Tech News - Mobile

Version 5 of Apple’s Swift language, used for iOS and MacOS application development, will release early next year. The main focus of this release will be an ABI (application binary interface) stability in the standard Swift library, in addition to Standard Library Improvements, Foundation Improvements and Syntactic Additions. ABI (application binary interface) features in Swift 5.0 ABI defines how to call a function, how data is represented in memory, where metadata is and how to access it. The current version of Swift is not ABI stable, so every binary (App), bundles its own version of the Swift Dynamic Library. For instance, if App1 is using Swift 3.0, it bundles Swift 3.0 Dynamic Library (containing the 3.0 ABI) inside. And if App2 is using Swift 3.2, it bundles Swift 3.2 and it’s 3.2 ABI. Here Swift doesn’t live on the iOS Operating System, it lives within each App. The ABI in Swift 5.0 will enable future compiler versions to produce binaries that conform to the stable ABI. A stable ABI tends to persist for the rest of the platform’s lifetime due to ever-increasing mutual dependencies. If Swift becomes ABI Stable, its ABI will be compatible with every version of Swift. For example, if App1 is using Swift 5.0, but App2 is using Swift 5.3, both will be consuming the Swift ABI embedded in the Operating System. The ABI feature was originally intended for Swift 4 release. Carryover goals from Swift 4 that are required for implementing the ABI in Swift 5 include: Generics features for the standard library. This includes conditional conformances for generic types and recursive protocol types and lifting restrictions on associated types in protocols API resilience, which will allow public APIs for a library to evolve A memory ownership model Besides ABI stability, expect these improvements in Swift 5: #1 String ergonomics Processing of the string type is expected to get better as users will have the ability to create raw strings, distinguish between enums that are fixed and enums that might change in the future,  and check whether one number is a multiple of another by using isMultiple(of:) #2 Groundwork for a new concurrency model Swift 5 will focus on designing language capabilities for building and using asynchronous APIs and dealing with problems created by callback-heavy code. #3 Targeted improvements to the Foundation API The Cocoa SDK- which was originally designed for Objective-C, can work seamlessly with Swift. To try out Swift 5.0 ahead of its release early next year, download the latest Swift trunk development snapshot, activate it inside your current Xcode version,  and then head over to Xcode Playground for examples you can edit. Read in depth about the new features to be implemented in Swift 5.0 at HackingwithSwift. Swift 4.2 releases with language, library and package manager updates! Apple bans Facebook’s VPN app from the App Store for violating its data collection rules iPhone XS and Apple Watch details leaked hours before product launch  

The Swift team released Swift version 4.2 yesterday. Swift 4.2 comes with updates to the Swift language including generics improvement, and standard library updates. Swift 4.2 also comprises changes to the package manager. Swift is a general-purpose and multi-paradigm programming language developed by Apple Inc. for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and Linux. Swift is built for uses that range from systems programming to mobile and desktop apps, to scaling up to cloud services. Let’s have a look at the key features in Swift 4.2. Language updates Swift 4.2 is a major language release and comprises of language changes such as Generics improvements, and Standard library updates. Generics Improvement Better support has been added for Generics which ultimately makes more of your code reusable. Standard Library updates The standard library in this latest release consists of a number of new features such as improvements to the Hashable protocol and a new unified set of randomization functions and protocols. Other updates Swift 4.2 has enabled the binary compatibility for future releases of Swift. Support has been added for batch mode compilation that results in faster build times. There’s a change in calling convention for retain/release cycle which helps reduce the code size and improve runtime performance. Package Manager Updates Swift 4.2 explores three new features namely, batch mode support, improved scheme generation logic, and automatic Xcode project generation. With Swift 4.2, the swift targets will be now compiled using the Swift compiler’s batch mode The scheme generation logic has been improved and it generates the following schemes: One scheme comprising all regular and test targets of the root package. One scheme per executable target consisting of the test targets whose dependencies intersect with the dependencies of the executable target. Swift 4.2 offers automatic Xcode project generation. The generate-xcodeproj here has a new –watch option which enables it to watch the file system and regenerate the Xcode project automatically, if needed. For more information on this release, check out the official release notes. Your First Swift Program What’s new in Vapor 3, the popular Swift based web framework Swift’s Core Libraries

