Half year mark is behind us and we have entered the silly season as nothing important is happening. From worth noting news, Apple and Samsung have finally settled a seven-year-old patent dispute. The dispute was about design patents which covered the iPhone's outer shell, software icons and UI elements. Apple sued Samsung in 2011 starting the long battle with many countersuits, trials and appeals that continued up until now.
The companies did not disclose the settlement amount, but in May Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $539 million for infringing on its patents.

Apple is also planning to release completely new version of Maps. The changes will roll out gradually with iOS 12 Beta. At the beginning Maps will cover San Francisco, then California and should cover rest of US at some point next year.
We don't know when new maps will be introduced in other countries, but Eddy Cue said that Maps team is global, which means that eventually we will get new Maps outside US.
It took Apple a while to do those improvements, but it's good to see that Apple is investing in Maps. Beside, Google is not making Apple's life easier with new improvements to Google Maps putting the comparison bar really high.

Now, lets move on to Star Wars topic. Amy Hennig left EA and the project she was working on has been put on hold. Last October EA closed Visceral, but it kept project alive. Development was to continue at EA Vancouver, but it looks like studio is working on something else.
It has been rough few years for Star Wars players. First, the Star Wars 1313 has been canceled. Then we've had shenanigans with Battlefront 2. Now, the third project is on hold. We've been teased with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, but I'm afraid that without specific release date, it might share the fate of the previous projects.

And finally, here is list of interesting articles.

The Problem You Solve Is More Important Than The Code You Write 🔊

How We Created a Virtual Crime Scene to Investigate Syria’s Chemical Attack

Why you should not use Google Cloud

How to build a React.js chat app in 10 minutes

How to create a real-world Node CLI app with Node

Extracting Super Mario Bros levels with Python

Code Injection In Swift

What’s new in Xcode 10?

Ui Goodies - A directory of UI resources

DevTube - The best developer videos in one place

Image credits: Sylwia Bartyzel.

We've updated our privacy policy. This is the sentence we've seen too many times in recent days. It is funny to see how companies comply to GDPR. Most of the companies just updated the privacy policies. Some companies have stopped providing services for EU users. An interesting approach has been taken by USA Today. They've prepared a separate version of their website for EU users. What's interesting, the EU version doesn't have any tracking and ad scripts, so the size of the site has been reduced from 5.2MB to ~500KB.
Fortunately the GDPR is finally here, all companies must to comply to new law. but it looks like some of them have not managed to do that. Google and Facebook have already been hit with a lawsuits with total fine set to about 7.6 billion euro.

This week we also had a premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story. It is good summer blockbuster movie. If you are a Star Wars fans, you will enjoy it much more. The number of references to Expanded Universe and ester eggs is stunning. Ron Howard managed to create a fast paced and funny origin story of Han Solo and Chewbacca. Watching it, you can fell a climate of old adventure movies from 80's. In terms of acting, many people has been worried about Alden Ehrenreich. It turns out that he was really good, natural. But let be honest, the show has been stolen by Donald Glover. His portrayal of Lando was spot on.
I really enjoyed this movie and I can't want to see it again.

And here is list of interesting things.

Immersive linear algebra

Best Visual Studio Code Extensions

Adobe Photoshop Souce Code

Best iOS hacks from Twitter: March & April Edition

An iOS architecture approach for UIViewController states & error management in Swift

Google announced that is making their storage service cheaper. The Google Drive, we have right now, will become a part of the Google One.
Google One will start from a $2.99 a month plan for 200GB of storage. The 2TB option will cost $9.99 a month. This plan is really appealing, usually it costs about $20, now we'll get it for half a price. There will be no 1TB option, which is a little bit disappointing. Personally I don't need 2TB of cloud storage. The 1TB option would be more than enough, and if take the new prices it would cost about $5 which would be awesome.

Adobe announced the Starter Plan for Adobe XD. Adobe XD is great tool for designing and prototyping UIs and now it is free. With free plan we get the same tools as in premium version. Of course the are limits, and those comes to the number of prototypes we can work at a time. Free users can work on only one shared project at a time.
I personally think this is great. Now, with integration with Sketch and Photoshop and free tier, it became a product that we should keep an eye on.

