Cyberpunk 2077 released

CD Project Red, after 9 years of development, finally released the Cyberpunk 2077. First reviews are very positive. CDP Red once again delivered very solid game, although it is far from being perfect. The game is hunted by many little bugs. Bugs are not  unexpected as the game is huge, but they make the  experience less pleasant.  Overall it looks like Cyberpunk is solid game and it somehow met the expectations.

Starship launch

Space X has performed a test flight of the Starship. The launch was verifying following scenario:

1. ✅ Launch Starship,
2. ✅ Achieve altitude of 12.5 KM,
3. ✅ Shutdown engines and rotate rocket on it's belly,
4. ✅  Fall free,
5. ✅ Turn on engines and rotate the rocket to the vertical position,
6. ❌ Land on the ground.

The test  ran perfectly until the landing. The pressure in fuel cells was too low, which resulted in higher touch down speed than anticipated, which ultimately caused an explosion.

Despite the fact, that Starship is gone, the test was successful.

AirPods Max

Apple announce AirPods Max - the over-ear noise-canceling headphones. Here are selected features:

• Active Noise Cancellation,
• Spatial audio with dynamic head tracking,
• Audio Sharing,
• Digital Crown for controlling volume and playback,
• Magnetic ear cups,
• Apple H1 chip, in each ear cup, for fast connecting with Apple devices and device switching,
• Sensors in each cup can detect whether they are placed on a user’s head and pause playback when removed,
• Bluetooth 5 compatible,
• 20h of battery life,
• Come in five colors: space gray, silver, sky blue, green, and pink.

AirPods Max  will be available from December 15th for $549.

New ARM macs in 2021

According to latest rumors, Apple is working on new 32-core chip, that will be shipped with upcoming iMacs and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Looking at performance of the current M1 chip, it is something worth waiting for.

Apple Fitness+

Apple also announced that Fitness+ will launch on December 14th. The workout service will be available only in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US  for $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year.

Disney plans

Disney have unveiled their plans for the foreseeable future.

Star Wars:

• Star Wars: Andor (TV); 2022,
• Obi-Wan Kenobi (TV); 2022,
• Ahsoka (TV),
• Rangers of the New Republic (TV),
• Star Wars: The Bad Batch (TV),
• The Acolyte (TV),
• Star Wars: Lando (TV),
• Droid Story (TV),
• Star Wars: Visions (TV),
• Rogue Squadron (Movie); 12.2023,
• Untitled Taika Waititi Film; 12.2025.

Marvel:

• WandaVision (TV); 15.01.2021,
• Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV); 03.2020,
• Loki (TV); 05.2021,
• Hawkeye; 2021,
• She-Hulk (TV),
• Ironheart (TV),
• What-if? (TV),
• Moon Knight (TV),
• Miss Marvel (TV),
• Secret Invasion (TV),
• Armor Wars (TV),
• Black Panther 2 (Movie), 07.2022,
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Movie),
• Fantastic Four (Movie).

Dope links

• Command Line Interface Guidelines
• Why Is Apple’s M1 Chip So Fast?
• The Secret To The Success Of Bastion, Pyre, And Hades: No Forced Crunch, Yes Forced Vacations
• Ship mobile apps faster with fewer bugs with Waldo
  

Image credits: Apple

Apple's software updates

This week Apple has updated all their operating systems. Here is the list of the most prominent changes:

iOS 13.4

• iCloud Folder Sharing,
• Universal Purchase allows to purchase single copy of an app for all user's iPhones, iPods touch, iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs,
• Revamped toolbar in Mail app,
• Third-party navigation apps are now supported by the CarPlay Dashboard,
• 9 new Memoji and Animoji stickers.

iPadOS 13.4

• Mouse and trackpad support,
• Shared iPad feature is now available for enterprise users,
• Also includes all changes from iOS 13.4.

macOS 10.15.4

• iCloud Folder Sharing,
• Universal Purchase allows to purchase single copy of an app for all user's iPhones, iPods touch, iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs,
• Time-synced lyrics for Apple Music, with ability to jump to part of a song by clicking a line in lyrics view,
• New Parental options.

watchOS 6

• In-app purchases are now available for ‌‌Apple Watch‌‌ apps,
• ECG app and Irregular heart rhythm notifications are now available in Chile, New Zealand and Turkey.

tvOS 13.4 & HomePod

• General bug fixes and improvements.

Disney+ in Western Europe

Disney has launched their streaming service in United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria. Disney says that Disney+ will be available in France in April. Additional Western Europe countries, including Belgium, the Nordics, and Portugal should get access this summer.

Dope Links

• What’s new in Swift 5.2
• Code coverage for Swift Package Manager based apps
• Swift Package Registry
• A Jira clone built with Vuejs & Nodejs/Graphql
• CSS units cheat sheet
• Animated CSS Background Generator
• Unity Learn Premium FREE for 3 months
• A Repository for all Intel Technical Content prepared for GDC 2020
• Presentations from GDC 2020 (online presentations)
• Raytracing in Excel

Samsung Unpack

This week Samsung held its Unpacked event and presented new phones:

Samsung Galaxy S20 & S20+

The successors to S10 model have following specification:

• 6.2-inch 120Hz QHD+ OLED display in S20,
• 6.7-inch 120Hz QHD+ OLED display in S20+,
• Snapdragon 865 CPU,
• 12GB of RAM,
• 128GB of storage + microSD in S20,
• 128 or 512 GB of storage + microSD in S20+,
• 10MP Selfie camera,
• Triple (12+64+12MP) rear camera system,
• 5G compatible,
• 4000mAh battery in S20 & 4500mAh in S20+.

Samsung Galaxy S20 starts at $999,  and S20+ starts at $1199. Both will be available on March 6th.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra

Samsung also revealed the premium model in S20 lineup.