Yesterday, Mozilla announced that they will be releasing a new version of Firefox Focus for Android next week. This version will be powered by Gecko, which is a browser engine developed by Mozilla and is also used in Firefox Quantum. Firefox Focus enables you to stay “focused” by automatically blocking ads and trackers. Once you are done browsing, you can delete your search history completely using its erase button. It provides a faster browsing experience and you do not have to worry about the retargeted ads. Why Firefox Focus needs Gecko? Since the beginning, Focus has been using Android’s built-in WebView, but it has some limitations. WebView is not designed for building browsers. It only supports a subset of web standards, as Google expects developers to use native Android APIs, and not the Web, for advanced standards. To add next-generation privacy features to Focus, its developers require deep access to the browser internals. This is why, they decided to use their own engine, Gecko. Firefox for Android already uses Gecko, but not in a way that’s easy to reuse in other applications. To make Gecko reusable they built GeckoView. To allow the use of GeckoView in other applications, the developers have decoupled the engine from its user interface and packaged it as a reusable Android library. In a nutshell, GeckoView will help them leverage all of their Firefox expertise in building more compelling, safe, and robust online experiences. They are also planning to use GeckoView in entirely new products like Firefox Reality, a browser designed for virtual and augmented reality headsets. You will hear more about Firefox Reality later this year promises the Mozilla blog. You can currently download Focus Beta and report issues, if any. If you are an Android developer, you can give this library a try or directly contribute on GitHub. To read more about GeckoView, check out the announcement on Mozilla’s official website. Mozilla releases Firefox 62.0 with better scrolling on Android, a dark theme on macOS, and more Upcoming Firefox update will, by default, protect users privacy by blocking ad tracking Firefox Nightly’s Secure DNS Experimental Results out

Multiple Google Pixel phones experienced an automatic activation of the ‘Battery Saver mode’ today when their phone was almost fully charged. Reddit saw a surge of comments on how users were taken by surprise due to the automatic turning on of the Battery Saver mode. The Pixel team responded to these comments clarifying that ‘an internal experiment to test battery saving features was mistakenly rolled out to more users than intended.’. Even though the settings have been reverted back to the default on their end, the amount of control that Google has on a user’s phone without their knowledge is scary. In most devices, the battery saver mode automatically kicks in when the phone’s charge level reaches a certain threshold. Users can change the percentage at which the battery saver activates. Apparently, Google manipulated the percentage for the users remotely. Reddit saw multiple users responding to Google’s claims of the “mistakenly deployed experiment”   Source: Reddit This is not the first time that users have felt a loss of control over Google-operated services. In October 2017, Google locked out users from Google docs for a violation of their TOS. While many users affirmed that their content nowhere violated the TOS, Google responded saying that they “mistakenly blocked access” to some of their users’ files, including Google Docs. This was due to a short-lived bug that incorrectly flagged some files as violating their terms of service (TOS). The bug was soon removed and the team restored affected users access to all affected files. In both these cases, the changes took place without any prior notification to the users. These ‘accidental mistakes’ on Google’s part raises concerns of the level of control Google has over user devices and data that users aren’t yet aware of. Incidentally, AndroidPolice also reported yesterday that android handsets running Pie or a Pie beta (like Pixel models, the Essential Phone, Nokia 7 Plus, and the OnePlus 6) also experienced the Battery saver issue. Bloomberg says Google, Mastercard covertly track customers’ offline retail habits via a secret million dollar ad deal Like newspapers, Google algorithms are protected by the First amendment making them hard to legally regulate them Google slams Trump’s accusations, asserts its search engine algorithms do not favor any political ideology  

