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A courtroom artist’s view of the Epic v. Apple trial

Drawn by Vicki Behringer

Eight of the artist’s favorite sketches from the three-week court proceeding

On Monday, lawyers gave final statements in the Epic v. Apple case, finishing up just over three weeks of in-court proceedings that gave an unprecedented look at how Apple manages the iOS App Store. Both images and audio from the proceedings were tightly controlled (as is often the case in federal courtrooms), so the only images came from courtroom artist Vicki Behringer, who saw much of the trial from an assigned seat to the right of the jury box. We invited Behringer to share eight of her favorite sketches from the trial, showing off both her skill as an artist and her unique perspective on the case. -Russell Brandom, policy editor

Image courtesy of Vicki Behringer

This shows opening statements by Epic Games attorney Katherine Forrest. It was my first day at the trial and my first sketch. There were plexiglass barriers all around the courtroom as a COVID precaution, and the attorneys wore plastic shields covering their faces. When I saw this graphic, showing a wall being built around the iPhone, I started to understand what was at stake in this trial.

Image courtesy of Vicki Behringer

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is the one that started this whole case, so I knew his testimony was going to be interesting. I just loved listening to how he started the company and what the game Fortnite is all about. I had no idea. Once again, I realize there is another entire world that I know nothing about. The programming, creativity, and talent it takes to create these games absolutely amazes me.

I try to finish all my sketches within one to one and a half hours. Some take longer. I have to budget my time while I am sketching in the courtroom. I have very strict deadlines and since the news is now a 24-hour cycle with the internet, my media clients need their sketches as soon as possible to go with their stories.

Image courtesy of Vicki Behringer

I’ve sketched Phil Schiller two or three times now in the Apple v. Samsung trials, so his face feels like an old friend. I always love hearing him talk about the history of Apple. I took my time here and decided to sketch the entire courtroom. Obviously it is not to scale. The number of people allowed in the courtroom was severely reduced, but there were still many, many attorneys to sketch, and every time a witness changed, they would play musical chairs.

Image courtesy of Vicki Behringer

This is Mike Schmid, the head of Apple’s gaming department, questioned by Apple attorney Jay Srinivasan. Seeing as I am not a gamer, all of the wonderful artwork that goes into the games is quite delightful for me, but I had to move so fast that there wasn’t time to sketch it. Schmid was grilled pretty hard on the cross-examination by Epic’s attorney, but at the break they both relaxed and seemed to be happy to see each other. Maybe they were just happy to have gotten through it.

Image courtesy of Vicki Behringer

Craig Federighi was a wonderful subject with his perfect white hair and dark eyebrows. People with subtle features are far more difficult, but Craig was a joy. He discussed the precautions that Apple takes to prevent its users from malware, viruses, and the like. I make a mental note to always update my software!

Drawn by Vicki Behringer

I like this sketch because not only did I get a different angle on Tim Cook’s face (which is fantastic), but it was an important moment in his testimony. Judge Gonzalez Rogers was asking some really interesting questions of him which didn’t sound very favorable toward Apple. His confidence seemed to waver just a bit, but he answered the questions clearly and did his best to justify Apple‘s position. It felt like a pivotal point in the trial.

I wanted to put in a gesture with the judge’s hand, but didn’t feel I had enough time. Sometimes hands can take as long as drawing the face.

Image courtesy of Vicki Behringer

The second week was mostly expert witnesses. I like the sketch because this professor had some interesting things to say about how safe Apple devices were. I know he is an Apple witness, but if his statistics are correct, it’s quite amazing! In the sketch, I added a couple of other people in the courtroom that I usually don’t have time to include. The court reporter and the judge’s deputy. When I am doing an actual trial, I try to make sure I get a sketch of everyone in the courtroom at some point. Everyone is important, even if they are not one of the main attorneys or witnesses.

