Weekly digest - 2018.39

Weekly digest - 2018.39

This week Google was celebrating its 20th birthday. September 27, 1998, this is the date when Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched their website - Google Search. Since then, Google has changed a lot. Google Search is now just a part of the tech giant now known as Alphabet.
After 20 years, some people see Google as the best company in the world, where others are convinced that Google is evil, spying on us in every possible way. I'm not sure whether Google is good or bad, probably both, but what I know is that Google during those 20 years has changed the world couple of times, and I'm sure it will be doing this in the future.

Elon Musk has been forced to step down as chairman of Tesla. This is the result of Musk's tweets about taking Tesla private. Those tweets, caused drastic price change of Tesla stocks. As Tesla ultimately has not been taken private, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Musk and Tesla for stock prices manipulation. On Saturday, Elon Musk has reached a settlement with the SOC and will step down as a chairman of Tesla and will have to pay $20 million fine, but will remain CEO of the company. Also, Tesla will have to pay $20 million fine. Both amounts will be later distributed over investors who lost money.
One tweet cost Elon Musk $40 million and his voice on the board. Lesson to take from this - be careful what you tweet.

Speaking of CEOs, Kathleen Kennedy will remain the president of the Lucasfilm for the next 3 years. For couple of months, there was a lot of rumors that Kennedy will be fired after disappointing Episode 8 and Han Solo movie.
Decision about keeping Kennedy goes inline with information about slowing Star Wars franchise down and Disney doesn't want any revolutions, which is a good thing.

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

20 years of Google Search

MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 Source Code

Marzipan: Porting iOS Apps to the Mac

Boost your productivity with macOS Mojave — enable Dark Mode for Xcode only

Pixel Art Tutorials of the month September 2018

I’m a Heart Doctor. Here’s Why I’m Wary of the New Apple Watch

Weekly digest - 2018.37

Weekly digest - 2018.37

This week Apple held the Gather Round event introducing three new iPhones and new Apple Watch. Without further ado, let's start with iPhones.
The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max are the premium models with the most features which also makes them the most expensive ones, starting at $999 and $1099 respectively. Here is the specification:

  • OLED True Tone Screen
  • HDR display
  • Dual 12-megapixel rear cameras (wide-angle and telephoto lenses)
  • 7-megapixel front camera
  • Portrait Mode with Depth Control
  • Smart HDR photos
  • A12 Bionic chip
  • Face ID
  • Fast charging
  • Qi-based wireless charging
  • IP68-rated water resistance to a depth of 2 meters for up to 30 minutes
  • 64GB / 256GB / 512GB of storage
  • Dual SIM (Nano-SIM and eSIM)
  • Gigabit-class LTE
  • Voice over LTE (VoLTE)
  • 802.11ac Wi‑Fi
  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • 3D Touch

iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have almost identical tech specs. The differences come to battery life, XS Max has one-hour-longer battery life, and screen size. XS has 5.8-inch screen, where XS Max has a larger 6.5-inch version.

Apple also introduced a brand new version of the phone, called iPhone XR. It is more affordable, starting at $749. I must admit, for this price point the specs look impressive:

  • LCD True Tone Screen
  • HDR display
  • Single 12-megapixel rear cameras (wide-angle lense)
  • 7-megapixel front camera
  • Portrait Mode with Depth Control
  • Smart HDR photos
  • A12 Bionic chip
  • Face ID
  • Fast charging
  • Qi-based wireless charging
  • IP68-rated water resistance to a depth of 2 meters for up to 30 minutes
  • 64GB / 128GB / 256GB of storage
  • Dual SIM (Nano-SIM and eSIM)
  • LTE Advanced
  • Voice over LTE (VoLTE)
  • 802.11ac Wi‑Fi
  • Bluetooth 5.0

As you can see, there is not much difference between XS and XR. If you are thinking about new iPhone and don't care about the OLED display and better camera you should choose the XR version. If you need better screen and camera, or if you need biggest screen then you have to pay $250 for XS model.

Now let's move on to Apple Watch. The version is called Series 4. The biggest change is over 30% larger screen. With bigger screen the case also got bigger by about 2mm. Looking at the thinness, Series 4 is about 1mm slimmer compared to predecessor. Here is the rest of the changes:

  • 64-bit S4 processor, 2 times faster than S3
  • Second-generation optical heart sensor
  • ECG monitor
  • New accelerometer (up to 32 g-forces) and gyroscope that can detect if person fall down
  • Haptic feedback on the Digital Crown
  • Louder speaker by 50%
  • New W3 wireless chip
  • Bluetooth 5.0

The new Apple Watch Series 4 is impressive and can't wait to finally get a proper start watch.

Last but not least, here is the list of interesting things.

Don’t Use Checkboxes

Your web app is bloated

.NET Conf 2018

How iOS Apps Adapt to the iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR Screen Sizes

The first month of being a freelance designer, how does it feel like?

Half-Life Recreated with Unreal Engine 4


Image credits: Apple.