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 - 2018.52

Weekly digest - 2018.52

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.

Weekly digest - 2018.39

Weekly digest - 2018.39

This week Google was celebrating its 20th birthday. September 27, 1998, this is the date when Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched their website - Google Search. Since then, Google has changed a lot. Google Search is now just a part of the tech giant now known as Alphabet.
After 20 years, some people see Google as the best company in the world, where others are convinced that Google is evil, spying on us in every possible way. I'm not sure whether Google is good or bad, probably both, but what I know is that Google during those 20 years has changed the world couple of times, and I'm sure it will be doing this in the future.

Elon Musk has been forced to step down as chairman of Tesla. This is the result of Musk's tweets about taking Tesla private. Those tweets, caused drastic price change of Tesla stocks. As Tesla ultimately has not been taken private, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Musk and Tesla for stock prices manipulation. On Saturday, Elon Musk has reached a settlement with the SOC and will step down as a chairman of Tesla and will have to pay $20 million fine, but will remain CEO of the company. Also, Tesla will have to pay $20 million fine. Both amounts will be later distributed over investors who lost money.
One tweet cost Elon Musk $40 million and his voice on the board. Lesson to take from this - be careful what you tweet.

Speaking of CEOs, Kathleen Kennedy will remain the president of the Lucasfilm for the next 3 years. For couple of months, there was a lot of rumors that Kennedy will be fired after disappointing Episode 8 and Han Solo movie.
Decision about keeping Kennedy goes inline with information about slowing Star Wars franchise down and Disney doesn't want any revolutions, which is a good thing.

That's it for this week, here is the list of interesting things.

20 years of Google Search

MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 Source Code

Marzipan: Porting iOS Apps to the Mac

Boost your productivity with macOS Mojave — enable Dark Mode for Xcode only

Pixel Art Tutorials of the month September 2018

I’m a Heart Doctor. Here’s Why I’m Wary of the New Apple Watch

Weekly digest - 2018.23

Weekly digest - 2018.23

This week we had Apple's WWDC. It turned out that last week's predictions were almost spot on, but we had a couple of surprises. So, without further ado let's jumped into what has been announced.

iOS 12

  • New operating system will support the same hardware as iOS 11.
  • Performance of various operations has been improved. Some of the most common operations are faster from 40 up to 70 percent.
  • More integration with augmented reality. Firstly, Apple announced a new file format for augmented reality - USDZ. It will allow develop augmented reality experiences across multiple platforms.
    With new iOS we will get new app, called Measure. This app will allow users to measure real life objects like photos, tables, etc.
  • Photos will have more tools that allow users to search and share them.
  • Siri will have new tool, called shortcuts. With shortcuts we can define voice-triggered actions tailored to individual apps. This is the reason why Apple bought the Workflow last year.
  • Car Play will support third party navigation apps, which is actually a huge deal - now we will be able to run Google Maps :)
  • Do not disturbed will get a new mode - "Do Not Disturb During Bedtime", which hides all notifications till morning.
  • We will get a little bit more control over notifications. Now, we will be able to mute and disable notifications from the lock screen. Also, notifications will be grouped by app, topic or by thread.
  • New iOS will have an app that monitors phone usage. Beside telling us how much time we spent using an app it will allow to set a time limit, disabling the app when we exceed the our time allowance.
  • FaceTime will support group calls, and Messages will get new animojis as well as memojis. Memoji is an animoji that we can create yourself. I think this is the feature that will ensure that people will upgrade to iOS 12 really fast ;)
  • From various announcements, News app has got redesign and now support AR content. Also, Stocks and Voice memos have been redesigned and it will be available on iPad.
    And finally, the iBooks has been renames to Apple Books.

macOS 10.14

  • The codename is Mojave and it will be last macOS that supports 32-bit apps.
  • It will have dark mode. What is really cool is will be able to adjust the backdrop to your screen throughout the day, so your desktop can be bright during a day and dark during night.
  • Speaking of Desktop. Now, we will be able to clean it using desktop stacks, which will group all desktop files, based on file type.
  • Finder will get new view mode, called gallery. This mode is basically modern version of Cover Flow, and it is intended to browse images. Finder will also display exif details of an image and it will allow to edit images right in Quick Look.
  • Taking screenshots will now be simillar to what we have on the iOS. Also, we will get tools to capture videos.
  • macOS Mojave will get new apps: News, Voice memos, Home.
  • AppStore, finally, will be redesigned.
  • Also, Apple gave us a sneak peak of new UIKit for macOS.

watchOS 5

  • Users will be able to invite others to workout competitions.
  • watchOS will try to automatically detect workout activities.
  • Yoga and Hiking will be new supported workouts.
  • With watchOS, Apples watches can be used as Walkie-Talkie.

Those are the most important news from this year WWDC. Nothing revolutionary, but we will get solid updates for all Apple system.

This week I don't have a list of interesting things. Instead, I encourage you to watch sessions from WWDC 2018.

Weekly digest - 2018.22

Weekly digest - 2018.22

This week was boring, nothing special happened. From worth mentioning events we have:

Also so this week we had plenty of rumors covering all things that we might see during Apple's WWDC:

  • iOS 12 - it looks like, that in the next version of the iOS, Apple has focused on stability and performance improvements. In terms of new features, we should see new animojis, more augmented reality and hopefully improved Siri.
  • macOS 10.14 - the new Mac operating system probably will be called Mojavi. It will have dark mode. Base on warnings for 32-bit apps in macOS 10.13, the new version should be 64-bit only. There was also plenty of rumors about project marzipan, which supposed to allow as to run iOS apps on macOS, but personally I doubt we will see it this year.
  • watchOS 5 - there are not much rumors about this one. My only wish is to get ability to create custom faces.
  • Macs - knowing that Apple is planning to release new Macs next year so I don't expect to see anything new in terms of hardware. What we might get is just small refresh of current line and maybe Apple will tease a new hardware like they did last year with iMac Pro.

Of course we will also get new developer tools, with new Xcode 10, and plenty new frameworks. Tomorrow we will see which of those rumors were true and which were just our wishful thinking.

Finally, here is a list of interesting articles:

Reconciling GraphQL and Thrift at Airbnb

Advanced Swift Debugging for UIKit

Custom UIView in Swift done right

An iOS architecture approach for UIViewController states & error management in Swift