In May, Google circulated a draft proposal to effectively kill Adobe Flash by blocking the plugin and prioritizing HTML5 by the end of the year. The company is going ahead with that plan to “de-emphasize” Flash with a staged disabling of the plug-in through multiple versions of Chrome.

Version 52 of Google Chrome is now rolling out to all users via Google’s stable channel with the usual bug fixes and security patches. For Mac, the update notably adds Material Design to the browser’s top bar and other UI elements. Other changes include removing the ability to use the backspace key as a return shortcut.

In addition to releasing the first developer preview of Android N earlier today, Google this evening has rolled out updates to a pair of its iOS apps. Both Google Drive and Chrome for iOS have been updated with a few new features.

The Physical Web is an open source web specification from Google released last year with the aim to make interacting with smart devices in the real world as easy as clicking a link, just as we do on the web. Now with the company having released its Eddystone beacon technology and APIs for making this communication between devices in the same proximity easier, it’s integrating Physical Web directly into Chrome for iOS.

The latest version of Chrome for iOS, version 44 available now in the App Store, brings Physical Web content to the “Today” view. The Today view, for those who don’t know, is a section within the iOS Notification Center panel, accessed by dragging down from the top of the screen, which contains quick glance information that you may want to access often, such as weather information, calendar events, etc. But developers can also make their own widgets for this section which could include this same sort of quick glance information pulled from their own apps, as well as action buttons to perform quick tasks – like checking into a location on Swarm, for example.

What this means for Physical Web is better visibility and increased potential for adoption. While beacons have yet to heavily saturate the world, they face a chicken and egg problem: without a way for end-users to actually receive information from devices they pass by in the physical world, developers and manufacturers don’t have the same kind of incentive to design, manufacturer, and sell, and invest in beacons, and vice-versa. Physical Web, though, takes advantage of Eddystone-URL, a language that Google’s Eddystone beacon technology can send information to end-user devices in. Now that the company has a full end-to-end beacon solution – the beacon software that device manufacturers can use in their beacon hardware, as well as deeper integration into end-user devices – it will be possible for web developers to get more native-like proximity functionality out of their apps.

In addition to support for Physical Web, today’s Chrome for iOS update also adds new swipe gestures for making navigation throughout the app easier. The app is available now in the App Store.

Apple will expand its support capabilities for Beats by Dre hardware products, like headphones and speakers, next week by launching web-based chat support, according to sources. Customers in need of support for their Beats devices will be able to instant message with a support representative via Apple’s support website beginning on Monday, February 23rd. In January, Apple began moving Beats phone-based support wholly in-house after still using the headphone maker’s outsourced support for most of last year. Apple began servicing Beats products in its retail stores late last year.

…Use Safari! (lol,)

Google Chrome 39 had started to crash for me as soon as I updated to 10.10.2 Beta. I tried all of the normal things (trashing Google prefs, using Canary, etc etc). Nothing worked except downgrading back to Mac OS 10.10.1 stable.

It turns out that the new 10.10.2 has depreciated some Trackpad APIs that cause an immediate crash.

The answer comes via Reddit today:

Obviously use at your own risk: an Automator app has also been built to speed up the below process.

Workaround that was found on the Apple dev forums – this is not my code – use at your own risk – I’ve used it and it works fine.

1) Open up text edit and paste this code – save it as “patch.m”

#import <AppKit/AppKit.h>

__attribute((constructor)) void Patch_10_10_2_entry()
{
NSLog(@"10.10.2 patch loaded");
}

@interface NSTouch ()
- (id)_initWithPreviousTouch:(NSTouch *)touch newPhase:(NSTouchPhase)phase position:(CGPoint)position     isResting:(BOOL)isResting force:(double)force;
@end

@implementation NSTouch (Patch_10_10_2)
- (id)_initWithPreviousTouch:(NSTouch *)touch newPhase:(NSTouchPhase)phase position:(CGPoint)position     isResting:(BOOL)isResting
{
return [self _initWithPreviousTouch:touch newPhase:phase position:position isResting:isResting force:0];
}
@end

2) Run this command in Terminal

clang -dynamiclib -framework AppKit ~/Desktop/patch.m -o ~/Desktop/patch.dylib

3) Run this command in Terminal to open Chrome.

env DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=~/Desktop/patch.dylib "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"

Notes: This will leave Terminal open in the background, do not close it or Chrome will quit out. This doesn’t modify anything permanently just fixes it temporarily. To reopen chrome a second time all you have to do is repeat step 3.

