Weekly digest - 2018.48

Weekly digest - 2018.48

As in this week nothing happend, there is nothing to discuss. In that case I hope you will find something interesting in the following articles.

How to Land on Mars

Software Library: C64

How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects

How to Become a Better Software Developer: A Handbook on Personal Performance

Redesigning the Office App Icons to Embrace a New World of Work

Apple Music: A UX/UI Holistic Case Study

Voice User Interfaces (VUI) — The Ultimate Designer’s Guide

11 Sketch Plugins That Will Improve Your Workflow

UNDERRUN – MAKING OF

How to Build a Serverless Backend with AWS Lambda and Node.js

These are the concepts you should know in React.js (after you learn the basics)

Introducing ASP.NET Core with Docker

How to Integrate a C Library into an iOS App Written in Swift


Image credits: 85Fifteen.

Weekly digest - 2018.38

Weekly digest - 2018.38

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

Weekly digest - 2018.36

Weekly digest - 2018.36

This week was one of the most uneventful weeks of this year. There is no a single story that might deserve more detailed coverage. In this situation, I decided just to listed news that might be somewhat interesting.

Samsung teases foldable phone. This phone is suppose to have foldable/blendable screen and will be released later this year under Galaxy brand.

Amazon passed a market value of $1 trillion. Amazon was competing with Apple to be the first IT company to pass $1T mark. Apple won this battle couple weeks ago. Nevertheless it's still impressive how company that couldn't afford a proper desk is now one of the most valued companies in the world.

Looks like Evernote is in trouble. First Evernote raised prices. Now is slashing prices for premium annual plans. In a meanwhile many executives left company. It does not look good. Especially when there are cheaper alternatives that offers the same or even better functionality.

Fortnite for Android has been downloaded 15 million times. The Android version was released just couple weeks ago and now it reached 15M downloads. Not to mention, it was achieved without Google Play. Impressive, most impressive.

Logitech will release alternative for Apple Pencil. Stylus will be available on September 12 for $69. I'm wondering whether this is confirmation of the rumors that new iPhones will support styluses. To be honest, it does not matter that much, because it's good to see more affordable alternative for quite expensive Apple Pencil.

Finally, here is list of interesting things.

Stop future proofing software

How Image Optimization Decreased my Website’s Page Weight by 62%

Most common Git mistakes and how to fix them

JavaScript ES6: Classes

Medieval Fantasy City Generator


Image credits: Mehdi-Thomas BOUTDARINE.

Weekly digest - 2018.25

Weekly digest - 2018.25

This week Apple launched Apple Pay in Poland. Customers of 9 Polish banks can add their Mastercard and Visa cards to the Wallet app. According to Polish media, the launch itself was huge success, outclassing Google Pay.
I personally started using Apple Pay almost everywhere. I also started thinking about leaving all plastic cards at home, especially when Apple Pay is more secure.

Speaking of Apple, they finally acknowledged that new MacBooks have keyboard issues.
They launched new service program for users that have issues with sticky, repeated characters or unresponsive keys. The fix is free and if someone already paid for keyboard repair will get a refund.
I'm glad that those keyboards shenanigans are over. Now, I only hope that keyboard in MacBooks will be better than current implementation.

Apple also announced that iOS 12 will automatically share caller's location with 911. This is huge and possibly can save many lives. I hope the same mechanism will be soon implemented in other countries.

We had a lot of Apple news this week, so here is the list of other interesting things:

React Native at Airbnb
This is must read for anyone interested in React Native and cross platform development!

Reconciling GraphQL and Thrift at Airbnb

Create A Live Comment Feed with Pusher and Gatsby (React + GraphQL + Node.js)

NES Emulator for Swift Playgrounds

Writing good bug reports

Advanced Swift Debugging for UIKit

Custom UIView in Swift done right

The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

How to Lose an IT Job in 10 Minutes

Weekly digest - 2018.20

Weekly digest - 2018.20

Google announced that is making their storage service cheaper. The Google Drive, we have right now, will become a part of the Google One.
Google One will start from a $2.99 a month plan for 200GB of storage. The 2TB option will cost $9.99 a month. This plan is really appealing, usually it costs about $20, now we'll get it for half a price. There will be no 1TB option, which is a little bit disappointing. Personally I don't need 2TB of cloud storage. The 1TB option would be more than enough, and if take the new prices it would cost about $5 which would be awesome.

Adobe announced the Starter Plan for Adobe XD. Adobe XD is great tool for designing and prototyping UIs and now it is free. With free plan we get the same tools as in premium version. Of course the are limits, and those comes to the number of prototypes we can work at a time. Free users can work on only one shared project at a time.
I personally think this is great. Now, with integration with Sketch and Photoshop and free tier, it became a product that we should keep an eye on.

Tapbots released a new version of TweetBoot. Tweetbot 3 for Mac is a brand new iteration of one of the best - if not the best - Twitter clients out there. The new version is not a revolution, but it comes with nice features like new sidebar, new media player and night mode. This looks like a solid update so I highly recommend getting one, especially if you haven't used Tweetbot before.

Vapor 3.0.0 has been released. Vapor is a web framework written in Swift. Maybe it's not the most popular framework out there, but it is the best tool if you want to create highly performant backend in Swift.

And here is the list of interesting articles.

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

Clean iOS Localizable Files

Tables & Collections with type-safe declarative approach

Restful Web API using ASP.NET Core 2.0 with MSSQL (using Dapper)

A Simple Guide to ES6 Promises

Supporting React Native at Pinterest


Image credits: Google.