This is not a good beginning of the year for Apple, another week and another controversy. This time Apple had a big fail, people discovered that you could hear the person you were calling before they even pick up. The bug was easy to reproduce, all you have to do is call someone and add yourself to the call again. This bug has been discovered and reported by teenager and his mother, but it took Apple a week to acknowledge the problem. Looking at how slowly Apple is responding to bug reports, they found out about the exploit because all media started reporting it. Only then Apple has taken Group Face Time service down. The fix should be released next week.
There are two things that bother me in this whole situation. Why this nasty bug has not been detected by Apple's QAs in the first place? The second one, why it took Apple a week to react?

Sometimes Apple can do a good things. First they revoked Facebook's enterprise developer certificates for distributing "internal" applications outside the company. Then they did the same thing to Google. In both cases companies violated Apple's Enterprise Program privacy policy. In case of the Facebook the situation is even more interesting. It turned out that Facebook paid $20 for installing the VPN app to monitor iOS users activities.

That's all for this week, if you want more, here is the list of interesting things.

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Image credits: Apple.

This week we also start with Apple news, rumors to be precise. We all anticipating the March event, but the question is what Apple would present. The iOS 12.2 beta unveiled a little bit of the secret. It looks like new (smaller) iPads are coming as well as new iPod touch. iPads are not a surprise but the iPod Touch is, I thought Apple has already killed iPod line.
So far we don't have any rumors regarding iPhone SE replacement, AirPower or new AirPods, except that the latter should be released in the first half of 2019.

Speaking of Apple rumors, new reports suggest that iOS 13 will get a major redesign. The last time iOS got one of those was iOS 7 and since then Apple was perfecting its clean design. I personally doubt that we will see any drastic changes in terms of graphic design, but we might get new ways to interact with the operating system. As Apple plans to combine iOS and macOS apps into one with project Marcepan we definitely will see some changes.

iFixit unveiled a new flow in MacBooks and called it Flexgate. Apparently the ribbon that connects the display with the motherboard is being pulled out when display is open, causing cables to tear over time. This issue is known to all generations of the MacBook Pros with Touch Bar. This is the design flow which Apple hasn't acknowledged yet. Which is not surprising, to fix this problem the entire display must be replaced and such repair cost about $600. Well, if this is a common problem, another law suite is waiting for Apple as well as another repair action.

That's all for this week, if you want more, here is the list of interesting things.

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Image credits: iFixit.

At the beginning of the year Apple informed investors to prepare for lower revenue. Mostly caused by lower than expected iPhone demand, especially on the Chinese market. More than the week later Apple reacted by reducing the price of the iPhone XR by $100. Furthermore, Apple brought the iPhone SE back to the store in US, also with lower price tag. Looks like Apple is trying to fix the sells issue. I really like to see lower prices of the newest phones, but I cannot understand why Apple brought back almost 3 year old phone. Hopefully Apple will learn the lesson from this iPhone flop and new models will be more affordable or will have features that will justify the price.

Apple struggles not only with iPhones, but with Macs as well. Apple sold less Mac than a year ago, but we can see that entire PC market is falling. Computers are expensive, especially Macs, and people are more keen to replace the computer with their phone or tablet. And again I believe that lower prices would help to revive this market.

Speaking of Apple, they also have some good news. DuckDuckGo started using Apple’s MapKit.js framework to display search results on the map. This is really interesting move, because DuckDuckGo’s first priority is privacy and they trusted Apple with all the search queries. Well, in the future we will see how both companies respect our privacy.

Now moving on, there was a lot of going on around Star Wars. Lets start with another cancellation of the Star Wars game. First we heard rumors that EA has canceled the Open-World game that supposed to be Uncharted in the space. Then EA ha released a statement, which basically confirms the cancellation. Well it looks like some manager at EA realized that the cannot put micro-transactions into story driver, single player game 😛.
During 6 years of having rights to Star Wars franchise, EA has released only 2 games, which has not been well received because of all the controversies around them. If I were a Disney I would be furious, because all the EA does just damages the franchise. Hopefully Disney/Lucasfilm realizes that before it will be to late.
And Lucasfilm knows how to intervene. They helped the fan film creator with a dispute between him and Disney/Warner/Chappel. The outrage among Star Wars fans have definitely been notices, so someone at Lucasfilm did the right thing and saved the film. This entire situation is really worrying. Disney, which earns billions of dollars each year, goes after a fan who is just promoting a franchise. And what's even more ironic, Lucasfilm each year is promoting and awarding the fan films.

Thats all for this week. Here is the list of interesting things.

