Microsoft Launches 365 Copilot for Enterprise Customers
Microsoft launched Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI-based productivity service for enterprise customers, on Nov. 2. The service will offer generative AI capabilities in apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more for $30 per month. Currently, customers who have subscribed to the Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 Enterprise packages can start using Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Bing Enterprise Chatbot. It’s important to note, however, that some Microsoft 365 Copilot features are currently in preview. These include, but are not limited to, Copilot for Excel which is in beta and Copilot for OneNote which is only available on Windows. While the SharePoint Copilot preview will be available in November, a preview of Copilot for OneDrive is not expected until December.
Apple No Longer Offers a Voice-activated Solution for Apple Music
Apple has announced that it will no longer offer Apple Music Voice over as of November. in a statement, Apple said that existing subscribers will be able to continue to use Voice over during their last program cycle, and will receive a message notifying them of the end, after which they will no longer be able to use it. apple didn’t give a specific reason for the discontinuation of the program, but only said that other Apple Music programs already work seamlessly with Siri.
Disney to Acquire Entire Stake in Hulu
Disney announced on November 2 that it will spend $8.61 billion to acquire Comcast’s 33% stake in Hulu, a move that makes Disney Hulu’s sole shareholder. While Disney may end up paying more than that, both parties have agreed to implement an appraisal step to determine Hulu’s fair value as of September 30th. If Comcast’s share is determined to be higher than the guaranteed minimum price, Disney will have to compensate Comcast for the difference. As for Hulu, its subscriber numbers remained virtually unchanged last quarter, while the price of its ad-free service increased from $14.99 to $17.99 per month in October, and the price of its service with live TV increased from $68.99 to $75.99 per month.
Mozilla Plans to Remove Theora Encoder from Firefox
Mozilla is planning to remove support for the Theora encoding format in Firefox, following Google’s plan to end support for the format in Chrome/Chromium browsers. According to developer Paul Adenot, Theora currently accounts for only 0.09% of Firefox’s media resource load, and most web services have already switched to the superior VP9 and AV1 encoders to replace Theora. It is planned that Firefox Nightly will be the first to discontinue support for the Theora encoder, and after a few Firefox release cycles, it will be removed from beta versions on a case-by-case basis, and eventually removed from the official Firefox release.
Other News
On November 2, Geekbench 6 showed the scores of several new Macs with the M3 series. The M3 chip scored 3,000 single-core points and 11,700 multi-core points, 20 percent faster than the M2 and 37 percent faster than the M1, the M3 Max scored 21,084 multi-core points, 45 percent faster than the M2 Max and 73 percent faster than the M1 Max, and the M2 Ultra scored 21,182 multi-core points.