Image credits: Timothy Eberly
For the second time, SpaceX and NASA launched the Crew Dragon capsule with people onboard. Following the successful Demo-2 mission, NASA gave SpaceX's Crew Dragon an operational status, and the Crew-1 mission is the first flight with such status. Crew of 4 astronauts launched on Sunday, and docked to the International Space Station the next day. According to NASA plans, astronauts will spend in space about 180 days.
Apple announced, that from January 1st, the AppStore tax will be reduce from 30% to 15% to all developers that during a year made under $1 million. If the developer exceeds the $1 million threshold then the 30% tax will be applied.
This is huge for the most of the developers. The change from 30% to 15% cut, by then increases developers revenue for about 20%.
Apple started shipping new ARM powered Macs and the first benchmarks started showing up. It looks like, all Apple claims about new hardware are true. New macs are not only the fastest, but also super efficient, which improves battery life. Now, the only thing that might stop a customer from choosing an ARM mac is a software compatibility. But even that should not be a big issue for the most users. And if a particular application is not ready yet, it should be very soon.
Image credits: NASA/SpaceX
Apple announced their November event, which will focus on ARM based Macs. According to latest rumors, we should see a new MacBook Air as well as 13 and 16 inch MacBook Pros. Although ARM powered MacBook Air is no brainer, the release of the Pro models would be a bold move from Apple. It would mean that first generation of new processors is (at least) as powerful as current generation of Intel ones.
Image credits: Łukasz Łada
Apple is planing to open another Store in Singapore. Normally, such thing wouldn't be even worth mentioning, as Apple has hundreds stores around the world. But this is the first Apple Store that floats on the water. Apple Marina Bay Sands is a giant glowing orb and will be docked on the bayfront of Singapore.
Judge decided that Apple can’t retaliate against Epic Games by terminating the Epic's developer accounts or restricting use of Unreal Engine by developers on Apple platforms. Also, judge decided that Apple doesn't have to bring Fortnite back, as Epic deliberately violated AppStore rules.
So the first battle has been won by Epic, but this is not the only good news for them. Epic gained an ally in Microsoft. Company from Redmond asked Apple to allow Epic continue development on Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine is one the most popular game engines in the world, and cutting off the support for Apple platforms might have severe consequences for game industry.
Despite all of this, Later this week, Apple did removed Epic's account from AppStore with all its games. What is more important Apple listened to the judge, and left Unreal Engine's account intact.
Microsoft Windows 95 just turned 25. It's incredible how fast it went and how much we progressed. 25 years ago you needed good PC to run it, today you can run it in a browser.
After cancelling E3 it looked liked gamers will not get any major gaming event this year, but Gamescom organizers found a way. They created virtual conference. Unfortunately nothing special was announced, but we got couple of cool looking trailers.
Image credits: Javan Ng
Google Maps monitors traffic data using various sources, including phones with location services turned on. Sam Wecker tricked Google Maps and created virtual traffic jam by walking through empty streets of Berlin with 99 second-hand phones loaded on a small wagon.
Google is aware of this flaw and, in response to 9to5Google, stated that they liked the idea, and hope that it will somehow improve the service.
A video showing upcoming Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip has been shared on Twitter. Phone itself looks more like a traditional flip phone that folds up into a compact device. There is not much information about this phone, but here is what we know so far based on the leaks:
The Galaxy Z Flip is expected to be revealed at Samsung's Unpacked event on February 11.
Nvidia's game streaming service - GeForce Now - left the beta and is finally available for everyone. At the moment, players can choose one of two tiers:
Free
Founders
GeForce Now allows to play already purchased games from Steam, Uplay, and Epic Store. The list of compatible games is impressive.
At the moment, the client is available for Windows, macOS i Android, but Nvidia also plans to release the PWA version.
Microsoft Teams went down for nearly three hours after Microsoft forgot to renew a critical security certificate. Teams users couldn't sign into the service because the app was failing to establish an HTTPS connection to Microsoft’s servers.
This is not Microsoft's first incident with expired certificate. In 2013, Microsoft Azure was not available for couple of hours.
New beta of macOS 10.15.4 Catalina continues to reference the AMD processors. Those references could mean one of couple of things:
Image credits: Google Maps