Weekly digest - 2019.12

Weekly digest - 2019.12

This week was really busy, which resulted in many news. So without further ado let's get started.

This week we had GDC 2019. As always it was packed with plenty of content for game developers, but the biggest announcement was from Google and it is going to affect not only developers but gamers as well. Google unveiled Stadia, the cloud gaming streaming service. It is the continuation of the project Stream, which allowed gamers to stream a game to the Chrome web browser. So far, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was the only playable game, but Google assured there will be more to come thanks to the partnership with Ubisoft or Epic Games, among others.
Deep integration with YouTube will allow to play the game instantly on desktop, laptops, phones, tablets and even TV. Platform will not only sync the state of the game between our devices, but it will allow to share it with our friends, so for example they can help us to progress the level.
Also, if we are stuck, we will be able to watch, in-game, walkthrough directly from YouTube.
Google says that 25MBps connection will be enough to stream the game in 1080p 60 fps and it will scale up to 4K 60fps and even 8K in the future.
This is not the first cloud gaming service. Many have tried over recent years and all those projects failed miserably. This time Google might have a chance to succeed. They already have the necessary infrastructure, also they have one of the best engineers in the world, not to mention a lot of money to pull it off.
I'm really hyped about this project and I hope it will be available here in Poland.

One week before the their's March keynote Apple made couple of hardware announcements. This was something that never happened before. Every day, for 3 days, Apple was updating one product line. It all stated on Monday when we got refreshed iPad Air and iPad mini. Yes, iPad mini has been resurrected.
This update is more a refresh than big upgrade, but both models got latest hardware including support for first gen Apple Pencil. It's a shame that this is not the newest one, but it looks like wireless charging for the pencil would be too expensive. Also compatibility with the first gen Apple Pencil is one of the reasons why new iPads have Lightning port instead of USB-C.
The pricing remained the same, which is a nice surprise when we look back at recent price rises.

On Tuesday Apple unveiled new iMacs. This refresh was long overdue. New iMacs got new processors and GPUs. What is interesting, by default Apple is using last gen Intel i8 chips instead of i9. It looks like iMac would suffer from overheating like last year's MacBooks Pro.
Speaking of laptops, Apple cut the price on SSDs options for the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

On Wednesday we got new AirPods. The refreshed model got better communication chip H1 and support for Hey Siri. There is also a new case that can be charged wirelessly. The rest is the same, which is really disappointing, especially after speculations about black design and sweat and water-proof.
Hopefully rumors about new PowerBeats are true, and we finally get true wireless earbuds for active people.

Thats all for this week. And as always, if you want more here is the list of interesting things.

WatchOS 5 — Communication between iPhone and Apple Watch and vice versa on Swift

AppVenture - Simple. Swift. Guides

Vapor – Swift Choice For the Back End

Creating A Spotify-Powered App Using Nuxt.js

Write yourself a Git!

Instantly generate code from JSON

Why Do Arrays Start With Index 0?

Using the iPad Pro as my development machine

Weekly digest - 2019.11

Weekly digest - 2019.11

This week World Wide Web turned 30 years old :). I think when Tim Berners-Lee created first WWW site, he didn't know how much he would change the world. Today it is in the center of our life. It's not only a source of information or entertainment. We shop there, we trust our savings in electronic bank. We not only earn money over Internet, but sometimes we even trust it with our lives.
Without a doubt world would not be the same without the WWW. Let's only hope that personal agendas of the politicians won't destroy it.

This week Tesla completed their S3XY car lineup with the brand new model Y. This model is a compact SUV, but it doesn't look like one. It's basically a bigger version of Model 3. The new car will be available in 2020 with price starting at $39,000 for model with 230 miles range. The 300 miles range model will cost $49,000 and the Performance version will cost $60,000.
SUVs are one of the most popular cars out there. We will see whether the people are interested enough in the electric one to boost Tesla's position on the market.

Apple finally announced the WDDC 2019. This year, conference will take place in the first week of June (3rd - 7th) in San Jose. This year's conference should be the interesting one. Of course we will get our first glimpse at iOS 13 and macOS 15. But I think we, as developers, are all waiting for more details about project Marzipan, as well as long awaited Mac Pro and maybe even rumored new MacBook Pro.

Microsoft announced that Windows will be able uninstall broken updates. This is the good step forward, especially after issues with last October update, but I'm wondering how fast we will see reports about this tool making even more harm than good.

Thats all for this week. If you want more, here is the list of interesting things.

The iOS Dev Directory

Ralph Küpper - Running Small Microservices in Swift on Production Environment

A little thread on generating and rendering a procedural trajectory mesh

Creating the Blockade Runner Engine Look for Rogue One

Designing Star Wars: Star Wars Resistance

Someone is recreating Star Wars: Dark Forces... in Unreal Engine 4

Real-Time AR Self-Expression with Machine Learning

A JavaScript-Free Frontend

Learning React Hooks by building a game - react.games Preview

Direct uploads to AWS S3 from the browser (crazy performance boost)

10 Programming Terms in Normal Human Language


Image credits: Pixabay.

Weekly digest - 2019.08

Weekly digest - 2019.08

This week Samsung held its UNPACKED 2019 event, during which they presented new phones. Lets start with phones we have already anticipated, Galaxy S10 and S10+. The first model starts at $899 and have following specification:

  • 6.1-inch (3040x1440) AMOLED display,
  • 8nm 64-bit 2.73GHz Octa-Core Processor,
  • 8GB RAM,
  • 128GB or 512GB of storage,
  • 10MP selfie camera,
  • Triple rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and wide-angle lenses, as well as 16MP ultra wide lens,
  • Fingerprint reader built into the screen,
  • 3.5mm Headphone jack 😉,
  • 3400mAh battery with wireless charging.

