Tech News - Mobile

Last week, Dan Abramov, one of the React developers, while announcing the release of React 16.8, shared that React Native 0.59 will be released with Hooks. The team was waiting for Hooks to land in React’s stable version before they support it in the next release of React Native. Today, they have released React Native 0.59 RC0, which along with React Hooks, ships with extracted React Native CLI, major QoL improvements, and more. Here are some of the major changes this version will come with: As mentioned earlier, React Native 0.59 will come with React Hooks. This feature allows you to “hook into” or use React state and other lifecycle features via function components. The React Native GitHub repo was quite big, and that is why the team decided to move some of the components to separate repos. As a result, the React Native CLI now has a separate repository. The team has also removed WebView from the React Native code. Now developers need to use its extracted version. Though the team has not shared which exact components will be deprecated in the release notes, this version will surely deprecate quite a few components. Along with these changes, many QoL improvements have been made on the native Android side such as 64 bits support via a new JSC, AppCompatActivity, etc. As this is not a stable release, developers are recommended not to upgrade to React Native 0.59 unless they want to collaborate in testing. To know more in detail, check out React Native’s release notes. The React Native team shares their open source roadmap, React Suite hits 3.4.0 React Native 0.57 released with major improvements in accessibility APIs, WKWebView-backed implementation, and more! JavaScript mobile frameworks comparison: React Native vs Ionic vs NativeScript

Yesterday, Google announced the release of Flutter 1.0, its first stable release, at the Flutter Live event. They further shared that they are working on a project called Hummingbird, which is a way to bring Flutter apps to the “modern, standards-based web”. https://twitter.com/flutterio/status/1070021432934055936 Flutter Live was held yesterday at the Science Museum on Exhibition Rd, Kensington, London SW7 2DD, UK. At this event, Google shared the latest from Flutter, Google’s free and open source SDK for building high-quality native iOS and Android apps from a single codebase. Flutter 1.0 updates The primary focus of Flutter 1.0 was bug fixes and stabilization. Some of the updates introduced in this release are: They have added support for nearly twenty different Firebase services. Performance is improved and work has been done around reducing the Flutter apps size. Dart platform has been updated to 2.1, which offers smaller code size, faster type checks, and better usability for type errors. They have also introduced previews of two new major features namely, Add to App and platform views, which are estimated to be released in February 2019. Developers can try these features in the preview mode. Add to App Add to App is introduced for the developers who wanted to use Flutter for adding new features in their existing applications or to convert their existing application to Flutter in stages. This feature makes it easier to incrementally adopt Flutter by updating templates, tooling, and guidance for existing apps. Also, the tooling has been reworked to make it easy to attach to an existing Flutter process without launching the debugger with the application. Platform views The newly-added platform view widgets, AndroidView and UiKitView allow you to embed an Android or iPhone platform in a Flutter app. These platform view widgets participate in the composition model, which means that you can integrate it with other Flutter content. Hummingbird to bring Flutter to web Flutter primarily focussed on iOS and Android, but now Google is extending it to a broader set of platforms. To achieve this goal, they recently shared a project called Flutter Desktop Embedding, which aims to brings Flutter to desktop operating systems. Also, to expand Flutter to the web they introduced Hummingbird. It is a web-based implementation of the Flutter runtime that utilizes the capability of Dart to compile not just to native ARM code but also to JavaScript. Google’s product manager for Flutter, Tim Sneath told TechCrunch, ”From the beginning, we designed Flutter to be a portable UI toolkit, not just a mobile UI toolkit. And so we’ve been experimenting with how we can bring Flutter to different places.” To explain more about what Hummingbird exactly is, Mr. Sneath added, “One of the great things about Flutter itself is that it compiles to machine code, to Arm code. But Hummingbird extends that further and says, okay, we’ll also compile to JavaScript and we’ll replace the Flutter engine on the web with the Hummingbird engine which then enables Flutter code to run without changes in web browsers. And that, of course, extends Flutter’s perspective to a whole new ecosystem.” Read the official announcement about Flutter, check out Google’s blog. Google Flutter moves out of beta with release preview 1 Google Dart 2.1 released with improved performance and usability JavaScript mobile frameworks comparison: React Native vs Ionic vs NativeScript

