By Ana Maria Constantin Karin Keller-Sutter, Switzerland’s finance minister and the country’s former president, has filed criminal charges for defamation and insult after Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok was prompted by an anonymous user to generate a torrent of sexist and vulgar remarks about her on X. The complaint, filed on 20 March with the Bern public prosecutor’s office, […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Varun Mirchandani New research shows AI bias isn’t just in algorithms. Women are using AI less, receiving less support, and . falling behind in workplace adoption

Source:: Digital Trends

It felt churlish to let Apple’s 50th birthday pass without adding to the hagiographic choir, so what follows is an unapologetically selective tour through some of the moments that shaped one of the most influential companies of the modern era. These were the inflection points where Apple didn’t just ship products, it distorted reality in its direction.

For anyone seeking a shorter item, Apple CEO Tim Cook obliged with a characteristically on‑brand Tweet. For everyone else, this is the longer version.

The first Apple article

The first bit of mainstream reporting about Apple I was able to find appeared in 1977 in an article in the now-defunct Kilobaud magazine. “The Remarkable Apple Computer” was a lengthy piece based on interviews with company founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. “We’re not in the business of making things more expensive,” they said at the time, keeping early costs low by frugal use of components and tight design. A second set of reports explored a different theme: “Apple didn’t just build machines. It recognized, earlier than most, that ordinary people were ready for them.”

Hassle-free

Apple’s marketing push for the Apple II series locked another gene into the company DNA: user-friendly, plug-and-play, and out-of-the-box experience were the hallmarks of how the company presented these computers. At best, it has remained consistent on these features ever since. (Though the Apple II Homemaker Ad still resonates for a different set of reasons.)

Going mainstream

Jobs was an inexorable part of the Apple story. Six years after founding the company, he gained his first Time magazine front page in 1982. He was 26 years old. Jobs spent most of the rest of his life in the public eye, a position he used shrewdly across his career, for his benefit, and for the computer company he loved. Apple has been playing the media ever since.

For the Rest of us 

Apple introduced Macintosh in a blaze of glory with the iconic “1984” ad, a Super Bowl spot, and every single ounce of energy the company had to put into the push. Its revolutionary point-and-click user interface changed computing forever. Apple billed the computer as “for the rest of us.” Interestingly, the first ever edition of Macworld appeared alongside the release. I recall a conversation with IDG/Macworld publisher Pat McGovern years ago when he told me how impressed he had been by Apple’s new computer in 1983 when he first saw a prototype of it. The New York Times loved it too, writing: “Another startling feature that I became aware of after a few minutes, although it may be a minor point to some people, is the absence of fan noise…. The Macintosh has been engineered to cool itself. There is no fan to drown one’s thinking.”

Sounds familiar.

The fall

After an extensive and widely reported power struggle, Apple’s board fired Jobs in 1985, ushering in a miserable decade of great ideas and declining market share. Even John Sculley, who led the ouster, years later conceded, “In hindsight, it was a terrible mistake.” It wasn’t a total disaster; some of the work Apple did during that lost decade was excellent – the investment in ARM and work on the Newton led to technologies that later defined the next era of computing. But somehow through a succession of CEOs, Apple lost its fire. 

Shut it down

Apple’s computers did achieve a spiritual connection with creative markets, even as the company entered decline. By 1997, the company was close to bankruptcy — so much so that Business Week described “The Fall of an American Icon” and Dell founder Michael Dell famously said the company should “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,” something Dell itself later did when it went private in 2013. Apple did not do this; instead, its leaders spent time searching for a new operating system (Copeland, or Cope, you decide) before realizing its salvation was its creation story.

Successful failure

Jobs, Apple’s former leader, hadn’t been quiet. He’d purchased Toy Story animation company Pixar just before being booted out of Cupertino, and launched his second computer company, NeXT, in 1985 after he was fired. Jobs remained optimistic, and later described his removal from Apple as “the best thing that could have ever happened,” as it led to him becoming a better leader. NeXT, staffed by ex-Apple engineers, built a Unix-based object oriented operating system called NeXTstep.

