This week was boring, nothing special happened. From worth mentioning events we have:

• Xiaomi announced Mi 8, which, on the first glance, looks like a clone of iPhone X.
• Microsoft has held talks to buy GitHub.
• Valve has tried to release the Steam app to the AppStore, but Apple has rejected it.
• Solo: A Star Wars Story is not doing well at box office.

Also so this week we had plenty of rumors covering all things that we might see during Apple's WWDC:

• iOS 12 - it looks like, that in the next version of the iOS, Apple has focused on stability and performance improvements. In terms of new features, we should see new animojis, more augmented reality and hopefully improved Siri.
• macOS 10.14 - the new Mac operating system probably will be called Mojavi. It will have dark mode. Base on warnings for 32-bit apps in macOS 10.13, the new version should be 64-bit only. There was also plenty of rumors about project marzipan, which supposed to allow as to run iOS apps on macOS, but personally I doubt we will see it this year.
• watchOS 5 - there are not much rumors about this one. My only wish is to get ability to create custom faces.
• Macs - knowing that Apple is planning to release new Macs next year so I don't expect to see anything new in terms of hardware. What we might get is just small refresh of current line and maybe Apple will tease a new hardware like they did last year with iMac Pro.

Of course we will also get new developer tools, with new Xcode 10, and plenty new frameworks. Tomorrow we will see which of those rumors were true and which were just our wishful thinking.

Finally, here is a list of interesting articles:

Reconciling GraphQL and Thrift at Airbnb

Advanced Swift Debugging for UIKit

Custom UIView in Swift done right

An iOS architecture approach for UIViewController states & error management in Swift

At the beginning of this week, Facebook hold the F8 developer conference. Let's face it, this year edition was in shadow of Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Nevertheless, Facebook announced couple of interesting things:

• Tool for removing cookies,
• Third party apps will go through the review process,
• Dating app built into Facebook,
• WhatsApp is getting stickers and group video calls,
• Instagram is getting integration with 3rd party apps,
• Oculus Go.

Also this week, AppleInsider presented report showing that 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard is failing twice as frequently as older models. I'm working on such MacBook Pro for over a year and I must admit, those stats don't surprise me. It has one of the worst keyboards I ever worked with.

Google and GitHub made one step closer to safer Internet. Google launched .app domains with HTTPS built-in. GitHub added HTTPS support for custom domains on GitHub Pages.

And finally, here is the list of cool things.

Portrait in pure CSS
Diana Adrianne did amazing female portrait using only css.

What's new in Swift
This site explains Swift new features. What's cool about this site, it contains changes and features introduced in every version of the Swift - since version 1.0 up to current release (4.2). Thanks to this, you can select your current stack and gradually move to newer versions.

How to make meetings (with your client) more effective
I know, putting my own article here is a little bit selfish, but screw this. I think it is worth reading, so I'm gonna promote it.

Image credits: Facebook.

This week LinusTechTips published a video in which they claimed that Apple and an Apple Authorized Service Provider denied to repair damaged iMac Pro.
What's really interesting about this situation, Apple not only refused to do repairs based on warranty, which is understandable because of the modifications done by LinusTechTips, but they also refused when youtuber wanted to pay for the repairs. Apple support advisor justified the refusal on limited availability of replacement parts. Regardless of the real reason I have different question. Is iMac Pro reparable at all? As long as the machine is on 1 year warranty, and we don't do any modifications to it, we should be fine. But what can we do with broken $5000 computer after warranty?
This is a little bit concerning, I hope that Apple will clarify this incident.

On another note, once again, the Internet did not disappoint. This time people croudfounded Elon Musk a new couch.

The marketing campaign for Solo: A Star Wars Story has started for good. This week we got two TV ads: Crew and Risk.

And finally, here is list of interesting articles.

Oh Man, Look at Your API!
Designing a REST API - or any other API, for that matter - is hard. Alexey gives couple of tips explaining how to make it good and usable.

Yes, React is taking over front-end development. The question is why.
React exploded in recent years and became one the most popular, if not the most popular, library in fronted development. Also there are no signs that is going to change in the near future. In this article Samer tries to explain the reasons that caused this phenomenon.

Scratching the Firebase services with your iOS app
Deyan explains how to create and setup an iOS app that uses Firebase as a backend.

Image credits: LinusTechTips.

This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before members of Congress. As expected, Senators don’t understand how Facebook works, but at least we got confirmation that Facebook took this data leak seriously and is working to prevent it from happening again. From Zuckerberg's testimony we also got hint that we might get paid version of the Facebook that doesn't have ads.
Hopefully this entire scandal will result in better understanding of the importance of users privacy as well as respecting it.

LucasFilm release a new trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story. It will be interesting to see a Star Wars western. I don't know about you, but I am excited.

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) became most profitable entertainment product of all time. Since its premiere in 2013 Rockstar sold 90 million copies of the game and generated around $6 billion in revenue.
It was a matter of time, but finally video games are more profitable than Hollywood blockbusters. Good job gamedevs!

And as always, here is list of interesting articles.

TCP Server With the SwiftNIO Networking Framework
SwiftNIO was announced last month during try! Swift conference. This article explains what it is and how to use it

ASP.NET Core Web API Multi-Tenant JWTs
Carl explains how to implement multi-tenant authorization based on Json Web Tokens using Asp.Net core.

Animated Transitions in Mobile Apps
Animations are important part of mobile applications. There are no longer only nice addition to visual design, they became functional, they support interactions.
From this article you will learn how to use animation to enhance your applications.

How To Design Emotional Interfaces For Boring Apps
Alice explains how to make user interfaces human friendly and interesting visually.

Matt Klein explains how he logged out 40M people from Twitter
This is interesting short story about little bug that caused big issue.

Image credits: Anthony Quintano.

This week started with article saying that 2019 Mac Pro will be shaped by workflows. After lack of new Mac Pro and disappointing MacBook Pro it's nice to hear that Apple listened started collaborating with professionals.

Also SpaceX reaches the promised land of launching every two weeks. Which is really significant, because SpaceX achieved something that was pursued for decades. It is actually nice to see, what privately funded company is able to achieve without government bureaucracy.

Fortnite on iOS made $15 million in its first three weeks in the App Store
Fortnite is great game, but those numbers are shocking. Especially if we take into consideration the fact that paid content contains only silly costumes, in-game dance animations, and other cosmetic items. This is good example how you can sell DLCs that does not affect the game and still make a profit.

Here is list of interesting articles.

Parallel programming with Swift: Promises
Parallel programming in Swift is hard. As we're still waiting for new solution built into the language, here is one based on Promises.

Advanced debugging with Xcode
Here you will find a couple of tips that will make debugging in Xcode easier.

UIAccessorizedTextField
Short, but useful post showing how to utilize a UIAccessorizedTextField class to implement the "suggestions" functionality.

We Are Netflix Podcast
This is new podcast from Netflix developers. First episode is about how their iOS app was made.

Microservices — From Idea To Starting Line
Michael explains how to reasonably approach a microservice architecture.

Vue CLI 3 — the deep dive
Another week and another article about Vue CLI 3.

Here are examples of everything new in ECMAScript 2016, 2017, and 2018
Java Script is evolving really fast. If you are behind, this article will help to catch up.

Image credits: Pascal Eggert.