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.
Dependency Management for iOS projects with the Swift package manager
Code to go - Find up to date snippets for common JavaScript use cases