Google is facing another fine for allegedly misusing its control of Android to suppress competition. CNETreports India's Competition Commission has fined Google the equivalent of $161.9 million for supposedly giving its Android apps an edge using restrictive terms. The company imposes an "unfair condition" on phone makers by requiring that they preinstall Google apps as part of agreements, according to officials. That, in turn, is said to discourage companies from developing heavily modified Android variants that rely less on Google services.

The Commission also maintains that Google is wielding its "dominant position" to squeeze out competitors in search, app stores, web browsers and video services. Historically, Google has required that phones with the Play Store installed also include apps like Chrome and YouTube, often with prominent placement on the home screen. While you can always install alternatives like Firefox and Vimeo, they're not included out of the box. Brands can use the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) if they want more flexibility, but they lose access to the Play Store in the process.

The regulator has issued a cease and desist order barring Google from requiring a "bouquet" of preinstalled apps. Companies have to be given the choice of which apps they want. Google also isn't allowed to deny access to the Play Services framework, to include "anti-fragmentation" clauses that bar Android forks, or to offer incentives in return for exclusive search deals. Third-party app stores must be allowed to distribute through the Play Store. Users, meanwhile, must have the power to choose their search engine on setup and to uninstall Google apps they don't want.

Google has declined to comment until it receives the official Commission order. The investigation began in 2019, but didn't determine that Google had abused its dominance until September 2021.

The fine is tiny for Google, which made about $257.6 billion in worldwide revenue last year. The order could force it to significantly alter its deals with Android manufacturers, however, and comes after South Korea, the European Union and others have demanded similar changes. And Google can't afford to ignore India — it's the second-largest smartphone market on Earth with about 606.6 million users. A forced withdrawal would significantly damage Google's bottom line, not to mention clout in the mobile industry.

Apple isn't just updating iPad and Mac software next week. The company has revealed that Fitness+ will come to the iPhone on October 24th in tandem with required software updates, including iOS 16.1. You'll need the handset to sign up, but it will also be accessible through the iPad and Apple TV. You also won't need an Apple TV to put vital stats on the big screen — Roku players with AirPlay will display metrics as of November.

You'll have access to the full range of workouts and meditations through the relevant tab in the Fitness app. The main limitation, as you might guess, is accuracy. Where Apple Watch owners can rely on constant heart rate monitoring to determine their calorie burn, iPhone users have to trust estimates. You may still want Apple's smartwatch if you insist on personalized performance data. The wristwear is also useful if you want to listen to Time to Walk or Time to Run workouts without bringing your iPhone.

There are added incentives to give the service a try, too. You now get three free months of Fitness+ if you buy an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, not just an Apple Watch as before. 

iOS 16.1 will include a number of changes beyond Fitness+ support. You can expect an improved battery life icon, Live Activities like sports scores, iCloud Shared Photo Library, per-app copy-and-paste permissions and clean energy charging. Simply speaking, many of Apple's OS update promises will become reality in a matter of days, regardless of which device you're using.

Google has detailed the new, recent and upcoming changes to its Messages app in an effort to advocate for the more widespread adoption of the RCS messaging protocol. Apple chief Tim Cook recently made clear that the company has no plans to fix the 'green bubbles' texting experience anytime soon, but Google's feature additions improve messaging interoperability between iOS and Android. Earlier this year, it rolled out an update for the Messages app that allowed it to display iMessage reactions as emoji. More recently, it launched the ability to react to SMS texts from iPhone users with emoji reactions, as well. 

To make navigating busy group chats easier, the app will soon let users respond to individual messages when RCS is enabled — they simply have to swipe on a particular message to reply. This will begin rolling out in the coming weeks. Google has expanded access to the Voice Message Transcription feature, as well, giving people who own a Pixel 6, Pixel 6A, Pixel 6 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S22 and the Galaxy Fold 4 the option to read the contents of a voice message instead. The feature auto-transcribes voice messages using machine learning and was only previously available for the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.

