Microsoft is releasing a new version of Office this week, designed for people that don’t want to subscribe to Microsoft 365. The standalone Microsoft Office 2024 release is now available for both consumers and small businesses, and includes locked-in-time versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook across both Mac and PC.

Office 2024 includes a lot of the updates that Microsoft has been delivering to Microsoft 365 subscribers over the past few years. Microsoft last released a standalone version of Office in 2021, and this new Office 2024 release includes improvements to the core apps, as well as accessibility and UI changes.

Office 2024 has a new default theme, with Microsoft’s latest Fluent Design principles that match the visual changes to Windows 11. Microsoft has also added accessibility-focused improvements to help Office users find potential accessibility issues in documents, slideshows, workbooks, and emails.

The biggest changes in Office 2024 can be found in Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft has added new functions in Excel to use text and arrays in worksheets, alongside a new IMAGE function that can pull pictures from the web. Excel 2024 can also now reference Dynamic Arrays in charts, which can automatically update rather than being fixed to set data points. Microsoft claims the overall speed and stability of Excel 2024 should also be improved.

In PowerPoint Microsoft has added the cameo feature, allowing you to insert a live camera feed into slides. PowerPoint also has a new recording studio feature that includes recording features for narration, animations, transitions, and inking. You can also add closed captions or subtitles to videos and audio files in slides, making presentations a lot more accessible.

Outlook 2024 includes improvements to search so you get more relevant results for messages, attachments, contacts, and calendar entries. This latest Outlook release also includes more options for meetings, including the ability to automatically shorten them. Mac users can also customize swipe left and right gestures in Outlook.

In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint you can now insert a picture easily from an Android mobile device, and Microsoft is also supporting version 1.4 of the OpenDocument format (ODF) which includes a variety of new improvements. Word and PowerPoint also include the ability to like and react to comments in documents.

Word 2024 users will also be able to recover a session if your PC crashes. Word will automatically open all the documents you had open before your PC crashed, you lost power, or Word simply closed unexpectedly. OneNote 2024 users will also get access to the new inking and drawing experience.

Microsoft says Office 2024 will... [Read More]

Ubisoft has announced its highly-anticipated upcoming game Assassin's Creed Shadows has been delayed until next year.

Instead of releasing it on 12 November as previously planned, it has been pushed back to 14 February 2025.

It follows the disappointing performance of another of the firm's major titles, Star Wars Outlaws, and concerns from some about how Ubisoft is being run.

The game's executive producer Marc-Alexis Cote said the developers "need more time to polish and refine the experience".

"We understand this decision will come as disappointing news," he said.

"But we sincerely believe this is in the best interest of the game."

In a trading update sent to Ubisoft's investors, seen by the BBC, the firm - which is headquartered in France - said despite the game being "feature complete" it needed more time.

"The learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release led us to provide additional time to further polish the title," it reads.

Star Wars Outlaws was released in August to strong reviews, but early players complained of bugs and glitches.

In its trading update, Ubisoft notes sales of the game were "softer than expected", which it seemed to be putting down to a lack of polish.

Mr Cote said the firm would refund fans who had pre-ordered the game, and promised a free expansion to anyone who placed a new pre-order for the revised launch.

BBC News

Google is improving passkey support in Chrome by making it easier to use the passwordless sign-in credentials across different devices. The search giant is introducing a Google Password Manager PIN that allows users to securely save and synchronize passkeys for use across Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android devices. These updates are available in beta on ChromeOS as well, with iOS support “coming soon.”

Passkeys needed to be saved to Google Password Manager on Android prior to this update and required users to scan a QR code on their Android device to access them on other platforms. The new PIN replaces the need to scan the QR code while ensuring that your saved passkeys remain protected by end-to-end encryption, so not even Google can access them. Users will need to either unlock their Android screen or use their Password Manager PIN to use passkeys on a new device.

The Verge

Microsoft is launching a Windows app today for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, web browsers, Android devices, and even Windows PCs. The Windows app is essentially a hub for streaming a copy of Windows from a variety of sources, including Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, Remote Desktop, and more.

This new unified app has been in testing for nearly a year and includes a customizable homescreen, multi-monitor support, and USB redirection so you can use local devices like webcams, storage devices, and printers as if they were plugged directly in to a cloud PC.

