2019 iPhone design

Mark Gurman tweeted a photo of alleged case molds for upcoming iPhones. Those molds align with previous rumors and shows much bigger, square camera bump. The bigger bump could be justified on the next iPhone XS ans XS Max, which are suppose to get 3 rear cameras, but XR model, despite the rumors about having only 2 cameras, also has square bump, almost the same size as XS will have.

Next Star Wars movies

Last week we got confirmation of the next Star Wars trilogy. This week, Bob Iger confirmed the rumors that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Games of Thrones show runners, will create next movie.  I'm stoked to see next movies, but looking at the turmoil the last season of Games of Thrones created I'm also a little bit worried.

Beside this, we also got more detailed release dates:

• Part 1 - 16th December 2022
• Part 2 - 20th December 2024
• Part 3 - 18th December 2026

3rd Star Wars TV show

Bob Iger also revealed that during 3 years break from the movies we will get 3 Star Wars TV shows. So far we know about The Mandalorian and Cassian Andor series. The third one was a surprise and becomes an interesting mystery.

App Store Monopoly Lawsuit Against Apple

The U.S. Supreme Court decided to proceed with the class action lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit was filed in 2011 by some iPhone users who believe that Apple violates federal antitrust laws by requiring apps to be sold only through  the App Store. This allows Apple to collects a 30% cut from all purchases, which leads to inflated prices of the applications.

Long story short, iPhone users believe that apps would be priced lower outside of the App Store, as Apple's 30 percent cut would not be calculated into  prices.

I have mixed filings about this. I agree that 30% cut is a big one and it didn't change since the beginning of the AppStore, but I also doubt that apps would be priced differently outside of the AppStore.  

Interesting links

• When will Starman return to Earth?
• Apollo 11 HoloLens 2 Demo | Microsoft Build 2019 | Unreal Engine
• God of War - Raising Kratos: Full Length Feature
• Reinventing God of War
• Marvel's Spider-Man: A Technical Postmortem
• How Video-Game Engines Help Create Visual Effects on Movie Sets in Real Time
• What to Expect From Marzipan
• I am a Web Dev. And I am Burnt The F#*K Out
• Node, Express, PostgreSQL, Vue 2 and GraphQL CRUD Web App
• Serverless Authentication with AWS Amplify and Vuex Modules
• You should never ever run directly against Node.js in production. Maybe.
• LEGO Stranger Things

Image credits: Mark Gurman

This week World Wide Web turned 30 years old :). I think when Tim Berners-Lee created first WWW site, he didn't know how much he would change the world. Today it is in the center of our life. It's not only a source of information or entertainment. We shop there, we trust our savings in electronic bank. We not only earn money over Internet, but sometimes we even trust it with our lives.
Without a doubt world would not be the same without the WWW. Let's only hope that personal agendas of the politicians won't destroy it.

This week Tesla completed their S3XY car lineup with the brand new model Y. This model is a compact SUV, but it doesn't look like one. It's basically a bigger version of Model 3. The new car will be available in 2020 with price starting at $39,000 for model with 230 miles range. The 300 miles range model will cost $49,000 and the Performance version will cost $60,000.
SUVs are one of the most popular cars out there. We will see whether the people are interested enough in the electric one to boost Tesla's position on the market.

Apple finally announced the WDDC 2019. This year, conference will take place in the first week of June (3rd - 7th) in San Jose. This year's conference should be the interesting one. Of course we will get our first glimpse at iOS 13 and macOS 15. But I think we, as developers, are all waiting for more details about project Marzipan, as well as long awaited Mac Pro and maybe even rumored new MacBook Pro.

Microsoft announced that Windows will be able uninstall broken updates. This is the good step forward, especially after issues with last October update, but I'm wondering how fast we will see reports about this tool making even more harm than good.

Thats all for this week. If you want more, here is the list of interesting things.

The iOS Dev Directory

Ralph Küpper - Running Small Microservices in Swift on Production Environment

A little thread on generating and rendering a procedural trajectory mesh

Creating the Blockade Runner Engine Look for Rogue One

Designing Star Wars: Star Wars Resistance

Someone is recreating Star Wars: Dark Forces... in Unreal Engine 4

Real-Time AR Self-Expression with Machine Learning

A JavaScript-Free Frontend

Learning React Hooks by building a game - react.games Preview

Direct uploads to AWS S3 from the browser (crazy performance boost)

10 Programming Terms in Normal Human Language

Image credits: Pixabay.

As in this week nothing happend, there is nothing to discuss. In that case I hope you will find something interesting in the following articles.