Facing existential crisis, Apple’s leadership approached Jobs to acquire NeXT for that operating system years later. That deal was done, and Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. NeXT became OS X, now macOS, arguably a most successful failure.

Think Different

Of course, the best way to play the media is to create credible narratives really, really hungry tech journalists can get behind. Edward Bernays had described that relationship decades before: “Being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.”

Substitute Apple for politics for the same result.  Apple’s marketing teams have always been good at doing this, from that iconic “1984” ad to the Think Different campaign that marked the resurrection of Apple to the adorable recent “Critter” ads. Apple has always tried to define its story before you do. Shortly after Jobs returned, the company rolled out the Think Different ads series. (Here’s the ad, read by Steve Jobs. “The people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”)

The iMac

The seminal moment in Apple’s recovery story is inarguably the introduction of the iMac in 1998. Jobs had been working at Apple as the “iCEO” for 10 months by then, as part of the NeXT acquisition that gave us macOS. The iMac captured global attention, put the company back into the zeitgeist, and became the foundation for the biggest corporate turnaround in history. He was wrong about the mouse, but he got the rest right. (He was also right about Wi-Fi, and introduced with the iBook, which Apple called “iMac to go,” a year later).

You want to lick it

Apple launched NeXT in March 2001, except it wasn’t called NeXT, had been heavily improved, and was launched as Mac OS X. At the time, Jobs said, “When you see it, you want to lick it,” pointing to its hideously attractive Aqua interface. I was at a launch event that had Apple fans beating at the windows. “I had to be here, it’s an historic moment – I eat, breathe, and sleep Mac,” one fan told me. In the decades since, OS X has formed the OS heart that beats inside all Apple products, from the Apple Watch to Mac, the iPad to iPhone, even Vision Pro. (Some of those products may also seem lickable.)

1,000 songs

October 2001 and a special Apple event saw the introduction of the iPod, reflecting Jobs’ decades-long obsession with music. If the iMac was the first wave, the iPod was the third after Mac OS X. It became Apple’s biggest product of all time (at the time). It vaulted into Windows, opened up the music industry, launched Apple’s services empire, and captured and defined a new generation. 

Business Week called it very, very right, declaring, “The iPod is no bigger than a deck of cards, but I predict this new handheld digital-music player will stand tall. Very tall. It’s going to do for MP3 music what the original Palm Pilot did for handheld computing in the late ’90s — that is, ignite demand like a match to dry twigs.” With iTunes and iTunes Music Store, it did. (A lot of people didn’t get it right, as described in this Macworld report.)

Hello Intel

Apple announced its transition to Intel processors in 2005. This was an important step. PowerPC (the chips then used in Macs) was incapable of keeping pace with rival chips and Apple’s leadership recognized the need to change. The company managed the transition so well that, thanks to Universal Binaries, it was possible to run apps on both old PowerPC Macs and brand new Intel models. You could also run Windows on Mac for the first time.

The move to Intel also allowed Apple to introduce the MacBook, which became a hugely successful device that propelled Apple toward becoming the world’s biggest mobile company, prompting it to change its name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc. in 2007. The first Intel Macs arrived in 2006, with Intel’s CEO joining jobs in what looked like a space suit but was in fact the protective clean room garb worn in chip foundries. 

An internet communicator

The next huge, big, massive moment in Apple history was the iPhone introduction in 2007. At the time, Nokia and Motorola were the second-largest cellphone makers in the world. Motorola’s then-CTO Padmasree Warrior left Motorola shortly after, arguing that “There is nothing revolutionary or disruptive about any of the technologies” in the iPhone. But perhaps the clip that most epitomizes the existential crisis felt by Apple’s competitors came from then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.  John Gruber caught the moment more presciently, “I haven’t found a single element of the iPhone UI that doesn’t feel super-snappy. The whole thing feels very realistic,” he wrote. That was the point: this was super advanced tech-in-a-box anyone could use, not a fiddly device few really understood. This was the epitome of personal computing, and still is.