Image courtesy of Vicki Behringer

This is when Tim Cook first took the stand, being questioned on direct by Apple attorney Veronica Moyé. I was so nervous while sketching him because I knew it had to look exactly like him; everyone knows what Tim Cook looks like. I had studied some photographs of him and thought I was ready. Unfortunately, when he took the stand there was a huge reflection on his face shield. I could not see some of the important details. I kept peering through my binoculars waiting for him to turn his head. Finally he did and I was able to get a good view of his face. That was such a relief!

I had heard this was his first time taking the stand, but I would never know it. He was quite calm, confident, and charismatic. He said so many positive things about Apple it was easy to like him. Later, I had the opportunity while finishing a sketch of him in the hallway to meet him. He seems to be a very nice man. I was shocked to see he has beautiful blue eyes. I did not realize that while sketching him — between the shadow from the light above, the reflection of his visor, and his glasses, his eyes were obscured. Something tells me I will be sketching him again since there could be more Apple trials in my future.

Sen. Ron Wyden pushes to raise standards for stimulus-funded broadband

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is calling on the Treasury Department to fund broadband projects in communities without access to 100Mbps upload and download speeds with the money allocated by the American Rescue Plan earlier this year.

In March, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, directing the Treasury Department to distribute billions of dollars to help state and local governments amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As part of the plan, this funding can be used to expand access to high-speed broadband internet in communities that need it.

However, the plan’s language suggests funding can only go to “unserved” or “underserved” communities. The Federal Communications Commission classifies communities with speeds of below 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up as “underserved.” In a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Tuesday, Wyden is asking that the department expand that definition to communities with speeds less than 100Mbps up and down.

“The mass adoption of video calling, streaming, and other bandwidth-intensive apps by Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that miserly speeds and data caps are holding back telework, remote education and telehealth capacity,” Wyden wrote in the letter. “Simply put, it is not possible for a family of four to telework and engage in remote schooling while sharing 3 Mbps of upload bandwidth.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The federal government’s definition of high-speed broadband has remained at the same level since 2015. But that definition has been called into question by lawmakers seeking to boost that standard as a result of heightened home internet usage due to the coronavirus pandemic. As infrastructure funding talks began earlier this year, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) penned a letter to the FCC requesting that the agency change the definition of “high-speed” broadband to anything about 100Mbps symmetrical speeds.

It’s unclear if Biden’s latest American Jobs Plan or any subsequent broadband funding measures from Congress could change this definition in the future. The Biden administration’s broadband plan originally called for $100 billion to connect every American to high-speed internet by the end of the decade. Republicans pushed back against that number, resulting in the administration scaling back its proposal to $65 billion last week.

Raspberry Pi Bonded Router Boosts Speed for Rural Networks

(Image credit: Jona)

The Raspberry Pi has a knack for bridging the gap between different technologies but, in this project, it’s combining the power of multiple routers into one connection point. This setup is referred to as a bonded router by its creator, Jona, and operates using a platform called Speedify.

The best Raspberry Pi projects tend to come out of necessity—often providing a solution to a specific problem. According to Jona, he was tired of the bandwidth limitations of rural internet and decided to merge multiple sources into one, stacking the available speed. Before this project, his network speed was capping around 2 – 5 Mbps but now it reaches up to 120 Mbps.

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(Image credit: Jona)

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(Image credit: Jona)

The Raspberry Pi is responsible for distributing network traffic between four individual internet access points (in this case, two LTE lines and two 5G lines). Jona also included a DSL failsafe to act as a backup in the event the bonded router connection drops.

If you’d like to recreate this project, you can download Speedify from the official website. It’s available for Linux machines like the Raspberry Pi but also on Windows, Mac, iPad and Android devices. In Jona’s setup, he’s using an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 with a 4G LTE HAT. It also has a USB hub connected to a 4-four gigabit Ethernet adaptor and a 5-port Netgear gigabit switch.

Read more about this project in detail on the project thread at Reddit and be sure to follow Jona for more cool Pi projects.

Microsoft is officially retiring Internet Explorer

Now that the Chromium version of Edge has shipped and Microsoft’s new browser has built up a user base, it is time to finally say goodbye to Internet Explorer. IE has been around for more than 25 years, but this week, Microsoft announced plans to retire it.

