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

Google IO

Google held its annual conference this week. This year, nothing revolutionary announced,  it was rather a presentation of an evolution of the current products. You can watch a recap here. Here is the short list of more interesting news:

• Google Assistant became smarter and faster,
• AR walking directions in Google Maps,
• New Pixel 3a was announced,
• Android Q gets dark mode,
• Smart screen became Google Nest,
• Duplex is coming to the web

From all the thing that's been shown I'm most impressed by the Google Assistant. As I tweeted earlier this week, it is lightyears ahead of Bixby, Siri or even Alexa. I wish Apple care about Siri as much as Google does with Assistant.

PowerBeats Pro

Tech reviewers started getting their hands on the new Beats earbuds. First impressions are very positive. PowerBeats Pro are the best Beats ever, but they have two major issues. One is pricing and the second is ery big charging case. I have already accepted the price, but the case is humongous. It will definitely not fit to the pocket, so you either need a backpack/bag to carry it or leave it at home.

Windows Now Comes with Linux

Microsoft will ship a full Linux kernel in Windows 10. Although Microsoft added multiple Linux Bashes to Windows over the years, this is a big surprise.

New Microsoft Edge released as a preview

Microsoft has released a preview of their new browser powered with Chromium engine. Right now it is available only on macOS. I run a quick test with Tatooine.live. So far, this site worked properly only on Chrome, now it also works, without any issues, on Edge for Mac.

What's even more interesting, this is the first Microsoft's browser on the Mac since Safari replaced Internet Explorer over 15 years ago.

New Star Wars Movies

Disney has announced the release dates for its upcoming movies, including Star Wars. Right now, only new trilogy has been announced with following releases:

• Part 1 - Christmas 2022
• Part 2 - Christmas 2024
• Part 3 - Christmas 2026

So, after Episode 9, there will be no Star Wars movies for 3 years. Hopefully the new TV shows will fill the gap. Right now, we know nothing about this trilogy, but we know about 2 potential projects:

• Rian Johnson trilogy,
• D.B. Weiss and David Benioff (Game of Thrones showrunners) project in the Old Republic era.

No spinoff has been announced, which is disappointing, because I'm waiting for Kenobi movie.

Spider-Man: Far From Home Trailer

Roughly two weeks after Avengers Endgame premiere, the new Spider-Man trailer hit the web. The trailer shows the aftermath of the events from the Endgame and it looks like it's opening the Multiverse  for the Phase 4.

Interesting Links

• Former Google engineer reveals the secret YouTube plot to kill Internet Explorer 6
• Minecraft Classic in a browser
• Proxx - minesweeper in a browser
• Real Time Flight Map w/ Azure Functions, CosmosDB & SignalR
• Tinder’s move to Kubernetes
• Real-time satellite imagery on your desktop with Downlink
• How Dead Cells Secretly Stops You From Dying | Audio Logs
• How Idle Heroes made $100M in a Year
• A new (and easy) way to hide content accessibly
• 99 point checklist for web designers
• 4 reasons your z-index isn’t working (and how to fix it)
• Best Practices for Mobile Payment Experiences
• The curious case of the disappearing Polish S

Image credits: Gogole

Avengers Engame

This week, Marvel released the final chapter of the Avengers. This is a culmination of the story that was 11 years in a making and took 22 movies to tell. During that time those movies evolved from small experiment into pop-culture phenomenon. That being said, the directors, Russo brothers, had almost impossible task to finish all the stories,  meet fans' expectations and lay the foundation for the Phase 4.  I have to admit, I was worried whether they would be able to do it, but they did it. After watching it, I can say with certainty that this is the perfect culmination of the Marvel's Phase 1-3 movies. After leaving the cinema I was fulfilled. Russo brothers not only close the storyline, but they also incorporated so many references to previous movies and comics, that is was overwhelming.  Every nerd will have something to talk about for weeks.

This is not the perfect movie, but  it  gives us closure, and that was what I wanted from this movie.

Samsung Galaxy Fold

Last week I was writing about broken review units. This week we got first reviews and even a teardown. As I said last week, this phone is still a prototype with many small issues. They are not anything major, but it looks like they might be irritating in long run. I hope Samsung is taking notes and the next model will be true folded phone.

Another AirPods in 2019?

There are rumors that Apple will release a brand new AirPods later this year. New model is supposed to have a noise-canceling feature as well as new form-factor. Those rumors are really interesting especially after Apple's AirPods update in last March. Although, in March we go merely a hardware refresh, when all previous rumors hinted new colors, materials and features including noise-cancellation, so maybe we will get a brand new AirPods after all.

Interesting links

• Guide to the Star Wars' Alphabet Aurebesh
• The transition into Fisk Tower in Spider-Man's intro mission
• Introduction to WebAuthn API
• Crafting a Command Line Experience that Developers Love
• The downsides of JSON for config files
• What is a File Descriptor?
• Great developers are raised, not hired

This week I want to try a different approach to weekly digest. Instead of trying to keep it as one coherent piece, today, I will break it into separate sections. I believe this will make it more clear to see what actually happened each week and it should also make writing it easier. Those are the goals I want to verify with this little experiment.

