From the 007 website:

Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli and Daniel Craig announced today that Bond 25 will begin filming at Pinewood Studios on 4 March 2019 under the helm of director, Cary Joji Fukunaga with a worldwide release date of 14 February 2020.

“We are delighted to be working with Cary. His versatility and innovation make him an excellent choice for our next James Bond adventure,” said Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.

I’ve no familiarity with Cary Joji Fukunaga, but I’m delighted to see that the release date has only been pushed back a couple of months. Bring it on!

Ten years of blogging is an impressive feat - almost as impressive as the huge amount of Apple history that Stephen Hackett has documented at 512 Pixels.

It’s great to see niche websites like this continue to live on as social media sites come and go. I’m looking forward to seeing how the site evolves over the next few years.

Eli Hodapp from Touch Arcade reacting to Apple’s decision to end the affiliate program:

TouchArcade has been around since early 2008, with our very first post published on March 12th, 2008 surrounding the earliest iPhone developers committing to making games on the platform. Since then, it has been a rollercoaster. In the early days, we had loads of good times. Recently? It genuinely feels like Apple does not want us to exist anymore.

I don’t know how the takeaway from this move can be seen as anything other than Apple extending a massive middle finger to sites like TouchArcade, AppShopper, and many others who have spent the last decade evangelizing the App Store and iOS gaming- Particularly on the same day they announced record breaking earnings of $53.3 billion and a net quarterly profit of $11.5 billion.

I think it would be a huge loss for the like of Touch Arcade to be forced to shut down or scale back because of this decision from Apple. It may be the case that Apple are losing a percentage of revenue from paying out to those registered in the affiliate program, but that is surely a tiny figure to a company that have just been valued at a trillion US dollars on the market.

Personally, I have used websites like Touch Arcade and Appspy countless times to find apps and games that would be of interest to me. Regardless of what changes are made to the App Store editorial section, it will never replace the value of those sites.

Great post by Stephen Hackett on the iPhone 3G. The 3G was my first iPhone, which I got for Christmas in 2008 - almost 10 years ago(!). For it’s time it felt like a huge step forward in technology, particularly when exploring the App Store and seeing what was possible.

The home button was noticeably soft to press, and as the months wore on, became harder to press without feeling like you were going to break it. ¹ I loved the plastic back and the chrome trim. I don’t think Apple have made an iPhone since the 3G/3GS that feel as comfortable to hold.

I still have a lot of photos that I took on the phone from that time backed up to iCloud, and those photos still hold up really well today I think.

For all the progress that has been made over the past decade, the 3G still looks so familiar. Home button, big screen, border at top and bottom, mute switch, lock and volume buttons - these are all still present in more or less the same position of last years iPhone 8 line.

Despite this, as we move towards edge to edge design I have a feeling that the next few iPhone releases will make the 3G feel like a relic of the past.

Instapaper blog:

Today, we’re announcing that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013. The ownership transfer will occur after a 21 day waiting period designed to give our users fair notice about the change of control with respect to their personal information.

We want to emphasize that not much is changing for the Instapaper product outside the new ownership. The product will continue to be built and maintained by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper for the past five years. We plan to continue offering a robust service that focuses on readers and the reading experience for the foreseeable future.

I’m glad to see this move, seeing as Instapaper has been unavailable for use for the past few months in the EU becuase of it non-compliance with GDPR. I’ve since moved onto using Pocket as a replacement, but it would be great to see Instapaper return.

John Mundy, writing on Pocket Gamer:

There have been a fair few mobile football games that have attempted to emulate the beautiful game over the past decade. I’d argue that none have done so as expertly as New Star Soccer.

You can keep your FIFA and your PES. The two undisputed console footy heavyweights have never been able to translate their highly technical magic to a tiny touchscreen.

I can’t think of any mobile game that I have played that comes close to how addictive New Star Soccer is. It’s the perfect companion to the World Cup, or if you want to mindlessly kill a few minutes hours from time to time on your phone/tablet.

Nice overview of Dark Mode in macOS Mojave. After reading through this it makes me even more happy to see a dark mode introduced.

Aside from looking great, I find darker colours much easier on the eye, which is something to be aware of when spending long periods of time working at a computer. Hopefully it makes its way onto iOS in the future.

Developer Steve Troughton Smith today tweeted photos of macOS 10.14 with some very juicy details about Apple’s upcoming operating system. The OS is very clearly sporting a fresh new dark theme, presumably a toggle-able setting, with the dark UI affecting all application chrome. You can also see an icon for a Mac News app in the Dock, as well as a first look at Xcode 10.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

WWDC 2018 kicks off in San Jose on Monday 4th. iOS 12 should be light on new features, instead bringing some much-needed stability to the platform, which is fine by me. Siri should also see some stage time with meaningful improvements. Hardware wise, it’s anyone’s guess.

I have one wish, and one wish only (which I’ve had the previous two years)….system wide dark mode. Don’t let me down Apple. 🙏

Nice outline of how poor emoji search is on Apple devices. This is just one of the many reasons that I use Gboard from Google.