Google is looking for ways to improve their biometric-based authentication features for Android P, their upcoming OS. For this they are taking two major steps: First, Google has defined a better model to measure biometric security and constrain weaker authentication methods. Secondly, they are providing a common platform-provided entry point for developers to integrate biometric authentication into their apps. Google has combined secure design principles, a more attacker-aware measurement methodology, and an easy to use BiometricPrompt API for developers to integrate authentication in their devices in a simple manner. Current, biometric models quantify performance from two machine learning inspired metrics, False Accept Rate (FAR), and False Reject Rate (FRR). Both metrics do a great job of measuring the accuracy and precision of a given biometric model. However, they do not provide very useful information about its resilience against attacks. In Android 8.1, Google introduced two new metrics Spoof Accept Rate (SAR) and Imposter Accept Rate (IAR) to measure how easily an attacker can bypass a biometric authentication scheme. The SAR/IAR metrics categorize biometric authentication mechanisms as either strong or weak. While both strong and weak biometrics allowed to unlock a device, weak biometrics did not allow app developers to securely authenticate users on a device in a modality-agnostic way. This was what inspired the development of a Biometric authentication API. With Android P, mobile developers can use the BiometricPrompt API to integrate biometric authentication into their apps in a device. Developers can be assured of a consistent level of security across all devices their application runs on because BiometricPrompt only exposes strong modalities. BiometricPrompt API architecture The API is automated and easy to use. Instead of forcing app developers to implement biometric logic, the platform automatically selects an appropriate biometric to authenticate. For devices running Android O and earlier, a support library is provided for allowing applications to utilize this API across other devices. Further details on BiometricPrompt API are available on the Android developer blog. Top 5 Google I/O 2018 conference Day 1 Highlights: Android P, Android Things, ARCore, ML kit and Lighthouse Android P new features: artificial intelligence, digital wellbeing, and simplicity

At GDC 2019, the team at Oculus launched a brand new addition to their VR collection, Oculus Rift S in partnership with Lenovo. The reason for this partnership is to speed up manufacturing and to improve upon the design of the original Rift. Oculus Rift S will be priced at $399 during launch in Spring, this year. Jason Rubin, Facebook and Oculus’ vice president of VR partnerships and Nate Mitchell, Oculus’ head of VR product said that every existing and future game on the Rift platform will be playable on the Rift S. Features of the Oculus Rift S Improved Resolution This new VR device has a 2560 x 1440 resolution (or 1280 x 1440 per eye), which is 1.4 times the total pixels higher than the original Rift. The new display is LCD instead of OLED, which brings a handful of benefits like a better fill-factor (less unlit space between pixels). However, this often lacks the rich colors and contrast of OLED. Rift S’s LCD display seems quite up to the task, despite running at 80Hz compared to the Rift’s 90Hz. Clarity and Field of View With improved fill-factor of LCD, the screen door effect (unlit space between pixels) sees a pretty solid reduction which makes the Rift S clarity seem better than the moderate change in resolution. With a slightly larger field of view and minimal mura, what you see inside the headset looks a lot like the original Rift but with better clarity. The screen door effect is less distracting, and it’s easier to get lost in the content. No Hardware IPD Adjustment As Rift S uses a single display, it has no hardware IPD adjustment (unlike the original Rift) to change the distance between the lenses to match the distance between the eyes. A proper IPD setting is important for visual comfort (and makes it easier to achieve maximum panel utilization). While IPD on the Rift S can be adjusted, to an extent, in software, users on the outer limits of the IPD range might be left wanting. Oculus hasn’t specified what they consider to be the headset’s acceptable IPD range. A new ‘Passthrough+’ Rift S new Passthrough+ allows users to ‘see through’ their headset by piping the video feed from the onboard cameras into the displays. The company says they’ve paid special attention to make sure the feed is low latency, high frame rate, and stereo-correct, which is why it’s called ‘Passthrough+’. An inside-out ‘Insight’ tracking Rift S uses an ‘inside-out’ tracking system (called Insight) which places five cameras onto the headset itself. The cameras look at the world around the user, and computer vision algorithms use the information to determine the position of the headset. The on-board cameras also look for glowing lights on the controllers (also invisible via infrared) to determine their location relative to the headset. An inside-out system like this is vastly more complex than the outside-in system of the Rift. Room-scale Out of the Box Rift S is easy to set up, and now has room-scale tracking out of the box, which means players can be more immersed in some games by walking around larger spaces and turning around naturally instead of relying on stick-based turning. Depending upon the game, having full 360 room-scale tracking can really enhance immersion levels. Other features in Rift S include hidden audio, improved design and Ergonomics, and much more. To know more about Oculus Rift S in detail, head over to its official website. Google announces Stadia, a cloud-based game streaming service, at GDC 2019 Epic Games announces: Epic MegaGrants, RTX-powered Ray tracing demo, and free online services for game developers Microsoft announces Game stack with Xbox Live integration to Android and iOS  