Another new feature is the ability to add reminders from right within the Messages app. Users who set reminders for birthdays and anniversaries will even get a notification when they open the application. In addition, the app will now suggest "starring" a message to keep track of important information or scheduling Meet calls and creating Calendar events when appropriate.

Google has also given Messages an in-app YouTube player, so that users won't have to leave the application when someone sends them a link to a video on the platform. It's testing the capability that would allow users to chat with businesses on Search and Maps from within the application in some countries, as well. And for those flying United, take note that the tech giant has struck a deal with the airline to offer free messaging for passengers using United WiFi starting this fall. 

Finally, Google is updating its Messages, Phone and Contacts icons to "to better reflect today's modern messaging experience" and to better blend in with Google's other apps.

Snap has introduced a number of features for its Snapchat+ subscription app, including a new "Story Expiration" feature, along with custom notification sounds, camera borders and more. The Story feature looks useful, and appears designed to tempt hardcore users to sign up for the $4 per month service.

With story expiration, subscribers can choose to let their stories expire for lengths of time between one hour and one week. That could allow creators to, say, draw interest with a short story, or let one stay for a longer period to draw the more eyeballs. As it stands now, all stories expire after 24 hours and must be saved or they'll be gone for good. 

Snap

Paid users are also getting access to custom notification sounds, letting them set different tones for different friends so they tell who Snapped them without checking their phone. And the new custom camera color borders option allows users to just what it says, using different hues while capturing content. And finally, Snapchat is bringing custom "exclusive, seasonal and spooky Bitmoji backgrounds" that they can use in their profiles for Halloween. 

Snapchat+ made a strong start, with the company boasting a million subscribers just a couple of months after it debuted. At the time, Snap described it as a service for "passionate" users, and though that's a fraction of its 347 million daily users, it's a significant injection of additional revenue. Snapchat also sells hardware like glasses and recently came out with the Pixy Drone, though Snap had reportedly given up on that product.

Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise. Aside from confirming that remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games. Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.

Ascension, due out in 2023, is the least game-like installment, but it will feature the influence of J.J. Abrams. It's an interactive streaming series with the tagline: Face Your Trauma Together. Ascension comes from Abrams' studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows.

Konami

And then there's Silent Hill f, coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is incredibly gruesome, featuring a young woman as she's consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is “set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world.” There's no word yet on a release date.

Oh, and of course, there’s a new Silent Hill movie, too. Happy Halloween, everyone.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Microsoft wants to build an Xbox-branded mobile game store

The Activision Blizzard merger would play a key role.

A company filing with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revealed plans to build a "next generation" Xbox store that's available on mobile devices, not just consoles and PCs. The shop would unsurprisingly lean heavily on content from the proposed Activision Blizzard merger. Call of Duty Mobile and King's more casual mobile games (think Candy Crush) represent more than half of Activision's revenue.

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The best portable Bluetooth speakers for 2022

There are good options in each price range.

Engadget

We’ve tested out some of the most popular Bluetooth speakers in different price ranges, focusing a bit more on audio quality and dynamic range, while considering factors like utility and price. Ultimately, there isn't one best Bluetooth speaker out there, but we've found plenty of good options for a range of uses and price points.

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James Webb telescope captures Pillars of Creation in unprecedented detail

Featuring lots of young stars.

NASA

Researchers have captured their most detailed image yet of the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming nursery in the Eagle Nebula roughly 6,500 light-years away. The near-infrared picture shows even more detail than Hubble's 2014 snapshot, with an abundance of stars (particularly newborns) – there isn't even a galaxy in sight. The new stars are the bright red points of light and are estimated to be 'just' a few hundred thousand years old.

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Meta's AI translator can interpret unwritten languages

It currently translates between English and Hokkien.