This Windows app is limited to Microsoft work and school accounts, as it’s primarily designed for existing users of Remote Desktop clients for Windows and other operating systems to move to. Microsoft has had similar apps for connecting to PCs remotely in Windows for decades, including the Remote Desktop Connection app that still ships as part of Windows 11. These apps, including the new Windows one, are useful for connecting to work PCs from a personal laptop or PC.

There are no signs that Microsoft plans to support consumer accounts with its new Windows app, though. Last year, it was revealed that Microsoft has a long-term goal of moving Windows fully to the cloud to “enable improved AI-powered services and full roaming of people’s digital experience.”

Windows users can grab the Windows app from the Microsoft Store. It’s also available from Apple’s App Store for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. An Android version enters public preview mode today.

The Verge

Back in March, Valve launched a new feature for Steam Beta users called Steam Families, a collection of features that can come in handy if you aren’t the only gamer in your family. Today, Steam Families is now out of beta and available to all Steam users.

Steam Families combines and replaces both Family Sharing (used to lend games to family members) and Family View (now known as Parental Controls, used to limit a family member’s access to certain Steam features and content), and also makes it possible for restricted family members to make purchase requests for approval.

The big change is that Steam Families now allows up to six people to play games simultaneously from a shared game library. However, if two or more people want to play the exact same game at the same time, multiple copies of that game will be needed. It’s also possible to play games offline as long as the game in question supports Family Sharing.

Note: Not all Steam games support Family Sharing. Developers may opt out on a per-game basis for any reason. Visit the Steam Store listing page for any game to see if it’s eligible to be shared with family members.

To make use of these features, you must either create a Steam Family or join an existing one. If you create one, you can then invite up to five others to join you. Each member of a Steam Family retains their own save files, achievements, and Workshop subscriptions.

Who can join your Steam Family? Right now, anyone can join. However, Valve intends this feature to be for a “household” of “close family members” — even if there aren’t any hard restrictions yet, it’s reasonable to assume that Valve will introduce them if people abuse it.

Also, if someone gets banned for cheating while playing your shared copy of a game, you will ALSO be banned for that game. For this reason, you should only join Steam Families with whom you trust.

PCWorld

To prevent another CrowdStrike update fiasco, Microsoft is looking at creating a new platform within the Windows OS specifically designed for antivirus monitoring, nudging security products out of kernel.

The platform is what Microsoft discussed with the antivirus industry during a summit earlier this week on Sept. 10. The event was closed off to journalists, but the company on Thursday decided to share some of the results, which included exploring “new platform capabilities Microsoft plans to make available in Windows.”

“Although this was not a decision-making meeting, we believe in the importance of transparency and community engagement,” Redmond added in the blog post.

The company held the summit in response to July’s infamous Windows outage, which the IT security vendor CrowdStrike accidentally caused through a faulty software update. One reason why the update temporarily bricked millions of computers is because CrowdStrike’s software —like many antivirus programs— has access to the Windows kernel, the essential brains to the operating system.
(Photo by Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Antivirus programs will harness the kernel privileges to monitor malicious changes to the deepest parts of the OS. But the same access also acts as a double-edge sword if the antivirus software ever malfunctions. In CrowdStrike’s case, a fault in the company’s validation processes let a buggy update slip through, triggering its security software to crash Windows machines.

The outage initially caused Microsoft to consider revoking the kernel access, potentially turning Windows into a more closed operating system akin to Apple’s macOS. But in Thursday’s blog post discussing the results of the Sept. 10th summit, the company stopped short of clamping down on the Windows kernel.

Instead, Microsoft mentioned how both customers and partners have called on the company to “provide additional security capabilities outside of kernel mode,” which antivirus software can also harness to provide protection.

“At the summit, Microsoft and partners discussed the requirements and key challenges in creating a new platform which can meet the needs of security vendors,” the company said. The areas discussed include the “performance needs and challenges outside of kernel mode,” providing an anti-tampering mechanism for security programs and the “security sensor requirements” for the antivirus monitoring.

Redmond didn’t offer more details to the security layer, which it describes as a longer-term project. But the company added: “As a next step, Microsoft will continue to design and develop this new platform capability with input and collaboration from ecosystem partners to achieve the goal of... [Read More]