Yesterday Facebook released a new JavaScript engine called Hermes under an open source MIT license. According to Facebook, this new engine will speed up start times for native Android apps built with React Native framework. https://twitter.com/reactnative/status/1149347916877901824 Facebook software engineer Marc Horowitz unveiled Hermes at the Chain React 2019 conference held yesterday in Portland, Oregon. Hermes is a new tool for developers to primarily improve app startup performance in the same way Facebook does for its apps, and to make apps more efficient on low-end smartphones. The supposed advantage of Hermes is that developers can target all three mobile platforms with a single code base; but as with any cross-platform framework, there are trade offs in terms of performance, security and flexibility. Hermes is available on GitHub for all developers to use. It has also got its own Twitter account and home page. In a demo, Horowitz showed that a React Native app with Hermes was fully loaded within half the time the same app without Hermes loaded, or about two seconds faster. Check out the video below: Horowitz emphasized on the fact that Hermes cuts the APK size (the size of the app file) to half the 41MB of a stock React Native app, and removes a quarter of the app's memory usage. In other words, with Hermes developers can get users interacting with an app faster with fewer obstacles like slow download times and constraints caused by multiple apps sharing in a limited memory resources, especially on lower-end phones. And these are exactly the phones Facebook is aiming at with Hermes, compared to the fancy high-end phones that well-paid developers typically use themselves. "As developers we tend to carry the latest flagship devices. Most users around the world don't," he said. "Commonly used Android devices have less memory and less storage than the newest phones and much less than a desktop. This is especially true outside of the United States. Mobile flash is also relatively slow, leading to high I/O latency." It's not every day a new JavaScript engine is born, but while there are plenty such engines available for browsers, like Google's V8, Mozilla's SpiderMonkey, Microsoft's Chakra, Horowitz notes Hermes is not aimed at browsers or, for example, how Node.js on the server side. "We're not trying to compete in the browser space or the server space. Hermes could in theory be for those kinds of use cases, that's never been our goal." The Register reports that Facebook has no plan to push Hermes' beyond React Native to Node.js or to turn it into the foundation of a Facebook-branded browser. This is because it's optimized for mobile apps and wouldn't offer advantages over other engines in other usage scenarios. Hermes tries to be efficient through bytecode precompilation – rather than loading JavaScript and then parsing it. Hermes employs ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation during the mobile app build process to allow for more extensive bytecode optimization. Along similar lines, the Fuchsia Dart compiler for iOS is an AOT compiler. There are other ways to squeeze more performance out of JavaScript. The V8 engine, for example, offers a capability called custom snapshots. However, this is a bit more technically demanding than using Hermes. Hermes also abandons the just in time (JIT) compiler used by other JavaScript engines to compile frequently interpreted code into machine code. In the context of React Native, the JIT doesn't do that much to ease mobile app workloads. The reason Hermes exists, as per Facebook, is to make React Native better. "Hermes allows for more optimization on mobile since developers control the build stack," said a Facebook spokesperson in an email to The Register. "For example, we implemented bytecode precompilation to improve performance and developed more efficient garbage collection to reduce memory usage." In a discussion on Hacker News, Microsoft developer Andrew Coates claims that internal testing of Hermes and React Native in conjunction with Microsoft Office for Android shows TTI using Hermes at 1.1s, compared to 1.4s for V8, and with 21.5MB runtime memory impact, compared to 30MB with V8. Hermes is mostly compatible with ES6 JavaScript. To keep the engine small, support for some language features is missing, like with statements and local mode eval(). Facebook’s spokesperson also said to The Register that they are planning to publish benchmark figures in the next week to support its performance claims. Declarative UI programming faceoff: Apple’s SwiftUI vs Google’s Flutter OpenID Foundation questions Apple’s Sign In feature, says it has security and privacy risks Material-UI v4 releases with CSS specificity, Classes boilerplate, migration to Typescript and more

Yesterday, Unity made an update stating that from Unity 2019.3.a2 onwards, Android and iOS developers will be able to incorporate Unity features into their apps and games. Developers will be able to integrate the Unity runtime components and their content (augmented reality, 3D/2D real-time rendering, 2D mini-games, and more)  into a native platform project so as to use Unity as a library. “We know there are times when developers using native platform technologies (like Android/Java and iOS/Objective C) want to include features powered by Unity in their apps and games,” said J.C. Cimetiere, senior technical product manager for mobile platforms, in a blog post. How it works The mobile app build process overall is still the same. Unity creates the iOS Xcode and Android Gradle projects. However, to enable this feature, Unity team has modified the structure of the generated iOS Xcode and Android Gradle projects as follows: A library part – iOS framework and Android Archive (AAR) file – that includes all source files and plugins A thin launcher part that includes app representation data and runs the library part They have also released step-by-step instructions on how to integrate Unity as a library on iOS and Android, including basic sample projects. Currently, Unity as a Library supports full-screen rendering only. For now, rendering on only a part of the screen is not supported. Also loading more than one instance of the Unity runtime is not supported. Developers need to adapt third-party plugins (native or managed) for them to work properly.   Unity hopes that this integration will boost AR marketing by helping brands and creative agencies easily insert AR directly into their native mobile apps. Unity Editor will now officially support Linux Unity has launched the ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players Obstacle Tower Environment 2.0: Unity announces Round 2 of its ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players.