Tapbots released a new version of TweetBoot. Tweetbot 3 for Mac is a brand new iteration of one of the best - if not the best - Twitter clients out there. The new version is not a revolution, but it comes with nice features like new sidebar, new media player and night mode. This looks like a solid update so I highly recommend getting one, especially if you haven't used Tweetbot before.

Vapor 3.0.0 has been released. Vapor is a web framework written in Swift. Maybe it's not the most popular framework out there, but it is the best tool if you want to create highly performant backend in Swift.

And here is the list of interesting articles.

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

Clean iOS Localizable Files

Tables & Collections with type-safe declarative approach

Restful Web API using ASP.NET Core 2.0 with MSSQL (using Dapper)

A Simple Guide to ES6 Promises

Supporting React Native at Pinterest

Image credits: Google.

Last week we had F8 from Facebook, this week we got 2 more conferences - Build from Microsoft and Google IO. Microsoft focused on integrations and IoT:

• iOS and Android can sync with Windows
• Cartana and Alexa can work together
• Timeline for iOS and Android
• Microsoft will pay developers up to 95% of the revenue
• Sets and new Alt-Tab
• Kinnect brought to the cloud
• Azure IoT Edge
• Microsoft Graph
• Mixed reality comes to the workplaces
• Visual Studio Live Share Public Preview
• .NET Core 2.1 RC1
• .Net Core 3 will support Windows Desktop Applications

Next day, Google showed us:

• Android P
• New Google Assistant Voices
• Google Duplex
• Smart displays with Google Assistant
• Gmail with intelligent auto completion
• Google Maps gets social features and augmented reality
• Google photos get new editing features
• Google News
• Ability to copy text from real world objects

Now, we know what 3 of 4 biggest IT companies are up to, Apple will unveil its plans during WWDC next month.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the iMac. Personally I'm not a big fan of the iMac line, but without a doubt this machine changed the way how people perceive personal computers.

Speaking of Apple computers. On Friday a class action lawsuit was filed in federal court. Apple is accused of knowing about flows and defects in MacBook Pro's keyboard before it launched in 2015.
Last week we saw report about high number of keyboard failures in MacBook Pro, so this lawsuit was just a matter of time. As this "keyboard gate" is developing rapidly I will keep an eye on this matter with a great interest.

Also this week we had a premiere of the Solo: A Star Wars Story. The first reactions are positive, saying that the movie is funny. It looks like Lucasfilm did it again, even with directors swap in the middle of shooting.

As we are on the topic of Star Wars, Jon Favreau give us a couple of news about his upcoming live action TV series. It will be set about 7 years after battle of Endor. It will introduce brand new characters. The technology used for the Jungle Book and Lion King will also be used to make the TV show.

As for the interesting links, I only have one - E3 2018 conference schedule.

Image credits: Google.

At the beginning of this week, Facebook hold the F8 developer conference. Let's face it, this year edition was in shadow of Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Nevertheless, Facebook announced couple of interesting things:

• Tool for removing cookies,
• Third party apps will go through the review process,
• Dating app built into Facebook,
• WhatsApp is getting stickers and group video calls,
• Instagram is getting integration with 3rd party apps,
• Oculus Go.

Also this week, AppleInsider presented report showing that 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard is failing twice as frequently as older models. I'm working on such MacBook Pro for over a year and I must admit, those stats don't surprise me. It has one of the worst keyboards I ever worked with.

Google and GitHub made one step closer to safer Internet. Google launched .app domains with HTTPS built-in. GitHub added HTTPS support for custom domains on GitHub Pages.

And finally, here is the list of cool things.

Portrait in pure CSS
Diana Adrianne did amazing female portrait using only css.

What's new in Swift
This site explains Swift new features. What's cool about this site, it contains changes and features introduced in every version of the Swift - since version 1.0 up to current release (4.2). Thanks to this, you can select your current stack and gradually move to newer versions.

How to make meetings (with your client) more effective
I know, putting my own article here is a little bit selfish, but screw this. I think it is worth reading, so I'm gonna promote it.

Image credits: Facebook.