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

Samsung Unpacked

This week Samsung held the Unpacked event and unveiled couple of new devices.

Samsung Galaxy Note  20 & Note 20 Ultra

New flagships have been announced and this is how they look like:

• 6,7” (2400 x 1080 px) Super AMOLED in Note 20
• 6,9” (3200 x 1440 px) Dynamic AMOLED 2X 120 Hz in Note 20 Ultra
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus CPU
• 8GB or 12GB of RAM,
• 256 or 512 GB of storage
• Hole-punch 10 Mpix selfie camera,
• Tripple rear camera
• 12 Mpix + 64 Mpix (telefoto) + 12 Mpix (ultrawide) in Note 20
• 108 Mpix + 12 Mpix (telefoto) + 12 Mpix (ultrawide)  in Note 20 Ultra
• Fingerprint sensor built into the screen,
• Dual SIM: SIM + eSIM
• 5G capabilities
• 4300 mAh battery in Note 20 & 4500 mAh battery in Note 20 Ultra,
• Phones will be available in August starting  at $999.99.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2

Samsung still pursues the fold concept and announced the successor to famous Galaxy Fold phone.  The biggest change a full-size 6.2-inch screen that covers the entire front of the phone. This is really huge improvement  from is tiny external display that Galaxy Fold had. The main display is also bigger, at 7.6 inches and runs up to 120Hz. Also, the screen  doesn't have huge notch for camera, instead there is  a small hole-punch camera that takes up far less space. Internals of the device also have been upgraded and Z Fold 2 is powered by Snapdragon 865 Plus processor. Unfortunately we still don't know pricing or a release date.

Galaxy Watch 3

Samsungs also announced a new Watch, that has a heart-monitoring electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG), which has been cleared by the FDA similar to Apple Watch. It will be available for purchase starting on August 6th from $399.99.

Big companies fight Apple's AppStore policies

It looks like, Apple is under heavy fire not only from indie developers, but big tech giants as well. All rally agains Apple's AppStore policies.

Microsoft, after announcement that xCloud wouldn't be coming to iOS, fired back at Apple accusing them of treating gaming apps unfairly compared to other apps.

Facebook launched gaming app on iOS, but it doesn't have any games. All thanks to an App Store policy which bans streaming gaming services.

It doesn't look very good for Apple, especially when AppStore Policies are under investigation regarding antitrust concerns and anti-competitive behavior.

Apple updated iMacs

Apple updated the iMac lineup. The biggest change is Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake processors. The most awaited change is 1080p HD webcam, hopefully this upgrade will be introduced in other macs. Also,  SSDs are now standard across the line.

Also, iMac Pro has been refreshed. Now, the base model has the 10-core 3.0 GHz Xeon W chip that was previously an upgrade option.

Dope Links

• Views and Controls — The SwiftUI 2 Documentation You’ve Been Waiting for
• Custom Paging UI in SwiftUI
• Building a Multi-platform App with SwiftUI
• Animating complex shapes in SwiftUI & Morphing shapes in SwiftUI

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
  
  

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

Apple Gaming Computer

According to Taiwan's Economic Daily News Apple is going to announce a gaming computer during this year WWDC. The report claims that new machine may be a a laptop or all-in-one desktop with a price tag of up to $5,000. So basically it could be a new MacBook or an iMac.

This rumor is so sketchy on so many levels. First of all Apple, just released a brand new, large-screen, laptop that is arguably gaming capable. Second, both iMac and iMac Pro are long overdue for an update, so they might get a hardware upgrade around WWDC. Also, iMac Pro is VR capable, so, without a doubt, newer hardware will be more powerful.

Beside that, Apple is focusing on Apple Arcade, which has small Indie games. Those, compering to AAA titles, are not that demanding, and most of today's computers could run them easily.

So as you can see, I take this rumor with a grain of salt. But in every rumor there is a little bit of truth, and I believe we might get updated iMacs. But the updates will be related more with VR than traditional gaming.

Emoji engravings on AirPods

Since last year, customers could engrave their AirPods with custom text. This year Apple extended this option with emojis. Unfortunately the number of emojis is very limited, but it includes the most popular ones:  smiling face, thumb up, heart, dog, alien, and even poop.

This feature is very silly, but I have to admit that those emojis look pretty dope on the charging case.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite

Samsung announced the budget versions of 2019 flagships. They offer some the of premium features at more affordable price points, which at the moment are still unknown.

Here are the specs:

Galaxy S10 Lite

• 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display (2400 × 1080),
• CPU: Snapdragon 855,
• 6GB or 8GB of RAM,
• 32-megapixel f/2.2 front camera,
• Tripple lens rear camera:
  • 5-megapixel f/2.4 macro lens,
  • 48-megapixel F2.0 wide-angle lens,
  • 12-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide with a 123-degree angle lens,
• 128GB of storage,
• 4,500mAh battery.

Note 10 Lite

• 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display (2400 × 1080),
• CPU: Samsung’s Exynos 8895,,
• 6GB or 8GB of RAM,
• 32-megapixel f/2.2 front camera,
• Tripple lens rear camera:
  • 12-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide lens,
  • 12-megapixel f/1.7 wide-angle lens,
  • 12-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto lens,
• 128GB of storage,
• 4,500mAh battery,
• SPen for hand writing and controlling the phone.

Dope links

• Building Pager view in SwiftUI
• Vue v3.0.0-alpha.1 released
• What You Need to Know About Vue3 in 2020
• Vue 3 and Composition API by Alex Kyriakidis
• Collection of essential Vue Composition API utils works for Vue 2.x and v3.x
• Generating color schemas as a developer: A simple guide
• AirPods Pro Bluetooth Latency
• Every iOS wallpaper from 2007-2019
• Music used in Apple Ads
• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga - Official Announcement Trailer
• LEGO RC Solaris Urbino 18 Articulated Bus