July 27 Tech news roundup: CrowdStrike says that a bug caused the massive outage, Apple Maps is now available for web browsers, Windows 11 has a new pop-up ad

CrowdStrike says that the global outage was caused by test software

Last week, the world was shocked by Windows computers crashing across various organizations. It affected offices, airports, hospitals, and several businesses across the globe. Microsoft was incorrectly blamed for the massive outage, which was actually caused by a third-party security software called CrowdStrike Falcon. Experts believe that the outage crashed 8.5 million computers, and could reportedly cost companies billions of Dollars.

CrowdStrike published a review of the incident, in which it claimed that the disaster was a result of a bug in its test software. The company stated that a configuration update released as a Rapid Response Content contained a bug, which contained problematic content data. The security firm has promised to improve its testing standards to ensure such incidents don’t happen again. However, experts say that validation tests were not run by the company.

Apple Maps on the web launches in beta

Apple has surprised users by announcing the availability of Apple Maps for Chrome and Edge browsers. Prior to this announcement, the navigation service was only available via the Apple Maps app on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Now, you can browse Apple Maps on the web is on your desktop PCs. The service is in beta, meaning it does not offer the best experience yet, but you can use it to search for locations, discover places around you, check reviews and photos of various stores, restaurants, etc.

The web-based navigation can also be used for walking or driving directions. It also features a Guides page, that users may find helpful in discovering landmarks around cities. Apple Maps only works with Chrome and Edge on Windows, it does not support Firefox, but this could change in the future.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox is a failure

Google has admitted that its Privacy Sandbox did not work out as originally intended. The Search giant had created it as a new web standard in a bid to kill third-party cookies on websites. However, Privacy Sandbox did not prevent tracking completely, as the name suggests. Instead of tracking individual users, it allowed tracking user groups. In other words, it still has privacy issues, hidden behind a rather confusing name. The main problem for Google was that Privacy Sandbox was not getting the same results that third-party cookies for ads were. Google is primarily an advertising company, so it is not surprising that it has decided to backtrack on its decision to get rid of the cookies. The Mountain company says that it still wants to work on Privacy Sandbox, but third-party cookies are not going anywhere.

Windows 11 is displaying another pop-up to annoy users

Microsoft has made yet another unpleasant change to Windows 11. The Redmond company has added several ads in its operating system, to promote its services. Now, Microsoft wants users to use the Windows Backup app. Reports say that Windows 11 users are getting a new pop-up on the screen, that highlights the importance of your files, and warns about the risks of losing them. The app does not back up your data to a local hard drive, instead it uploads your data to OneDrive. The problem is Microsoft only allows 5 GB of storage for free accounts. Once that threshold is met, users will need to either delete the data, or pay for a premium plan to continue backing up the content to the cloud storage service. So, essentially this new pop-up is an advertisement for OneDrive.

Windows 11 July Security Updates have a major bug

Microsoft released the July Security Updates for Windows 10 and Windows 11 earlier this month. But, many users say that the updates have been buggy. KB5040442 and KB5040427 are affected by a problem related to the BitLocker. Users may run into a BitLocker recovery screen after booting their PC. Microsoft has acknowledged the issue. The company says that the issue only affects users who have enabled Device Encryption on their computer, but not everyone who has the option checked seem to be impacted by this bizarre issue.

Microsoft is investigating the problem, and will address it by releasing an update in the future. As for now, users are advised to log into the BitLocker recovery screen portal if they are unable to find their encryption key.

Spotify may introduce Hi-Fi audio, but it won’t be cheap

Spotify users have been requesting the company to add Hi-Fi audio for a long time. It appears that their prayers could finally be answered. Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, has confirmed that the music streaming service is indeed working on bringing high-quality audio to its platform. However, the feature is still in an early phase, despite being first announced in early 2021.

That is not the bad news though, the real concern could be the price of the plan. Ek has stated that Spotify could launch a Deluxe plan with Hi-Fi audio, and that it could come at a higher price than the other plans offered by the service. The Spotify Deluxe plan pricing will reportedly be $18, which is $5 more than the Spotify Premium subscription, and could well be beyond the reach of most users. This could face significant competition from Apple Music, which already offers lossless audio quality at a much more affordable price.

Apple TV+ is not performing to expectations

Apple TV+ has been quite popular, and has managed to build itself a large audience with its original productions. It has over 277 Million subscribers. The platform earned a significant profit increase in 2023, reaching up to 44% growth. But it seems that the streaming service is not actually impressing in terms of performance. According to a report, Apple TV+ is hitting fewer views in a month than Netflix does in a day. Apple TV+ barely has about 8% of TV viewership in the U.S., and while it is only slightly behind YouTube TV, it still has a long way to catch up to Netflix. Things could be changing soon, as the Cupertino company is trying to attract more projects from Hollywood, to broaden its lineup and make the service more appealing to users.