Introducing DualSense the New Wireless Game Controller for PlayStation5

Microsoft Edge Is Now More Popular Than Firefox | Digital Trends

The web has changed a lot over the years, and so has the way we use it. The thing that hasn’t changed? The web browser, the tool every one of us depends on. Here’s why it’s well past time for new ideas.

Digital TrendsArif Bacchus

Play Stadia Pro for free, starting today

Video games are a great way to socialize while at home, so we’re giving gamers in 14 countries free access to Stadia Pro for two months.

GooglePhil Harrison

Disney Plus surpasses 50 million subscribers

The international rollout of Disney Plus in a number of countries has helped it roll past the 50 million subscriber mark, the company has announced. To compare, Netflix has 167 million subscribers worldwide.

The VergeJulia Alexander

Leaker Claims New 13-inch MacBook Pro Coming as Soon as Next Month

Apple will announce a new 13-inch MacBook Pro in May with the codename J223, according to a rumor shared by YouTuber and leaker Jon Prosser. ...

MacRumorsTim Hardwick

No one’s getting new emoji in 2021 because of the pandemic

The Unicode Consortium says it’s delaying the release of emoji in 2021 and will be pushing back the schedule until 2022. This means the deadline to submit new emoji goes until September 1st.

The VergeAshley Carman

Google extends free access to advanced teleconferencing features to September 30th

Google has announced that it will extend free access to some advanced Google Meet features to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers until September 30th. Previously, Google said it would offer free access until July 1st.

The VergeJay Peters

Apple and Google partner on COVID-19 contact tracing technology

Apple and Google announce a joint effort to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy central to the design.

Apple Newsroom

Cyberpunk 2077’s DLC will be revealed before release, CD Projekt suggests | VGC

Company says it’s planning “no less” DLC than it released for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Video Games ChronicleAndy Robinson

iOS 14,  iPadOS 14, watchOS 7 details leaked

Couple of details leaked about upcoming operating systems and new Apple's products:

iOS

• Over-ear headphones with AirPods feature are coming,
• iPhone SE 2 will have TouchID,
• AirTag might have removable battery,
• Home screen will get list view for the apps,
• New augmented reality app will display detail information about real objects,
• 3rd-party apps will be able to integrate their wallpapers with the system
• HomeKit will be able to change the color temperature of lights throughout a day.

iPadOS

• Smart keyboards with trackpads are in the works,
• iPad Pro might have triple camera system,
• Extended support for mouse pointers,
• New OCR system capable to detect text written with Apple Pencil

watchOS

• Sharing watch faces with friends & family,
• Watch face with tachymeter,
• Watch face with country flags,
• Photo watch face could be made not only out of single photos, but entire albums as well,
• Parental controls,
• Sleep tracking app,
• Blood oxygen tracking,
• WatchOS apps will be no longer be based on extensions.

New MacBooks

According to Ming-Chi Ku, couple of new MacBooks will be released in upcoming months:

1. 14- inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air with Scissor Keyboards will come in second quarter,
2. MacBooks with ARM processor will come in late 2020 or early 2021.

Google Pixel 4a

New details regarding upcoming budget phone have surfaced:

• 5.8-inch (2340 x 1080) display,
• Snapdragon 730 CPU,
• 4GB or 6GB of RAM,
• Hole-punch selfie camera,
• Single 12-megapixel rear camera,
• Fingerprint sensor on the back,
• 3.5mm headphone jack,
• support for dual-sim in 6GB model,
• 3080mAh battery,
• Phone will be available in April starting  at $399.

Coronavirus vs conferences #3

This week another conferences have been affected by coronavirus:

• E3 2020 joined has been cancelled,
• Microsoft's Build 2020 has been converted to online-only event,
• WDDC 2020 will be an online experience.

Dope Links

• Drawing In SwiftUI – A Comprehensive Guide
• Integrating MapKit with SwiftUI
• Avoiding massive SwiftUI views
• How to create Activity Ring in SwiftUI
• Class-only Protocols: class or AnyObject
• Google's Swift Style Guide
• Getting started with Vue & Apollo GraphQL
• Here is what Cloudflare Workers do
• is it canceled yet?
• Re-imagining the Windows Experience

Image credits: the Hacker 34

Apple Rumors

This week there was plenty of rumors regarding Apple:

• iPhone SE/9 is entering final stages of production,
• 14.1-inch MacBook Pro is on its way,
• Apple is working on iMac, MacBooks Pro and iPads with mini-LED displays.

Coronavirus vs Conferences

Google informed that Google IO 2020 is cancelled. Event was planned for May of this year. Similarly to previous conference cancelations, the reason is Coronavirus outbreak.

Also, Santa Clara County, asked big tech companies to cancel all upcoming big events. It means that Apple's WWDC might not happen this year, or it will be replaced by an online event.

