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

Couple weeks ago I released a Halloween watch face for Apple Watch. I was more a joke, but people really liked it. Since then they asked me weather I'm going to do a Christmas watch face. I wanted to do one, but I didn't know whether I would have time or even an idea to create something cool. Fortunately, last week I found both and created this.
Originally I wanted to do something else, but it didn't look good and I would have to spend much more time on this to make it work. After this failed idea, I decided to do a watch face inspired by Christmas decorations made out of paper. Paper town and Santa plus some particle effects create a perfect combination. I'm really happy with the end result. Usually Christmas designs are fancy and festive, but I really wanted to keep it clean and simple. After all the watch face should not distract you from its main purpose, telling time.
So far people like it as well, but its to early to call is a success, that I will be able to tell after Christmas. If you want this watch face on your Apple Watch, check out this my GitHub repository.

From other news. Microsoft announced that it is working on new browser that is going to replace Edge. I have mixed feelings about this because it's just another browser that we, as developers, will have to support. On the other hand it will be based on Chromium, so maybe it will not be that bad.

Apple released the watchOS 5.1.2 with long anticipated ECG feature. It is out for couple of days now, but it's already saving lives. Well done Apple.

It took seven miles to pull over a Tesla with a seemingly asleep driver. I was actually wondering whether you can drive Tesla on autopilot when you are drunk. Fortunately you can't. Autopilot is amazing technology that improves every year, but still I don't trust it that much to let it drive the car practically without the driver.

Marvel released the trailer for upcoming Avengers 4 movie. Together with the trailer we got the full name of the movie Avengers: Endgame. I know it is just a trailer, but I'm already hyped.

And finally, here is the list of interesting things.

How to Write a Game in Under 13 Kb While Taking Care of a Baby

Measuring the "Filter Bubble": How Google is influencing what you click

Xcode file variants without targets

Watermarking photos with ImageMagick, Vapor 3 and Swift on macOS and Linux

An Introduction to Flutter: The Basics

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.