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It's a tradition that during second week of January, most of business related to the consumer technologies gather in Las Vegas for the CES. Here is the list of more interesting news.

1. Lets start with surprising announcement from Samsung and Sony that their new Smart TVs will support AirPlay. To clarify the confusion Apple announced that leading TV manufacturers will be integrating AirPlay 2 into their TVs.
2. Chinese EV startup - Byton - has shown their 49-inch screen. It doesn't sound special, except this screen is inside the car. I must admit, it looks gorgeous; however, I'm wondering how useful it is as well as how much it distracts a driver.
3. Speaking of screens, LG has presented first rollable OLED TV. You may ask why one would need to roll their TV screen. Beside the ability to hide the screen when requested, I don't have any other answer. This is not important when we look at this from technology point of view. If we can roll an OLED screen, that means we are really close from getting foldable OLED phones and tables.
4. HTC announced Vive Pro Eye. This is virtual reality headset with eye tracking built-in. Eye tracking allows developers to increase the quality of the games/applications. This can be achieved by using high quality assets for objects that are in front of player's eyes and lower quality assets for elements that are outside eye's focus area. Beside the visual aspect, eye tracking will add some new capabilities to the headset e.g. hands-free interactions. The price is still unknown, but the headset should be available in the second quarter of 2019.
5. Google assistance is getting momentum. It will be integrated with many new products including TVs, phones, speakers and even shower. I wish Siri had those capabilities.
6. Yubico presented the first Lightning security key for iPhones. Securing keys are now a standard for computers, but I have never heard of such solution for a phone. So now, if one needs to protect their phone even more, they have a solution that is even approved by Apple.
7. AMD announced the Radeon VII. This is first 7nm GPU and promises significant performance improvements over current AMD's flagship card - Radeon RX Vega 64. Also, with this card, AMD wants to compete with Nvidia's RTX 2080.
8. A lot of cars have been announced, including flying car, walking car as well as smart vehicles. I like to see cool technologies, but I hope that CES don't become an auto show.

Now, let's move on to other news. There was a lot of rumors regarding Apple. First we got a first "alleged" mocks of the new iPhone. We cannot see the from of the phone, but it's remored that Apple wants to move all the sensors behind OLED screen and remove the notch. I really like this idea, I got used to the notch, but still it is hideous. If those rumors are true, new iPhone might looks like Samsung Galaxy S10.
As we are on the topic of leaked photos, new iPad mini has emerged basically from grave. I thought the mini series is dead, but it looks like Apple still is considering small form factor. The future will tell who was right.

Also this week, we got a first real result of buying GitHub by Microsoft. Users can create unlimited private repositories for free. This is the feature I have been waiting for a long time. I know I can create private repositories for free on Bitbucket or GitLab, but anyone is on GitHub and if I want to start something privately and later on share this with others now, I can do this without switching between different repositories.

This week there is no list of interesting things. I suggest to browse the YouTube or your tech site of choice and check what else has been announced during CES.

This week Tim Cook sent a letter to Apple investors regarding new strategies after much lower than expected earnings in FYQ1 2019.
Apple was expecting lower ravenue, but it looks like actual numbers caught Apple off guard. Regarding to Apple, the main cause of this situation is weak demand in China. People there doesn't buy new iPhones. New iPhones are ludicrous expensive, and in China there are plenty of cheaper devices that have the same features. People there doesn't care whether they use iOS or Android because Chinese apps look and work the same way on both platforms, so it is really easy for them to switch platforms.
Also, if we add to this tense relations, because of "Trade War", between China and USA it's not a surprise that sells have been lower than expected.
China is one of the biggest markets in the world, high demand from there is really important, but Apple also reported weakened demand in some "developed markets", which indicates that either iPhones are too expensive or new features introduced in new models does not appeal to the customers.
Probably it is the combination of both. For a while Apple has been increasing the price of the devices without any breakthrough features. I used to wait entire year for iPhone's keynote and I knew I would see something revolutionary. Now, I simply don't care because Apple will again show the same "recycled" phone with higher price tag.
On the positive note, Apple has increased demand for services, macs, wearables and iPads. Also in other markets, including Poland, Apple reported record sells. Maybe higher that usual demand in Poland is the first step to opening the first official Apple Store here.

Now, moving on to other news. Image of the Samsung Galaxy S10 has leaked, revealing bezelless screen without a notch, but with camera cutout withing the screen. This is an interesting design, and if you only need front facing camera it makes a lot of sense.

Google has got U.S. regulatory approval to proceed with a radar-based motion sensor known as the Soli Project. This technology can make UI from Minority Report a reality.

Thats all from this week, now it's time for list of interesting things.

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