There’s an app for that

A sleeping giant rose in 2008 when Apple unveiled the App Store with 500 apps. At first, we excited ourselves with apps that let us drink virtual pints; today, apps have become part of almost every task we do, from maps to payment systems and everything between. Jobs had a feeling, telling The Wall Street Journal this was “the biggest launch of my career.” It was an instant success; 10 million apps were downloaded in the first 72 hours.

Jobs himself was surprised. “I would not trust any of our predictions, because reality has so far exceeded them by such a great degree that we’ve been reduced to spectators just like you,” he said. So far, the ecosystem the App Store supports has also generated billions of dollars, opening opportunities for software in glasses, watches, and wearables. And, unfortunately as history has now shown, it opened the door to surveillance and regulation.

Stop me if you’ve seen this before

Perhaps Apple’s biggest security breach took place in 2010 when a prototype of an iPhone 4 was left in a bar by an Apple software engineer and subsequently sold to Gizmodo. Apple was furious, so much so that Jobs referred to this disaster during the launch of the device, saying, “Stop me if you’ve seen this before.” The same device also begat the now immortal phrase, “You’re holding it wrong.” 

A large iPhone

Apple’s iPad launch in 2010 generated major interest. It also hit a market of Windows users primed enough by good experiences with their iPods to pick up an iPhone. Many of these wanted to continue to use Windows but were sufficiently curious that when Apple introduced the iPad they wanted to try one for themselves. (I saw evidence of this across enterprise customers at that time.)

“I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop,” said Walt Mossberg. History will show it didn’t quite achieve that, despite Apple’s “What’s a computer/Post-PC” coverage, but it did create a completely new computer category it continues to lead. Once introduced, iPad almost immediately eclipsed the netbook industry. (Apple’s about to do the same thing to the mid-range PC industry with the MacBook Neo.)

Medical leave

Apple’s CEO had been struggling with his health, fighting pancreatic cancer. In a January 2011 email, he wrote: “At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011. I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.”

He subsequently resigned as CEO in August 2011, and sadly died in October. The iPhone 4S was released a few weeks later, with many describing the name as signifying S “for Steve.” For many, the commencement speech he delivered at Stanford University remains an inspirational guide.

The planet can’t wait

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook had been groomed for the top job for years. An expert in operations, Cook helped Apple grow rapidly, becoming the first company to ever reach a $3 trillion valuation. That should be enough to prove that while he’s a different type of leader, he is a highly effective one who thinks deeply about the impact of technology on the wider world.

America’s first openly gay CEO also became Apple’s longest-serving Apple CEO in 2025. Critics may throw stones, but it is appropriate that the leader of one the world’s most influential tech company at least considers its place in racism, privacy, and the environment. Under Cook’s watch, the world has really explored the ugly side of digital transformation, spanning the Snowden affair, Cambridge Analytica, surveillance-as-a-service, the Covid crises, intensive regulation, and, most recently, direct threats against Apple and its employees because of a war no one voted for. It is hard to say whether anyone else could have managed Apple more successfully through this tumult.

Services, services, services

Apple’s push into services began with Maps. Actually, that’s not quite true, it actually began with movie trailers in QuickTime in the late 1990s and really took an upswing thanks to the acquisition of Soundjam and the introduction of iTunes and the iTunes Music Store alongside the iPod. Under Cook, Apple recognized that music purchasers wanted to stream their songs, and it needed some way to transition iTunes sales to music streaming.

In May 2014, Apple announced the $3 billion purchase of Beats, which Forbes called “Tech’s Worst Acquisition, Except for All The Others.” Beats made headphones (and still does) and offered a music streaming service, which became Apple Music. Despite media scepticism at the time, that launch has more than paid for the initial purchase. It gave Apple an opportunity to build a massive services empire, one that generates approximately $207,686 every minute, based on fiscal year 2025 revenues, with roughly 75% margins. In other words, Apple’s services arm now generates enough revenue to do another $3 billion deal every two weeks. 

