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

One connector to rule them all

EU lawmakers voted overwhelmingly (540-40) in favor for rules that would establish a common charger standard for mobile devices. It has not been decided which connector is the chosen one, but proposed charging ports include Micro-USB, USB-C and the Lightning connector. Looking at the already wide adoption of the USB-C, it's rather safe to say that it will be chosen. Fortunately, we won't have to wait long for the decision, the European Commission should adopt new rules by July.

Apple wants to make SMS one-time codes safer

Apple's WebKit team published a proposal to change the format of SMS one-time passcodes. The idea is to make the two-factor authentication process more secure. The proposal describes two ideas to achieve that:

1. SMS one-time passcodes would be associated with a URL. It would be achieved by simply adding the website's URL to the SMS itself,
2. Standardized format of two-factor authentication SMS code would allow applications to detect passcodes; automatically extract them, and complete the login process without further user interaction.

Here is an example of such SMS message:

011970 is your Brain Archives authentication code.
@brainarchives․com #011970

So far Apple and Google have backed the proposal.

iOS 14 to support the same iPhones as iOS 13

According to French website iPhonesoft, iOS 14 will be compatible with all iPhones supported by iOS 13,  including:

• iPhone 11,  11 Pro & 11 Pro Max,
• iPhone XS & XS Max,
• iPhone XR,
• iPhone X,
• iPhone 8 & 8 Plus,
• iPhone 7 & 7 Plus,
• iPhone 6S & 6S Plus,
• iPhone SE,
• iPod touch (7th generation).

As for the iPads, iPhonesoft informs that iOS14 will drop support for the iPad mini 4, and will support following devices:

• 12.9-inch iPad Pro,
• 11-inch iPad Pro,
• 10.5-inch iPad Pro,
• 9.7-inch iPad Pro,
• iPad 7th, 6th & 5th   generation,
• iPad mini (5th generation),
• iPad Air (3rd generation).

iPad turned 10

This week is the 10th anniversary of the original iPad announcement. iPad supposed to become the "post PC" device that would replace personal computers. 10 years later, we know it hasn't done that yet, but current generation of iPads and iPadOS is closer than ever. Although, tablets hasn't become as popular as smartphones, iPad helped Apple take over this market.

Google's new business communicator

According to report from The Information Google is working on a new communicator for workplaces, that will combine the part of GSuite functionality, like Gmail Google Drive & Hangouts.

Dope links

• Atomic property wrapper in Swift
• Translucent “Now Playing” Bar
• iOS App Security: Best Practices
• Post Mortem: App Store Outage on January 24th, 2020
• React Native is the Future of Mobile at Shopify
• Intro to PWAs and Service Workers
• Introducing Yarn 2 ! 🧶🌟
• TypeOfNaN JavaScript Quizzes
• A long list of (advanced) JavaScript questions, and their explanations ✨
• How Smashing Magazine Manages Content: Migration From WordPress To JAMstack
• Using NSwag to Generate a Vue Client for an ASP.NET Core 3.1 API
• Intrinsic Sizing In CSS
• Memory Management Reference
• Understanding The GIT Workflow
• Words Are Hard - An Essay on Communicating With Non-Programmers
• Postwoman • API request builder
• Are you unique?

Image credits: Lucian Alexe

Samsung Galaxy S20

XDA Developers leaked the photos of the successor to Samsung's flagship phone - Galaxy S10. What's interesting, Samsung is not going to just increment the number to S11, instead they are going to jump ahead to S20. Probably Samsung is naming is based on current year.  Other visible differences are:

• front facing camera cutout is closer to the center of screen,
• rear camera has 4 lenses:  regular wide, an ultra-wide, portrait, and a macro,
• body is less curved.

For the rest of the spec, we'll have to wait until February 11th.

New iPhones and iPads with faster 5G

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, this year iPhone will support both sub-6GHz 5G (slightly faster than LTE) and faster mmWave 5G (closer to WiFi transfers). Previous reports suggested only the the former, so this week rumor is a nice surprise. Of corse, it is possible that faster 5G will be available only in selected models of iPhone.  That would line up with  last week rumors,  that new iPhones might have staggered rollout.

Also, according to DigiTimes, upcoming iPads will get faster 5G as well.  Although, this feature might be limited only to iPad Pro lineup.

New MacBooks coming soon

Apple has register portable and unreleased Mac in Eurasian Economic Commission database. Common sense indicates that might be new 13-inch, or maybe even 14-inch, MacBook Pro with a scissor keyboard. Regardless, of the screen size, new Mac will be released within couple of weeks.

Windows 7 is dead

After 11 years, Microsoft is officially ending support for Windows 7. Although, users should not get any bug fixes or feature updates, Windows 7 will share the fate of Windows XP, and Microsoft will be releasing critical security updates for couple more years.

New Microsoft Edge is out

Microsoft has finally released the stable version of the Edge browser based on the Google's Chromium web browser project. New Microsoft Edge is available on both Windows and macOS.

Cyberpunk 2077 delayed

Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed by 5 months.  In the special statement,  CD Project Red (CDPR) announced that the released date has been moved to September 17th.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated games of this year, and it is not a surprise, that CDPR want to polish the game and release the best game possible. CDPR did similar move with Witcher 3, which also was delayed for 3 months and turned it to be one of the best RPGs ever. So, there is nothing to worry about, all we need to do is be patient.

SpaceX Crew Dragon Launch Escape Demonstration

On Sunday, SpaceX performed the final test of the Crew Dragon. The goal of this mission was to verify the escape mechanisms of the Crew Dragon capsule.

Less than one and half minute after Falcon's 9 launch, Crew Dragon separated from the booster. Seconds later rocket itself was destroyed. Meanwhile, Crew Dragon achieved safe distance and parachuted in the ocean.

The test looked to be successful. If the telemetry confirms that, it means that SpaceX will be in the home stretch to send first astronauts into space.

Dope links

• How to fix slow List updates in SwiftUI
• Common pitfalls when using Keychain Sharing on iOS
• Full Stack Pronounced Dead
• Kubernetes for Full-Stack Developers
• What is the CSS ‘ch’ Unit?
• The Apple Archive
• The Witcher -  Interactive map of the continent & timeline

Image credits: XDA Developers