The addition of voice and image features in ChatGPT offers users more versatile ways to use the tool in their daily lives. According to OpenAI, a few examples of how users can make use of these new features is they can take pictures of landmarks while traveling for live discussions, snap images of their kitchen to plan meals and even get recipe guidance, and help their children with math problems using photos and shared hints. 

These features will be gradually rolled out to Plus and Enterprise users over the next two weeks, with voice available on iOS and Android (opt-in required in settings) and image support on all platforms.

To begin using the new voice feature in ChatGPT, users can navigate to the mobile app’s Settings section, access New Features, and opt-in for voice conversations. Then, on the home screen, they will discover a headphone icon located in the top-right corner. 

By clicking this icon, users can choose their preferred voice from a selection of five options. This voice functionality relies on a text-to-speech model capable of generating human-like audio from text and a short sample of speech. The voices were developed in collaboration with professional voice actors, and speech recognition is performed using the open-source Whisper system to convert spoken words into text.

Additional details are available here.

The post Voice and image capabilities added to ChatGPT appeared first on SD Times.

Impeller renderer on iOS optimizations have led to reduced latency, eliminating shader compilation issues and resulting in smoother performance. Additionally, some benchmarks show that Impeller now has improved average throughput, surpassing previous benchmarks. The average frame rasterization time in the flutter/gallery transitions performance benchmark has been halved compared to the Skia renderer.

In 3.10, Flutter announced that wide gamut colors were available under a flag when using Impeller. After hearing and addressing feedback from users, wide gamut colors are now the default on iOS when using Impeller.

Progress is being made on developing the Vulkan backend for Impeller, but it hasn’t reached a quality level suitable for an official preview, according to Flutter in a blog post that contains additional details. The goal is to ensure a high-quality initial experience with Impeller on Android, which is not yet achieved. 

Plans are to potentially launch a preview period for Impeller on Android in a stable release later this year. Despite the lack of an Android preview, optimizations benefiting both OpenGL and Vulkan backends have been implemented in Impeller’s Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) over the past year. Notably, average frame rasterization times on Android have improved significantly in the flutter/gallery transitions performance benchmark. Ongoing work is dedicated to further enhancing the Android preview’s quality.

Also, Impeller for macOS is available in preview and users can test Impeller and enable it in their app by following the guidance on the Impeller page.

Flutter added a new API to retrieve various properties of a display. The new getter FlutterView.display returns a Display object. The Display object reports the physical size, the device pixel ratio, and the refresh rate of the display.

Also, when using TextField on iOS, users will automatically see an option to use the device camera to recognize characters and insert them into the field. 

The post Flutter 3.13 released with Impeller improvements and API for foldables appeared first on SD Times.

Mobile applications are a central part of our lives, enabling business operations, accelerating communications around the world, and providing an effortless way to connect and collaborate. It is no surprise that according to Statista, mobile devices now generate nearly 59% of global website traffic. However, managing a mobile test infrastructure as part of a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline can be time-consuming and expensive for organizations striving to achieve mobile application quality.

Waldo addresses these challenges by delivering SaaS-based test automation that simplifies mobile test authoring, management, and execution directly from a browser. As organizations shift left and increase their focus on shipping quality code, Waldo allows them to cost-effectively test every commit through emulation using virtual mobile devices.

“The number and complexity of mobile applications continue to increase with no signs of slowing down,” said Kevin Thompson, Chairman and CEO, Tricentis. “We believe the combination of what Waldo brings from a depth-of-knowledge and technology perspective combined with what Tricentis offers in our breadth-of-test automation expertise will allow us to deliver higher-quality mobile applications at the speed and scale businesses require.”

Along with Tricentis Testim Mobile and Tricentis Tosca Mobile, Waldo adds unmatched value to the Tricentis mobile application testing offerings and AI-based test automation platform. Mobile application development teams gain simplicity and speed authoring tests and power and flexibility through execution on a virtual device cloud.