A branch of the tree

“I see wearables as a very key branch of the tree,” Cook said in 2013. “I think it could be a profound area for technology.”

He was wearing a Fuel band at the time and recognized their potential for health. Apple’s adventure in wearables began with “the watch for pioneers,” the Apple Watch, the AirPods (Cult of Mac called them “Ear Fangs”) and led to the era of spatial computing and Vision Pro. Two of these products now own their category: AirPods hold a 23% share of that market, while Apple Watch has a 32% share of its own. The third product continues to define its market, creating expectations others cannot match, and setting the stage for a future “one more thing moment” sometime this year.

Of course, the sensors built into wearables also opens up another fresh frontier in health, on which more is expected from Apple.

The glory of silicon

One big thing somehow reflects the very first thing. You see, back when Apple began, the one component it didn’t make was the MOS 6502 chip used inside the acclaimed Apple I. The arc of time saw the company often constrained by the processors it got from third-party manufacturers. In 2008, Apple began to change that with the purchase of PA Semi.

“Apple buys firm that makes tiny, powerful chips,” said TechCrunch at the time. Sixteen years on, we can see exactly what happened; the tech Apple acquired helped it build the chips inside iPhones so successfully it wound up using them in Macs, too. Today’s Macs are the most performant and energy efficient AI PCs money can buy, and are grabbing back market share Apple sacrificed back in the ’80s following the ouster of Jobs. These high-performance, low-power processors also offer the advantage that they can be configured for use in smaller and larger devices, giving the company a solid tech canvas upon which to build the next 50 years.

One more thing?

Looking forward and back, it’s true to say Apple has spent its life fighting for independence. At first, it could not control its chips, at times it was not able to control its platform, at one point it could not control its own survival. Now, Apple designs the silicon, operating systems, hardware, services — even the way it engages with the world outside its Cupertino windows. That control has produced some of the most elegant, efficient computing devices ever made, though it also means regulators, critics and governments now understand how much leverage it holds.

Apple is self-sufficient and its future years will in part be defined by how responsibly it chooses to leverage the power it has accumulated across five decades.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

By Shimul Sood Every day in tech seems to outdo the last. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something shifts the conversation completely. I stumbled across news about Garmin teaming up with Natural Cycles, and I had to pause for a second. Birth control, powered by your smartwatch? That’s not something you expect to read in […]

Source:: Digital Trends

In the vibrant universe of online casino entertainment, the way players encounter games often defines their overall experience. More than just the thrill of spinning reels or hitting a jackpot, what captivates users is how easily they can explore their options without feeling overwhelmed. Online casinos are increasingly prioritizing smooth browsing, clear information, and responsive support to create an environment that feels welcoming and well-organized, enhancing every visit.

The Art of Effortless Discovery

When stepping into an online casino realm, players expect to be greeted by an interface that intuitively guides them through their choices. Sites that emphasize clear categorization—whether by game type, popularity, or theme—allow users to find favorites and new offerings with minimal clicks. This thoughtful design prevents frustration and helps maintain excitement throughout the session.

Many platforms also feature advanced filters and search bars that quickly narrow down options based on specific criteria like jackpot size or gameplay style. These tools not only save time but encourage players to explore titles they might have otherwise missed. Imagine browsing private wellness options in a peaceful setting like private wellness in Beveren—just as those tranquil menus guide choices, so should casino navigation flow smoothly to enhance enjoyment.

Support That Enhances Confidence

Accessible and effective customer support is a quiet hero in the world of online casino entertainment. Knowing that help is readily available transforms browsing from a tentative exploration into a confident adventure. Live chat options, comprehensive FAQs, and responsive email teams ensure that players can continue their entertainment uninterrupted, even when questions arise about game features or account details.

Casinos that showcase transparency with clear explanations and instant assistance empower users to focus on the thrill of the games rather than grapple with confusion. This supportive infrastructure contributes to a more relaxed environment, making the entire visit feel more like a personalized experience rather than a generic transaction.

