Basecamp's controversy

Earlier this week, the Basecamp CEO posted a blog post announcing big changes inside the company. The new philosophy prohibited, among other things,  the “ No more societal and political discussions” on internal forums.  

After public backlash, CEO offered generous severance packages to any employee who disagreed with the changes.

On Friday,  about a third of 58 Basecamp employees took his offer and accepted buyouts. Later that day, 18 people had confirmed they left the company.  

While the CEOs argued that they were trying to get employees focused on work, the way it was done raises many questions. The most popular theory right now is that CEOs just wanted to easily get rid of employees that might disagree with their specific vision. Well, probably we will never know the truth. But what we know is that this will be difficult time for Basecamp.

Apple accused of antitrust violations

The European Commission issued antitrust charges against Apple over concerns about the company’s App Store practices. The Commission found that Apple has broken EU competition rules with its App Store policies. The Commission sent Apple a list of violated competition rules. Now, Apple has 12 weeks to respond.  

This specific case is only about Apple’s practices for music streaming. If Apple is found guilty, they will have to pay $27 billion fine for this case alone.

The EU is also investigating  other cases of  competition rules violation within App Store, so the total fine might be much bigger.

SpaceX's Crew-1 is back

The SpaceX and NASA finally completed the their first operational crew mission. It all started in November last year, with launch of 4 astronauts into the International Space Station. The crew spent 166 days onboard the station. On the 167th day, the capsule brought astronauts back to the Earth, splashing down in Gulf of Mexico. What's interesting, this was the first night splashdown for NASA since Apollo 8 in 1968.

So far, the Crew Program is a huge success for SpaceX. Both Demo and Crew-1 missions finished without any issues, and the third mission - Crew-2 - has successfully docked to the ISS.

Apple Spring Event

Apple held an online Spring Event and announced a couple of new products.

Purple iPhone 12

Apple added a new purple color option to the iPhone 12 lineup. There is nothing special about the phones themselves, they are just purple.

Apple TV 4K

The Apple TV 4k has been refreshed with the A12 Bionic chip. It should be more than enough to play 4K movies or play simple games. The new chip is a nice upgrade, but the biggest change was a new Siri remote. Apple has ditched the previous design with the trackpad. Now, we have good old  click wheel and the power button for a TV. It is good to see that Apple is abandoning bad designs and go back to things that people loved.

AirTags

Afters years of rumors, Apple finally  showed the AirTags. The AirTag is a tracking tile. You put it on something and you can locate it using the Find My app. It is not a GPS tracker, and it cannot be used for live tracking people or objects, but it allows to locate a lost items.

The AirTag uses BLE to communicate with surrounding iPhones to sent tag's approximated location to the tag's owner. If someone finds an AirTag, they can contact the owner using Find My app or by using the NFC. AirTags will also alert other people if the tag seems to follow them.

I almost forgot, but AirTag has a replaceable battery, that should last for a year.

The biggest surprise is a price. Everyone expected it to be around $50, but Apple is selling them for $29 for 1-pack or $99 for a 4-pack.

iMacs

The iMac lineup has been finally refreshed. It not only got the new M1 chip, but also has been redesigned. Now, iMac is much thiner and comes in different colors. I have mixed feelings about the front of the computer, but Apple thinks this is what people want. Another big change affected the ports. iMac has only 2 or 4 (depending on the configuration) USB-C ports. The ethernet port has been moved to the power brick. Speaking of the power brick, it connects to the iMac with braided MagSafe cable. Yup, you read it right the MagSafe is back! Or rather it has been introduced to the desktop computers.

There is no iMac Pro, but it probably will be introduced together with MacBook Pro later this year.

iPad Pro

The new iPad Pro is a beast: Apple put the fricking M1 chip from Macs inside the tablet. But that's not all. The 12.9-inch version has a mini-LED display. All versions up to 2TB of storage, have the Thunderbolt connector. The cellular model supports 5G. Of course the cameras have been updated. And usually I don't really care about cameras, but the new iPad has a feature called Center Stage that can automatically follow a person or adjust itself to present all talking people during a video call.