“We are very excited to join Tricentis,” said Laurent Sigal, Co-Founder and CTO of Waldo. “As a leader in test automation with a comprehensive set of mobile application testing offerings, the company has uniquely positioned itself to support mobile app quality holistically across the software development lifecycle. We see a world of possibilities in how we can leverage our technologies.”

About Tricentis

Tricentis is a global leader in continuous testing and quality engineering. The Tricentis AI-based, continuous testing portfolio of products provide a new and fundamentally different way to perform software testing through an approach that’s totally automated, fully codeless, and intelligently driven by AI. This approach addresses both agile development and complex enterprise apps, enabling organizations to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives by dramatically increasing software release speed, reducing costs, and improving software quality. Widely credited for reinventing software testing for DevOps, cloud, and enterprise applications, Tricentis has been recognized as a leader by all major industry analysts, including Forrester, Gartner, and IDC. Tricentis has more than 2,500 customers, including the largest brands in the world, such as McKesson, Allianz, Telstra, Dolby, and Vodafone. To learn more, visit https://www.tricentis.com.

The post Tricentis Acquires Codeless Mobile Test Automation Platform Waldo appeared first on SD Times.

The support consists of two parts: one is for WebAssembly and Skia (Gtk+WPF), the software library for graphics processing, and the other is for Mobile targets such as iOS, Android, Catalyst and macOS.

Adding the .NET 7 binaries allows the use of new JSImport/JSExport APIs to improve the performance of WebAssembly apps beyond the netstandard2.0 that was used previously. For .NET Mobile, .NET 7 allows Uno.UI to use iOS 16 APIs as well as others. 

Uno Platform 4.6 also introduces a highly requested ability for NuGet packages and in-solution library projects to include content assets deployed as part of the app. The new feature opens up the path to having fonts included as standalone packages and can automatically be enabled when creating a new Cross-Platform library. 

Support for SVG will make it easier to display high-res images on a wide range of display resolutions and densities. 

Other improvements in Uno Platform 4.6 include support for Android 13, the new WebAssembly Bootstrap 7.0, and ASP.NET Core Hosting Project. Also, developers who are using Uno Platform 4.6 can also expect a performance boost of 20-50% in critical paths, according to Uno in a blog post. 

The post Uno Platform 4.6 adds support for .NET 7 appeared first on SD Times.

According to JetBrains, logic elements can often fall out of sync when dealing with mutliple codebases, so being able to share code will help eliminate issues that arise as a result of that. 

Developers can also use a single language, rather than having to use a different language for each platform they are trying to build for. 

“Where other technologies abstract away or completely replace platform specific app development, Kotlin Multiplatform is complementary to existing platform specific technologies and is geared towards replacing platform agnostic business logic. It’s a new tool in the toolbox as opposed to replacing the toolbox”, said David Henry & Mel Yahya at Netflix.

During the alpha program, JetBrains implemented an automatic memory manager to reduce some of the restrictions that were in place regarding object sharing between threads. Another benefit of this is that they can now provide fully leak-free concurrent primitives that don’t require any special management from developers.

In the beta, this memory manager is being updated to provide a more consistent experience between Android and iOS targets. According to JetBrains, this gives developers a better balance between being able to reuse Kotlin code and being able to access features that are specific to a certain platform.

The post JetBrains releases beta of its cross-platform Kotlin development tool appeared first on SD Times.

Updates for iOS 16 focused on the lock screen which can now showcase favorite photos, customize font styles, and display a set of widgets to get information at a glance. It also expands the availability of widgets on the Lock Screen that help users glance at data such as weather, events, date, time zones, and more. 

People can also easily filter out distractions by setting up a Focus that lets users select the apps and people they want to receive notifications from by either allowing them or silencing them.