WebView is used to display web content in your iOS applications.Yesterday, React Native announced a new native iOS backend to the WebView component that uses WKWebView. This WebView component will be available in the upcoming React Native 0.57 release. Apple has discouraged the use of UIWebViews for a long time. This is due to its being formally deprecated in the upcoming months. It is advised that you use the WKWebView class instead of using UIWebView for the apps that run in iOS 8 and above. You can use the useWebKit property to opt into this implementation: What problems does WKWebView solve? Earlier, to embed web content in our applications we had two options, UIWebView and WKWebView. UIWebView is the original WebView introduced in 2.0. It is known to have some pitfalls and problems. The main drawback is that it has no legitimate way to facilitate communication between the JavaScript running in the WebView and React Native. The newly introduced WKWebView aims to solve this problem. Other benefits of WKWebView over UIWebView include faster JavaScript execution and a multi-process architecture. What to consider when switching to WKWebView? You must avoid using the following properties, for the time being: Using automaticallyAdjustContentInsets and contentInsets may result in inconsistent behavior. When we add contentInsets to UIWebView, the viewport size changes (gets smaller, if the content insets are positive). In case of WKWebView, the viewport size remain unchanged. If you use the backgroundColor property there is a chance that WKWebView may render transparent backgrounds differently from UIWebView and can also flicker into view. Per React Native community, WKWebView doesn't support the scalesPageToFit property. Hence, they couldn't implement this on the WebView React Native component. To know more about the new WebViews, check out their announcement on React Native’s official website and their GitHub repository. Apple releases iOS 12 beta 2 with screen time and battery usage updates among others React Native 0.56 is now available Apple releases iOS 11.4 update with features including AirPlay 2, and HomePod among others

Mozilla has announced a collaboration with Khronos Group and developers of existing open source Blender tools, to bring GL Transmission Format (glTF) import and export add-on for Blender. This release supports the upcoming release of Blender 2.8 which will feature physically-based rendering (PBR) and improved user interface. The glTF format is the foundation for interoperable 3D tools and services. Basically, it’s the “JPEG of 3D”. It is royalty free and coordinated by the Khronos consortium. With gITF support for Blender, mixed reality developers, designers, and creators anywhere in the world, can create, edit, and remix glTF models without having to purchase the specialized software. How did the collaboration come to be? Mozilla’s Mixed Reality (WebXR) Team conducted a joint ecosystem analysis focusing on content creators, their motivations, current pain points, and the expected impact of tools that could empower them. After the joint ecosystem analysis Khronos, UX3D, and Mozilla decided to co-fund the development of the Blender importer and exporter tool. Airbus was also declared as one of the partners in the development of the Blender glTF tools. They are using the glTF format internally to visualize their Blender created mock-ups in VR and AR. They came up with an ecosystem partners model to accelerate the advancement of the glTF standard and the WebXR ecosystem. The team hopes that “the Blender tools will unleash the creativity of the global community.” The glTF Blender import and export tool will be released and ready for beta testers around the time of the Blender conference in late October. Mozilla will also be sharing a detailed analysis of the tool on Mozilla’s Hacks blog in the coming weeks. Read more about the collaboration on Medium. Building VR objects in React V2 2.0: Getting started with polygons in Blender Is Mozilla the most progressive tech organization on the planet right now? Mozilla announces $3.5 million award for ‘Responsible Computer Science Challenge’ to encourage teaching ethical coding to CS graduates

Android 11 introduced several exciting updates for developers to integrate into their app experience including new device and media controls, enhanced support for foldables, and a lot more. In addition to new features there are also several privacy enhancements that developers need to integrate into their application when upgraded and re-targeting to Android 11. One of those enhancements is the introduction of package visibility that alters the ability to query installed applications and packages on a user’s device. When you want to open a browser or send an email then your application will have to launch and interact with another application on the device through an Intent. Before calling StartActivity it is best practice to QueryIntentActivities or ResolveActivity to ensure there is an application that can handle the request. If you are using Xamarin.Essentials, then you may not have seen these APIs because the library handles all of the logic for you automatically for Browser(External), Email, and SMS. Before Android 11 every app could easily query all installed applications and see if a specific Intent would open when StartActivity is called. That has all changed with Android 11 with the introduction of package visibility. You will now need to declare what intents and data schemes you want your app to be able to query when your app is targeting Android 11. Once you retarget to Android 11 and run your application on a device running Android 11 you will receive zero results if you use QueryIntentActivities. If you are using Xamarin.Essentials you will receive a FeatureNotSupportedException when you try to call one of the APIs that needs to query activities. Let’s say you are using the Email feature of Xamarin.Essentials. Your code may look like this: public async Task SendEmail(string subject, string body, List<string> recipients) { try { var message = new EmailMessage { Subject = subject, Body = body, To = recipients }; await Email.ComposeAsync(message); } catch (FeatureNotSupportedException fbsEx) { // Email is not supported on this device } catch (Exception ex) { // Some other exception occurred } } If your app targeted Android 10 and earlier, it would just work. With package visibility in Android 11 when you try to send an Email, Xamarin.Essentials will try to query for pacakges that support email and zero results will be return. This will result in a FeatureNotSupportedException to be thrown, which is not ideal. To enable your application to get visbility into the packages you will need to add a list of queries into your AndroidManifest.xml. <manifest package="com.mycompany.myapp"> <queries> <intent> <action android:name="android.intent.action.SENDTO" /> <data android:scheme="mailto" /> </intent> </queries> </manifest> If you need query multiple intents or use multiple APIs you will need to add them all into the list. <queries> <intent> <action android:name="android.intent.action.SENDTO" /> <data android:scheme="mailto" /> </intent> <intent> <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" /> <data android:scheme="http"/> </intent> <intent> <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" /> <data android:scheme="https"/> </intent> <intent> <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" /> <data android:scheme="smsto"/> </intent> </queries> And there you have it, with just a small amount of configuration you are app will continue to work flawless when you target Android 11. Learn More Be sure to browse through the official Android 11 documentation on package visibility, and of course the newly updated Xamarin.Essentials documentation. Finally, be sure to read through the Xamarin.Android 11 release notes. The post Query & Interact with Apps in Android 11 with Package Visibility appeared first on Xamarin Blog.

