Cool tech at CES 2020

As always, the second week of January is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) week. I'm not going to cover in much details what has been shown, people on the site can do much better job. Instead, I've created a list of the most interesting gadgets & thing shown at CES 2020.

Mobile, portable & wearable devices

• OnePlus Concept One Phone
• Dell Alienware Concept UFO
• Withings Scanwatch

Laptops

• Intel's Horseshoe Bend concept
• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold
• Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus with E-ink screen
• Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro

Computers

• Intel's 10th-Generation 'Comet Lake' CPUs
• AMD takes no prisoners
• Origin’s Big O combines PC & consoles
• MSI’s MEG Aegis Ti5
• Razer Tomahawk

TVs & Monitors

• Samsung's bezel-less 8K TV
• Samsung Sero rotating TV
• Sony Z8H 8K HDR Sony A8H 4K OLED TVs
• LG OLED ZX 88-inch 8K TV
• Asus' 360Hz Monitor
• Samsung Odyssey G9 Gaming Monitor

Headphones & speakers

• JBL's AirPods alternative
• Jabra Elite Active 75t wireless earbuds
• Harman Kardon Citation Oasis
• Vizio’s soundbar with rotating speakers
• Amazon Fire TV soundbars

Smart home devices

• Samsung Ballie
• Arlo's wireless Floodlight Camera
• Charmin’s new toilet paper robot and fart smell sensor
• Wemo Wifi Smart Plug & Stage
• Y-Brush toothbrush
  

Cars & Vehicles

• Mercedes-Benz Vision AVTR
• Sony Vision-S concept car
• Fiser's electric SUV with solar roof
• Mustang Mach-E SUV
• BMW i Interaction Ease concept
• Segway S-Pod

Dope links

• Sign in with Apple - Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3
• Swift 5.2 Development Snapshot
• Build your own Netlify-like deployment for React app using multi-container Kubernetes pod
• Canned Emails - a minimal site with prewritten emails
• Disk Sleeves
• Twenty Years Ago, Steve Jobs Showed Off the Aqua Interface for the First Time
• I created an ultra-detailed color image of the moon by combining around 100k photos
• How The Irishman’s Groundbreaking VFX Took Anti-Aging To the Next Level
  
  

MacBook Pro 16' imminent release?

According to DigiTimes new 16-inch MacBook Pro could be released by the end of October. At the moment, there is no information about any Apple's event, so people are speculating whether Apple is going to just release new laptop model together with Mac Pro.

It looks like the rumors about imminent release might be true. In the latest beta of the macOS 10.15.1, people found images of the 16-inch MacBook. New model looks to be slightly bigger than 15-inch predecessor, and has noticeably smaller screen bezel.

Interesting links

• Create the Perfect UserDefaults Wrapper Using Property Wrapper
• Mockingbird: A convenient mocking framework for Swift
• No Overview Available
• Take a screenshot and record a video in iOS Simulator
• Using Web Bluetooth to communicate with Bluetooth devices
• Dark mode in HTML email
• My favourite Git commit
• Why you should have a side project
• Asynchronous Communication: The Real Reason Remote Workers Are More Productive
• Why The 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' Illusion Battle Took Nine Months To Make
• Bruno Simon's Portfolio

Image credits: MacGeneration

At the beginning of this week, Apple finally released the iOS 12. The new version of the mobile operating system contains plenty new features and improvements:

• Better performance especially for displaying keyboard or opening apps,
• Better battery usage information
• Screen time - tool that allows to track how much time we spent using particular app,
• Grouped notifications - now, notification from the same app are grouped together,
• New Animiji and Memoji - I think this doesn't need explanation 😛,
• Grouped FaceTime - finally you can call multiple people,
• Improved AR capabilities including new Measure app or AR elements in the News app
• Shortcuts - tool for automating common task. With Siri this is very powerful, but so far underrated feature,
• Siri suggestions - Siri show suggest what can we do based on what are we currently doing,
• CarPlay supports third-party apps,
• Location is automatically shared with 911 and first responders,
• Do not disturb during bedtime - a new mode of the phone which will hide all notifications when we are sleeping,
• Password Manager API - this allows password managers to fill your passwords right from the keyboard without switching between apps.

This release is not revolutionary, but brings couple of long awaited improvements, so I encourage you to update your devices.

With premiere of the iOS 12, we also got a new Beta version of the next release. Of course people were looking for new leaks and they found couple of interesting thing about upcoming iPad Pro:

• No home button
• Face ID (with support for both portrait and landscape)
• No notch
• Probably USB-C port instead of lightning

If those rumors are true, then I can't wait to see new iPhone next year. Hopefully without notch and finally with USB-C.

On Tuesday, Marvel released first trailer of the Captain Marvel movie. Movie is set in 90s and tell the story of Kara Danvers, who becomes one of the most powerful superheros in Marvel universe.
Speaking of Marvel universe, Disney is planning Loki and Scarlet Witch TV shows. Also, there are rumors that Disney is planning to create more TV series for characters who don't have their own movies. If any show is created, it will be for upcoming Disney's streaming platform.
I must admit, creating a TV show in popular franchise is a great strategy for promoting the new streaming platform. Let's face it, Disney owns most of the franchises, so they have plenty of material to use. They already confirmed that there will be Star Wars TV show created by Jon Favreau.

As we are talking about Star Wars. Disney's CEO, Bog Iger, said that they are going to slow down with Star Wars franchise.
Since 2015 we had 4 movies. First two movies have been huge success, especially commercially. But last two have been disappointing, they felt rushed. They also, have been confusing for the fans because we had movies from the trilogy interspersed with with anthologies, where fans have been expecting continuation like in Marvel movies.
I love Star Wars, and I would love to see new movie every year, but if we can get movies that are better quality then I can wait.

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

iOS 12: The MacStories Review

Microcopy Inspirations

Why does the Zune HD have the message “For our Princess” on the inside of the case, and why is she a princess?

Dependency Management for iOS projects with the Swift package manager

Code to go - Find up to date snippets for common JavaScript use cases

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