“iOS 16 is a big release with updates that will change the way you experience iPhone,” said Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering at Apple. “We have reimagined how the Lock Screen looks and works with exciting new features that make it more personal and helpful, introduced iCloud Shared Photo Library for families, streamlined communication through new capabilities in Messages and Mail, and harnessed enhanced intelligence with updates to Live Text and Visual Look Up.”

For security, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS also gained passkeys, a method that is end-to-end encrypted and safe from phishing and data leaks. According to Apple, these factors make passkeys stronger than all two-factor authentication types, and it works on non-Apple devices.

MacOS provides an enhanced search engine and image search that can find images in Photos, Messages, Notes, the Finder, and the web right from Spotlight. One can also use Live Text to search for an image based on text inside it. 

Users can also activate SharePlay through Messages and more easily share notes, presentations, reminders, Safari Tab Groups, and more.

A new Stage Manager automatically organizes apps and windows in a single view on any Mac, to help stay focused while moving between tasks. Users can create different groups of apps for a specific project and arrange, resize, and overlap it in layouts. 

iPadOS received many of the same features as iOS 16 and added new display modes and improved external display support with resolutions up to 6K using Stage Manager. 

Watch OS 9 now allows users to track meds in the new Medications app, get more insights into sleep and health, and access more watch face personalization options.

Two new MacBooks with an M2 chip will be available next month. Additional details on all of the software updates from WWDC 22 are available here.  

The post WWDC 22 introduces better collaboration and focus capabilities along with Passkey security appeared first on SD Times.

The most important thing in getting started with mobile app testing is ensuring quality by defining a profile of the end users to select the required mobile devices for testing, according to Nadya Knysh, the managing director at a1qa, North America in a recent What the Dev? podcast episode. A1qa is a company that provides full-cycle QA and quality engineering and ensures high software quality.

Then there are other factors to consider: geographical location, application types, user interface, battery life, internationalization, and many others. 

“The problem is that a test strategy in each case will be a little specific. For example, when it comes to testing native apps, it’s important to concentrate on either iOS or Android-specific functionality and behavior. In the case of a hybrid app, it’s both platforms that are supported with a specific focus on the two most prevalent aspects here. The first one is UI navigation, like UI graphics, visual quality, and so on. And the second aspect is performance. Specifically, responsiveness, suspend / resume, retire, multitasking, app speed, and so on,” Knysh explained. 

Another important aspect is that in today’s day and age, there’s not much of a chance to correct first impressions once something is already out there, so it’s important to ensure quality the first time around. 

Many times, organizations rely on emulators and simulators for their mobile app testing, but there are some defects that cannot be discovered this way and need to be tested on real devices. 

“One of the best examples is when you have an app and you fill out some kind of questionnaire with a bunch of questions and then you get a call from someone. Will your data be safe for you to continue? Will the data disappear, and you will have to resubmit the answers again?” Knysh said. 

In general, companies are moving to be more mobile-first, whether that’s retail companies that moved from physical stores to primarily ecommerce due to the pandemic or even brand new startups that may not even have a website yet, and just have an idea of their future business. But they understand that they will have to be mobile right away, because that’s what users are expecting, according to Knysh.

The post What to consider when getting started with mobile app testing appeared first on SD Times.

The wear library allows users to lay out elements in an arch and write curved text in order to support the curvature of round watches. In addition, wear-input identifies and interacts with hardware buttons on Wear OS devices. Wear-ongoing features Surface Ongoing Notifications in new Wear specific surfaces. Wear-phone-interactions detect whether the watch is paired with an iOS or Android device and handle all Notification bridging options. Finally, wear-remote-interactions allows users to open Android intents on other devices.

Domo introduces Sandbox

Today, Domo announced the release of Sandbox, a new development and testing environment built into the Domo platform. This release will serve to help users easily create and promote content into production across the enterprise.

According to Domo, Sandbox will assist professionals by providing a safe and governed space to collaborate before releasing new BI-related content into production, creating a smoother roll out. 