Virtually tune-in to communities around the world through amazing online events, streams, and recordings this October. Stay connected to your developer communities through the upcoming .NET Conf 2020, virtual Meetups, community stand-ups, podcasts, and more! As well as discovering ways to get started with .NET tutorials and hosting your own virtual experiences. .NET Conf 2020 The .NET team and the .NET Foundation are excited to present .NET Conf 2020 – a free, 3-day, livestream event all about .NET development! This year is going to be extra special as .NET 5.0 launches on the 10-year anniversary of this virtual conference happening November 10-12th, 2020! Host a Virtual Event The .NET Foundation is supporting virtual events run by communities from around the world. Organize a virtual event or Meetup for your community between November 13, 2020 – January 31, 2021 to get the following support: Promotion of your event on the .NET Conf event site and through the .NET Virtual User Group. Technical content to present/promote to your local groups through an “Event in a Box”. Support with online streaming to the .NET Foundation’s YouTube channel, if needed. Digital SWAG and additional offers from our partners. How to Participate Fill out this form to let us know about your virtual event. Share your stories and events via the hashtag #dotnetconf on Twitter. Share our Facebook event with your friends to help spread the word! For questions, please email dotnetconf@dotnetfoundation.org Important note: Please be advised request of speakers and streaming support for virtual .NET Conf 2020 events resources are provided based on speaker and streaming support team availability, as well as a “first-come-first-served” basis. Join us on November 10th at 08:00 PST for the live keynote on www.dotnetconf.net. Share your stories, watch the stream, and have fun learning! Virtual User Group Events Around the World Discover events happening all over the globe and all throughout the month via the .NET Foundation Community Meetup site. Get assistance with supporting your own local user group by joining the .NET Foundation Meetup Pro account. Additionally, the .NET Foundation is helping .NET user groups go virtual through the .NET Virtual User Group program! .NET Foundation’s .NET Virtual User Group Program Let the .NET Foundation take care of all of the streaming so you can focus on enabling developers around the world to join into YOUR event. Submit your user group session, get scheduled, and get your event promoted! It is a great way to engage with the broader .NET community while keeping your user group active and maintaining social distance. Join the .NET Virtual User Groups right now! Find awesome upcoming user group sessions from around the world and right in your hometown. Watch the .NET Team Stream Discover new live community stand-ups every week! Catch the Xamarin community live-streaming on Twitch daily: Get the full list of .NET streamers throughout the week. Be sure to click that “Follow” button to stay up to date. Join a .NET Stand-up Multiple times a week, the .NET teams meet online to talk about the latest news across all .NET products. Find live, upcoming, and past episodes on the new .NET Community Stand-up website. Including the upcoming Xamarin Community Stand-up at 10/1/2020, 1:00:00 PM EST. Topic: Community member Theodora shows off her College Diary app Subscribe to the Xamarin Podcast Join your co-hosts, Matt Soucoup and James Montemagno, to catch up on the latest and greatest in Android, Xamarin, and cloud development. Get all the updates about Xamarin.Forms, recent features, and future releases in a jiffy. Subscribe to the Xamarin Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. Get Started with Xamarin and .NET Begin your journey of .NET Core with experts like Scott Hanselman, Kendra Havens, and many others that help walk you through the beginning stages of learning .NET. Such as how to get started with .NET, Xamarin, ASP.NET, NuGet, and even build your first app! Discover the exciting world of development with this Beginner series for .NET developers today. The post .NET Conf 2020 and Community Events this October appeared first on Xamarin Blog.

Progressive web apps are now available on the Microsoft store. But just when you thought Microsoft was taking a step to plug the 'app gap' and catch up with the competition... This first wave of progressive web apps won't actually work on Windows mobile. One of the central problems with the new Windows progressive web apps is that they do not have service workers implemented for Edge mobile - that means they aren't able to send push notifications. This is bad news generally for the Windows 10 mobile platform. It's possible that Microsoft might add further updates for progressive web apps on mobile, but it nevertheless sends signals that Microsoft just doesn't have the hunger to commit to their mobile project. As we've seen just a few days ago, the company more broadly appears to be moving towards infrastructure and cloud projects. The issues around progressive web apps might well just be symptomatic of this broader organizational shift. For TechRadar, this is a misstep by Microsoft. "There’s very little evidence out there that Microsoft is willing to put in the massive effort needed to get back on terms with iOS and Android devices, even in the enterprise sector, so the future doesn’t look too rosy at the moment." However, while disappointment is understandable, there's a chance that these issues will be corrected. It wouldn't actually take that much for Microsoft to fix the problem. Development teams could then deploy updates to their respective applications pretty easily, without having to go through the rigmarole of submitting to the app store once again. The list of companies who have PWAs available are, we should note, pretty impressive. It's clear that some big players in a number of different fields want to get involved: Skyscanner Asos Ziprecruiter Oyster StudentDoctorNetwork What this means for the future of Windows mobile isn't clear. It certainly doesn't look great from Microsoft's perspective, and you could say this has been a bit of a missed opportunity. But all is not lost, and they could quickly recover to use PWAs to redefine the future of its mobile offering. Check out other latest news: Verizon launches AR Designer, a new tool for developers Leap Motion open sources its $100 augmented reality headset, North Star