With 600 commits and 992 files changed, React Native 0.57 was released yesterday. In this release, major improvements are done in the accessibility APIs, and WKWebView-backed implementation is added just as they announced in August, along with several tooling updates. What is new in React Native 0.57? New features Accessibility APIs, used for making apps accessible to people with disabilities, now support accessibility hints, inverted colors, and easier usage of defining the element's role and states. On iOS, WebView can now use WKWebView internally by passing useWebKit={true}. Loosen platform check to improve support for out-of-tree platforms. An implementation of YogaNodeProperties is added, which accesses style and layout properties using a ByteBuffer rather than JNI calls. FlatList and SectionList are now added to Animated exports. Changes Android tooling has been updated to match newer configuration requirements (SDK 27, gradle 4.4, and support library 27) unbundle is renamed to ram-bundle (a breaking change for OSS) Minimum Node version is changed from 8 to 8.3 Flow is upgraded to v0.76.0 ESLint is upgraded to 5.1.0 Babel is upgraded to v7.0.0 The “loading from pre-bundled file” notification won’t show up anymore when not on dev mode StyleSheet.compose is refined so that subtypes of DangerouslyImpreciseStyleProp can flow through the function call without losing their type The use of new Metro configuration is supported in the public react-native CLI react-native-dom is whitelisted in haste/cli config defaults Bug fixes debugger-ui path of react-native CLI was wrong earlier, which is now fixed. Extreme slowness of <TextInput> is fixed Placeholder of TextInput not completely visible on Android is fixed Horizontal <ScrollView> overflow issue is fixed Added support for connecting to the Packager when running the iOS app on device when using custom Debug configuration Fix crash in RCTImagePicker on iOS Removed features ScrollView.propTypes is removed. It is recommended to use flow or typescript for verifying correct prop usage instead. (Breaking change) ReactInstancePackage is now deprecated. It is recommended to use @link ReactPackage or @link LazyReactPackage. To know more about the improvements in React Native 0.57 release, head over to their GitHub repository. React Native 0.57 coming soon with new iOS WebViews React Native announces re-architecture of the framework for better performance Introducing Watermelon DB: A new relational database to make your React and React Native apps highly scalable

Details of new Apple products - 3 new iPhones - that were meant to be released at today's launch event at 10.00 am PT, have been leaked thanks after the Apple sitemap revealed the names of the 3 new products. According to Allthings.how, the sitemap revealed the names of iPhone XS and IPhone XS Max, as well as the iPhone XR (the cheaper LCD option). Apple now appears to be aware of the leak and has removed the sitemap links. What else was revealed in the Apple sitemap? You could find considerable details about the new products in the sitemap. A report by Apple tech website 9to5mac.com found, for example: The new iPhone XR will come in blue, coral, red, black, white, and yellow The XR also has 3 storage options:  64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB New Apple Watch models will be available in both 40 mm and 44 mm sizes. Color options are silver, space gray, and gold aluminum How was the Apple sitemap leaked? It didn't require much effort to actually get in to the Apple sitemap and uncover details about the new products. Guilherme Rambo, who works for 9to5mac revealed on Twitter that he simply "used the URL pattern from the last event and guessed the device’s names." https://twitter.com/_inside/status/1039604702697144322 Essentially, if you go to the page for Apple's 2017 event, you can then take a look at the URL path where the images on the page are stored, and then swap out '2017' for '2018'. The launch is due to happen in just a matter of hours. Although it will certainly be irritating for Apple, a company which prides itself on controlling launches to every last detail, it's probably not going to cause too much damage. At the very least it will boost awareness of the event - something the team in Cupertino probably won't complain about.

The Tor Project released its first mobile browser on the Google Play Store, called the Tor Browser, last week. The browser is currently an Alpha release i.e. you can expect few bugs while using the browser. The stable version is expected to be released by early 2019. It comes packed with privacy-enhancing features such as block trackers, defense against surveillance, resist fingerprinting, browse freely, and multi-layered protection. The Tor Browser for Android comes with the highest privacy protections available. The Alpha release of this browser can be downloaded on GooglePlay, or you can use the apk directly from their download page. The Alpha release of this browser requires the installation of a proxy application named Orbot. Orbot is used for connecting the browser to the Tor network. This dependency on Orbot will be deprecated in the future stable release of the this Browser. Let’s now have a look at the features of this new Browser. Block Trackers Tor Browser prevents third-party trackers and ads from following you as it isolates each website that you visit. Also, all the cookies clear away on their own once you are done browsing. Defend against Surveillance This feature in the Tor Browser prevents others watching your connection from knowing what websites you visit. All that the people monitoring your browsing habits would see is that you’re using Tor. Resist Fingerprinting Tor Browser focuses on making all users look the same, and makes it difficult for you to be fingerprinted depending on your browser and device information. Multi-layered Encryption Using Tor Browser for Android, your traffic gets relayed and encrypted three times on passing over the Tor network. The network comprises thousands of volunteer-run servers called Tor relays. Browse Freely Tor Browser lets you access sites that your local internet service provider may have blocked. Currently, there is no official Tor Browser for iOS devices, and there’s one known issue i.e. the Security Slider is under ‘Security Settings,’ but because of a small issue, it shows up only after you restart the app. For more information, check out the official Tor Project Blog post. Tor Browser 8.0 powered by Firefox 60 ESR released Mozilla releases Firefox 62.0 with better scrolling on Android, a dark theme on macOS, and more Airbnb introduces MvRx, a new Android framework for easier, faster, and high-quality product development

