Latest news

Spotify has been doing some new A/B testing, reports from social media confirm.

The world's leading streaming music service is looking to customize their content to users more, and the new "What's New" feature might be one of the better attempts at it.

What's New section of the app is pretty much what you would expect it to be. It shows new releases but personalizes the selection by the user.

Spotify has become the leading player in the field not only because of its good app or music selection, but perhaps most because of its successes in AI and content personalization.

This newest feature is still in testing, and there's no guarantee that it'll ever make to everyone, but it seems like people are happy about it.

If it works as well as Discover Weekly it'll get a good reception, one would think.

Google has decided that it is necessary to start charging Android manufacturers for using Google Play services, and its apps, in Europe.

New rules in EU create incentives for Google to try to find new ways for revenue as the manufacturers cannot anymore be required to pre-install Google's services, such as Chrome as a default browser, on Android.

Google will also implement incentives of its own by lowering the prices if certain Google services are pre-installed.

Prices might be as much as $40 per device, The Verge reports.

For reasons unknown, the licensing fee depends on display pixel density. For over 500 PPI device the fee is as much as $40, with 400-500 PPI devices half of that, and under 400 PPI devices need only pay $10 fee.

According to the document the lowest end devices might have a fee of $2.50, depending on the country.

As the market forces demand, this payment will inevitably be forwarded to customers in form of a price hike.

We'll have to see how many will take use of the new EU rules or will they want relief from the fee and choose to install Google apps.

Known for its household appliances, such as curling irons and humidifiers, Dyson has been thinking outside the box in a real way.

Obviously the company is a vacuum cleaner company first and foremost, but in the future it might be remembered as a electric car manufacturer as well.

The company has been planning as move into electric cars since 2017 and is now ready to take a major step towards building its own vehicles.

Dyson's board has approved a new factory in Singapore that will that building its upcoming electric cars, The Verge reports.

Plans are to start building the factory in December and should have it running in 2020. This would mean that the first Dyson car would be ready for release perhaps in 2021.

The company has earmarked $2.6 billion for the factory.

According to Jason Dyson, the vehicle will be something completely new or, as he puts it, "radically different", although at this point there's no word on what this might entail.

It'll likely be a higher end product, as are the company's other products, but Dyson plans to introduce couple more affordable models later on.

Apple's latest "budget" iPhone has entered the pre-order stage. The iPhone XR is now available for pre-order in six bright color and three storage options.

Color options are White, Black, Blue, Yellow, Coral, and (PRODUCT)RED™, and you can get each with three storage options, including 64, 128 and 256 GB.

Starting at $37.41/mo or $749 lump sum and ranging all the way up to $43.66/mo. or $899 for the 256 GB version.

The iPhone XR is expected to be perhaps the best selling iPhone of its generation. That is supported by the fact that it is indeed the cheapest of them, despite the aforementioned fairly steep price.

Deliveries are scheduled from October 26 onward, and they range depending on the version and its availability.

Specs-wise you can expect a 6.1 inch and 828 x 1792 resolution LCD screen, new and powerful Apple A12 Bionic chip, 12 megapixel camera, Face ID, and of course updated iOS 12.

World's leading messaging platform, WhatsApp, is working on an update that brings a few new features to its mobile app.

According to WABetaInfo, a resource for WhatsApp beta updates, has found out that the Facebook-owned messaging app is looking to release a couple new features in an upcoming update.

The new Silent Mode allows users to silence conversations and notifications. With it enabled, you won't be notified of new messages unless you open the app.

Another new feature is Vacation Mode, which you might want to use on your work groups while on vacation. When enabled you can silence and archive chats without them having to pop up again when a new message is received.

In addition to these two new modes, WhatsApp is reportedly adding Linked Accounts. The feature allows you to link other (social media) accounts to your WhatsApp account. Not surprisingly it is said to support at least Instagram but likely Facebook, and perhaps even other Facebook-owned and third party services.

This could allow status updates to be posted simultaneously to social media and WhatsApp.

Winamp has gone through several ownership changes ever since AOL gave up hopes with the legendary music player and the program has been on permanent hiatus ever since 2013.

But finally, today, Winamp released the first update since 2013, as Winamp v5.8 beta 3306 was released officially. The rushed release was due a leak which spread the said release acorss the Net. To counter the leak, Winamp decided to release the v5.8 beta officially.

Company, which is nowadays owned by Radionomy, also announcd few days ago that it is working on first major update to Winamp in ages, Winamp 6, which is due to be released in early 2019. Winamp 6 should ba available to Windows, Android and iOS platforms when it is finally released.

And, best of all, now with the v.8 release, Winamp is 100% freeware again.

Download the latest version from AfterDawn's download section:

Winamp v5.8, full version (freeware)

AfterDawn's official Android app has been updated. The new version, v1.60, is mostly a bug fix release to address the known issues with the app.

Our app's crash-free rate has been constantly above 99.9 percent, but there's always room to improve. We've identified handful of bugs causing the app to crash with various handsets - and have managed to fix all those known issues in our new version.

Our official app lets you read our news and allows you to scan through our news archive ever since 1999 when our site was launched. Yup, all of our news, how-tos and reviews are available there.

And of course, the app is completely free - and doesn't ask you any silly permissions when you install it. And apparently, people like it, too: it has the average rating of 4.4/5.0 in Google Play store.

Give it a try:

Download AfterDawn Android app

Apple has revealed the date of their next product launch, and it is sooner than most expected.

The next event will be held October 30 in Brooklyn, New York. Apple seems to be spoiling OnePlus' special day as their OnePlus 6T launch is scheduled just an hour or so later the same day, also in New York City.