Powerbeats Pro

One weeks after Apple's new AirPods release, Beats announced new truly wireless Powerbeats Pro. We knew they were coming, but now it is official, and we have the launch date. They are coming in May, in 20 countries, for about $250. Here are some features of the new earbuds:

• up tp 9 hours of listening time,
• Apple's H1 chip with for quick connection and hands-free “Hey Siri”,
• Sweat and watter resistant,
• Physical and programmable control buttons,
• Automatic pause and resume,
• Charging case, which work similarly to AirPods' case,
• 23% smaller and 17% lighter than its predecessor,
• Come in 4 colors: Black, Ivory, Moss and Navy.

The are a little pricey, but I'm waiting for them.
I was waiting patiently for sport version of the AirPods, but they've never come. Also, when I was fitting the AirPods, they were loose in my ears, so they would probably fall during the training. Powerbeats doesn't have this problem as they were design for athletes.
Beside the price, there is one more thing I don't like. It is the lightning jack on the charging case. I really wished Apple/Beats would finally switched to USB-C with all their products.

Visual Studio 2019

Microsoft has released the next version of its main development IDE. For me, the new IntelliSense powered by an AI is mind-blowing. Also live sharing built into the IDE looks awesome. There are many more new features and improvements, which you can check here.

Cloudflare free VPN

Cloudflare has added free VPN into its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver app. What's interesting this is not a traditional VPN service. Usually the main reason we use VPNs it to trick websites and services into thinking wee are accessing them from a different location. That's no the case with Cloudflare’s service. Instead, the VPN works behind the scenes to increase speed and privacy.
This is different approach, but as long as it is keeping us safe I approve it.

List of interesting things

• VueSolitaire
• Super Charrio Kart
• Vue PWA example
• Vue.js Kanban Board Part I with PWA features in Part II
• How to Fix the Refresh Button When Using Service Workers
• Konami Code Fun: Adding Cheat Codes to your Website
• Libraries Used in the Top 100 iOS Apps
• 5 Tools To Speed Up Your App Development
• Why I Replaced Disqus and You Should Too
• The worst volume control UI in the world
• GDC 2019 Vault
• The Twelve-Factor App
• The first iPhone prototype: an exclusive look at Apple’s red M68
• The MacBook keyboard fiasco is way worse than Apple thinks
• Windows 10 Hero Desktop Image - Behind the Scenes
• Mathigon

Image credits: Apple.

This was definitely Apple's week. It all started on Monday with special event. This time it was focused on various services.

Let's start with Apple News+. Apple News has been around since 2015. The idea was to gather and curate high quality news and articles in a one place. And on the paper it sounds good, but it has never convinced me to jump on board and replace my RSS reader. Actually it was quite the opposite. But this time the Plus version looks interesting. For $9.99 a month we get access to 100 magazines, which is quite a good deal. Unfortunately there are 2 main issues with this service. First of all, for the foreseeable future, it will be available only in US and Canada. The second issue is the quality, right now those magazines are just PDFs, so there is no dynamic content we used have e.g. in iBooks or in some articles in standard Apple News.

The second service was a completely surprise. Apple introduced their own Credit card based on Apple Pay technology. The card has no additional charges and quite impressive cashback options.
This credit card sounded really nice and it would be if it was purely virtual. But Apple based this card on physical Mastercard. Don't get me wrong, this card is still really good deal especially with cashback rates, but I would love to see something even safer than traditional card connected to Apple Pay.

The next presented service was the Apple Arcade. This is game subscription which will allow to play various games without worrying about ads or microtransactions. It is something similar to Xbox Gold or PlayStation Plus. Nothing impressive here, just another way to make more money on AppStore.

The last service was Apple TV+. And we all knew what to expect here. Basically this is Apple take on Netflix. For now, Apple presented couple of original shows, with quite impressive group of people behind those series. So far they have Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams and even Oprah Winfrey. We will see whether those shows will be worth watching.
Beside original shows, Apple TV+ will also allow, at least in US, to customize the list of TV channels we watch. Normally, we have to buy them in bundle, but here we will pay only for those channels we watch. This is cool idea and might bring quite a lot of people to Apple TV.
And the last thing, Apple TV is no longer a physical device, it will also be an app for iOS and macOS.

We all thought that the special event was the end of Apple related news for this week, but on Friday Apple announced that they canceled the AirPower mat. This was a big surprise, especially after all the teasing, code samples in iOS, and even recently the marketing materials.
Well it's sad to see that Apple was not able to pull off an engineering miracle, but it is good to see that Apple admitted the failure.

That's it for this week. If you are interested, please check out those cool things.

A web based Windows XP desktop recreation!

Why can't bots check “I am not a robot” checkboxes?

Build a Progressive Web App In VueJs, from Zero to Hero! Part I

Build a Progressive Web App In VueJs, from Zero to Hero! Part II — The Service Worker

Things nobody ever taught me about CSS

GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE 2019 LINKS

Marvel's Spider-Men Technical Postmortem

Q2VKPT

Image credits: T.C. Sottek.