At the beginning of the year Apple informed investors to prepare for lower revenue. Mostly caused by lower than expected iPhone demand, especially on the Chinese market. More than the week later Apple reacted by reducing the price of the iPhone XR by $100. Furthermore, Apple brought the iPhone SE back to the store in US, also with lower price tag. Looks like Apple is trying to fix the sells issue. I really like to see lower prices of the newest phones, but I cannot understand why Apple brought back almost 3 year old phone. Hopefully Apple will learn the lesson from this iPhone flop and new models will be more affordable or will have features that will justify the price.

Apple struggles not only with iPhones, but with Macs as well. Apple sold less Mac than a year ago, but we can see that entire PC market is falling. Computers are expensive, especially Macs, and people are more keen to replace the computer with their phone or tablet. And again I believe that lower prices would help to revive this market.

Speaking of Apple, they also have some good news. DuckDuckGo started using Apple’s MapKit.js framework to display search results on the map. This is really interesting move, because DuckDuckGo’s first priority is privacy and they trusted Apple with all the search queries. Well, in the future we will see how both companies respect our privacy.

Now moving on, there was a lot of going on around Star Wars. Lets start with another cancellation of the Star Wars game. First we heard rumors that EA has canceled the Open-World game that supposed to be Uncharted in the space. Then EA ha released a statement, which basically confirms the cancellation. Well it looks like some manager at EA realized that the cannot put micro-transactions into story driver, single player game 😛.
During 6 years of having rights to Star Wars franchise, EA has released only 2 games, which has not been well received because of all the controversies around them. If I were a Disney I would be furious, because all the EA does just damages the franchise. Hopefully Disney/Lucasfilm realizes that before it will be to late.
And Lucasfilm knows how to intervene. They helped the fan film creator with a dispute between him and Disney/Warner/Chappel. The outrage among Star Wars fans have definitely been notices, so someone at Lucasfilm did the right thing and saved the film. This entire situation is really worrying. Disney, which earns billions of dollars each year, goes after a fan who is just promoting a franchise. And what's even more ironic, Lucasfilm each year is promoting and awarding the fan films.

Thats all for this week. Here is the list of interesting things.

The hole-punch display is going to be okay

Why Founders Should Start With a Website, Not a Mobile App

A Christmas Challenge — A Cinema app in just 7 days

Dart vs Swift: a comparison

Deno is the new Node?

A comprehensive introduction to Docker, Virtual Machines, and Containers

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 Apple held its October event. This time they focused on Macs and iPads. The first presented product was new MacBook Air. New model starts from $1199 and here is the specification:

• 13-inch Retina display,
• 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz, with 4MB L3 cache,
• 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1.5TB od SSD storage,
• 8GB or 16GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory,
• Intel UHD Graphics 617,
• New keyboard with TouchID,
• Up to 12h of battery life,
• only 2 USB-C ports.

This update was long overdue, and I have to admit it doesn't look impressive. Don't get me wrong, it is good update, but it's an update we should have long time ago. After couple of years I would expect something more revolutionary, but this model looks like a step back. Previous MacBook Airs offered the quad core i7 option, the new model is only dual core, which is really disappointing for people who wants light and portable computer with a little bit more power under the hood. Now, they have to buy bulky MacBook Pro. The only impressive thing about this computer is new T2 chip, that disconnects a microphone when lid is closed.
What is even more surprising, Apple kept the old model on the shelves, without any price change. Wojtek Pietruszewicz compared this to selling a 1990's car for today's price. I completely agree with him, Apple devices are overpriced, especially computers, and there is nothing that could justify such high prices.

Now, let's move on to the Mac mini. This computer has not been updated for 1475 days! During the keynote Apple showed the new version specification starting from $799:

• 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i36MB shared L3 cache in base model up to 3.2GHz 6-core Intel Core i7 Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz 12MB shared L3 cache,
• 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB of 2666MHz DDR4 SO-DIMM memory,
• 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of SSD storage,
• Intel UHD Graphics 630,
• 2 USB-A and 4 USB-C ports, HDMI output and 3.5mm headphone jack,
• 1Gb or 10Gb RJ-45 Ethernet port.

The rest of the design, beside the black mate color is the same as in the previous model. This update is a solid one, of course it is still long overdue, but it is better than nothing. This is basic computer that can be used by anyone, people who only wants to watch cute animals and by people who uses computer professionally. I'm glad Apple still support this type of computers.

The last device presented by Apple was new iPad Pro. And this is the iPad we have all been waiting for. Let's start with the specifications:

• 11 or 12.9 inch Bezel-less Liquid Retina screen,
• 64GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB of storage,
• 4GB of memory and 6GB in 1TB model,
• A12X Bionic chip,
• 7 and 12-megapixel cameras,
• e-Sim,
• Face ID working in portrait and landscape modes,
• USB-C port.

This model is the biggest change to iPad since 2010, when the first iPad came out. First big change is the bezel-less screen, now we have bigger screen in the smaller for factor. This is the first iPad that has new 1.43:1 aspect ratio, all previous models had 1.33:1 (4:3). Unfortunately, this screen is not OLED, Apple deviced to use the Liquid Retina display, which we can find in the iPhone XR.
Moving to the next big change, the new USB-C port. I have to say - FINALLY! We all have been waiting for USB-C in iPhones and iPads since 2016, when new MacBook Pros came out. New port offers not only faster changing and data transfers, but also offers connectivity with external displays up to 5K.
To drive the 5K monitor you need the powerful processors. Early benchmarks suggest that new iPad Pro is a beast comparable to 2018 MacBook Pro. Thats a lot of power! I really wish, we could so enthusiastic about the power of the Macs...
Together with new iPad, Apple presented new Apple Pencil. It has completely new design. It features wireless charging (finally) and it also supports gestures. A nice addition is, that it magnetically attaches to the iPad.
Apple also showed a new keyboard cover, but beside the new size, there is nothing to talk about.
Unfortunately, the new version cost more that previous models. The 11-inch starts from $799 and 12.9 inch model starts from $999.

Thats all. This week was all about Apple, but if you want to see more interesting things, please check out the list below.

Custom Apple Watch face for Halloween 2018 with source code

Docker Cheat Sheet

DevOps NIGHTMARE

What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

udocker

Using dark mode in CSS with MacOS Mojave

During this week literally nothing happened. The only things worth mentioning are listed below.

1. Apple announced iPad Pro and Mac event for October 30th with really cool logo variants,
2. Apple started taking iPhone XR preorders in selected countries,
3. Google will start charging Android device makers a fee for using its apps in Europe.

That's really all, so if you are interested, please take a look at the following articles.

Using ASP.NET Core with MongoDB in containers for local dev, CosmosDB for production

How Microsoft rewrote its C# compiler in C# and made it open source

5 Easy Steps to Understanding JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

How Font Awesome became the most funded software project on Kickstarter — and what we can learn from it

Motion Design Doesn’t Have to Be Hard

Stop building websites with infinite scroll!

Image credits: Apple.