Microsoft employees are outraged over the company’s $480 million deal with the U.S. Army to provide them with Hololens2, Microsoft’s latest augmented-reality headsets, to be used on the battlefield. Although Microsoft won the contract in November, it was last Friday, that Microsoft workers took to Twitter to express their concerns. In an open letter, addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and president and chief legal officer Brad Smith, employees wrote that the deal has "crossed the line" and "is designed to help people kill." https://twitter.com/MsWorkers4/status/1099066343523930112 This is not the first time tech workers have stood up in solidarity against tech giants over discrepancies in business or policies. Last year, ‘Employees of Microsoft’ asked Microsoft not to bid on US Military’s Project JEDI in an open letter. Google employees also protested against the companies’ censored search engine in China, codenamed Project Dragonfly. In October 2018, an Amazon employee has spoken out against Amazon selling its facial recognition technology, named, Rekognition to the police departments across the world. Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the HoloLens2 AR device at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. They also signed a contract with US military services called Integrated Visual Augmentation System. Per the terms of the deal, the AR headsets will be used to insert holographic images into the wearer’s field of vision. The contract’s stated objective is to “rapidly develop, test, and manufacture a single platform that Soldiers can use to Fight, Rehearse, and Train that provides increased lethality, mobility, and situational awareness necessary to achieve overmatch against our current and future adversaries," the letter said. What are Microsoft employees saying? The letter which was signed by more than 100 Microsoft employees, was published on an internal message board and circulated via email to employees at the company on Friday. The letter condemned the IVAS contract demanding for its cancellation and a call for stricter ethical guidelines. “We are alarmed that Microsoft is working to provide weapons technology to the US Military, helping one country's government ‘increase lethality’ using tools we built. We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used,” the letter said. Aligning Hololens2 with military turns “warfare into a simulated ‘video game,’ further distancing soldiers from the grim stakes of war and the reality of bloodshed,” adds the letter. In October, Brad Smith defended Microsoft's work with the military, via a blog post, "First, we believe that the people who defend our country need and deserve our support. And second, to withdraw from this market is to reduce our opportunity to engage in the public debate about how new technologies can best be used in a responsible way. We are not going to withdraw from the future." He also suggested that employees concerned about working on unethical projects “would be allowed to move to other work within the company”.  This statement ignores “the problem that workers are not properly informed of the use of their work”, the letter stated. Netizens are also in solidarity with Microsoft employees and criticize the military involvement. https://twitter.com/tracy_karin/status/1099880041721352192 https://twitter.com/Durrtydoesit/status/1099840664978817024 https://twitter.com/cgallagher036/status/1099826879090118657 A comment on Hacker news reads, “Whether you agree with this sentiment or not, people waking up to ethical questions in our field is unquestionably a good thing. It's important to ask these questions.” Rights groups pressure Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to stop selling facial surveillance tech to the government. ‘Employees of Microsoft’ ask Microsoft not to bid on US Military’s Project JEDI in an open letter. The new tech worker movement: How did we get here? And what comes next?