Internet Explorer 11 will be the final version of the browser, but it will continue to be supported for a while longer, with Microsoft setting a June 15th 2022 date for end-of-life.

“Over the last year, you may have noticed our movement away from Internet Explorer (“IE”) support, such as an announcement of the end of IE support by Microsoft 365 online services”, writes Microsoft’s Sean Lyndersay in a blog post. “Today, we are at the next stage of that journey: we are announcing that the future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge.”

Microsoft has already thought out legacy support concerns. In Microsoft Edge, you will be able to use “IE Mode”, which will enable access to legacy IE-based websites and applications. Since Microsoft Edge is capable of doing this, Internet Explorer will officially retire in June next year. This only applies to most versions of Windows 10 though – IE 11 will continue to be supported on Windows 10 LTSC and the server application will live on too.

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This is Microsoft’s vision for the future of meetings

Microsoft is outlining its vision for the future of meetings today. After a year that’s seen more people dialing into the office remotely, the company is once again banging the drum for hybrid work: a model that combines remote access with in-person work.

While the company has been teasing new concepts for Microsoft Teams in recent months, it’s now starting to bring to life an updated interface for the communications software that will help blend remote colleagues into physical meeting rooms.

A new video details Microsoft’s plans, which include larger screens that help facilitate face-to-face meetings with life-sized remote colleagues. Microsoft imagines meeting rooms where cameras are placed at eye level to improve eye contact, and spatial audio that will help you hear colleagues’ voices when they’re dialed in. This spatial audio will also supposedly make it feel like a remote colleague is more present in a room.

A new Microsoft Teams interface for remote meetings.

Image: Microsoft

This meeting room of the future looks like it’ll require a lot of hardware, though. Customers will need new intelligent video cameras that can detect who’s talking and bring them into view, speakers capable of spatial audio, and even microphones embedded into the ceilings. Microsoft itself might deliver some of this hardware: the company started selling Intelligent Speakers for Teams recently, which will help bring this future meeting room scenario to life.

This meeting room of the future is all part of a broader push by Microsoft to get ready for what it sees as a hybrid approach to work, where more employees will be working remotely or dipping in and out of the office.

“Hybrid work represents the biggest shift to how we work in our generation,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in a LinkedIn post outlining the company’s approach. “And it will require a new operating model, spanning people, places, and processes.” Microsoft is releasing a playbook for businesses looking to adopt a hybrid model, with data and research it has conducted during the pandemic.

Microsoft has been gradually opening up its campus in Redmond, Washington in recent months, and remote meetings have become a big focus point. “In fact, at Microsoft, meeting recordings are the fastest-growing content type,” reveals Nadella. “Employees now expect all meeting information — whether that’s recordings, transcripts, or highlights — to be available on demand, and on double speed, at a time that works for them.”

Microsoft’s meeting rooms of the future will require more hardware.

The push toward hybrid work also opens up security challenges for organizations. Microsoft is embracing this new era by removing its own employees from corporate networks and taking an internet-first approach instead. That means ditching the old era of corporate domains and intranets you need VPNs for and having all data in the cloud. Of course, Microsoft also happens to own Azure, so that makes it both easier for the company to switch and an incentive to promote its cloud business. For other businesses, it’s not always an easy task to embrace the cloud fully.

Microsoft is also asking its own employees who work from home to “run a test of their home networks to ensure they are secure,” and requiring that every mobile device that accesses corporate information is managed. We’ve seen a variety of ransomware attacks and increases in phishing attempts during the pandemic, and Microsoft says the threats keep on increasing.

“The threat landscape has never been more complex or challenging, and security has never been more critical,” explains Nadella. “We intercepted and thwarted a record 30 billion email threats last year and are currently tracking 40-plus active nation-state actors and over 140 threat groups.”

Apple’s new privacy ad imagines Thanos-snapping your stalkers out of existence

Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS 14.5 doesn’t seem to be a difficult concept to grasp; initial estimates suggest as many as 96 percent of US users are leaping at the chance to tell their apps, “No, you can’t track me across the internet.” Now, Apple is taking a victory lap with a full ad campaign, too, one that turns the feature into a selling point for the iPhone and furthers the attempt to pitch itself as the only tech company you can trust. And, if you ask me, its new ad spot “Tracked” is just about perfect.