Visual Comfort and Pace Control

The aesthetics of an online casino platform deliver more than just style—they help control emotional pacing during gameplay. A clean, uncluttered layout prevents sensory overload, allowing players to settle in and enjoy without scanning through walls of text or too many flashing banners. Calm color schemes and well-spaced content create a welcoming ambiance, inviting longer and more engaging sessions.

Additionally, some sites offer customization in how players interact with games, such as toggling sound effects or adjusting the pace of animations. These subtle features respect individual preferences and contribute to an experience that feels less like a rigid routine and more like a well-paced activity tailored to personal rhythms.

Highlights That Make Online Casinos Feel Like Home

What truly sets apart platforms with outstanding browsing experiences is their attention to the fine details that ease user interactions. Here are some key elements often found in player-friendly environments:

• Simple Registration and Quick Onboarding: Streamlined sign-ups that don’t bombard newcomers with excessive forms or jargon.
• Intuitive Game Previews: Access to demos or clear descriptions helps players decide if a game fits their mood before diving in.
• Easy Access to Bonuses and Promotions: Clearly labeled offers avoid confusion and encourage exploring additional playtime without hassle.
• Mobile-Friendly Design: Seamless transitions between devices ensure that enjoyment is uninterrupted whether at home or on the go.
• Consistent Updates and Notifications: Carefully curated alerts keep players informed without feeling spammed or pressured.

A Welcoming Journey Through Digital Playgrounds

At the heart of online casino entertainment lies the balance between excitement and ease. Players want to feel in control, able to explore without obstacles or confusion. Platforms that embrace this mindset craft experiences where browsing feels like a mindful journey rather than a hurried sprint. This elegant flow not only respects player time but fosters trust and satisfaction, turning first-time visitors into returning enthusiasts.

By focusing on navigation clarity, supportive assistance, and visual comfort, online casinos transform from mere websites into welcoming digital playgrounds. Whether a player seeks classic card games or the latest slot adventures, the pleasure of a smooth browsing experience elevates entertainment, ensuring that every visit unfolds with anticipation and ease.

As AI agents become more embedded in workplace tools, Asana is positioning its approach around collaboration rather than individual productivity.

“We believe in AI being ‘multiplayer’ by design,” said chief product officer Arnab Bose. “The future of the agentic enterprise will only be realized if agents can work independently and with multiple people, versus just a copilot.”

Asana made its AI Teammates feature generally available this month; it’s a paid add-on that provides customers with AI agents that are capable of completing tasks autonomously within Asana’s work management platform. Users can build their own AI teammate agents or use one of 21 off-the-shelf agents focused on job roles such as marketing, IT, and operations.

Unlike standalone AI assistants, Asana’s AI teammates operate within shared workflows, with access to projects and portfolios across the platform, Bose said. Users can assign tasks to an agent, review its output, and provide feedback. An auditable record of prompts and actions carried out by the agent is then available to all co-workers.

The collaborative approach leads to greater transparency around information generated by agents, said Bose. “As you train the AI agent and get more work done within Asana, all of that reinforced learning is shared with the human beings with access to the same agent,” he said. “You’re getting institutional memory; you’re not just getting individual memory and individual productivity boost.”

Connecting to third-party apps

AI teammates are also able to connect to third-party applications via “a bi-directional sync” to retrieve data and take actions such as creating new documents, Bose said. Currently this means API connections to Google Drive and Microsoft 365 apps. Connectors to other business applications, such as HubSpot and Salesforce, are in development.

API connectors are well-suited to tasks such as updating docs, but for more non-deterministic tasks, Asana is working on MCP connectors for AI teammates. These are likely to arrive next quarter, Bose said, and are a better fit for unstructured agent-to-agent interactions.

An example would be AI teammates connecting to Slack’s revamped Slackbot. “Slackbot has an MCP agent,” said Bose, “so you can have the Asana AI teammate ask the Slackbot, ‘Hey, what’s up with this particular project? Are there any interesting comments in these channels which I should use to flag status risk?’ We would get back answers like that.”

