By the end of this week Lucasfilm shared the details of the first Star Wars live-action TV Series - The Mandalorian. The series is set between episodes six and seven and will be about a brand new Mandalorian character.
Jon Favreau will write and produces the 8 episodes, with Dave Filoni directing the first one. Additional episodes will be directed by Deborah Chow (Jessica Jones), Rick Famuyiwa (Dope), Bryce Dallas Howard (Solemates), and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok).
I'm very exited about this. Especially about involvement of Dave Filoni, who basically created the Mandalorian culture for the Clone Wars. It is also amazing to hear that Filoni finally will be behind real camera. He is George Lucas' protege. Lucas tought him the art of storytelling and we saw the results of this in later episodes of the Clone Wars and though entire Rebels series, which to be honest was better than The Last Jedi and Han Solo movie.

Earlier this week, Microsoft refreshed its Surface lineup. I'm not going to the technical details of the upgrade, but I have to agree with Owen Williams, right now Microsoft has the best device lineup in the industry. They have device for everyone, from casual users, through tech enthusiasts, to the power users and content creators. This is something that Apple had 10 years ago and abandon by focusing on iPhones. Now, they have lineup with various outdated devices that are also expensive. I hope that Microsoft will not make the same mistake and, in 10 years time, the lineup will be as strong as today.

Speaking of mistakes, Microsoft has pulled the Windows 10 October update after reports of personal files being deleted. Microsoft is investigating the issue. The problem didn't affect everyone, but for now, it is good to wait with the upgrade.

Here is the list of interesting things.

"STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE" Animotion Trailer

DESIGN DB

Plans for the Next Iteration of Vue.js

Under the hood of Pixling World

Achieving impossible coding tasks without knowing how to do them

Day in the Life of a Google Product Manager

Image credits: Lucasfilm.

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

This week pasted mostly on discussion about future of the Twitter. On August 16th, Twitter removed streaming APIs which most of the 3rd party Twitter clients relied on. They've done that without providing any substitute, so now the 3rd party clients are missing key functionalities like real time notifications. This of course pissed a lot of people off and was interpreted as a di*k move to force user to use either web or crappy PWA clients. It also restarted the debate about future of the Twitter itself because this is not first time when Twitter has made a questionable decision. From many opinions I read, I completely agree with Sarah Perez:

Perhaps, users want a consistent experience — one that doesn’t involve a million inconsequential product changes like turning stars to hearts or changing the character counter to a circle. Maybe they appreciate the fact that the third parties seem to understand what Twitter is better than Twitter itself does: Twitter has always been about a real-time stream of information. It’s not meant to be another Facebook-style algorithmic News Feed. The third-party clients respect that. Twitter does not.

And I believe this is the core of the problem. If we look back at all the (questionable) changes that Twitter made, e.g.: algorithm driven timeline instead of chronological one, it looks like Twitter's management at all cost tries to make a clone of the Facebook. They are completely missing the point that Twitter was different idea and had different purpose.
In my opinion, if Twitter continues doing this, sooner or later, it will hit rock bottom. This is why I started looking for alternatives. Right now people are moving to Mastodon - the decentralized Twitter alternative. I joined it to see how it is going to evolve. You can find me there @mtynior.

From the other news. This week Motorola released new P30 Smartphone, which looks like iPhone X. Actually this is iPhone X, those phone are identical. Something tells me there is a lawsuit in the air...

Also this week, Lucasfilm and Disney released first trailer for upcoming TV series - Star Wars Resistance. My first impression was that it looks very cartoonish. But for now, I will not judge it. I was also skeptical after watching the first trailer of the Start Wars Rebels. And it turned out to be better than most of the Hollywood blockbusters.

Finally, here is list of interesting things.

Unreal Academy

The 2018 Game Developer Roadmap

The Productivity Stack

How to launch a side project in 10 days

GRID: A simple visual cheatsheet for CSS Grid Layout

Lessons from a small Firebase project

How to build a single page application using server-side Blazor

As silly season continues, nothing really interesting happened. For me, the most interesting news was Apple's software fix for new MacBook Pros throttling issues. All new benchmarks show that fix helped and new laptop is able to maintain the base clock speed under heavy load.
That being said, the CPUs are still not able to reach their full potential because of insufficient cooling. But I think this is the price we have to pay for having slim design. Anyway, the new MacBook Pro is powerful machine that should satisfy any Pro user. Also, it is good to see that Apple took this issue seriously and released the fix so fast.

From the other news, Slack bought the HipChat and Stride from Atlassian. HipChat will be shut down and existing users will be migrated to Slack. Based on the statements from both companies, Slack is not eliminating the competitor, but rather teaming up with Atlassian on creating competition to Microsoft Teams. We will see what the future brings, but it is always good to see how companies are fighting for customers.

Now it's time for new from galaxy far, far away. Lucasfilm announced the cast of the Episode IX. The cast includes familiar faces: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, and Billie Lourd. Joining them are Naomi Ackie, Richard E. Grant, and Keri Russell. Also we will see the veterans: Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, and Billy Dee Williams, who will reprise his role as Lando Calrissian. Leia Organa will return! Once again played by Carrie Fisher. Filmmakers will use previously unreleased footage shot for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The filming begin at London’s Pinewood Studios on August 1.

Finally, here is the list of interesting things.

Emulator 101

The Free Stack - Running your application for free on AWS

What Tech Stacks are Indie Hackers Using for Their Apps, and Why?

What every product designer should take away from Lyft’s new UI

Apple's design resources with UI elements from watchOS 5 and macOS 10.14

Creating a Markdown editor/previewer in Electron and Vue.js

DevCleaner - app for managing Xcode caches

Image credits: Lucasfilm.

Clone Wars is saved. During San Diego Comic Con, Disney and Lucasfilm announced that the Clone Wars TV series has been renewed.
In 2012, when Disney bought Lucasfilm, the show was canceled after season five. The first half of season six, that already has been done, has been released as "The Lost Missions" on Netflix; but we never got the proper ending. Lucasfilm tried to fill the gaps with books and another TV show - Star Wars Rebels, but still we have been missing the story of almost 1.5 season. In 2016 during Ahsoka’s Untold Tales Panel, series director Dave Filoni, shared what would happen, and it looks like, the new season will show this storyline.
New season will return, next year, with 12 all-new episodes on Disney's streaming platform.

One week after premiere of new MacBook Pro, people are still talking about it. That's because two reasons. First one is fixed keyboard. It looks like Apple finally solved the issue with faulty keyboards. The second reason is related with overheating Intel i9 CPU. Youtubers reveled that i9 MacBook Pro throttles on heavy load. There are plenty of videos showing and describing the problem, here is couple of them:

• MacBook Pro 15 (2018) - Beware the Core i9
• 2018 MacBook Pro i9 Thermal Throttling CONFIRMED!
• i9 Macbook Pro 2018: Hottest Laptop on the Planet!
• The New MacBook Pro Throttles?!?

For now it looks like, there is an issue only with i9 chips, and i7 version is fine. We will see what Apple will do about this particular problem.

Finally, here is the list of interesting things I stumbled upon this week:

8-bit Emulators

Learn how to work remotely

Building the Google Photos Web UI

How to build a typing indicator for your chat app in ASP.NET

How to get started with augmented reality in Swift, the easy way

Atomic Properties in Swift

Open Terminal from Xcode

Image credits: Lucasfilm.