Just give it a watch above. Who wouldn’t want to Thanos-snap ad trackers into dust? It’s no wonder Google is thinking long and hard about following Apple’s lead with an anti-tracking feature of its own.

Critics claim these moves will make the internet more expensive and potentially harm small businesses, and they are updating their apps to warn you about that — as well as the idea that ads might be less relevant if you opt out. But that’s a tough sell compared to the privacy fears that exist these days, and it’s hard to argue with Apple’s idea that users should get to choose for themselves. The company also launched privacy “nutrition labels” late last year.

Apple tells The Verge that its own ad platform and apps don’t track users and that the App Tracking Transparency prompt applies to its own apps as well.

Snapchat gets augmented reality Legos you can build with a friend

Snapchat is introducing a new type of augmented reality lens, called “Connected Lenses,” which allows Snapchat users to connect and enjoy an AR experience or game together — even if they’re not in the same physical space.

The company is partnering with Lego for its first Connected Lens, which allows users to build a Lego model in augmented reality together, whether that’s in the same room or through the internet from around the world.

In the demo video that Snap showed off, both users see the same floating Lego model on a table in their respective homes and can add parts, effects, and animations to the model, which are reflected for both users in real time.

The move marks Snap’s latest expansion of augmented reality lenses, which include the popular photo filter lenses, the company’s “Landmarker” lenses for interacting with famous landmarks in AR, and the community-sourced Lens Explorer.

Creators will also be able to build new Connected Lenses using Snap’s Lens Studio. The new multiperson Lego Lens should be available soon on Lego’s Snapchat profile.

Apple wants users to trust iOS, but it doesn’t trust iOS users

Apple’s software engineering head Craig Federighi had a tricky task in the Epic v. Apple trial: explaining why the Mac’s security wasn’t good enough for the iPhone.

Mac computers have an official Apple App Store, but they also allow downloading software from the internet or a third-party store. Apple has never opened up iOS this way, but it’s long touted the privacy and security of both platforms. Then Epic Games sued Apple to force its hand, saying that if an open model is good enough for macOS, Apple’s claims about iOS ring hollow. On the stand yesterday, Federighi tried to resolve this problem by portraying iPhones and Macs as dramatically different devices — and in the process, threw macOS under the bus.

Federighi outlined three main differences between iOS and macOS. The first is scale. Far more people use iPhones than Macs, and the more users a platform gets, the more enticing that audience becomes to malware developers. Federighi argued iOS users are also much more casual about downloading software, giving attackers better odds of luring them into a download. “iOS users are just accustomed to getting apps all the time,” he said, citing Apple’s old catchphrase: “There’s an app for that.”

The second difference is data sensitivity. “iPhones are very attractive targets. They are very personal devices that are with you all the time. They have some of your most personal information — of course your contacts, your photos, but also other things,” he said. Mobile devices put a camera, microphone, and GPS tracker in your pocket. “All of these things make access or control of these devices potentially incredibly valuable to an attacker.”

That may undersell private interactions with Macs; Epic’s counsel Yonatan Even noted that many telemedicine calls and other virtual interactions happen on desktop. Still, it’s fair to say phones have become many people’s all-purpose digital lockboxes.

The third difference is more conceptual. Federighi basically says iOS users need to be more protected because the Mac is a specialist tool for people who know how to navigate the complexities of a powerful system, while the iPhone and iPad are — literally — for babies.

As Federighi put it:

The Mac from the beginning has been part of a generation of systems where the expectation is you can get software from wherever — you can hand it to your friend on a floppy disk and run it, that’s part of the expectation. But Mac users also expect a degree of flexibility that is useful to what they do. Some of them are software developers, some of them are pros running their unique tools, and having that power is part of it.