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  

CES 2019 is kicking off in Las Vegas, Nevada today, January 8, Monday for 3 days. The conference unofficially kicked off on Sunday, January 6 and you may have a look at the announcements made on that day. Yesterday was the main press day when the majority of the announcements were made with a lot of companies showcasing their latest projects and announcing new products, software, and services. HTC HTC announced their partnership with Mozilla, bringing Firefox’s virtual reality web browser to the Vive headset. Mozilla first announced Firefox Reality as a dedicated VR web browser in April. In September, they announced that the browser is now available on Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream. Now, it is available for the HTC Vive headset. As part of the deal, HTC is also teaming up with Amazon to make use of Amazon Sumerian. HTC also announced the Vive Pro Eye virtual reality headset with native, built-in eye tracking. It uses “foveated rendering” to render sharp images for wherever the human eye is looking in a virtual scene and reduces the image quality of objects on the periphery. Intel Intel made a number of announcements at CES 2019. They showcased new processors and also released a press release with updates on Project Athena. With this project, they are getting PC makers ready for “a new class of advanced laptops.” These laptops will be Ultrabooks part two with 5G and artificial intelligence support. New Intel processors: New 9th Gen Core processors for a limited number of desktops and laptops. A 10nm Ice Lake processor for thin laptops. A 10nm Lakefield processor using 3D stacking technology for very small computers and tablets. A 10nm Cascade Lake Xeon processor for data processing. 3D Athlete Tracking tech which runs on the Cascade Lake chip and shows data about how fast and far athletes are traveling. Intel’s 10nm Snow Ridge SOC for 5G base stations. Lenovo Lenovo has made minor updates to their ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga laptops with new designs for 2019. They are mostly going to have a material change, and are also going to be thinner and lighter this year. Lenovo has also released two Lenovo is two large display monitor. The first is Lenovo’s ThinkVision P44W, which is aimed at business users, and the second is the Legion Y44w Gaming Monitor. They both have a 43.4-inch panel. Uber One of Uber’s partners in the air taxi domain, Bell, has revealed the design of its vertical takeoff and landing air taxi at CES 2019. Their flying taxi, dubbed the Bell Nexus, can accommodate up to 5 people and is a hybrid-electric powered vehicle. CES 2019 also saw the release of the game Marvel's Avengers: Rocket's Rescue Run. This is the first demo product from startup Holoride, which has Audi as one of its stakeholders. It's the result of Audi and Disney's new media format, which aims to bring virtual reality to passengers in cars, specifically to Uber. More announcements: Harley-Davidson gave a preview of their first all-electric motorcycle. It will launch in August 2019 and will cost $29,799 TCL announced its first soundbars and a 75-inch version of the excellent 6-Series 4K Roku TV Elgato announced a professional $199 light rig for Twitch streamers and YouTube creators Hisense announces its new 2019 4K TV lineup and the Sonic One TV Griffin introduces new wireless chargers for the iPhone and Apple Watch Amazon is planning to let people deliver packages inside your garage Kodak’s release a new instant camera and printer line GE announced a 27-inch smart display for the kitchen that streams Netflix. Google Assistant will soon be on a billion devices. Their next stop - feature phones Vizio announces the most advanced 4K TV ever and support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 Toyota shared details of it’s Guardian Driver-Assist System which will mimic a technique used in fighter jets to serve as a smart intermediary between driver and car. CES 2019: Top announcements made so far HTC Vive Focus 2.0 update promises long battery life, among other things for the VR headset Intel unveils the first 3D Logic Chip packaging technology, ‘Foveros’, powering its new 10nm chips, ‘Sunny Cove’