Nearly half of the world’s roughly 7,000 known languages lack a written component. These unwritten languages pose a unique problem for machine learning translation systems, but one that Meta is trying to tackle with its Universal Speech Translator (UST) program. As part of this project, Meta researchers looked at Hokkien, an unwritten language spoken throughout Asia’s diaspora and one of Taiwan’s official languages.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained: “We leveraged Mandarin as an intermediate language to build pseudo-labels, where we first translated English (or Hokkien) speech to Mandarin text, and we then translated to Hokkien (or English) and added it to training data.” Currently, the system allows for someone who speaks Hokkien to converse with someone who speaks English, stiltedly.

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Google's iOS 16 lock screen widgets are now available

Gmail, Maps and other apps are now in closer reach.

Google’s new iOS 16 widgets give you at-a-glance info and shortcuts for some of the company's core apps. Gmail shows your new message counts, and Maps provides links to your favorite trips (like your commute home). The widgets run the gamut of Google apps, though with diminishing usefulness: Google News shows the latest headlines, while Drive takes you to suggested and starred cloud files. YouTube and YouTube Music also have home screen widgets, so you can jump to your video subscriptions or search for a song on YouTube Music.

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Blackmagic Design is bringing it's popular DaVinci Resolve video editing app to the iPad, promising support for RAW, cloud collaboration and more, the company announced on Twitter. It won't be a full version of the PC/Mac app, as it will initially feature just the Cut and Color pages. Otherwise, though, "it will be similar to the desktop version," Blackmagic said.

The iPad app will support file formats including H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips available from the "iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, externally connected iCloud or USB-C media disks," the company wrote on Facebook. 

In addition, you'll be able to open desktop projects on the iPad version, including shared collaborative projects via Blackmagic Cloud. "This means DaVinci Resolve for iPad is the same professional tool, and the same codebase as used on major Hollywood feature films," Blackmagic pointed out. 

There are some changes to the UI because of the screen size, as the menu bar will be removed, for instance. In addition, there's no plan to bring the Edit page to the iPad version, as it's essentially designed for a keyboard and mouse. "This makes it very difficult to move to the iPad without changing it in a way that would cause problems for professional editors who rely on the edit page for their work," the company said. Because of that, the Cut page will gain new features, including "enhanced audio support, key framing , split edits and more." 

The Fusion effects and Fairlight audio tools aren't available yet either, "because their software code has not yet been redesigned for the iPad." However, the company plans to work on those pages and include them in a future release. 

DaVinci Resolve is a popular app with professional editors, in part because of its powerful color correction tools — making Engadget's list of the best editing apps. In addition, there's a powerful free version of the app and the paid version costs just $300, with all future updates free. That has proven tempting for editors who don't want to pay a monthly fee to use Adobe's Premiere, After Effects and Audition tools. 

Google's iOS 16 lock screen widgets are officially available. As outlined in September, the widgets give you at-a-glance info and shortcuts for some of the company's core apps. Gmail can show your new message counts, while Maps can either provide a link to favorite trips (like the commute home) or searches for destinations like restaurants. Widgets for Chrome and the Google app, meanwhile, can help you start web searches, issue voice commands or launch features like Lens translation and Chrome's Dino game.

Other widgets are more specialized, but still helpful. Google News can show the latest headlines. Drive provides quicker access to suggested and starred cloud files. It's also much easier to listen to YouTube Music, as you can quickly start a playlist when you're heading out for a walk.

YouTube and YouTube Music also have home screen widgets. You can quickly browse your YouTube video subscriptions, or search for a YouTube Music tune. 

The widgets should automatically surface when you're customizing your lock screen. As usual, they make the most sense for the always-on display of the iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max. Regardless of the device you use, they could make Google's apps more compelling. In some cases, they'll even provide an edge over those Android phones that only show a limited amount of info before you unlock the device.

Google's Material You design language has been available since Android 12, but you wouldn't know it if you bought an entry Go Edition phone stuck with the old look. Thankfully, Google is finally bringing that aesthetic to lower-cost handset. The newly announced Android 13 Go Edition brings Material You to these basic devices for the first time, giving you color themes that reflect your wallpaper as well as an overall more stylish appearance.

