Software and technologies that excites me this 2021
disclaimer: We all know that this has been the longest 2020 March ever, but let’s see what’s exciting for this March extension (2021)
Macbook Air M1
At last, I was able to sink my fingers in this so well reviewed Macbooks M1, after watching tons of reviews Iwent for a Macbook Air M1, 8gb and 512gb ssd (512 just for the reason of the extra gpu core), I know the “sweet spot” is the Macbook Air 512gb and 16gb ram, but funny enough, to this side of the world we can just get the 8gb, nothing to do.
Let me set a point, the first computer I used, was a “286” when I was like 9 years old, then MY first computer was a “486”, not even a pentium, since then is the first time that I have a computer that can do pretty much everything and no fan, that’s bonkers, having a computer on my lap that isn’t melting my legs and I’m not afraid of goes flying away cuz the fan power it also amazing.
But you know what’s more crazy, I can open Xcode and messing around in SwiftUI and the computer behaves just like nothing is happening, actually the computer start to heat a little if open any browser based app ( points at figma ), or watch some Youtube videos, dude Chromium browsers are the less optimized thing in this universe, maybe I’ll give a second chance to Safari.
CSS
This isn’t anything new, every year I’m crazy excited about the new things that can be achieved with css, yes I’m not talking about react, vue, laravel, nah plain CSS, cuz every framework needs CSS, also not excited about Tailwind, give it a little shot and felt super wrong doing all my styles like a inline style in html, nowadays feels overkill to use a framework to do layouts went everthing is pretty easy with CSS GRID and CSS FLEXBOX. This year I’m looking forward for containers queries, always felt media queries are underrated and under used, hope that with the arrival of containers queries things change a little. (was reading about, and it will)
WWDC
Since last year I’ve been watching pretty much everything at WWDC, and wow, there’s a lot of I+D in Apple (no way) and we can see all of those in this videos, but this year I’m particulary wanting to know more about the Apple Sillicon and the new hardware they will be release (I’m totally dreaming about a full-fledged iPad running Macos, so we have the best from both worlds).
Also all the new things in SwiftUI, this is one of those languages that’s a delight to code some interfaces and interactions, why? can’t tell exactly, maybe I’m getting better at coding or this is just plain more simple than ever (ok anything it’s easier than Obj-C, maybe it’s the MVVM that resonates more with my designer side or the declarative way).
Design software
So, nothing new, tru my veins runs designer blood, doesn’t matter how much I’m enjoy this new “coding” life, I still like to open Sketch or Figma to design something, and as always im pretty excited about the new things that will appear this year. Framer is always my favorite, even I barely use it, Sketch since last year has been a dissapointment, Figma already won the race, the only way Sketch take the throne again is to do something completly new, but still, Figma is like 5 steps ahead, sorry Sketch. But there’s new ppl on town, Penpot, what makes Penpot special, well, is fucking open source, that make’s it my new favorite (still like you Framer, oh yeah framer is cool cuz has this mix of code, design & prototyping, Webflow it’s also kinda cool)
Games
Damn, stupid games, Monster Hunter Rise is here, what a game!. If you played the original ones, and then World (warudo) you wouldn’t believe that they manage to improve the whole damn game, damn sis besides that, the game is receiving updates every month, and now in July we got a new title of Monster Hunter Stories (its a pokemon like game but in the monster hunter universe). Besides Monster Hunter, I don’t see any other exciting game, I yeah, I returned to Destiny, I know, it’s like a bad drug or a ex gf, but has been hard months.
I promise next blog post won’t be as boring as this one and should be a little more informative.
here we go 2021, with already 5 months, oh jeez, I can’t wait for this eternal march to end.