I think of it is as if the Mac is a car — that you can take it off-road if you want, you can drive wherever you want. And that comes with as a driver, you gotta be trained, there’s a certain level of responsibility in doing that, but that’s what you wanted to buy. You wanted to buy a car. With iOS, we were able to create something where children — heck, even infants — can operate an iOS device, and be safe in doing so. So it’s a really different product.

Federighi expanded on the metaphor a little later, when Apple’s counsel asked if macOS was “safe.”

Safe if operated correctly, much like that car. If you know how to operate a car, and you obey the rules of the road and are very cautious, yes. If you’re not — I’ve had a couple of family members who’ve gotten some malware on their Mac. But ultimately, I think the Mac can be operated safely.

I find the mental image of slowly, cautiously “driving” a Mac around the internet hilarious, because cars are deadly two-ton metal boxes that crush obstacles at superhuman speeds, while my MacBook starts losing keys if I type on it too hard.

If you pair these comments with some earlier statements about macOS, though, it’s a bit less funny. Federighi was bluntly critical of macOS security, saying Apple saw “a level of malware on the Mac that we don’t find acceptable.” If you used the Mac’s security model on the iPhone, “with all those devices, all that value, it would get run over to a degree dramatically worse than is already happening on the Mac,” Federighi said. “iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection. The Mac is not meeting that bar today.” It’s a distinctly negative evaluation of open computing systems, implying only a relatively small platform could afford that openness without disaster.

Federighi took a far broader view of security than Epic’s own expert witness James Mickens. Mickens testified earlier that iOS wasn’t meaningfully more secure than Android, but he analyzed mostly technical threats to the platforms. Federighi focused on scams, phishing, and other apps that target human psychology instead of computer code — many of which pose serious dangers.

Sometimes, though, the protectiveness felt patronizing. When Federighi explained Apple’s restrictions on cloud gaming, he focused partly on tangible security issues, like how to grant device permissions for different titles on a single gaming app. But he slipped seamlessly into discussing how the concept would be simply too confusing — that iPhone and iPad owners would be befuddled by the notion of launching a separate game catalog. Apple wants iOS devices to feel trustworthy, but at times like that, it seems more like Apple just doesn’t trust its own users.

Senators roll out bipartisan data privacy bill

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is back with a bill to protect consumer data privacy when collected by large tech platforms like Facebook and Google.

Klobuchar (D-MN) has teamed up with a bipartisan group of senators, including Sens. John Kennedy (R-LA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Richard Burr (R-NC), to reintroduce the Social Media Privacy Protection and Consumer Rights Act. The privacy legislation would force websites to grant users greater control over their data and allow them to opt out of data tracking and collection.

“For too long companies have profited off of Americans’ online data while consumers have been left in the dark,” Klobuchar said in a statement to The Verge. “This legislation will protect and empower consumers by allowing them to make choices about how companies use their data and inform them of how they can protect personal information.”

The bill would also require platforms to write their terms of service agreements in plain language so users understand what they’re accepting by using the platforms. If a website were to suffer a data breach, it would have to notify users within 72 hours of it occurring.

“In today’s world, ownership and agency over one’s internet data is essential in protecting users’ privacy online,” Burr said. “This bipartisan legislation is a commonsense step in granting individuals a greater ownership over the type of information companies may collect on them.”

Klobuchar first introduced the bill in 2019 after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. At the time, the bill stalled without support from the Republican majority — but now that Democrats control Congress, it has a new chance to move forward.

In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission announced a $5 billion settlement with Facebook after a yearslong investigation into the scandal. As part of the settlement, the company is required to conduct quarterly privacy reviews and obtain purpose and use certifications from third-party developers that want to use Facebook data.

Another force working in the bill’s favor are the dozens of state-level privacy bills that have taken effect since the bill was first introduced, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA. Companies like Microsoft have vowed to honor the CCPA in states outside of California, but the sheer volume of overlapping statutes has created a growing desire for a federal privacy framework that would make corporate compliance simpler.

The tech companies are pushing for federal rules as well. Last July, Facebook published a white paper calling current US privacy laws “insufficient” and called on the federal government to develop a national framework. The company revamped that call this March after Virginia passed its own protections through the Consumer Data Protection Act.