Since its launch Magic Leap has always been in the limelight for its unique AR experiences. To take it one step further, Magic Leap has announced a tie-up with motion capture actor Andy Serkis and his UK-based The Imaginarium Studios. Source: Twitter Andy Serkis and his Imaginarium Studios are best known for innovative motion capture and performance capture roles such as Gollum, King Kong, Caesar, Captain Haddock and Supreme Leader Snoke. Magic Leap and Serkis’ The Imaginarium plan to create additional content for the Magic Leap platform, and support third-party developers with its production resources, including the motion capture stage at its London studio. Matthew Brown, CEO of The Imaginarium Studios, quotes, “In using performance capture, we have the opportunity to authentically portray the intent of the actor. With Magic Leap’s technology, that performance is pulled off the screen and into the world of the viewer. This is storytelling as it should be: immersive, personal, and integrated into our world.” As the first product of this partnership, Andy has created a performance-captured character for the Magic Leap One Creator Edition mixed reality headset. This character named Grishneck, is the first Magic Leap character played by Serkis. Grishneck is described as a 3D Orc-like creature that interacts with the viewer when wearing the Magic Leap One Goggles in their controlled environment. In the story, Grishneck is a character who was rejected from a project because he wasn't scary enough. Andy has expressed enthusiasm for the potential of augmented reality. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said, “We now have a new way of experiencing story. What is thrilling is that with Magic Leap, the relationship of the performances to the real world can change hugely and they can be placed and manifested in countless ways.” Magic Leap’s executive creative director Andy Lanning confirmed that Imaginarium and Magic Leap have been in conversations for at least five years. Imaginarium is currently working on several Magic Leap projects. Magic Leap One, the first mixed reality headsets by Magic Leap, is now available at $2295. Magic Leap’s first augmented reality headset, powered by Nvidia Tegra X2, is coming this Summer. Understanding the hype behind Magic Leap’s New Augmented Reality Headsets.

Last week, Google announced that they have made some enhancements in the Wear OS design to provide users a quicker access to information and notifications, proactive help from Google Assistant, and smarter health coaching. Following are some of the improvements they have added to make the user experience better. Notifications on a single scrollable pane To check your notifications at once, you simply need to swipe up. A major improvement is, all notifications are displayed on a single scrollable pane as opposed to having them fill the entire screen one by one. If you receive a message and want to quickly reply to it, you can use a built-in smart reply. Shortcuts and handy features To view shortcuts and handy features you simply have to swipe down. The Quick Settings pane is slightly revamped with two buttons, one for finding your phone and another for Google Pay. Smart suggestions from your Google Assistant Users will now receive a proactive and personalized feed of information from Google Assistant. To view this feed you need to swipe right. Based on your plan, it will give you predictive information about your day. You can plan your day, get answers, and manage your tasks with the help of Google Assistant. To invoke Google Assistant, long press the power button or say “Hey Google”. Start and track your workout goals Recently Google released Google Fit with two new activity goals, namely, Heart Points and Move Minutes. These are based on the activity recommendations by American Heart Association and the World Health Organization, which are shown to have health benefits for your heart and mind. You can swipe left to start and track your workout goals. To stay motivated you can also download or stream your favourite music. The smartwatches are available in various brands such as, Fossil, Huawei, Emporio Armani, and Casio, leaving behind the old boring design. To read the official announcement, head over to the blog posted by Google. Google, Harvard researchers build a deep learning model to forecast earthquake aftershocks location with over 80% accuracy BBC experiments with speed reading on smart watches Google CEO Sundar Pichai won’t be testifying to Senate on election interference

