Where’s that from? I don’t see anything on the web site, nor in my emails.
I believe now that it was just an update of their web page, that lasted an hour or two. I was carried away by the message, “Something Exciting…” Sorry for the confusion I may have created.
Now I’m curious too! Hopefully it’s not just a small UI tweak and actually something workflow-related. Better masking tools or faster processing would honestly make a huge difference for a lot of people.
For now, it’s a nothing-burger. The page was probably erroneously displayed while making an update to the web server. On the other hand, if you look at the PhotoLab content at dxo.com, the “new” version number is still 9.6. So I’d love to see a surprise free update to PhotoLab 9 show up. 
It may be the announcment of a whole raft of new camera/lens modules just released.
This is the case, new version for windows’ users v9.8.1 
What would really, really be exciting is…
They manage to get rid of all the bugs!!
Maybe loading the images at startup got faster in PL9.8.1/Win (?).
Noticed it on a directory with 1,300 raws, opened few times during last 3 days. After 9.8.1 update populating the filmstrip got visibly faster but I didn’t actually measure it.
I used to think devs were just lazy saying “Bug fixes and Updates”
But I discovered it’s a learned behavior, at least on the app stores. In practice the more you share in that what’s new. The more likely you are to trigger a newbie or aggressive reviewers to go spelunking. if they fund a legit bug. Awesome. But in my experience it some obscure policy thing buried two dots down in section 4.2.1.1 or wherever.
That does make a sort of sense, I hate to admit it. I’m sure there are times when giving (us users) too much info about what has been changed has kicked off huge debates about whether it was the right thing to do, or whether it was fixed “correctly”.
On the other hand… a cynic might wonder that it’s not a neat bit of vague filler to imply improvements, whether they exist or not. A kind of placebo…
Well…. for the longest time with Apple and Google you couldn’t update your store pages unless you push a new build. Google split that out a year or more ago. But it’s still the case with Apple.
So yeah, sometimes “bug fixes and updates” really does mean we needed to update the screenshots, text or keywords. 