January 2025

Anthropic's Claude AI is set to receive significant updates that could reshape user interactions with the chatbot. The company has revealed its plans to introduce a two-way voice mode.

Apple is set to launch iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3 and macOS Sequoia 15.3, and it will enable Apple Intelligence by default. Users who don't want to access the AI features will need to turn them off manually from the settings post-installation.

Microsoft is implementing a significant change to its account authentication system starting February 2025. Under the new system, users stay signed in across sessions unless they sign out explicitly.

To better understand the change, it is necessary to look at how sign ins are handled currently by Microsoft. When you sign in to a Microsoft account in a web browser, a "stay signed in" prompt is displayed after you provide username, password, and the optional two-factor authentication verification.

Samsung has officially confirmed that One UI 7, its latest software based on Android 15, is set to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.

Netflix is once again increasing the monthly prices of its subscription plans across multiple countries, including the US, Canada, Argentina, and Portugal. The price adjustments are already in effect for new subscribers, and will apply during the next billing cycle for existing customers.

The first update of 2025 for the open source encryption software VeraCrypt is now available. VeraCrypt 1.26.18 is a security update that is also introducing a number of fixes and other changes, including dropped support for 32-bit versions of Windows.

The details:

OpenAI has rolled out some new customization features for ChatGPT, enhancing the way users interact with the AI chatbot. Available in the browser version and on Windows desktop, these updates allow individuals to dictate how ChatGPT responds, making interactions feel more personal and tailored.

Firefox has supported profiles for a very long time. This may come as a surprise to many users, as the visibility of the feature is lacking. Veteran users know that they can run Firefox with the parameter -p to start the profile manager. There is also about:profiles, which can be loaded in Firefox's address bar.

Several methods exist to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware and to upgrade to a new version of Windows 11 from older versions. Microsoft allows this on one hand, but says it does not offer any kind of support, if the PC does not meet the system requirements.

Microsoft has increased the prices of Microsoft 365 subscriptions. But you get access to Copilot with the subscription.

You may be aware that the company launched a premium plan called Microsoft Copilot Pro, which allowed subscribers to access advanced AI models with higher usage limits.  Microsoft is pushing artificial intelligence more aggressively, by introducing Copilot