Dope Links

• Swift ArgumentParser
• Writing command line interfaces for iOS apps
• Swift Package Continuous Integration Guide
• Improve your Xcode (Swift) Compile Time
• Made a couple apps in three months, SwiftUI is a blast to learn. Zero Programming experience. Would love feedback. Lessons learned so far.
• Apple Debugging
• iOS Developer interview questions 2020
• Hosting a site with docker+nginx+certbot+wildcard certs
• How to estimate time for a project/task accurately
• Curiosity's 1.8-Billion-Pixel Panorama of Mars
  
  

Apple Event at the end of March?

According to German site iPhone-ticker.de, Apple is going to hold a Media Event on March 31st. At this event Apple is supposed to unveil iPhone SE2 (iPhone 9), new iPad Pro and AirTag.

Windows 10 icons redesigned

Microsoft has started rolling out new colorful app icons in Windows 10. New Icons are part of the Fluent Design that Microsoft has been working for years now.  So far Mail and Calendar apps has been updated; rest of the core apps will be refreshed over upcoming months.

Android 11 Preview

Google has released first developer preview of the Android 11. At the moment preview is available only for selected Pixel phones.

Android 11 offers new capabilities for developers, like enhancements for foldables and 5G, call-screening APIs, new media and camera capabilities, machine learning, and more.

Dope Links

• Results of the iOS Developer Community Survey
• Tobias Due Munk - Prototyping Custom UI in SwiftUI
• Optional SwiftUI views
• Managing toolchains in Xcode
• Advanced localization techniques in Vue.js
• Vue.js: The Documentary -  Trailer
• The React Cheatsheet for 2020 📄‬ (+ real-world examples)
• GuiJS
• Add dark mode to your website with just a few lines of code
• DistroTest.net - The first online operating system tester

Faking trafic jam on Google Maps

Google Maps monitors traffic data using various sources, including phones with location services turned on.  Sam Wecker tricked Google Maps and created virtual traffic jam by walking through empty streets of Berlin with 99 second-hand phones loaded on a small wagon.

Google is aware of this flaw and, in response to 9to5Google, stated that they liked the idea, and hope that it will somehow improve the service.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip leaked

A video showing upcoming Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip has been shared on Twitter. Phone itself looks more like a traditional flip phone that folds up into a compact device. There is not much information about this phone, but here is what we know so far based on the leaks:

• It will have 6.1- inch foldable main screen,
• Smaller screen on the back for clock & notifications,
• Front facing camera built into the main screen,
• Double camera system on the back.

The Galaxy Z Flip is expected to be revealed at Samsung's Unpacked event on February 11.

GeForce Now finally released

Nvidia's game streaming service -  GeForce Now - left the beta and is finally available for everyone. At the moment, players can choose one of two tiers:

Free

• Play session is limited to 1 hour,
• Raytracing is disabled.

Founders

• Costs $4.99 a month,
• Unlimited play time,
• Priority access to servers,
• Raytracing is available.

GeForce Now allows to play already purchased games from Steam, Uplay, and Epic Store. The list of compatible games is impressive.

At the moment, the client is available for Windows, macOS i Android, but Nvidia also plans to release the PWA version.

Microsoft forgot to renew a certificate, again

Microsoft Teams went down for nearly three hours after Microsoft forgot to renew a critical security certificate. Teams users couldn't sign into the service because the app was failing to establish an HTTPS connection to Microsoft’s servers.

This is not Microsoft's first incident with expired certificate. In 2013,  Microsoft Azure was not available for couple of hours.

AMD Powered macs?

New beta of macOS 10.15.4 Catalina continues to reference the AMD processors. Those references could mean one of couple of things:

• Apple is just playing with AMD's hardware and there is nothing more to the story,
• AMD's CPU and GPU will power rumored gaming computer,
• Apple is going to replace Intel's chips with AMD ones in future iMacs and MacBooks.

Dope Links

• Introducing Swift Crypto
• Creating a macOS App - SwiftUI Tutorials by Apple
• SwiftUI for Mac - Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3  & Extras
• Using UIKit views in SwiftUI
• SwiftUI basic Shape operations
• How to integrate Vue and Asp.Net Core 3.1 app using VS Code
• Improved accessible routing in Vue.js
• UVue - Server Side Rendering (SSR) for VueJS
• Microsoft Announces Playwright Alternative to Puppeteer
• 2020 Java Technology Report
• Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust
• Diagrams: A Brand New Diagram Editor for Mac
• Setting Up Your Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
• One year ago I shared my highest resolution picture of our moon. Last night I created an improved version, combining 140,000 pictures
• On 21 January a fireball meteor crashed to Earth causing a cascade of bright light to trail through the sky
  

Image credits: Google Maps