Microsoft's losing share in the browser market, and fast.

Microsoft’s browsers took a beating of historical proportions last month, losing user share at a rate that could put it in second place, behind Google, as early as May, new data signaled today.

The several editions of Internet Explorer (IE) and two versions of Edge lost a combined 2.1 percentage points of user share in February, the largest one-month decline for Microsoft in the 11 years of recorded statistics that Computerworld has compiled from metrics vendor Net Applications.

IE and Edge—Net Applications dumps the latter’s user share into the bucket labeled “IE”—accounted for 44.8% of all browsers used to reach the Web last month. A year earlier, that number was 57.4%.

Net Applications

Microsoft and Google could swap spots as the No. 1 and No. 2 browser makers as early as May if the trend over the last three months continues. A forecast which relies on the 12-month trend puts the switch in July.

Microsoft’s browsers dipped under the major milestone of 50% only in December, but if the user share drain stays on the pace set in the last three months, it will slip under the 40% bar sometime in May.

When changes in IE’s user share over the last 12 months were used to model its fall, the under-40% mark occurred in July.

In either forecast, IE’s plunge was mirrored by the rise of Google’s Chrome, which is poised to replace Microsoft’s browsers as the world’s most-used in the same months that IE is projected to drop below the 40% mark.

Chrome ended February with a user share of 36.6%, up 1.5 percentage points from January and 11.9 points higher than 12 months earlier. Mozilla’s Firefox gained three-tenths of a percentage point to climb back to 11.7%, about the same as a year ago, and Apple’s Safari grew by two-tenths of a point to 4.9%.

Other sources of browser data echoed Net Applications’ numbers.

The Digital Analytics Program (DAP)—which collates visits to more than 4,000 websites on over 400 different domains maintained by U.S. government agencies—also illustrated a decline by IE + Edge in February, and an increase by Chrome. DAP tagged IE + Edge as accounting for 22.6% of all traffic last month, down from January’s 23.4%. Meanwhile, Chrome’s numbers climbed from 41.9% in January to 44.1% last month.

Most of DAP’s visits originate in the U.S., and it has long portrayed Chrome as the leading browser.

Computerworld has traced IE’s defections to Microsoft’s August 2014 announcement that users of older versions had to upgrade, in most cases, to IE11, by Jan. 12, 2016. Since the announcement, IE has lost 13.7 percentage points of user share, representing a 23% decline.

By forcing customers to upgrade to a newer version of IE—or alternately, turn to Windows 10 and its default Edge—Microsoft forced users to change browsers. That had a disastrous impact on IE’s user share as people used the mandate to rethink their browser choice, and abandoned Microsoft’s browsers for rivals’, notably Chrome. Last month’s precipitous decline in IE’s user share and the significant increase in Chrome’s, reflecting the first full month’s data after the deadline, supported that theory.

But Chrome’s rise can’t be credited only to Microsoft’s decision to drop support of older versions of IE. A net loss last month of 2.3 percentage points by IE11 shows that even those on a supported Microsoft browser have dumped it, largely for Chrome, according to Net Applications’ numbers.

The upgrade-or-else deadline of Jan. 12 now is seven weeks in the past, but by Net Applications’ numbers, more than a third of IE users remain on outdated versions that no longer receive security updates. The 18.2% of IE users running IE8, for example, are on a browser that Microsoft no longer patches; the same goes for more than three-fourths of the 11.8% stuck on IE9 and for virtually all of the 6.7% who ran IE10 last month.

Among IE’s overall gloom, the bright spot was on Edge, the default browser for Windows 10: By Net Applications’ count, Edge gained about nine-tenths of a percentage point of user share in February, the most since 10’s debut last summer. Edge accounted for 3.9% of all browsers used last month, or approximately 8.8% of those created by Microsoft.

Blu-ray cracking software makers are giving up

It’s been a rough week for Blu-ray cracking software makers and their users.

On Wednesday, Slysoft, makers of AnyDVD and AnyDVD HD ripping programs, replaced their entire website with a single message: “Due to recent regulatory requirements we have had to cease all activities relating to SlySoft Inc. We wish to thank our loyal customers/clients for their patronage over the years.”

Although Slysoft hasn’t given much more of an explanation, an employee in the company’s forums suggested that Slysoft CEO Giancarlo Bettini has been “under massive pressure” from copyright groups and governments for nearly a decade. MyCE also notes that the company, based in Antigua, was fined $11,000 for copyright violations in 2014. The legal precedent may have prevented Slysoft from working with service providers.

The good news for current AnyDVD owners is that the software they paid for will continue to work, at least for DVDs. Certain Blu-ray discs will work with the software as well, but results will vary for others that require access to an “Online Protection Database.” This database could theoretically get shut down at any time, preventing further ripping.

AnyDVD isn’t the only software apparently affected by a copyright crackdown. On Thursday, DVDFab makers Fengtao Software announced that it will never attempt to decrypt or circumvent AACS 2.0, a new copy protection measure that’s included in the latest 4K Blu-ray discs. Ars Technica points out that AACS 2.0 was already tricky to crack permanently, as it includes an extra protection layer whose encryption keys can be updated at any time, but DVDFab won’t even try.

Why this matters: Although users of ripping programs have long maintained that they're allowed to make a personal copy of the media they paid for, that doesn't stop the movie industry from going after purveyors of these programs. While we've seen some high-profile clashes before, makers of ripping programs have always found a way to survive. With the closure of Slysoft, and the new copy protection that DVDFab won't attempt to defeat, it seems the movie industry has won a big victory, at least for future optical media.