Facebook Reality Labs have launched the Scene Understanding and Modeling SUMO Challenge. The challenge is designed by a group of computer vision researchers at Facebook with collaborators from Stanford, Princeton and Virginia Tech. The goal of the challenge is to aid the development of comprehensive 3D scene understanding and modeling algorithms. For the SUMO challenge, participants are required to generate an instance-based 3D representation of an indoor scene given only a 360-degree RGB-D image taken from a single viewpoint. The generated scene is modeled by a collection of elements, each of which represents one object, such as a wall, the floor, or a chair. Source: Facebook Blog What are the three types of tasks? The SUMO Challenge is organized into three performance tracks based on the output representation of the scene. Participants can join in any of the three increasingly detailed and difficult performance tracks. Bounding Boxes Track: The scene is represented by a collection of oriented bounding boxes. This is similar to the SUN RGB-D Object Detection Challenge. The bounding box is the coordinates of the rectangular border that fully encloses a digital image when it is placed over a page, a canvas, or a screen. Voxels Track: The scene is represented by a collection of oriented voxel grids. A voxel represents a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space. Meshes Track: The scene is represented by a collection of textured surface meshes.  A mesh is a collection of vertices, edges and faces that defines the shape of a polyhedral object in 3D computer graphics and solid modeling. How are the tasks evaluated? The SUMO evaluation metrics focus on four aspects of the representation: geometry, appearance, semantics, and perception (GASP). Participants will be evaluated on their ability to consistently infer the correct geometry, pose, appearance and semantics of the elements in each scene. The challenge runs from August 29th until November 16th, 2018. The top winners in each track will receive prizes, including cash rewards and NVIDIA Titan X GPUs. 1st prize - winner of mesh track: $2,500 in cash + Titan X GPU 2nd prize - winner of voxel track: $2,000 in cash + Titan X GPU 3rd prize - winner of bounding box track: $1,500 in cash + Titan X GPU Winners will be announced at the SUMO Challenge Workshop on December 2nd at ACCV 2018, where they will present their results. How to Participate Familiarize yourself with the input and output formats. Download the SUMO software and the data set. See the data set page for details. Develop your algorithm. Submit your results using EvalAI. For more information, visit the SUMO Challenge website. Facebook Watch is now available world-wide challenging video streaming rivals, YouTube, Twitch, and more. Facebook launched new multiplayer AR games in Messenger. Facebook to launch AR ads on its news feed to let you try on products virtually.

Huawei has debuted a new Artificial Intelligence chip, the Kirin 980, which boasts a number of world firsts. According to Huawei, the Kirin 980 is the world's first: 7nm process mobile phone SoC chipset Cortex-A76 architecture chipset Dual NPU design Chipset to support LTE Cat.21 with speeds up to 1.4Gbps. The Kirin 980 is less than 1 square centimeter and integrates 6.9 billion transistors. The architecture of the Kirin 980 has eight cores: two are for turbo performance, two are for long-term performance, and the last and smallest four are used to maximize power efficiency. It uses Flex-Scheduling intelligence mechanism to allow the CPU to adapt in heavy, medium and light-load scenarios by reducing its power consumption and giving users a longer battery life. The Kirin 980's performance and efficiency improvements The Kirin 980 uses Mali-G76 GPU improving performance by 46%. The fourth-generation ISP utilises a multi-pass noise reduction to capture quality images and preserve important details. This ISP also has a dedicated video pipeline to effectively improve video clarity and reduce shooting delays by 33%. The Kirin 980 7nm compared with the 10nm process, improves performance by 20%, power efficiency by 40% and the overall energy efficiency of the Kirin 980 by 58%. Huawei has doubled down on its AI processing, adding a dual NPU to the Kirin 980, which performs AI-assisted image recognition tasks at a rate of 4,500 images per minute. The NPU is optimized for vector math that powers machine learning frameworks like Facebook’s Caffe2 and Google’s TensorFlow. Huawei says its heterogeneous computing structure — HiAI — automatically distributes voice recognition, natural language processing, and computer vision workloads across it dynamically. The Kirin 980 will also offer the world’s fastest smartphone Wi-Fi speed, clocking in at 1,732Mbps. Huawei's bid to defeat Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 The performance improvements you can see in the Kirin 980 are all key to Huawei's plan to oust Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 as the top mobile AI chip. At the moment, the Snapdragon 845 is the chip that features in Android phones not produced by Huawei. Huawei believes the advantages are significant, claiming its chip has "20 percent better bandwidth and 22 percent lower latency than the Snapdragon 845," while "in gaming applications, the 980 has been shown to produce 22 percent higher frame rates than the 845, and its power consumption when gaming is said to be 32 percent lower" (The Verge). Android Authority have done a detailed fact check looking at the reality of Huawei's claims - it's well worth reading. For a list of other technical specifications, read the Huawei blog. Read next Qualcomm announces a new chipset for standalone AR/VR headsets at Augmented World Expo Tesla is building its own AI hardware for self-driving cars Baidu releases Kunlun AI chip, China’s first cloud-to-edge AI chip