“We welcome the CDPA and hope that it, as well as legislative proposals in other states, will serve as an impetus for Congress to pass a comprehensive federal privacy law this year,” Facebook wrote in a March blog.

Google rediscovers RSS: tests new feature to ‘follow’ sites in Chrome on Android

Google is testing a new feature for its Chrome browser on Android that lets users “follow” sites to create an updating list of new content they publish. The feature is based on RSS, an open web standard that’s been the backbone of many popular web aggregation tools in the past. That includes Google’s own, much beloved (and now defunct) Google Reader.

The test is small-scale: following sites will only be an option for some US users of Chrome Canary (the bleeding-edge version of Chrome that lets enthusiasts access beta features). Users will be able to follow sites from the browser menu, and updates will be aggregated in a card-based feed that’s shown when users open a new tab. It’s not clear whether this feed is wholly dependent on sites providing RSS support, or if Google will fill in the gaps itself.

Although this is just an early test, it’s nonetheless exciting for a certain sort of web user who misses the glory-days of RSS (and, by extension, a mode of internet discovery and distribution that faded years ago). At its core, RSS allows users to maintain a personalized feed of new content from favorite sites, blogs, and podcasts. And although tools that utilized these feeds were briefly very popular, they were eclipsed for numerous reasons.

Exactly why RSS fell from prominence is complicated. (Here’s a story from Vice and one from TechCrunch that help explain.) But whatever the ultimate cause, many see its demise as a turning point for the web: the moment when decentralized, chronological feeds were replaced by the engagement-driven algorithms of social media giants.

The halcyon days of 2013: the year of Google Reader’s death.

Image: The Verge

Because the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and the like have had so many obviously bad effects (misinformation! Hoaxes! Nazis!), many look back wistfully on RSS as a sort of Golden Age for the web that failed from a surfeit of nobility and deficit of cunning. “If only RSS had thrived!” they say. “All this nastiness could have been avoided.” Perhaps. What’s clear is that Google is responding to a demand for new (read: old) ways of engaging with the web.

“We’ve heard it loud and clear: Discovery & distribution is lacking on the open web, and RSS hasn’t been ‘mainstream consumer’ friendly,” tweeted Google’s head of web creator relations, Paul Bakaus. “Today, we’re announcing an experimental new way, powered by RSS, to follow creators with one click.”

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Will Google follow through and push RSS-powered features to all Chrome users? Or will it get bored of a product that’s not integral to its bottom line? (As it did with Google Reader.) Bakaus, at least, suggests there’s more to come. “This is only the beginning of a bigger exploration, and to get this right, we need your feedback,” he tweeted. “Hit us up via @WebCreators to let us know what we need to build for you. I’m very excited about it!”

Microsoft Is Killing Internet Explorer 11 For Good by 2022

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Microsoft is finally kicking the curb to its once-famous and popular Internet Explorer web browser. In a recent blog post, Microsoft said that it plans to fully retire Internet Explorer 11 (the latest version of the browser) by June of 2022. For companies still using apps tailor-made for Internet Explorer, Microsoft has added an Internet Explorer compatibility mode to Edge, to ensure critical enterprise apps remain operational.

Since the introduction of the Edge web browser in 2015, we knew Microsoft had fully planned to retire its now seriously-outdated Internet Explorer browser. Since its glory days in 2003, Internet Explorer saw a rapid loss in traction, even before Microsoft released its Edge browser.

Back in the early 2000s, Internet Explorer was actually one of the best browsers on the web and supported cutting-edge technologies that no other browser supported. But, due to Microsoft’s persistent use of proprietary APIs and lack of consistent updates, Internet Explorer quickly lost ground to other web browsers like Chrome and Firefox in the early 2010s.

Now, all Internet Explorer is used for is to run proprietary applications which only work with Internet Explorer’s code. This is where Microsoft’s Internet Explorer compatibility mode will fully replace Internet Explorer, allowing Internet Explorer-specific applications to remain functional.

