This week we also start with Apple news, rumors to be precise. We all anticipating the March event, but the question is what Apple would present. The iOS 12.2 beta unveiled a little bit of the secret. It looks like new (smaller) iPads are coming as well as new iPod touch. iPads are not a surprise but the iPod Touch is, I thought Apple has already killed iPod line.
So far we don't have any rumors regarding iPhone SE replacement, AirPower or new AirPods, except that the latter should be released in the first half of 2019.

Speaking of Apple rumors, new reports suggest that iOS 13 will get a major redesign. The last time iOS got one of those was iOS 7 and since then Apple was perfecting its clean design. I personally doubt that we will see any drastic changes in terms of graphic design, but we might get new ways to interact with the operating system. As Apple plans to combine iOS and macOS apps into one with project Marcepan we definitely will see some changes.

iFixit unveiled a new flow in MacBooks and called it Flexgate. Apparently the ribbon that connects the display with the motherboard is being pulled out when display is open, causing cables to tear over time. This issue is known to all generations of the MacBook Pros with Touch Bar. This is the design flow which Apple hasn't acknowledged yet. Which is not surprising, to fix this problem the entire display must be replaced and such repair cost about $600. Well, if this is a common problem, another law suite is waiting for Apple as well as another repair action.

That's all for this week, if you want more, here is the list of interesting things.

30th anniversary of the Macintosh

Avoiding conflicts between developers and marketers

Open source Eva icons as Vue components

Here are some super secret VS Code hacks to boost your productivity

Image credits: iFixit.

During this week I looked back on what happened this year and I decided to pick my top 3 news from each month. Here are my picks.

January

1. Bitcoin bubble burst,
2. Meltdown and Spectre discovered,
3. EA became scared of YouTubers.

February

1. SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy into space,
2. Elon Musk started selling not a Flamethrowers,
3. Apple started selling HomePods.

March

1. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal,
2. Apple fixed buggy iPhone X ad before fixing the actual iOS 11 bug,
3. Current frequency deviations in Central Europe.

April

1. Mark Zuckerberg testified before members of Congress,
2. SpaceX reached the promised land of launching every two weeks,
3. GTA V has become the most profitable entertainment product of all time.

May

1. Google Duplex has been announced,
2. GDPR has become effective,
3. Premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

June

1. Microsoft bought GitHub,
2. Apple held WWDC,
3. Apple Pay became available in Poland.

July

1. Apple updated MacBook Pros,
2. New MacBook Pros fixed keyboard but overheats,
3. Clone Wars TV series has been renewed.

August

1. Apple became first IT company to be worth 1 trillion dollars,
2. Twitter limited access to the APIs,
3. CD Project released first gameplay of the Cyberpunk 2077.

September

1. Apple unveiled iPhone XS, XR and Apple Watch 4,
2. Google was celebrating its 20th birthday,
3. iOS 12 and macOS Mojave has been released.

October

1. LucasFilm shared details about first Star Wars tv series - The Mandalorian,
2. Apple shoved new iPad Pro,
3. Google unveiled Pixel 3, a tablet and HomeHub.

November

1. Disney announced new streaming service - Disney+,
2. Stan Lee has passed away,
3. Robert Kubica returned to F1.

December

1. Microsoft announced that it's working on a new browser,
2. YouTube Rewind 2018 became the most disliked video on YouTube,
3. Google’s Home Alone ad.

That's all folks. This was an incredible year. I hope next year will be event better.
Happy New year guys and see you soon!

Image credits: Annie Spratt.

This week Stan Lee has passed away at the age 95. He lived wonderful life and left us his great legacy in form of superheroes: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Daredevil, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, The X-Men, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four.
We have lost a great visioner and storyteller, but today his creations are more popular than ever. He and his life's work will be remembered by many generations.
Rest in piece Stan Lee.

In terms of the tech news nothing special happened, so I just prepared the list of more interesting news:

• Facebook executives forced to use Android phones by Mark Zuckerberg,
• Spotify released Apple Watch app,
• Pokemon: Let's go has been release on Nintendo Switch.

As this week was pretty boring, maybe this list of cool things will be more interesting.