Sandbox builds upon the governance capabilities of Domo’s modern BI platform such as personalized data permission (PDP), certifications, and dynamic groups.  

Learn more about Domo Sandbox here.

Sentry announces new capabilities 

Sentry announced new capabilities that significantly reduce management overhead and accelerate issue response times for enterprise development teams.

These include percent-based alerts, Code Owners for GitHub and GitLab, team and personal notifications in Slack, and automated Sentry access with SCIM support for Okta.

Percent-based alerts reduce noise by adjusting changes to app usage so that teams can quickly identify the right problem at the right time. Also, managers and product owners can save time assigning issues by integrating directly with the CODEOWNERS file in GitHub or GitLab. 

Uno 3.10 

Uno Platform 3.10 includes Day-0 support for .NET 6 REC1, WinUI Infobadge, and Windows 11 Fluent Styles. 

The load times for Uno Projects significantly improved, upward of 20% faster. 

Uno Platform enables the creation of pixel-perfect, single-source C# and XAML apps which run natively on Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, Linux and Web via WebAssembly. Uno Platform is free and Open Source (Apache 2.0) and available on GitHub.

Additional details about the new version are available here. 

The post SD Times news digest: Stable Jetpack Wear OS libraries, Domo Sandbox, and new Sentry capabilities appeared first on SD Times.

Developers can maintain pixel-perfect control over where pixels go while having a choice of developing a platform-specific or custom look and feel of your application. For example, a button will use the original UWP/WinUI style to draw the same look-and-feel button on desktop, mobile and on a web platform.

Uno Platform uses XAML styling to easily target native controls if desired, on each individual control on screen.

The newest release of the platform is version 3.9, which brings support for .NET 6 (for iOS, Android, mac Catalyst and macOS), support for Visual Studio 2022 templates, WinAppSDK 0.8.1, Focus management updates, and a XAML Trimming feature to reduce the size of WebAssembly apps.

The move to .NET 6 means that the simpler SDK-style projects are used for most targets except for UWP. This allowed the developers behind the project to merge all mobile targets into one project. 

Additional details on Uno Platform are available here.

The post SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Uno Platform appeared first on SD Times.

The dtSearch Engine for macOS release candidate adds support for Apple Silicon M1/ARM; the dtSearch Engine developer SDKs for macOS, Linux, and Windows share cross-platform.

The beta also adds Hancom Office HWPX support to the many data types covered by dtSearch’s proprietary document filters.

Postman raises $225 million in Series D funding 

Postman closed a $225 million series D round, bringing its total valuation to $5.6 billion. 

The company said it will use the funding to further its growth and to invest in its community of developers across the globe, support students through innovative API literacy programs, and contribute toward open-source projects to foster a strong and thriving API ecosystem. 

Postman is an API platform that is used by more than 17 million developers and 500,000 organizations worldwide for building and using APIs. 

Apple SharePlay developer updates

SharePlay has been disabled for use in the developer beta 6 versions of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and tvOS 15, and will be disabled in the upcoming beta 6 release of macOS Monterey.

SharePlay will be enabled for use again in future developer beta releases and will launch to the public in software updates later this fall, according to Apple. 

“We appreciate how many teams have been hard at work building SharePlay experiences and to ensure there is no interruption in your development, we have provided a SharePlay Development Profile which will enable successful creation and reception of GroupSessions via the Group Activities API,” Apple stated in a post. 

AlmaLinux now available on Azure Marketplace

The AlmaLinux OS is now available on the Azure marketplace. Images are available for both Gen1 and Gen2 and are deployable from the Azure Cloud, Azure command-line utility as well as from the marketplace link. 

Aside from images, AlmaLinux announced a worldwide mirror network with Azure regions in order to make the user experience when installing updates or new software better. 

The post SD Times news digest: dtSearch announces version 2021.02 beta, Postman raises $225 million in Series D funding, Apple SharePlay developer updates appeared first on SD Times.