Apple's new iPhones are out already, so what are we expected to see?

Most likely products include some new iPad and Mac models. More specifically iPad Pro is expected to get a refresh, and perhaps the next most obvious upgrade would be to non-Pro MacBooks.

MacBook Pro was already refreshed earlier this year but the regular MacBook and MacBook Air might get updates.

Rumors also have it that Apple's tiny Mac mini might be getting an update that is long overdue.

One could easily argue that Apple is predominantly a software company, even though most people think of iPhones and Macs as hardware products first and foremost when they think about Apple.

Cupertino's own trillion dollar company has been investing heavily in hardware lately, in hopes to gain more control over the components in their hardware as well as, perhaps even more importantly, boost the bottom line.

Now rumors have it that Apple is going to bring in one more main component under their own Apple brand, 9to5Mac reports.

In smartphones, Apple designs their own system-on-chips, the A chips, and now Apple is looking into running Mac computers with their own ARM-based processors.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has noted that Apple wants to relieve itself from Intel's CPU roadmap that can be crippling.

However, even though Apple's ARM-based A chips are powerful they can't compete with top-of-the-line Intel chips designed for computers. Not yet at least.

It is thus no surprise that reportedly the transition will begin with the most portable Macs and slowly work its way up the Mac hierarchy.

OnePlus has confirmed previously that its upcoming OnePlus 6T model will ship with the latest Android Pie operating system. But company also told that the promised Pie updates to previous models have been delayed.

OnePlus got praise from the press and its fans back in July when company announced that it has revised its update policy so that previous models, starting with OnePlus 3, will get Android Pie update by end of the year 2018.

Now, the company CEO told in online chat that while company still intends to update all promised models (OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T, OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T) to Android Pie, the update will be postponed to "early 2019".

Company's current model, OnePlus 6, shipped with Android Oreo but got OTA update to Android Pie in September.

We had a severe problem with our software download section for the past 10 days that caused good portion of downloads from our site to fail.

We have finally identified the culprit and have fixed the problem. It was simply due a human error - a bug in the code that wasn't noticed and managed to slip through our testing process.

Apologies for the inconvenience this might have caused.

Our software database that we've been building for the past 19 years is available at https://www.afterdawn.com/software/ and has served more than quarter of a billion software downloads since 1999.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has died at age of 65. Cause of dead was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a condition that was diagnosed in 2009 and returned just weeks ago.

Allen is widely considered to be one of the groundbreaking tech pioneers. Paul Allen founded Microsoft together with Bill Gates in 1970s and became one of the first tech billionaires in the World after Microsoft IPO in 1980s. He maintained his position at Microsoft until 2000.

Since Microsoft era, he has been best known for his Vulcan Inc investment company and for the fact that he owns several major sports teams: Seattle Seahawks (NFL), Portland Trail Blazers (NBA) and Seattle Sounders (MLS).

Through Vulcan, Allen invested to various technology projects, including SpaceShipOne, the first privately-funded ship to put a civilian into suborbital space around the Earth. He also funded generously SETI project, a project set to search for extraterrestrial life.

Thank you, Paul. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/SDj5Xp34jj

-- Microsoft (@Microsoft) 15. lokakuuta 2018

The man behind the original Android, Andy Rubin, made a comeback to the smartphone world last year with his new company Essential Products and their first smartphone Essential Phone.

While there were definitely some innovation that really caught the eye of customers, and especially the competitors, it couldn't be exactly described as a hit.

Obviously Essential started a trend, the notched displays, that they might not be as proud anymore, especially after Pixel 3 XL's huge cutout.

Now, Rubin has something new in store and, by the sounds of it, it might be the revolutionary thing we're waiting for.

According to Bloomberg, Essential is developing a smartphone that will evolve machine learning and AI to completely new level allowing the smartphone to complete rudimentary everyday tasks without user input.

The smartphone would learn the users behavior and apply that to automate tasks such as answering text messages.

European Commission investigated Google's monopolistic tendencies during past few years which resulted in July to a massive fine for Google restricting competition on their mobile platform.

Google obviously wasn't happy about the $5 billion (4.34 billion euros) fine, and now it has decided to file an appeal, Financial Times reports.

Not only is it a great deal of money, even for Google, but the decision would affect Google's business model on smartphones immensely.

European Commission argues that Google has broken the law by requiring carriers and manufacturers to include Google's software. In addition Google has blocked the use of other platforms.

This means that device manufacturers haven't had the option to replace Google Play with a third-part app store, or install a competing platform as an alternative to Android.

EU and Google have a long and storied history with fines and court battles. Google got fined nearly $3 billion last year for preferring their own shopping services on Google search. That was appealed as well, and has yet to be resolved.

Every moment after the debacle on YouTube videos on Amazon's Echo Show has lead to this. Now Google has introduced a new smart speaker that plays YouTube videos.

It is called Google Home Hub, and we thought it might have been due already last year.

As expected it features a touch screen, not unlike Echo Show, and because it is a Google device it can play videos from YouTube among other things.

It has all the features of a normal Google Home but also answers your questions with content on the screen. That means that you can ask it to play a song and it'll do that but also shows the music video.

Or you can get cooking instructions now with step by step picture or video to walk you through. To make it more obvious that Google has Amazon beat here, they offer a six month membership on YouTube Premium for free with a purchase of Home Hub.

One of the more interesting software features of Home Hub also comes to the Home mobile app. New Home View combines all the smart home devices to one neat view so you don't have to open different apps for adusting the lights, checking the security camera, and tweaking the temperature on the thermostat.