The pricing starts from $799 for 11-inch model, and $1099 for 12.9-inch model.

SpaceX Crew-2 mission

Space X has launched second operational Crew Dragon with 4 astronauts on board. This was the 3rd SpaceX crew mission that transported people to the International Space Station. This also is the first crew mission with parts used in previous missions. The Dragon capsule was used in Crew Demo mission, and rocket booster was used in Crew-1 mission.

The astronauts will stay on ISS for about a month a go back to Earth. The next mission is the Inspiration4 and is planned for September. And this will be the first mission with all-civilian crew.

Image credits: Apple

Apple Event

Apple sent invitations to an online Spring Event. This event supposed to be in March, but better late than never. Here is what we expect to see:

• new iPads Pro,
• new iMacs ,
• new AirPods,
• AirTags,

Whether any of those expectations will be fulfilled we will find out on April 20th.

LG to manufacture Apple Car?

Last week LG announced departure from making mobile phones, to focus on other areas like manufacturing parts to vehicles. This week we have rumors that LG together with Magna is very close to win Apple's Electric Car contract. What's interesting, the contract is about small volume of  vehicles for testing purposes. Which means we might see couple of Apple Cars before we see the final product.

Image credits: Apple

WWDC 2021

Apple announced WWDC 2021. The conference will take place June 7 to 11. Like last year, this will be an online event. What's interesting each animated avatar promoting a conference has glasses. This prompt a lot of speculations about Apple Glasses or AR/VR Headset announcement during the conference. I personally doubt it, and I believe the avatars have glasses just to show a conference date, but who knows, maybe Apple is teasing us.

Crew Dragon with a nice view

It's not a secret that SpaceX is counting on a space tourism. Relaying on government contracts is a one thing, but space tourism is also a very lucrative business. Especially when you can limit the cost of such expedition. SpaceX has not only made rocket launches affordable, but now they are offering an unforgettable experience, for future space tourists by adding a glass dome on Crew Dragon for 360 views of space.

Hey Google car

Fiat and Google collaborated and made a special version of a Fiat 500.  The car has not only Google's branding but also deep integration with Google Assistant. It will allow users to monitor and control the car through the phone or Google Nest Hub.

Users will be able to check  fuel level, lock status, switch on emergency lights, or find the closest Fiat service station. System can also alert the owner if the car exceeds a certain speed or leaves a certain geographic area.

Image credits: Apple

macOS turns 20

20 years ago Apple introduced the Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah. It was, in someways, a limited operating system. But back then, it was just a foundation for things that came later. Apple based MacOS X  on UNIX, which later became a foundation for iOS and the rest is the history. With Cheetah Apple also introduced the classic Aqua interface. Aqua evolved throughout a years, especially in Mac OS 10.5 and recently in Big Sur, but the core functionality remained the same.  And that shows you how good the Cheetah was back then. Last year Apple introduced macOS 11, which will bring us to the new era of the macOS family.

Microsoft buys Discord?

The are rumors that Microsoft plans to buy an online communicator Discord. The accusation is supposedly valued more than $10 billion. This is interesting move from Microsoft because they already have Skype and Teams.  Since last year, Microsoft heavily invested in the latter, where the Skype felt behind. The question is whether Microsoft is going to invest into Discord or will it slowly die because of lack of any development?

Visual overhaul of Windows

Microsoft started refreshing the UI of the Windows. They started with the icons.

This is a first part of the Sun Valley project, that is going to rejuvenate Windows.

Spotify refreshed

Spotify released a new versions of the app for Desktop and the Web. The update brings a new UI that is more consistent and fell more native. Apple should take notes, because their Music app is really bad.

Image credits: Wikipedia