Microsoft Refreshes Three Windows 11 Apps for Insiders

Microsoft says that Windows Insiders in the Dev channel will see major updates to the Camera, Media Player, and Movies & TV apps today.

Each is, in its own way, momentous. For an app update.

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The Camera app is being updated with the Windows 11 visual style, belatedly, and Microsoft is adding QR code and barcode scanning features too.

The Media Player app is getting CD ripping capabilities. Supported formats in this release include AAC, WMA, FLAC, and ALAC but not MP3, no doubt because of licensing costs. Perhaps that will change in the future.

Finally, the Movies & TV app is now available as a native Arm64 app on Windows 11 on ARM PCs and should deliver better performance. As should be expected, Microsoft is also beginning the migration of local video playback away from Movies & TV and to the Media Player app.

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Conversation 9 comments

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    13 July, 2022 - 5:39 pm

    <p>I thought the MP3 patents expired.</p>

    • Jack

      Premium Member
      13 July, 2022 - 6:38 pm

      <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Microsoft is one of many licensors for AAC patents and I’ll guess that MP3 isn’t being updated for new devices because AAC is it’s direct successor </span></p>

  • Sykeward

    13 July, 2022 - 5:51 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Fraunhofer IIS terminated all MP3 licensing fees back in 2017 so who knows what the reasoning is there. It just baffles me that, in the year 2022, Microsoft is adding (incomplete!) CD ripping to Media Player on Windows 11, a version that requires PCs new enough that they’re unlikely to even have optical drives at all. </span></p><p><br></p><p>As a side note, I’d think that having ARM versions of all built-in apps would be the bare minimum for an ARM version of Windows, yet it seems that’s not the state of things, either. Does anyone working on Windows even care anymore? </p>

    • CasualAdventurer

      14 July, 2022 - 9:29 am

      <p>Some of us still prefer to buy CD’s and rip them to our media libraries. I like having a "hard copy" of my purchase, it seems more permanent to me. So I have an external optical drive that I can connect to any of my PC’s. I’m really happy that Microsoft added this capability to Media Player as the old Windows Media Player can sometimes not perform as expected.</p>

  • kshsystems

    Premium Member
    13 July, 2022 - 6:00 pm

    <p>Windows on ARM should have never been released with out native ARM64 support and all in box apps running natively under ARM64 on day one.</p><p> </p><p>The fact that this did not happen, tells me Microsoft really did NOT expect Windows on ARM to succeed.</p>

    • taswinfan

      13 July, 2022 - 10:23 pm

      <p>Oh wise one… Pray tell, what does the fact that they are adding support for the platform NOW… indicate to you. That it is exceeding their expectations?</p>

    • Maverick010

      13 July, 2022 - 10:55 pm

      <p>There have been a few OS designs including MAC OS that have launched on ARM64/PowerPC/etc that have not had native apps fully ready at launch. Some of it is due to building the apps up. I would say for Microsoft, it is 2 things. 1 being the rebuilding of the app, and the 2nd being X86 is their bigger focus first, as majority of devices are powered by Windows and X86 is the prime devices, with ARM64 being more of a new focus, albeit a little slower. I see nothing wrong and in this case it is better late than never.</p>

  • spiderman2

    14 July, 2022 - 3:32 am

    <p>Hopefully they’re not slow and heavy web based</p>

  • blue77star

    14 July, 2022 - 12:06 pm

    <p>Media app is so horrible…it crashes every time you do couple fast skip over 4k 40GB video file for example.</p>

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