Competing with third-party agents

Asana believes that AI teammates will also help protect the value of Asana as third-party AI agents such as Claude Cowork and ChatGPT become more capable of working autonomously across software-as-a-service applications — that’s part of the thinking behind the so-called SaaSpocalypse, where work applications such as Asana theoretically become the layer underneath a general-purpose AI agent.

Bose doesn’t see external agents as a risk to Asana’s value proposition, and there are two reasons for this, he argues.

One is that Asana’s embedded, collaborative AI agent approach is better suited to the complexities of enterprise work management than general purpose AI agents.

“If you take a look at how Claude Cowork or any of these coding agents slash productivity agents work today, they are highly optimized for individual or personal productivity,” said Bose. These agents are essentially disconnected from colleagues, he said, with research and reinforcement loops “all happening on an individual basis; they’re not happening in the project or task context.”

The other point, he contends, is that Asana still stands to benefit even if a user interacts with the work management app via a AI agent, as the agent still connect to Asana’s Work Graph — a data map of the relationships between all the work, people and information held in its platform — which allows Asana monetize these agent interactions.

“If it’s a single human who’s completing a task … [and] you don’t end up using Asana UI, you’re still getting massive benefits out of the Work Graph, which is ultimately good for us,” said Bose.

He added: “If you’re updating a document or you’re responding to an email, you could pull data out of Asana to get the most relevant organizational context … that just makes our Work Graph stickier.”

In the shorter term, Asana is likely to face more competition from other productivity software vendors that are also building AI agents into their apps.

Craig Le Clair, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, said many business applications already feature AI builder tools that can address similar use cases to AI teammates, “so this in itself not unique.” Yet Asana has a “data advantage,” according to Le Clair, as other AI agents may not be grounded in the enterprise data and human work patterns to the same degree.

Since it’s connected to Asana’s Work Graph, AI teammates agents provide better context than AI tools such as ChatGPT, said Le Clair, with the main competition for Asana coming instead from “horizontal” platforms that integrate AI agents into the product suites where workers already spend their day: Microsoft 365 Copilot and apps such as Teams, for instance, or Salesforce, with Agentforce and Slack.

Asana is “well-positioned against other pure-play collaborative work management vendors, but the real threat are these more general alternatives,” he said.

Asana’s AI Teammates feature is priced $15 per user per month for 100 agent “requests.” Customers that go over this limit will be charged at the same rate for an additional 100 requests, though Asana will waive these additional fees for a year for customers that sign up before July 31, 2026.

Source:: Computer World

By Rachit Agarwal Google is building a screen-less Fitbit band to rival Whoop, and it comes with an AI health coach powered by Gemini.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Deepti Pathak vivo is all set to launch the vivo V70 FE in the Indian market this week….
The post vivo V70 FE Leaks Reveal Price & Key Specifications in India appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Adarsh Verma In my years of engineering, I have seen technological shifts come and go. But nothing has…
The post How to Integrate AI APIs Into Existing Software Applications: A Developer’s Guide appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Alina Maria Stan The metaverse was supposed to be its own destination. You would put on a headset, enter a virtual world, and never need to think about the platform that brought you there. That was the pitch, anyway. Decentraland, one of the earliest and most persistent experiments in decentralised virtual worlds, appears to have reached a different […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Cristian Dina Public blockchains operate as permissionless networks where anyone can send digital assets to any address at any time. This open architecture creates a fundamental technical challenge for compliance teams tracking the flow of funds. Digital assets rarely travel in straight lines. They often move through multiple intermediate wallets before reaching a final destination. This multi-hop […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Vikhyaat Vivek Researchers at the University of Tartu are developing a smartwatch-like wearable that uses spectrometry to detect plastic particles in the human body without drawing blood.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Shikhar Mehrotra Tired of productivity tools that treat your data as their business model? Proton Workspace bundles everything from encrypted email to video calls under Swiss privacy law, and it costs less than you’d expect.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Nadeem Sarwar Nothing is reportedly planning to launch smart glasses with built-in cameras and a pair of AI-powered earbuds. Let’s hope they do it in their signature style.