After spending about a month and a half in the beta channel, Chrome is rolling out Google Now notifications to all users. To activate the feature, Google says to sign in with the same Google account used on iOS.

Alas, we’re one step closer to an App Store not filled with iOS 6 keyboards. Google released Translate 2.1 today, bringing support for the iOS 7 keyboard released last September to the iPhone and iPad.

The update also expands support for its new handwriting input method to a number of additional languages including Arabic, Esperanto, Gujarati, Hebrew, Javanese, Maltese, Maori, Marathi, Persian, Punjabi, Telugu, and Zulu.

Google first introduced its handwriting input method last September. Google Translate 2.1 is available now on the App Store.

There have been indications for a long time that Google Now was eventually coming to the Chrome browser. Via the Google Operating System Blog, the service has finally surfaced in the most recent release of Chrome Canary (Google’s name for the app’s ‘alpha’ channel builds).

As expected, Google Now in Chrome closely mirrors Google Now on Android. The contextually-relevant cards (which show information such as weather, news or upcoming flights) appear in Chrome’s Notification Center on the desktop. The notification area can be accessed in the menubar, represented by a bell icon.

Google’s Chrome Blog has announced that Chrome for iOS will be getting autofill functionality shortly, enabling automated completion of web forms. If you already use Chrome on a desktop machine, the iOS app will sync data between the two.

For iPhone and iPad users, Chrome for iOS will soon include Autofill to help you quickly fill out forms on-the-go just as you can on desktop and Android. When you sign into Chrome on your iPhone and iPad, you can quickly complete online forms using your synced Autofill info from other devices you’ve signed into.

Google says that it is “starting to roll out” the feature from today, but the version of the app on iTunes hasn’t been updated at the time of writing.

Safari introduced iCloud Keychain, offering synchronised logins and credit card data, with Mavericks and iOS 7.

If you’ve been carrying out any dodgy searches in Incognito Mode in the iOS 7 version of Google Chrome, you may want to wander casually into settings to delete the search history (looking toward the sky and whistling helps): it appears that Incognito Mode currently isn’t. All searches performed in the private browsing mode are available in search history once you return to normal browsing.

The above video is rather swift, and has no commentary, but what it shows is erasing history to start with a clean slate, entering Incognito Mode, visiting a website, returning to normal browsing and then viewing search history at Google – where the supposed private web session shows up.

Note that you do need to visit Google to see the history: it doesn’t show up when simply using the combined URL/search bar.

Google updated the app last month. The company has not yet made any statement on the bug.

Thanks, Robin

We knew that Apple’s attempt to expand Safari’s reach into the Windows population was at an end when the company stopped updating the Windows version a year ago, but the browser has now been erased from history as Apple’s bookmark sync tool drops support for it. iCloud Control Panel 3.0 for Windows, released yesterday, supports only Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.

iCloud keeps mail, contacts, and calendars up to date between your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and Windows PC, and lets you share calendars and task lists.

iCloud also keeps your Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google Chrome bookmarks on Windows in sync with your Safari bookmarks on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac.

On OS X, however, Apple is keep to ensure we don’t use anything else. The iCloud Bookmarks extension for Chrome, allowing bookmark syncing with Safari, works only on the Windows version of Chrome. C’mon, Apple, make us want to use your software by making it better than anyone else’s, not by this kind of move …

Google has been adding Single Sign-On support to lots of its iOS apps in recent months, making it easier to sign into Google apps on their iPhone or iPad. With Single Sign-On, users can sign in once in any Google app supporting the feature and will automatically be signed into all the other apps. The idea is to eliminate having to sign-in multiple times to the same Google account for different apps. The latest app to get the update is Google Play Books, which was updated today to version 1.6.1 with support for Single Sign-On and copying selected text.

Google also recently added Single Sign-On support for its Chrome, YouTube, and AdSense iOS apps.

What’s New in Version 1.6.1

Added support for Google Single Sign-On, so that you only need to sign in once to access all of the Google apps on your device. Added support for copying selected text, if copyright allows. Stability improvements.