Gogs: a painless self-hosted Git service

web.dev - the ultimate resource for developers

What Web Can Do Today

To www or not to www – Should you use www or not in your domain?

My App Is Dead in the Water

Creating iOS 12 Shortcuts with JavaScript and Shortcuts JS

Emoji Builder

Image credits: Wikimedia.

At the beginning of this week, Apple finally released the iOS 12. The new version of the mobile operating system contains plenty new features and improvements:

• Better performance especially for displaying keyboard or opening apps,
• Better battery usage information
• Screen time - tool that allows to track how much time we spent using particular app,
• Grouped notifications - now, notification from the same app are grouped together,
• New Animiji and Memoji - I think this doesn't need explanation 😛,
• Grouped FaceTime - finally you can call multiple people,
• Improved AR capabilities including new Measure app or AR elements in the News app
• Shortcuts - tool for automating common task. With Siri this is very powerful, but so far underrated feature,
• Siri suggestions - Siri show suggest what can we do based on what are we currently doing,
• CarPlay supports third-party apps,
• Location is automatically shared with 911 and first responders,
• Do not disturb during bedtime - a new mode of the phone which will hide all notifications when we are sleeping,
• Password Manager API - this allows password managers to fill your passwords right from the keyboard without switching between apps.

This release is not revolutionary, but brings couple of long awaited improvements, so I encourage you to update your devices.

With premiere of the iOS 12, we also got a new Beta version of the next release. Of course people were looking for new leaks and they found couple of interesting thing about upcoming iPad Pro:

• No home button
• Face ID (with support for both portrait and landscape)
• No notch
• Probably USB-C port instead of lightning

If those rumors are true, then I can't wait to see new iPhone next year. Hopefully without notch and finally with USB-C.

On Tuesday, Marvel released first trailer of the Captain Marvel movie. Movie is set in 90s and tell the story of Kara Danvers, who becomes one of the most powerful superheros in Marvel universe.
Speaking of Marvel universe, Disney is planning Loki and Scarlet Witch TV shows. Also, there are rumors that Disney is planning to create more TV series for characters who don't have their own movies. If any show is created, it will be for upcoming Disney's streaming platform.
I must admit, creating a TV show in popular franchise is a great strategy for promoting the new streaming platform. Let's face it, Disney owns most of the franchises, so they have plenty of material to use. They already confirmed that there will be Star Wars TV show created by Jon Favreau.

As we are talking about Star Wars. Disney's CEO, Bog Iger, said that they are going to slow down with Star Wars franchise.
Since 2015 we had 4 movies. First two movies have been huge success, especially commercially. But last two have been disappointing, they felt rushed. They also, have been confusing for the fans because we had movies from the trilogy interspersed with with anthologies, where fans have been expecting continuation like in Marvel movies.
I love Star Wars, and I would love to see new movie every year, but if we can get movies that are better quality then I can wait.

Last but not least, here is the list of interesting things.

iOS 12: The MacStories Review

Microcopy Inspirations

Why does the Zune HD have the message “For our Princess” on the inside of the case, and why is she a princess?

Dependency Management for iOS projects with the Swift package manager

Code to go - Find up to date snippets for common JavaScript use cases

TinyLETTER

This week was really uneventful. The only interesting thing was the Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 event, where new Note 9 has been announced, as well as new smart speaker - Galaxy Home. Also, Samsung has rebranded the Gear watches into Galaxy Watches so now we have entire Galaxy family of devices.
Samsung has also announced the partnership with Spotify. Now Samsung users can make Spotify the default music player across its devices.

Speaking of Samsung. One of the most popular games of last couple of months - Fortnite - was launched on Android... exclusively on recent Samsung Galaxy devices.
Last week we got news that Fortnite is not going to be available through Google Play Store. This week Epic Games dropped the bomb that it will be Samsung's exclusive at launch.
The rumors say that the exclusivity will last less than a month, but it still feels wrong.

That's it. As I said this was uneventful week. Now, the only thing left is to share the list of interesting articles.

Ray Tracing - Part 1

DX12 Ray Tracing Tutorials

Building Fluid Interfaces

Vue CLI 3.0 is here!

How I Built a Google Docs Imitation

Argon - A beautiful Design System for Bootstrap 4

Image credits: Samsung.