Source:: Digital Trends

A group of European technology firms has launched a new open-source office suite aimed at offering a sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office.

Euro-Office consists of four core applications — a document editor, spreadsheet program, presentation tool, and PDF editor — and is built on the open-source OnlyOffice suite. It supports Microsoft Office file formats DOCX, PPTX and XLSX, as well as Open Document Format (ODF) files such as ODS, ODT and ODP.

Those involved include open-source productivity software vendor Nextcloud, cloud hosting provider Ionos, and Proton, a Swiss software-as-a-service provider that sells privacy-focused email and other productivity tools.

The Euro-Office initiative is driven by demand for a “complete sovereign, open-source, decentralized solution” among European organizations, Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud, told Computerworld, amid a growing push for alternatives to US technology providers in the region.

“Europe needs to reduce its reliance on big tech — open source is an essential tool,” said Harald Wehnes, professor at the University of Würzburg Institute of Computer Science and speaker for the German Informatics Society’s Working Group on Digital Sovereignty.

Euro-Office is targeted at Europe’s “extremely dependent businesses and governments,” which largely rely on US technology providers, he said. “Customers are unhappy with current offerings and want a true European alternative.”

Karlitschek plans to introduce a new product based on Euro-Office into its Nextcloud Hub, he told Computerworld, though pricing and availability are yet to be confirmed.

Nextcloud currently provides productivity apps from OnlyOffice and Collabora as part of its Nextcloud Hub suite. Both have drawbacks, according to Karlitschek: Collabora’s software is built on LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice, and has usability limitations, he said. (Nextcloud will continue to offer Collabora as an option to customers, however, and some of Collabora’s code will be incorporated into Euro-Office software.) With regards to OnlyOffice, Karlitschek cited customer concerns about the owner company’s supposed roots in Russia.

Nextcloud, Proton, and Ionos have each allocated “two-digit” numbers of developers to development of Euro-Office, said Karlitschek, with others contributing on a slightly smaller scale.

It’s early days for the project — a preview version of the software is available now on GitHub, with a 1.0 release set for the summer — but Karlitschek said that initial priorities include development of mobile and desktop apps, as well as addressing document incompatibilities.

There are several reasons why organizations might wish to use an open-source productivity suite such as Euro-Office.

European organizations, particularly in public sector and regulated industries, are “evaluating an exit strategy from the US-owned productivity suites like Microsoft Office,” said Dario Maisto, senior analyst at Forrester.

“Organizations are mainly moved by a desire to improve their digital sovereignty posture, escape vendor lock-in, and have a ready alternative to avoid costly price increases from one enterprise agreement renewal to the other,” Maisto said.

The European Union recently launched an initiative intended to support the growth and sustainability of its open-source sector, while some member state governments have signalled intentions for wider open-source adoption.

Aerospace and defense sector organizations often need to inspect and certify code, Maisto said, particularly as geopolitical volatility increases. Whether this means a “deliberate choice for Euro-Office is a whole different discussion,” he said.

Gaining traction among end-user organizations will likely be challenging. An open-source implementation can be a significant undertaking for IT teams, said Maisto, particularly at the scale required to achieve cost savings versus proprietary tools.  A lack of advanced functionality such as Excel macros can be problematic for a subset of office workers.

He also cited the axiom “nobody was ever fired for choosing Microsoft.”

“While this attitude is changing, it will take time to instill a culture of — and trust in — open-source alternatives,” said Maisto.

Related reading:

Global uncertainty is reshaping cloud strategies in Europe

EU looks to bolster its open-source sector to counter US cloud dominance

EuroStack: Europe’s path to digital independence?

Local clouds shape Europe’s AI future

Source:: Computer World

By Shimul Sood Yes, seriously. That’s exactly what it says.

Source:: Digital Trends

It’s no big deal, you’d think, that researchers have found a way to reduce the computing requirements for one of the many steps involved in training an AI model to help robots manipulate simple geometric objects.