It should also be easier to keep your phone up to date. Android 13 Go Edition adds Google Play System Updates that, like on the 'full' platform, ensure you get critical patches without waiting for your manufacturer to push the new code. This could help fix security flaws in a hurry, of course, but it will also keep your device current without chewing up the frequently limited storage on budget phones.

The new Go version adds Discover to help browse a curated list of news stories and other content. Some of Android 13's subtler improvements are available here, including notification permissions and per-app language preferences.

The first Android 13 Go Edition phones won't be available until sometime in 2023. With that said, Google notes the release is as much a symbol of Go's expansion as it is a technical improvement. There are now more than 250 million monthly active Android Go devices. While that pales in comparison to the 3 billion total active devices reported at I/O 2022, it suggests the concept of a highly-optimized, more accessible Android OS is here to stay.

Now that speedy ports are par for the course on computers, how is Intel going to make Thunderbolt more enticing? By courting enthusiasts who demand a wall of monitors, apparently. The company has previewed a next-generation Thunderbolt standard that will offer more bandwidth for multi-monitor setups and other "visually intensive usages." While the port will normally offer 80 gigabits per second of bandwidth like the USB 4 Version 2.0 spec it's built on, it auto-switches to a special mode with 120Gbps upstream and 40Gbps downstream when your screens' resolution or refresh rate demands greater performance.

You can also expect DisplayPort 2.1 support, twice the PCI Express data (important for external GPUs) and backward compatibility with earlier formats as well as passive cables up to 3.3ft long.

That's not far off from the new USB 4 standard. As The Vergepoints out, though, Intel is betting that consistency will persuade PC makers to adopt the new technology. "Many" of USB 4's new features are optional where they're required with the new Thunderbolt, Intel's Jason Ziller says. While the USB Implementers Forum is improving labeling, you may want Thunderbolt to be sure your gaming rig or creative studio can handle all the monitors you want.

Intel plans to share the updated Thunderbolt standard's final name and capabilities sometime in 2023. This might give some users a reason to buy Intel-powered computers (or Macs, if Apple adopts the port) next year. However, it's clear the gap between Thunderbolt and USB has narrowed considerably. You might not have much reason to buy an Intel Core-based PC when a USB 4-equipped AMD system may offer nearly identical connectivity.

Microsoft wants to bring a taste of Xbox game shopping to your phone. As The Vergeexplains, a company filing with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revealed plans to build a "next generation" Xbox store that's available on mobile devices, not just consoles and PCs. The shop would unsurprisingly lean heavily on content from the proposed Activision Blizzard merger. Call of Duty Mobile and King's more casual games (think Candy Crush) represent more than half of Activision's revenue and would help attract gamers to the new platform, Microsoft said.

The purchase would boost Microsoft's mobile gaming and ad revenue, according to the company. It would also offer "much needed expertise" in developing and marketing these titles.

The software giant is aware there will be challenges. It will require a "major shift" in consumer habits to pull them away from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, according to the filing. Microsoft says it will apply its open app store philosophy to the Xbox mobile shop, including equal treatment for third-party apps and choices for in-app payments.

It's far from certain that Microsoft will launch the Xbox mobile game store as outlined. The CMA is conducting a deep investigation of the Activision Blizzard buyout over concerns it might hurt competition, particularly in console gaming. There's also no practical way to install a dedicated Xbox game store on iPhones and iPads. While Android users can sideload third-party stores, Apple requires use of the App Store. Microsoft struggled to bring Xbox games to the App Store, and had to offer Game Pass streaming through the browser. Short of antitrust lawsuits forcing Apple to open its platform, Microsoft may have to be content with courting Android gamers.

The strategy behind the filing isn't subtle. Microsoft wants to convince UK regulators that the Activision Blizzard deal would preserve or even improve competition, and the prospect of an Xbox mobile store theoretically helps. Agencies like the CMA might not see it this way, however. Officials are still concerned that Microsoft's potential ownership of Call of Duty on console, cloud and mobile would give the company too much control over the games industry, and the developer's promises to support rival platforms might not be sufficiently reassuring.