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Meet R2-D2 and BB-9E, Sphero’s new ‘Star Wars’ toys
It's been nearly two years since Sphero introduced its app-controlled BB-8, a replica of the cute rolling droid that first appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That toy quickly became one of the most coveted by fans of Disney's franchise, and it wasn't long before the company followed it up with a Battle-Worn Edition, designed to look as rugged as the character does in film. And today at IFA 2017, Sphero announced it is expanding its connected-toy universe with two more Star Wars droids, R2-D2 and BB-9E. Naturally, Sphero worked closely alongside Lucasfilm to bring these to life, just as it did with BB-8. The idea, as you might expect, is to make them as close to the real thing as possible.
Apple makes its Swift programming language open source
Earlier this year, Apple said it would be making its programming language Swift open source. And now the company's making good on that promise to developers, specifically those who want to make apps for OS X, iOS and watchOS. Swift, which Apple describes as powerful and easy to use, will be open source under the Apache License, giving devs access to a full set of tools to create anything from 3D games to social networking apps.More importantly, Swift was built to play nice with Objective-C, allowing developers to create projects that blend existing code with Apple's new programming language. If you're interested in playing around with it, Apple's Swift.org site has more information -- although it appears to be down right now.