For more details, check out Microsoft’s FAQ. As of this moment, Microsoft is asking all companies that still operate with Internet Explorer 11 to migrate to Edge’s Internet Explorer compatibility mode as soon as possible.

Microsoft is finally retiring Internet Explorer in 2022

Microsoft is finally retiring Internet Explorer next year, after more than 25 years. The aging web browser has largely been unused by most consumers for years, but Microsoft is putting the final nail in the Internet Explorer coffin on June 15th, 2022, by retiring it in favor of Microsoft Edge.

“We are announcing that the future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge,” says Sean Lyndersay, a Microsoft Edge program manager. “The Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10.”

While the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) of Windows 10 will still include Internet Explorer next year, all consumer versions will end support of the browser. Microsoft doesn’t make it clear (and we’re checking), but it’s likely that we’ll finally see the end of Internet Explorer being bundled in Windows either in June 2022 or soon after.

Internet Explorer originally launched in 1995.

Photo: Fairfax Media via Getty Images

The alternative for most businesses will be Microsoft Edge with IE mode. Microsoft created its IE mode for Edge a couple of years ago, and it has allowed businesses to adopt the new Chromium-based browser for older legacy websites. IE mode supports older ActiveX controls and legacy sites, which are surprisingly still used by many businesses. Microsoft is promising to support this IE mode in Edge until through at least 2029.

The end of Internet Explorer has been a long time coming. Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer 11 for the Microsoft Teams web app last year, and it’s planning to cut it off from accessing Microsoft 365 services later this year. Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported for Microsoft’s online services like Office 365, OneDrive, Outlook, and more on August 17th.

Microsoft has also been trying to stop people from using Internet Explorer for more than five years. Microsoft Edge first appeared in 2015, and it kicked off the end of the Internet Explorer brand. Microsoft has since labeled Internet Explorer a “compatibility solution” rather than a browser and encouraged businesses to stop using the aging browser in favor of Edge and its IE mode.

How to download your Google Photos

As of June 1st, 2021, all of the new images and videos that you save to Google Photos will count toward your free 15GB of storage. If you don’t take a lot of photos, that may not be much of a problem. And if you own a Pixel phone, your photos still won’t count against your total storage. (However, be aware that those photos will be Google’s “high-quality” compressed images, not the originals.) But if you like to take a good number of photos, be prepared to have to pay for Google One storage.

You could decide to just shrug and go for a subscription: Google One is not all that expensive, and it compares reasonably well to other photo services. But if you decide that you’d like to move your photos to a different service — or that you simply want to save them to your computer drive or other local storage — then you’re going to have to export them from Google Photos first. Here’s how.

Google Takeout

The first thing to be aware of is that you can’t simply go into Google Photos and download your stuff. You have to use Google’s export tool.

Go to Google Takeout. (You can get to the same page while you’re in Google Photos by selecting Settings, scrolling down to “Export your data,” and clicking on “Backup.”)
You will find a long list of your Google apps; all of them will be pre-checked. If you want to take this opportunity to simply download all of your Google data, just leave them checked; otherwise, look for the “Deselect all” link at the head of the checkboxes and click it.

Once you’re in Google Takeout, scroll down to Google Photos and select it.

Scroll down to “Google Photos”
If you want to know what formats your data will be exported in, click on the button that reads “Multiple formats.” Basically, your still photos will be exported in the format (PNG, JPG, WEBP) they were imported in, videos will be exported in MP4 format, and your metadata will be exported in the JSON text format.
You can also choose not to export all of your albums. The second button under “Google Photos” will probably read “All photo albums included.” If you want to only export some of your albums, click on that and then uncheck any albums you don’t want to export
Scroll down and click on “Next step”

You can choose how often and in how large a file you can export your photos.