Following an announcement to developers through App Store Connect last night, Apple now requires all new apps and updates to include a link to their developer’s privacy policy in the app metadata. The new rules will come into effect from October 3rd. Even if the app is a basic utility application that doesn’t connect to the internet, it must still host a website with a privacy policy page. The App Store app listings have had a privacy policy URL metadata field for a long time. They have been mandatory for apps that have subscriptions, but this rule now applies to all apps in the store. Apple will not pull existing apps from sale, but any future update must ensure it has the privacy policy URL set. On iPhone or iPad, customers will be able to tap on the link to the privacy policy and read it in Safari. tvOS does not have a web browser, so developers will have to copy and paste their privacy into a text box when they submit their apps, so the Apple TV can display it. Apple says “The privacy policies must identify what data the app collects, in what manner, and how it is used. It is also the responsibility of the app developer to confirm that the behavior of any embedded third-party frameworks complies with the parent app’s privacy policy. Apple also says that apps must clearly explain data retention policies and detail how a user can revoke consent and request deletion of any personal data stored.” It remains to be seen whether Apple will pull apps that are found to be in violation of their privacy policies. Data-sharing practices in ‘apps’ has come under scrutiny in recent months, in the wake of scandals like Cambridge Analytica. Apple instated informational onboarding screens that describe how it uses personal data earlier this year, as part of European GDPR regulation. The new App Store requirements are likely related to GDPR compliance at some level. A privacy policy is required for App Store distribution, as well as external TestFlight beta testing stages. To read the full story visit the Apple blog page. Apple announces a Special Event to reportedly launch new products including “iPhone XS” and OS updates Could Apple’s latest acquisition yesterday of an AR lens maker signal its big plans for its secret Apple car? Did you know your idle Android device sends data to Google 10 times more often than an iOS device does to Apple?

Apple announced yesterday that they will be conducting an event named, Apple Special Event, on September 12, 2018. It will be held at the Steve Jobs Theater. You can also watch the live-streaming of the event on its official website. Source: Apple What can we expect? In Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) held in June this year, it announced upgraded operating systems for iPhone and iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Currently, the beta versions of iOS 12, macOS Mojave, watchOS 5, tvOS 12 is available through Apple Developer Program. The Apple Developer Program allows developers to try out beta versions of Apple software for a few months before it is released in public. Speculations are Apple might share the final release dates of the operating systems at this event. Based on the keynote, following are some of the new features that we can expect in the new OS releases: iOS 12 An all-round faster and more responsive experience. Can FaceTime 32 people at once. A new kind of Animoji, called Memoji is introduced, to match your personality and mood. ARKit 2 enables you to share AR objects through messages and mail and view them in the real world. Screen Time will give you insight into how you use your devices. Read also: Apple releases iOS 12 beta 2 with screen time and battery usage updates among others macOS Mojave Comes with a Dark Mode that will help you focus on your work. The Stacks feature automatically organizes your files into related sets. Finder will help you locate a file by how it looks. Metadata provides you the key details of any file. Continuity camera helps you shoot a nearby object or scan a document and have it automatically appear on your Mac. Read also: macOS Mojave: Updates to the Mac experience for 2018 watchOS 5 Activity Competitions allows you to challenge a friend for a seven-day competition. Workout Updates senses when you are moving and alerts you to start the Workout app. Advanced running features are added like Pace alerts, Rolling pace, and Cadence. With Apple Podcasts you can stay connected to the stories, personalities and news you love. Using Walkie-Talkie you can have one-on-one conversation with anyone who has compatible iWatch. tvOS 12 Added support for Dolby Atmos audio. Compatible movie purchases upgraded for free in iTunes. Zero sign-on feature to simplify the cable authentication process. New aerial screensavers created in partnership with the International Space Station have been added. Siri integration will allow users to search for specific content via voice for quicker content access. With many rumours around, it is expected that Apple might introduce a new iPhone named, iPhone XS in 5.8-inch and 6.5-inch variants. It is also speculated that a new Apple Watch Series 4 will be unveiled with its design focused mainly on increasing the screen size. The new watch may also have solid state buttons and improved heart rate detection. We also expect to see two iPad Pro upgrades with Face ID and no Home button. To know more on this Special Event, check out their official website and also follow the regular updates by 9TO5Mac. Could Apple’s latest acquisition yesterday of an AR lens maker signal its big plans for its secret car? Apple bans Facebook’s VPN app from the App Store for violating its data collection rules 16 year old hacked into Apple’s servers, accessed ‘extremely secure’ customer accounts for over a year undetected