Get An iPad Like App Launcher On Windows

Microsoft experimented with a full screen app launcher back in Windows 8 that it called the Start Screen. The launcher didn’t fare well with users and Microsoft eventually had to get rid of it. If the idea of a full screen app launcher appealed to you, PaperPlane is a free app launcher for Windows that mimics the launcher on the iPad. The great thing about the app is how easy it is to launch it. It doesn’t interfere with any normal desktop functions and you can add files, folders, apps, and web links to it.

Install PaperPlane and double right-click on the desktop to open it or hit F12. It will automatically add a few apps to the launcher and you can click on any one of them to launch the app. The search bar at the top will let you search the apps added to PaperPlane.

To add more apps to PaperPlan, right-click inside the launcher and add a URL, a System app, a file, folder, or any other app.

The app offers lots of customization options including a different way to add files, folders, or apps to the launcher i.e. via drag & drop. You can enable this mode from the General tab in the app’s settings. You will need to switch to the desk mode in order to add files and apps via drag & drop. You can also customize the animation style.

To customize the size of the app icons, how they are arranged, and how many icons should appear in a row and column, go to the Layout tab. If the default launch shortcut for PaperPlane is interfering with another app, you can set a custom shortcut from the Activation tab. To customize the background of the launcher, go to the Appearance tab and select any background picture from your hard drive. You can also change the blur radius that the app adds.

Last but not least, you can add PaperPlane to the right-click context menu on your desktop, or you can add it to the Send to menu in the right-click context menu.

Download PaperPlane For Windows

Stream Videos For Songs In Your iTunes Library To Chromecast

A while back I shared an app called Jukebox that allowed you to listen to music stored in your Dropbox account. The app connected with your account, scanned it for music, and allowed you to play it from its music player. With Jukebox, you can create playlists, and play songs on loop or repeat. If you’re looking for a way to cast your music to a Chromecast, then Music TV is the answer. It’s a free iOS app that will let you select songs from your iTunes library and play them over the Chromecast. It searches YouTube for a video to go with it and casts it when the song is played.

Install Music TV and tap the music button at the top right. The next screen is a mess in terms of UI but on it you have to tap the ‘Add New Music Videos’ option. Music TV lets you add music from two sources; your iTunes library and YouTube. If you’re looking to add music from YouTube, it’s better to just use the YouTube app which has full support for Chromecast. Tap the ‘Music Library’ option to select songs from your library.

You will need to select songs one by one since there isn’t a select all option. Tap the plus button next to a song to add it and Click Done to return to the music player screen. The app will immediately start searching for a video to go with the track. Unfortunately, it can’t be paused and if you want to play the next song in queue, you will have to tap the ‘Cancel’ button on your screen. Once you’ve got the song and video you want to play on your screen, tap the cast button at the top left, select a device, and it will start casting.

Music TV is a good app in terms of what it does but the UI is a mess. Skipping songs is difficult. They can’t be ‘stopped’ and have to be cancelled to go to the next one. If you switch to full screen mode, the ads in the app make it almost impossible to return to the normal viewing mode. It’s a lot of give and take with this app so be prepared for a little clumsy fumbling.

Install Music TV From The App Store

We’re closer than you think to having smartphones with 7-day batteries

Every year smartphone owners beg companies to build phones with better batteries and every year these companies only give us lighter and thinner devices that still deliver mediocre battery life. Will this ever chance? If a fuel-cell developer called Intelligent Energy has any say, we could have smartphones whose batteries last up to a week within the next two years.

For a while now, Intelligent Energy has been working on a new type of smartphone battery that runs on hydrogen and can purportedly last a week per charge. The battery converts hydrogen to electricity and creates water vapor as a byproduct, which is why prototype phones that have been built with the battery have tiny vents on the back to let the vapor escape.

Intelligent Energy CEO Henri Winand tells Bloomberg that if all goes according to plan, a smartphone that uses the technology could hit the market by 2018.

“The killer app is a battery with a seven-day refresh life and we think that will appeal to everyone,” he explains. “It’s not just for intrepid explorers.”

This past summer, Intelligent Energy revealed that it had modified an iPhone 6 to be compatible with its new battery technology, which has fueled rumors that it’s working with Apple to deliver the world’s first flagship smartphone with a seven-day battery. If that’s truly the case then we can expect the 2018 iPhone 8 to be a gigantic seller, although we’re getting way, way ahead of ourselves with that kind of speculation…

5 secret features hiding inside your iPhone

Custom Vibration Alerts: I personally rely on this one so much that I’m not sure how I could live without it. Open the Settings app and go to Sounds > Ringtone/Text Tone/Etc > Vibration. At the bottom of the list, choose Create New Vibration. This will let you tap out a new vibrate pattern that you can then use for all calls or texts, or just for a specific person in your contact list.

Text Shortcuts: Do you type the word Triskaidekaphobia all the time while you’re texting? Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement and tap the plus symbol. Then input Triskaidekaphobia in the Phrase field and something like tdp in the Shortcut field. Now, every time you type “tdp” your iPhone will auto-correct it to “Triskaidekaphobia.”

Head Control: Apple’s iOS platform has the most robust set of accessibility features available. While they’re aimed at users with special needs, many of them are also handy for others. Try this: got to Settings > General > Accessibility > Switch Control. Turn it on, tap Switches, and then add Camera as a new Switch. Once you do that, you’ll be able to configure specific actions that will take place when you move your head to the right or the left while looking at the iPhone’s display.

Hide Unwanted Apple Apps: This is a feature that tons of users wish for. Little do they know… it’s already there. Go to Settings > General > Restrictions and enable them by entering your PIN or passcode. Then slide toggles to off next to any Apple apps that you want to hide from your home screens. Never want to look at that awful News icon again? Done.

Blinking Message Alerts: This is another example of a feature that many people request despite the fact that it’s already there. Open Settings and go to General > Accessibility, then slide the toggle next to LED Flash for Alerts to on. Now your camera flash will blink whenever new messages arrive.