How to Land on Mars

Software Library: C64

How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects

How to Become a Better Software Developer: A Handbook on Personal Performance

Redesigning the Office App Icons to Embrace a New World of Work

Apple Music: A UX/UI Holistic Case Study

Voice User Interfaces (VUI) — The Ultimate Designer’s Guide

11 Sketch Plugins That Will Improve Your Workflow

UNDERRUN – MAKING OF

How to Build a Serverless Backend with AWS Lambda and Node.js

These are the concepts you should know in React.js (after you learn the basics)

Introducing ASP.NET Core with Docker

How to Integrate a C Library into an iOS App Written in Swift

Image credits: 85Fifteen.

This week Disney finally shared more details about their upcoming streaming service. Despite early rumors, it will be called Disney+ and will be launched in late 2019.
Along with the name of the service, Disney also announced brand new TV series. For the new Star Wars show, Diego Luna will reprise his role as the Rebel operative Cassian Andor in a prequel to the Rouge One. The remaining three shows will be set in Marvel universe. First one will be feature Loki and this is only officially confirmed TV show. Second will be about the Scarlet Witch and the last one will feature Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Both series has not been officially confirmed, but this is just a matter of time.
All announced series will join Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, which already is in production.

Speaking of TV shows. Industrial Light & Magic, one of the best VFX companies in the world, opened a TV division. Just in time for Disney’s new shows. According to a press release, the new group will focus on episodic and streaming television series. At the moment they are working on the Syfy’s Krypton and, mentioned earlier, The Mandalorian.

This is it. If you want to learn more, check this list of interesting things.

Learning CSS? Try CSS Diner, the fun way to practice selectors

Jerry Hargrove - Cloud Diagrams & Notes

Photographs of old computers

This is how i figured out how Instagram zoom works — Swift 4.2

Image credits: The Walt Disney Company.

This week Google held a special event, where they presented new Pixel 3 phones and bunch of others devices. Let's start with the phones. Google as always presented two versions, the base one - Pixel, and one with bigger screen- Pixel XL. Here is the specification:

• Full-HD+ OLED, Gorilla Glass 5,
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor,
• Adreno 630 GPU,
• 4GB RAM and 6GB for Pixel XL
• 64GB/128GB storage,
• 12Mp f/1.8 rear camera with dual autofocus,
• 8Mp + 8Mp, f/1.8/2.2 dual-selfie camera,
• Rear fingerprint sensor,
• IPX8 waterproofing,
• 2915mAh battery for Pixel, and 3430mAh with Quick Charge for Pixel XL
• Wireless charging and USB-C 3.1,
• Android 9.0 Pie.

The specification for both version is almost identical. The only difference comes to amount of RAM, 4GB vs 6GB, and battery size. Of course there is also screen size difference, Pixel has 5.5 inch screen and Pixel XL has 6.3 inch with a notch. Speaking of the notch, it has not been received well. Based on images and videos I've seen, I have to agree with those accusations. I'm not a big fan of the notch, but I got use to it on the iPhone. Keeping that in mind, the Pixel's 3 notch still feels gigantic. I would love to see the phone in real life and do the comparison.
Speaking of real life, both phones are the most expensive Google phones ever :/ The Pixel starts at $799 for 64GB version. The XL starts at $899 for the same storage. It looks like the trend of producing very expensive phones continues.

Google also announced new tablet with a detachable keyboard powered by ChromeOS. It's called Google Pixel Slate, and it's very similar to the Surface Pro. It has 12.3 inch screen with front facing camera and two speakers. On the back there is rear camera. On the side, we will find fingerprint reader.
Device is powered by family of Intel CPUs, from Celeron up to i7 in the most powerful configuration. The CPU version affects the amount of memory we can get, 4GB in Celeron configuration, up to 16GB with i7. In terms of storage, devices will have from 32GB up to 256GB.
The Pixel Slate will go on sale in November starting at $599, while the dedicated keyboard will cost additional $199.

Also during the event, Google presented the Home Hub. This is basically the Google speaker with a screen, like Amazon's Echo Show or Facebook Portal but without a camera. Lack of the camera on a device like this is a bit surprising, but at leas we don't have to worry about device spying on us. Home hub comes in 4 colors and will be released on 22nd of October for $149.

The last news from the event is that Google Plus is going to be shut down. The official reason are security breaches, but to be honest, no one was using this platform anyway, so I'm glad that i will be officially gone.

That all folks from the news, here is the list of interesting things.

Hire by Google: applicant tracking system & recruiting software

Kinda okay generated text

Secure your web application with these HTTP headers

How to launch a site on AWS for free in 15 minutes

Why building your own Deep Learning Computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

The truth about toxic workers in the workplace