• 6.9-inch 120Hz QHD+ OLED display,
• Snapdragon 865 CPU,
• 12GB or 16GB of RAM,
• 128GB or 512GB of storage + microSD in S20+,
• 40MP Selfie camera
• Triple (108+48+12MP) rear camera system with additional depth camera,
• 5G compatible,
• 5000mAh battery.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra starts at $1399, and will be available on March 6th.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip

Samsung presented another foldable phone -  Galaxy Z Flip,  but it's not a successor to Galaxy Fold. Here is the spec:

• 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED main display,
• 1.1-inch Super AMOLED cover Display,
• Snapdragon 855+ CPU,
• 8GB of RAM,
• 256GB of storage,
• 10MP Selfie camera,
• Dual 12MP rear camera system,
• 3300mAh battery.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip costs $1,380 and launched on February 14th.

Xiaomi Mi 10

Despite of the Coronavirus outbreak in China, Xaomi managed to launch, at online-only event, the new flagship phones - Xiaomi Mi 10 & Mi 10Pro. Here is the spec of presented devices:

• 6.67-inch 90Hz AMOLED display,
• Snapdragon 865 CPU,
• 8 or 12GB of RAM,
• 128GB or 256GB of storage in Mi 10,
• 256GB or 512 of storage in Mi 10 Pro,
• 20MP Selfie camera
• Quad (108+12+8+20MP) rear camera system in Mi 10,
• Quad (108+12+2+2MP) rear camera system in Mi 10 Pro,
• 5G compatible,
• 4780mAh battery in Mi 10 & 4500mAh in Mi 10 Pro.

Xiaomi Mi 10 starts at ~$575 and will be available in China from February 14. Xiaomi Mi 10Pro  starts at ~$715 and will be available in China from February 18.

$450 production cost of PlayStation 5

According to Bloomberg manufacturing costs of the PlayStation 5 are around $450 per unit. The biggest reason for higher cost is limited supply and high prices of DRAM and NAND flash memories.

Dope links

• Swift Playgrounds for macOS
• Swift Package framework creation in Xcode
• How to Send Push Notifications to the iOS Simulator
• Full Stack Open 2019 - Deep Dive Into Modern Web Development
• GraphQL is Not "Better" Than REST
• What to Choose Between Gridsome and NuxtJS
• The guide to write universal, SSR-ready Vue components
• A Vue powered design tool that... exports Vue components
• Create a Reading Scroll Progress Bar for Your Blog in JavaScript and CSS
• How I recreated a Polaroid camera with CSS gradients only
• Spider-Man Developers Want More People to Know How Games Are Written
• Third Row Tesla Podcast – Elon Musk's Story - Director's Cut

Image credits: Samsung

Tesla Cybertruck

Tesla has revealed its new car. This time it is,  Blade Runner inspired, electric pickup truck called Cybertruck. There will be 3 versions available:

• Single motor rear-wheel drive with 250 miles of range, 7500-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 6.5 seconds. Starting at $39900.
• Dual motor all-wheel drive with 300 miles of range, 10,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 4.5 seconds. Starting at $49900.
• Triple motor all-wheel drive with 500 miles of range, 14,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 2.9 seconds. Starting at $69900.

All models are made of ultra-strong glass and polymer-layered composite that can withstand even bullets.  Also, all versions come with Autopilot, but "self-driving" costs additional $7000.

Cybertruck is available to preorder, but first models won't be delivered until late 2021.

Interesting links

• Understanding CORS
• You can create these elements without JavaScript
• Easily switch to Composition API in Vue.js 3
• Audio Processing for Dummies
• How to write a commit message
• Apple has locked me out of my developer account
• The future of my games on Apple (post-Catalina) and what this means for art games in general
• Microsoft Flight Simulator - Official Gameplay Trailer

Image credits: Tesla

More PlayStation 5 details

Wired published an article that shares more information about next-gen console. Here is the short summary:

• It has been officially confirmed that next console will be named PlayStation 5,
• It will be available for holidays 2020,
• CPU will be based on AMD’s Ryzen line and a GPU based on Navi family,
• It has been confirmed that ray-tracing support will be hardware based
• There will be no HDD only SSD,
• There will be 4K Blu-ray player,
• PS5 will use 100-GB optical disks,
• New data structure mechanism will allow gamers to install only single-player or multiplayer campaign instead of installing the whole game,
• There will be new system that will allow to check what players can do in games and quickly join in,
• New controller will be called DualShock 5,
• New controller will have "adaptive triggers" that offer varying levels of resistance, which can be adjusted to game we play,
• The force-feedback system is now based on haptic engines instead of rumble motors,
• Next-gen controller uses a USB Type-C connector for charging.

Apple's Sleep app confirmed in a leak

The App Store screenshots for the Alarms app for Apple Watch include text that mentions the rumored Sleep app. This is another confirmation that Apple is working on it. The Sleep app supposed to come with iOS 13, but was removed before iOS 13 beta was released.

If we take in consideration that battery life in Apple Watch Series 5 is worse than in previous model, it looks like that for the Sleep tracking we will have to wait till next year. If Apple won't be able to improve battery life software-wise, then we won't see it until new version of Apple Watch is released.

Interesting links

• Indie game makers open up about the money they actually make
• The Making of “The Aviator”: Animating a Basic 3D Scene with Three.js
• How to organize your Three.js code in a cleaner way
• Vue 3 – A roundup of infos about the new version of Vue.js
• Interview with a Pornhub Web Developer
• This Is What Happens When You Re-Upload a YouTube Video 1000 Times!
• What to do when you get Sherlocked by Apple

Image credits: LetsGoDigital