Weekly digest - 2019.14

8 April 2019

This week I want to try a different approach to weekly digest. Instead of trying to keep it as one coherent piece, today, I will break it into separate sections. I believe this will make it more clear to see what actually happened each week and it should also make writing it easier. Those are the goals I want to verify with this little experiment.

Powerbeats Pro

One weeks after Apple's new AirPods release, Beats announced new truly wireless Powerbeats Pro. We knew they were coming, but now it is official, and we have the launch date. They are coming in May, in 20 countries, for about $250. Here are some features of the new earbuds:

up tp 9 hours of listening time,
Apple's H1 chip with for quick connection and hands-free “Hey Siri”,
Sweat and watter resistant,
Physical and programmable control buttons,
Automatic pause and resume,
Charging case, which work similarly to AirPods' case,
23% smaller and 17% lighter than its predecessor,
Come in 4 colors: Black, Ivory, Moss and Navy.

The are a little pricey, but I'm waiting for them.
I was waiting patiently for sport version of the AirPods, but they've never come. Also, when I was fitting the AirPods, they were loose in my ears, so they would probably fall during the training. Powerbeats doesn't have this problem as they were design for athletes.
Beside the price, there is one more thing I don't like. It is the lightning jack on the charging case. I really wished Apple/Beats would finally switched to USB-C with all their products.

Visual Studio 2019

Microsoft has released the next version of its main development IDE. For me, the new IntelliSense powered by an AI is mind-blowing. Also live sharing built into the IDE looks awesome. There are many more new features and improvements, which you can check here.

Cloudflare free VPN

Cloudflare has added free VPN into its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver app. What's interesting this is not a traditional VPN service. Usually the main reason we use VPNs it to trick websites and services into thinking wee are accessing them from a different location. That's no the case with Cloudflare’s service. Instead, the VPN works behind the scenes to increase speed and privacy.
This is different approach, but as long as it is keeping us safe I approve it.

List of interesting things

Image credits: Apple.

Weekly digest - 2019.12

24 March 2019

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 - 2019.10

10 March 2019

This week I didn't have time to prepare the news part, so I've only gathered the list of interesting things.

Polish Powerhouse

The Origins of CD Projekt Red

How The Witcher Took Over The World

Creating Cyberpunk 2077

Safely supporting new versions of Swift

Dependency Injection in Swift with Protocols

Emoji in SQL - SELECT 🗣 FROM 👤

Vue + TypeScript Cookbook

Famous Laws Of Software Development

The Growth Stacks of 2019

My Descent Into YouTube Addiction

PCjs Machines

Weekly digest - 2019.09

3 March 2019

The main event of this week was the launch and docking of the SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. Capsule was launched to orbit on Saturday with Falcon 9 rocket. The launch was perfect, capsule has been deployed to orbit and the couple minutes later, rocket booster landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic becoming SpaceX's 35th successful landing.
In the meantime, the Crew Dragon capsule was on its way to ISS. On Sunday capsule reached the station and docked by itself to International Docking Adapter. During its stay, the crew members of the Space Station will perform various tests on the capsule to see how it performs in the space. Nasa and SpaceX plans to return capsule to Earth on Friday.
This mission is a final test of the Crew Dragon. If this mission is successful, we will be one step closer to real mission with the crew on board, which is scheduled for July this year.

That all folks. If you want more interesting things check this list out.

Learning about .NET Core futures by poking around at David Fowler's GitHub

An awesome guide on how to build RESTful APIs with ASP.NET Core

Scott Hanselman & Damian Edwards Talk about Microsoft & .Net Core 3

The Complete Guide to SCSS/SASS

Mask Compositing: The Crash Course

How “defer” operator in Swift actually works

Data structures to name-drop when you want to sound smart in an interview

How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

Role of colour in UI

How to recognize fake AI-generated images

Image credits: Nasa.