If you own Apple devices that use iOS, watchOS, tvOS, or macOS, there's good news.  The company just released major updates for all of those.

They're available right now, and here are a few of the highlights:

For iOS 12.1, the big changes are as follows:

Group Face Time, with support for audio and video calls with up to 32 participants simultaneously
End-to-End encryption for your Face Time/Group Face Time conversations
A "Start Group Face Time" option from inside Group Messages
More than 70 new emoji's
Dual SIM support
Improved camera functionality
A variety of performance and battery life enhancements
And more

The big additions for watchOS are:

Automatic contact of emergency services if you are immobile for more than a minute after the device detects a hard fall.

Earlier this year, Google introduced a new and improved Gmail that gave users virtually unlimited customization options. In addition to that, it included some exciting new AI-based features that cut down on repetitive tasks and made email management significantly easier.

Yahoo has the dubious honor of having been on the receiving end of the largest data breach in history. As a consequence, the company has recently agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide free credit monitoring services to its impacted users.

The company actually suffered a pair of breaches in 2013 and in 2014, although this information was not disclosed by the company until 2016.  All of the company's 3 billion users were impacted, and more than 200 million of them saw losses arising from that breach.

IBM has recently announced what is to be the largest open source acquisition in history.  They're buying Red Hat for a staggering $34 billion dollars.  This, as the saying goes, changes everything.

IBM has lagged behind its competitors for years in the area of cloud computing.

Would you leave the front door of your business wide open every night? Of course, you wouldn’t. When nobody’s at the office, you’ve got to protect your assets, usually behind locked doors, a complex security system and often even a network of CCTV cameras.

Google is rolling out some important changes that will make it easier for people who use their services to control their data.

They're starting with their most widely used service, which is search.  In the weeks ahead, it will be easier than ever for users to delete their search history, on both PC and Android devices.

Security in the Android ecosystem is awful.  There's just no other word to describe it.

In large part, the blame for that can be placed at the feet of Google.  Although they have succeeded in creating a wildly successful platform, their management of OEM devices (in particular, security updates for them) have been virtually nonexistent.

As far as hackers are concerned, no target is safe.  Not even the Girl Scouts.

Recently, one of the Girl Scouts' official email accounts was accessed by an "unauthorized third party" and as a result, as many as 2,800 girl scouts in Orange County, California may have had their personal information compromised.

Do you use Tumblr?  If so, be aware that your personal information may have been exposed.

Tumblr recently added a feature called "Recommended Blogs" that presents you with a list of blogs you might enjoy based on your past viewing habits.  It's a great idea in theory, but unfortunately, there were problems with the way the feature was implemented.

McAfee has long been a popular target of scammers, but recently, they've changed the nature of their game.

In years past, they'd display a webpage informing you that any McAfee products on your computer are out of date and provide a link to the company's virtual storefront where you could renew.