Apple held its annual conference Worldwide Developers Conference, WWDC 2019 in San Jose on Monday and to say that the keynote session, was jammed with announcements would be an understatement. This time Apple has really tried to innovate, it was not just the usual product hardware updates but also key features in the business, software space, along with a focus on privacy. Some new products and services which were showcased included a Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR, iOS 13 with a dark mode, MacOS Catalina and an operating system for the iPad called iPadOS. There was also a new privacy-focused sign-in, SwiftUI framework, and Feedback Assistant. Needless to say, people were enthralled by the event and expressed their excitement on Twitter. https://twitter.com/ShaneyBoy112/status/1135628489065996288 https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1135653636145590273 https://twitter.com/nickchapsas/status/1135616253677191169 New enhancements to Apple’s flagship operating systems macOS Catalina in beta Apple previewed a new version of Mac operating system, macOS Catalina (macOS 10.5) as a result of the expansion of the company's Marzipan program -- now called Project Catalyst -- which brings iOS apps to the Mac. With macOS Catalina, Apple is replacing iTunes with its popular entertainment apps — Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and the Apple TV app. It also has a new Sidecar feature which helps users extend their Mac desktop by using their iPad as a second display or as a high-precision input device across Mac apps. Catalina has new security features such as ‘Find My app’ and ‘Approve’ to keep users better protected. Voice Control lets users control their Mac entirely with their voice. It also has the Screen Time feature, giving users options such as monitoring usage, scheduling downtime, and setting limits for both apps and websites across all devices. macOS Catalina will be available this fall as a free software update for Macs introduced in mid-2012 or later. For more information, see our detailed coverage here. iOS 13 Beta Apple previewed the latest update of its mobile operating system, iOS 13 at WWDC. It introduces dark mode, advanced photo and camera features, Sign in with Apple and a new Maps experience. Sign in with Apple allows customers to simply use their Apple ID to authenticate instead of using a social account or filling out forms, verifying email addresses or choosing passwords. The Sign in will protect users’ privacy by providing developers with a unique random ID. Siri has a new, more natural voice. HomePod can also distinguish voices from anyone in the home to deliver personal requests, including messages, music and more. https://twitter.com/astralwave/status/1135602897821917184 The developer preview of iOS 13 is available to Apple Developer Program members at starting yesterday, and a public beta program will be available to iOS users later this month. New software features will be available this fall as a free software update for iPhone 6s and later. Read more about iOS 13 features here. Apple iPadOS WWDC 2019 also saw iPad getting its own Apple iPadOS. Basically, iPadOS builds on the same foundation as iOS, adding intuitive features specific to the large display of iPad. It has a Split view allowing iPad users to work with multiple files and documents from the same app simultaneously. They can also quickly view and switch between multiple apps in Slide Over. It also introduces mouse support for both USB and Bluetooth devices. Source: Apple Now Apple Pencil is even more integrated into the iPad experience. Customers can now mark up and send entire webpages, documents or emails on iPad by swiping Apple Pencil from the corner of the screen. The Files app also comes with iCloud Drive support for folder sharing. Text editing on the iPad receives a major update with iPadOS. It is easier and faster to point with precision and speed, select text with just a swipe and use new gestures to cut, copy, paste and undo. iPadOS will be available this fall as a free software update for iPad Air 2 and later, all iPad Pro models, iPad 5th generation and later and iPad mini 4 and later. tvOS 13 and watchOS 6 Apple also released tvOS 13 operating system for Apple TV 4K. With tvOS 13, Apple TV 4K now has a new Home screen; multi-user support for customers to access their own TV shows, movies, music, and recommendations; support for Apple Arcade; expanded game controller support for Xbox One S and PlayStation DualShock 4; and new 4K HDR screen savers. tvOS 13 will be available this fall as a free software update for Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD. Apple previewed watchOS 6, offering users better health and fitness management such as cycle tracking and Noise app, gives access to dynamic new watch faces and the Activity Trends and App Store directly on Apple Watch. New software features will be available this fall as a free software update for Apple Watch Series 1 or later paired with iPhone 6s or later running iOS 13 or later. Source: Apple Swift UI framework Apple unveiled its SwiftUI framework at WWDC offering a simple way for developers to build user interfaces across all Apple platforms using just one set of tools and APIs. It features a declarative Swift syntax that’s easy to read and natural to write. SwiftUI Working with new Xcode design tools, Swift UI keeps code and design perfectly in sync. It also offers features such as automatic support for Dynamic Type, Dark Mode, localization, and accessibility. Swift UI got developers quite excited who compared it with React Native and Flutter. https://twitter.com/chrismaddern/status/1135624920036184067 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1135835228696600576 https://twitter.com/benjaminencz/status/1135797158807035904 Apple aims to protect user privacy with Apple Sign in Apple has a new way to stop third-party sites and services from getting your information when you sign up to an app. The “Sign in with Apple” button introduced at WWDC, can authenticate a user using Face ID on their iPhone without turning over any of their personal data to a third-party company.  Often users are dependent on third-party apps for using a social account or filling out forms, verifying email addresses or choosing passwords. Sign in with Apple allows customers to simply use their Apple ID to authenticate. It protects users’ privacy by providing developers with a unique random ID. Other privacy updates to the App Store Apps intended for kids cannot include third-party advertising or analytics software and may not transmit data to third parties. HTML5 games distributed in apps may not provide access to real money gaming, lotteries, or charitable donations, and may not support digital commerce. VPN apps may not sell, use, or disclose to third parties any data for any purpose, and must commit to this in their privacy policy. Apps that compile information from any source that is not directly from the user or without the user’s explicit consent, even public databases, are not permitted on the App Store. Apps must get consent for data collection, even if the data is considered anonymous at the time of or immediately following collection. More privacy related announcements here. New Mac Pro with Apple Pro Display XDR At the WWDC, Apple also announced its all-new redesigned Mac Pro, starting at $5,999. The design is a homage to Apple’s classic “cheese grater” look, but it is far from a simple grater when it comes to features. https://twitter.com/briantong/status/1135612966789820418 The new Intel Xeon processor inside the Mac Pro will have up to 28 cores, with up to 300W of power and heavy-duty cooling. System memory can be maxed out at 1.5TB, says Apple, with six-channel memory across 12 DIMM slots. It also has 32GB of memory, Radeon Pro 580X graphics, and a 256GB SSD. With this Mac Pro, Apple is launching a custom expansion module, the MPX Module. It has a quad-wide PCIe card that fits two graphics cards, has its own dedicated heat sink, and also has a custom Thunderbolt connector to hook into Thunderbolt 3 backbone that Apple built into the motherboard to deliver additional power and high-speed connectivity to components. The power supply of the new Mac Pro maxes out at 1.4kW. Three large fans sit at the front, just behind the new aluminum grille, blowing air across the system at a rate of 300 cubic feet per minute. Alongside the new Mac Pro, Apple also introduced a matching 6K monitor, the 32-inch Pro Display XDR at WWDC, whose starting price is $4,999. The Pro Display XDR, which stands for extreme dynamic range, has P3 and 10-bit color with reference modes built in, as well as Apple’s True Tone automatic color adjustment for ambient lighting. It’s 40 percent larger than the iMac 5K display and has an anti-reflective coating, and comes in a matte option called nanotexture. Source: Apple Feedback Assistant for Developers Bug reporter is now replaced with Feedback Assistant which is available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web, making it easy for developers to submit effective bug reports and request enhancements to APIs and tools. When developers file a bug, they will receive a Feedback ID to track the bug within the app or on the website. Other features include automatic on-device diagnostics, remote bug filing, detailed bug forms, and bug statuses. For more coverage of Apple’s special event keep watching this space. You can also stream the WWDC Keynote from the San Jose Convention Center here. Apple releases native SwiftUI framework with declarative syntax, live editing, and support of Xcode 11 beta. Apple Pay will soon support NFC tags to trigger payments Apple proposes a “privacy-focused” ad click attribution model for counting conversions without tracking users