendor is growing but not yet profitable.

As part of Nvidia’s broader strategy of investing in AI-related tech companies, the chip maker has invested $3.7 million into SoundHound, in return for a 0.6% stake.

SoundHound’s Vehicle Intelligence product, powered by Nvidia Drive, allows drivers to ask questions related to maintenance, safety, and other vehicle-specific information using natural speech.

SoundHound markets itself as an independent voice AI platform, offering customers the ability to create their own branded voice experiences rather than relying on voice assistants from bigger vendors.

Allset

SoundHound said the deal to buy Allset will advance its plans to enable voice-enabled food and drink ordering across millions of cars, TVs, and smart devices. Its voice ordering technology works across multiple channels, including via phone, drive-thru, kiosk, and mobile app.

More than 10,000 restaurant locations use SoundHound’s platform to understand speech in a range of major languages, learn any restaurant’s menu, process orders directly to the point of sale (POS), and answer customer FAQs.

“Allset will help SoundHound bring voice AI solutions to even more restaurants looking to improve operational efficiency,” Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and co-founder of SoundHound AI, said in a statement on the deal.

For example, SoundHound has been working with White Castle, the US-based fast-food hamburger joint, to offer voice AI ordering technology at select White Castle drive-thrus for a year, with plans to roll out the technology to 100 locations by the end of 2024.

Many in the fast-food industry are looking to use AI technology to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Using an AI system that provides a consistent, interactive ordering experience is a big ask.

Super size snags at McD’s

McDonald’s recently ended its trial of AI-powered drive-thru technology developed in partnership with IBM. McDonald’s had been testing IBM’s AI-powered voice recognition technology at around 100 US drive-thru locations for around two years.

The technology has numerous glitches, chiefly around the misinterpretation of customers’ orders to sometimes comical effect.

Hard to swallow mistakes included adding bacon to ice cream and putting excessive quantities of items on orders (e.g., hundreds of chicken nuggets on a single order). People took to social media with tales of “fighting the McDonald’s robot” and similar.

The automated order taking system — which evidently had problems picking up on accents and dialects, noise and cross-talk from neighboring drive-thru stations — will be dropped from the end of July, Restaurant Business reported.

IBM has yet to respond to a request for comment from Computerworld but reportedly said it looks forward to working with the fast food restaurant chain on a variety of projects in the future.

Bill Conner, CEO of mobile technology developer Jitterbug, told Computerworld that teething problems with new technologies are to be expected. Waiting for technologies to mature is unwise, since slow adoption of AI technology is likely to leave businesses at a competitive disadvantage, Conner argued.

“The future of application development, orchestration, and automation is based on an AI evolution, not a revolution,” Conner said. “Even the most agile organizations need a smart, measured approach to infusing AI capabilities into their business and infrastructure.”

As employee experiences become increasingly digitized, the digital employee experience (DEX) is becoming the primary interaction you and your workers have, whether in person, remote, or hybrid. That’s why the technologies that enable whatever mission you happen to be on have become so important, as the tech is by definition an essential component in any digital employee experience.

We know because they told us

We already know this because big enterprises like SAP, Salesforce, Cisco, IBM, and many others have told us that when given the choice, employees will choose an Apple product as their primary workplace device. We also know that, for example, sales of portable Macs absolutely boomed during the pandemic, when every office-based worker transitioned to become a home-based employee in a matter of weeks. 

Once the pandemic seemingly ended, those home-based workers became mobile employees, and later — sometimes reluctantly — turned into hybrid workers. 

In that sense, the importance of Apple’s products has already been proven. These devices, whether Mac, iPhone, or iPad, have already been used on a global scale to maintain businesses remotely in real time — as will visionOS devices in their time. 

That success continues to translate into increasingly large deployments across industries you might not have considered to be natural Apple users before, from retail to engineering and beyond. 

Empowering good business with DEX

Of course, business leaders recognize the changing workplace, with 24% of leaders already seeking to unlock improved DEX and productivity. The analysts at Gartner say digital workers who are happy with the tools and applications provided for work are 1.6 times more likely to stay.

While not everyone is an Apple user, sundry TCO studies suggest that businesses that do adopt those products realize significant benefits in terms of support costs, device longevity, employee retention, and productivity.

But at its core, Apple’s key offer to business is the same one it offers to consumer users: a user interface that, for the most part, gets out of the way to enable the user to get what they want to get done as effectively as they can.

That’s the whole point of smart DEX strategy — to equip and empower employees so they can stay focused on their task and not get bogged down by tech.

This secret sauce is compelling to any busy person, and the savor gains gusto on strength of Apple’s full platform — by which I mean that on mobile, tablet, or computer you get a similar DEX.

This familiarity is critical, as it makes it easier to complete tasks on whatever device makes the most contextual sense for a person at any point in time. In essence, the provision of consumer-simple technologies capable of delivering enterprise-class results to employees who can work from anywhere empowers immense business flexibility. 

Infrastructural change

The other post-pandemic benefit supporting the trend comes through the rapid evolution of device management of Apple devices since the pandemic first hit.

Sure, there was already a healthy industry of device management vendors (including Apple itself), but the company took note of enterprise pain points and introduced tools to address them. Think zero touch, declarative device management, improvements to activation lock, and even the recent introduction of a dedicated (and provisionable) password app based on the company’s existing iCloud Keychain. 

The result? 

At the front end of business, DEX improves through employee-driven adoption of Apple’s products.

But the company has also been speaking with both Windows- and Apple-familiar IT admins to figure out how to enable good experiences for them. It’s now truly possible to ship hardware to new hires, who can safely and effectively start their managed employee experience with a single login to their new device — and for IT to manage the entire transition through a single pane of glass.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.