Yet such is the concern about the rising cost of powering data centers for AI applications that this one small and largely unremarkable finding prompted breathless headlines such as “100x Less Power: The Breakthrough That Could Solve AI’s Massive Energy Crisis.”

Don’t believe the hype

No-one’s disputing the researchers’ findings, but reports about them may be somewhat exaggerated: “The leap from the research conducted in the arXiv study to the conclusion in the associated news articles is the stuff of myth. It’s the kind of hype that Gartner warns clients to avoid,” said Gartner VP analyst Nader Henein.

The researchers, from Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Tufts University in the US and the Center for Vision, Automation, and Control in Vienna, Austria, compared the training cost and performance of vision-language-action (VLA) models with that of a neuro-symbolic architecture using PDDL-based symbolic planning, reporting the results in a paper, The Price Is Not Right: Neuro-Symbolic Methods Outperform VLAs on Structured Long-Horizon Manipulation Tasks with Significantly Lower Energy Consumption. The paper has been accepted for presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Yuri Goryunov, who is the CIO for consulting firm Acceligence, also questioned whether the study’s energy-saving findings are applicable to broader problems in the enterprise.

“The ‘100x less power’ headline is misleading. What the researchers actually showed is that a rule-based system uses less energy than a neural model on a single puzzle. And it was in simulation, with the rules hand-coded by experts in advance,” Goryunov said. “That’s not a breakthrough. That’s a calculator beating a supercomputer at arithmetic.”

Goryunov argued that “the savings disappear the moment you hit real-world complexity. Disparate data sources and messy inputs, ambiguous situations without clear rule sets, or actually any domain where the rules aren’t already obvious. And someone still has to write all those rules.”

The researchers did not respond to a request for comment — but they likely wouldn’t disagree with Goryunov. In their conclusion, they state, “These results highlight important trade-offs between end-to-end foundation-model approaches and structured reasoning architectures. For manipulation tasks governed by explicit procedural constraints, incorporating symbolic structure can yield substantial advantages in reliability, data efficiency, and energy consumption.”

Some of these discussed hypothetical new approaches to AI do have potential, Goryunov said, specifically citing research work done by Google. “Google’s approach is to make the AI we’re already running dramatically cheaper and faster. Tufts’ approach is to replace it with something architecturally different for a narrow class of tasks. From an enterprise standpoint, there’s no contest. You can deploy Google’s findings tomorrow through your existing model providers. Tufts requires you to rewrite your architecture, hand-code your domain rules, and hope your problem looks like a puzzle.”

The benefits of short-termism

Nathan Marlor, the head of data and AI at Irish consulting firm Version 1, said that even though the Tufts research may not have immediate applicability to enterprise IT deployments, it could impact pricing negotiations with hyperscalers.

“For enterprise IT there’s nothing to do here. Nobody’s building PDDL planners in-house. But the cost angle matters if you’re watching AI compute bills climb and vendors keep telling you the answer is more GPUs. This is one more reason to push back on that,” Marlor said. “If hybrid architectures prove out more broadly, it shows up downstream as cheaper inference and lower cloud bills. But that’s on the platform and hyperscalers to figure out and not enterprise IT teams.”

Another consultant, Brian Levine, executive director of FormerGov, agrees that the Tufts report could color how IT views future AI pricing.

Enterprise IT executives “should absolutely track this space, not because they’ll deploy these models next quarter, but because the economics of AI are getting even more volatile. Enterprises need to stay flexible with their AI vendors,” Levine said. “This market can pivot on a dime. Locking yourself into a single hyperscaler’s stack or a single model architecture is a recipe for regret when breakthroughs like this start to commercialize.” Levine advocated staying flexible and avoiding long-term obligations. “This is a reason to avoid overcommitting to any one vendor’s roadmap. The ground under AI is shifting faster than most procurement cycles. The winners will be the CIOs and orgs that build for portability, negotiate for flexibility, and assume that today’s state of the art may look outdated sooner than anyone expects.”

Source:: Computer World

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