Now you get to choose from a variety of different options: Whether you want your data to be emailed to you as an attachment or sent to Drive, OneNote, Dropbox, or Box; how often you want your data to be exported (either this once or every two months for a year); the type of file that will be downloaded (a ZIP or TGZ compressed file); and how large you want the exported files to be. For example, if your exported file will be larger than 2GB, you can have it split up into more than one file. I have about 39GB of photos, so that resulted in 19 zipped files. You can request files up to 50GB, but Google states that compressed files over 2GB will be delivered in Zip64 format.
Click on “Create export”

Google will warn you that it may take a while to get a link to your exported file(s).

And that’s it. Google will warn you that it could take hours or even days for your data to be available; I have several thousand photos, and it took only a little more than half an hour for the link to my export to appear in my email. Of course, depending on your internet connection, it can take much longer than that to actually download them all.

Deezer beats Spotify to Apple Watch offline listening

Music streaming service Deezer has revamped its Apple Watch app to let you listen to music without an internet connection, the company has announced. Previously Deezer’s Apple Watch app has only been able to control music playback on a paired iPhone, but now paid subscribers can download songs for offline listening when they’re away from their phones.

Offline listening has previously been available with Apple Music as well as Pandora, but similar functionality is yet to appear in Spotify’s Apple Watch app. Spotify recently added the ability to stream music from Apple Watch without needing a paired iPhone, but the feature still requires a cellular or Wi-Fi connection. Meanwhile, Google just teased that Spotify users will soon be able to download tracks to Wear OS smartwatches, which makes it even more strange that it doesn’t offer a similar feature on Apple’s wearables.

Subscribers can download both Deezer playlists as well as their own personalized playlists for offline listening. Naturally, you’ll need enough storage on your Apple Watch to hold the files for offline listening. The streaming service doesn’t explicitly say which models of Apple Watch support the new feature, noting only that it requires the “latest Apple watch software.” Presumably this is referring to watchOS 7, which is available on Apple Watch devices going back to 2017’s Series 3.

The new Apple Watch feature follows Deezer’s upgraded integration with Apple’s HomePod smart speakers released earlier this month. The new functionality lets users control playback with Siri voice controls, and even make Deezer their default music service. Spotify is yet to offer the same option. Then again, with a fraction of Spotify’s market share, Deezer has to work a lot harder to try and catch up.

Spotify and YouTube Music will bring much needed offline tunes to Google’s Wear watches

Spotify’s product lead for cars and wearables teased an exciting new feature coming to Wear devices during Google’s Developer Keynote on Tuesday: the ability for the streaming services’ 356 million users to download music directly to their watch, and listen to it at times when they don’t want to carry their phone (via XDA Developers). The feature isn’t included in the redesign that was just released, but Spotify says that it’s currently in the works.

The announcement came alongside Google’s reveal that it would be merging Wear OS with Samsung’s Tizen. During Tuesday’s I/O keynote, Google promised that the updated OS would bring faster performance and longer battery life, which are currently still issues for Wear OS watches.

The YouTube Music app is also getting an update, which will similarly add the ability to download music directly to Wear devices, allowing users to listen without a phone nearby.

YouTube Music will also support downloads.

Image: Google

Google’s smartwatch OS has lagged behind Apple’s in many ways, including offline music listening. The Apple Watch has been able to play songs downloaded through Apple Music when away from a phone for years, and it got to the point where Google decided to release its YouTube Music app for the Apple Watch before its own Wear OS. When Gizmodo put out an article last November on how listen to music phone-free on smartwatches, its Wear OS recommendation was more or less an app that acted as an MP3 player, requiring the transfer of local files that you already own.

Since the shutdown of Google Play Music, Wear OS users haven’t had many options for offline music. But now, Google’s Wear watches could potentially even leapfrog the Apple Watch when it comes to offline Spotify playback — to get your Spotify on an Apple Watch without carrying around your phone, you currently need an active internet connection to stream it to one of Apple’s pricier cellular Apple Watch models, a feature added late last year. Some other watches have had offline Spotify playback in the past, though, like Garmin’s flagship Forerunner sports watches and some Samsung Galaxy wearables.

You can check out the Spotify and YouTube Music app reveals for yourself in Google’s Wear-specific session from I/O. The YouTube Music announcement starts at 2:38, and the Spotify demo starts at 12:50 in the video below.