Yesterday, Apple Inc. announced the acquisition of Akonia Holographics, a startup focused on making lenses for augmented reality glasses, which may launch sometime in the year 2020. Akonia Holographics was founded in 2012 by a group of holography scientists and had originally focused on holographic data storage before shifting its efforts to creating displays for augmented reality glasses. Why did Apple acquire Akonia Holographics? With this acquisition, Apple aims to create a wearable device that has the potential to superimpose digital information in the real world via a thin lens. Akonia’s display technology allows for thin, transparent smart glass lenses that display vibrant, full-color, wide field-of-view images. This can help Apple in reaching its ambition of superimposing digital information. Akonia has a portfolio of more than 200 patents related to holographic systems and materials, according to its website. As reported by Reuters, The Akonia acquisition is a clear indication of how Apple might handle one of the most daunting challenges in augmented reality hardware, which is producing crystal clear optical displays that are thin and light enough to fit into glasses similar to everyday frames with images bright enough for outdoor use and suited to mass manufacturing at a relatively low price. In 2013, Apple acquired a small Israeli firm called PrimeSense that made three-dimensional sensors. The iPhone X, launched last year, uses a similar sensor to power facial recognition features. Similarly, Akonia’s acquisition might also result in a new AR lens update in one of its upcoming releases in its devices. Ming-Chi Kuo, a former Apple Inc. analyst said that the Apple Car will launch sometime in 2023-2025. The iCar project is codenamed as 'Titan', according to The Wall Street Journal. Kuo said, “Apple’s leading technology advantages (e.g. AR) would redefine cars and differentiate Apple Car from peers’ products”. Apple acquiring Akino could also be part of including the latest AR tech within the iCar initiative and scale forward the timelines. Apple bans Facebook’s VPN app from the App Store for violating its data collection rules Stack skills, not degrees: Industry-leading companies, Google, IBM, Apple no longer require degrees 16 year old hacked into Apple’s servers, accessed ‘extremely secure’ customer accounts for over a year undetected

Yesterday, Airbnb open sourced MvRx (pronounced mavericks), their Android architecture. MvRx received an astounding adoption rate when it was first introduced to the engineers at Airbnb in July. Later, it became their standard way of writing screens and now it is used for nearly all of their product development. Due to its popularity among Airbnb’s app developers, they have decided to share it with all Android developers. MvRx is based on Kotlin, which helped MvRx’s developers to leverage several powerful features provided by the language to build a cleaner API. It is built on top of the following technologies and concepts: Kotlin Android Architecture Components RxJava React (conceptually) Epoxy (optional but recommended) Why you should use MvRx? Using MvRx you will be able to write simple and complex Android screens easily. MvRx also helps making certain tasks easier and faster for Android app developers such as: Saving view state and business logic in onSaveInstanceState properly Creating layouts with a toolbar, RecyclerView, and footer over and over again Executing the onSuccess and onFailure handlers for asynchronous requests Dealing with the Android lifecycle What are its core concepts? State: MvRxState is an interface that you need to extend with an immutable Kotlin data class. It contains the properties necessary to render your screen. ViewModel: All the business logic and anything other than just rendering views is handled by MvRxViewModels. It extends Google's ViewModel. The following lifecycle diagram clearly illustrates how ViewModels simplify lifecycles on Android: Source: GitHub View: MvRxView is a simple interface that users see and interact with. It is a LifecycleOwner consisting of a invalidate() function that gets called any time there is a change in the state of its ViewModels. Async: MvRx makes handling async requests like fetching from a network or a database easier using Async. It is a Kotlin sealed class with four types: Uninitialized, Loading, Success, and Fail. MvRx provides an extension to map Observable<T> to an Async<T> property on your state to make executing network requests and other actions easy with a single line of code. How can you install it? To use MvRx, you need to add the following dependency to your project in the build.gradle file: dependencies { implementation 'com.airbnb.android:mvrx:0.5.0' } To know about the other details of MvRx, you can refer to its GitHub repository and also read Airbnb’s official announcement. RxAndroid 2.1.0 is out with a newly added Async API! Dagger 2.17, a dependency injection framework for Java and Android, is now out! Did you know your idle Android device sends data to Google 10 times more often than an iOS device does to Apple?