This week we got some information about Apple event that is rumored for March. During this event we should see new iPads mini, which I've already covered two weeks ago, long awaited AirPower and AirPods 2 with new color options. Unfortunately, we don't know when we will be able to buy new AirPods, one rumor says it will be available this spring, and another says that we have to wait till fall. I cannot wait for new AirPods, especially black matte ones, and I hope we will get them in the first half of this year.

On the other side of the barricade, Samsung released a new tablet, Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e. Starting at $399 device has following specification:

• 10.5inch Super AMOLED (2560x1600) display,
• Qualcomm SDM 670 (Dual 2.0GHz + Hexa 1.7GHz) processor,
• 4GB or 6GB of RAM,
• 64GB or 128GB of internal storage,
• SD card slot supporting cards up to 512GB
• Front (8-megapixel) and back (13-megapixel) cameras,
• Up to 14.5h of battery life.

Right now, the market of the tablets is dominated by iPads. The root cause of that situation was lack of decent Android devices. With this new Galaxy Tab, Samsung finally has something that might be recommended as an alternative to the iPad.

From the other news, JPMorgan is launching its own cryptocurrency. Yeah, another cryptocurency to the collection. This time, one JPM Coin will be equivalent of one dollar, and will be used to perform real-time transfers of substantial amount of money, which right now might take even days. I'm not a big fan of another cryptocurency, but I'm glad to see that big and respected bank is going to use blockchain to transfer money.

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

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As nothing worth mentioning happened this week, beside Samsung launching Tinder for fridges, here is just the list of interesting things.

Finding Lena, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

Vue 2.6 released

How I do Vue in 2019: TypeScript and TSX

How to Use Mock Data in Vue Apps

Life of a SQL query

Dear web developers: set the font color, too

Apple’s New iPad Pro Ads Were Shot and Made Entirely on the iPad Pro

Apple Is Fighting a Good Fight Against Facebook and Google

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Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

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One year ago today: SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy

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.

30th anniversary of the Macintosh

Avoiding conflicts between developers and marketers

Open source Eva icons as Vue components

Here are some super secret VS Code hacks to boost your productivity

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.

The hole-punch display is going to be okay

Why Founders Should Start With a Website, Not a Mobile App

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