The bigger model S10+ starts at $999 with following specification:

  • 6.4-inch (3040x1440) AMOLED display,
  • 8nm 64-bit 2.73GHz Octa-Core Processor,
  • 8GB RAM with 128GB of storage, 8GB RAM with 512GB of storage, 12GB RAM with 1TB of storage,
  • Dual front camera with 10MP selfie camera and 8MP depth camera,
  • Triple rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and wide-angle lenses, as well as 16MP ultra wide lens,
  • Fingerprint reader built into the screen,
  • 3.5mm Headphone jack,
  • 4100mAh battery with wireless charging.

And that's not all. Samsung following steps of Apple, introduced the "budget" version of the phone. Galaxy S10e starts at $749 with following specification:

  • 5.8-inch (2280x1080) AMOLED display,
  • 8nm 64-bit 2.73GHz Octa-Core Processor,
  • 6GB RAM with 128GB of storage and 8GB RAM with 256 of storage
  • 10MP selfie camera,
  • Dual rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and 16MP ultra wide lenses,
  • Fingerprint reader built into the screen,
  • 3.5mm Headphone jack,
  • 3100mAh battery with wireless charging.

The biggest surprised was introduced at the end. The Samsung Galaxy Fold is the first Samsung's foldable device. Here is the specification:

  • Main screen is 7.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED display (4.2:3),
  • Cover screen is 4.6-inch Super AMOLED Display (4.2:3)
  • Has 3 cameras:
    • Cover camera 10MP selfie,
    • Dual front camera with with 10MP selfie and 8MP depth cameras,
    • Triple rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and wide-angle lenses and 16MP ultra wide lens,
  • 7nm 64-bit Octa-Core Processor,
  • 12GB RAM with 512GB internal storage,
  • 4380mAh battery with wireless charging.

Samsung's Galaxy Fold foldable starts at $1,980 and launches on April 2. I'm really interesting to see how this foldable device will behave in real life and can't wait to try it myself.

Now, moving on to other news. Earlier this week, we got rumors that Apple is planing to release new 16-inch MacBook Pro. All we know so far is that new mac is supposed to have a brand new design. This is interesting rumor, maybe overheating and hinge issues force Apple to change the design. I will follow this topic with great interest.

Speaking of Apple, there is another rumor saying that Apple will combine macOS and iOS by 2021. We already know that we will be able to run iOS apps on mac using project Marzipan, which should be released this year. But the more interesting part is that we have a date when this transition should be in effect, which means that around 2021 we will get macs with ARM processors.

Thats all for this week. Last but not least, here is the list of interesting things.

Don’t get clever with login forms

7 Alternatives to the <div> HTML Tag

CSS Scroll Snap — How It Really Works

You probably don’t need a single-page application

Linux Reverse Engineering CTFs for Beginners

The shady economics of ‘buy one, get one free’ deals


Image credits: Samsung.

Weekly digest - 2019.06

Weekly digest - 2019.06

As nothing worth mentioning happened this week, beside Samsung launching Tinder for fridges, here is just the list of interesting things.

Finding Lena, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

Vue 2.6 released

How I do Vue in 2019: TypeScript and TSX

How to Use Mock Data in Vue Apps

Life of a SQL query

Dear web developers: set the font color, too

Apple’s New iPad Pro Ads Were Shot and Made Entirely on the iPad Pro

Apple Is Fighting a Good Fight Against Facebook and Google

Good Engineering Practices while Working Solo

Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

NES games painted & updated

Here is an example of old graphics on CRT, vs. modern emulation. On the CRT they look more detailed as your brain fills in the blurred gaps

One year ago today: SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy

Weekly digest - 2019.05

Weekly digest - 2019.05

This is not a good beginning of the year for Apple, another week and another controversy. This time Apple had a big fail, people discovered that you could hear the person you were calling before they even pick up. The bug was easy to reproduce, all you have to do is call someone and add yourself to the call again. This bug has been discovered and reported by teenager and his mother, but it took Apple a week to acknowledge the problem. Looking at how slowly Apple is responding to bug reports, they found out about the exploit because all media started reporting it. Only then Apple has taken Group Face Time service down. The fix should be released next week.
There are two things that bother me in this whole situation. Why this nasty bug has not been detected by Apple's QAs in the first place? The second one, why it took Apple a week to react?

Sometimes Apple can do a good things. First they revoked Facebook's enterprise developer certificates for distributing "internal" applications outside the company. Then they did the same thing to Google. In both cases companies violated Apple's Enterprise Program privacy policy. In case of the Facebook the situation is even more interesting. It turned out that Facebook paid $20 for installing the VPN app to monitor iOS users activities.

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

The Ultimate Beginner Git Cheatsheet

How to use the result type to handle errors in Swift 5?

Top 5 Frontend Development Topics To Learn in 2019

Jest 24: 💅 Refreshing, Polished, TypeScript-friendly

Netflix JavaScript Talks - Making Bandersnatch

The mistake developers make when coding a hamburger menu

HTTP/3: From root to tip

Programming Fonts - Test Drive


Image credits: Apple.