Apple earns five stars in this year’s Who Has Your Back report. This is Apple’s fifth year in the report, and it has adopted every best practice we’ve identified as part of this report. We commend Apple for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy.

Congrats Apple.

EFF’s evaluation of Google (three stars):

Google should take a stronger position in providing notice to users about government data requests after an emergency has ended or a gag has been lifted. Furthermore, Google should provide transparency into its data retention policies.

Over 600 million Samsung mobile device users may be at risk due to a significant security threat, according to researchers at mobile security specialist NowSecure.

and

“Welton found he could hijack the process of updating one of the virtual keyboards Samsung installs on many Android smartphones. From there, he could eavesdrop on phone conversations, rummage through text messages and contacts, or turn on the microphone to capture audio,”…

Enjoy your phone Samsung people.

Jim and Merlin recap WWDC and talk rock.

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I have been reporting on Apple for more than 20 years now, and in all that time no product has had such an impact on my life as this little piece of hardware and software. I don’t say that for dramatic effect, it has had a profound effect on the way I live. As you will read later, this is the most personal review I have ever written. […]

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The folksy roots, the founder breakups, the dysfunction — all those things made Twitter a very human and a much beloved service. It was a service everyone (especially those in the media) wanted to love — and yet it is 2015 and the narrative around the company has become negative and toxic. The more I read all these things about the company, the more I wonder — how did Twitter lose the plot, the narrative. Till not too long ago, the press was generally very kind to the company.

It’s very true, there’s been very little positive out of Twitter in a while.

I began using OS X El Capitan shortly after last week’s WWDC keynote when I met with Apple to talk about the latest release of the operating system. […]

I’d like to thank Microsoft for sponsoring The Loop this week. This year, Microsoft is making major investments in developer and cloud tools to move beyond Windows and bring great support to iOS developers and other popular platforms. As part of this focus, Microsoft is sponsoring Altconf this week and will be there to show you some of the cool new services and free tools to help you take your apps to the next level.

I also want to thank Microsoft for sponsoring the Beard Bash party on Monday June 8th. Life may run on code, but we all know developers run on beer.

If you cannot attend Altconf or the Beardbash, you can learn more about what is possible at http://AnyDevAnyApp.com.

Merlin and Jim talk about TV. Subscribe to this podcast Sponsors: Hover — Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. Use code GREENBOTTLE for 10% off. Harry’s — Go to Harrys.com and use the promo code … Continued

Apple kicked off its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday in San Francisco, Calif. While some of the presenters (not mentioning any names) weren’t up to the usual Apple polish, the company did introduce some nice updates.

This year, Microsoft is making major investments in developer and cloud tools to move beyond Windows and bring great support to iOS developers and other popular platforms. As part of this focus, Microsoft is sponsoring Altconf this week and will be there to show you some of the cool new services and free tools to help you take your apps to the next level.

I also want to thank Microsoft for sponsoring the Beard Bash party on Monday June 8th. Life may run on code, but we all know developers run on beer.

If you cannot attend Altconf or the Beardbash, you can learn more about what is possible at http://AnyDevAnyApp.com.

Future Sonics is hands down the best in the industry. This is the company that invented professional Ear Monitors, and they continue to care about your ears and the quality of sound you hear. I’m getting these.

HTC today introduced a 24-karat gold limited edition of the HTC One M9. There’s just a slight problem: One of the three photos depicting the new smartphone was taken with an iPhone.

The most unfortunate photo taken in a while.

I love shopping on The Music Zoo Web site. I want all of these.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition now—the AltBeardBash at WWDC is in its fourth year, and we have big plans for the event next week.

As with previous years, entertainment will be provided by the Amazing Embarrassonic Human Karaoke Machine—these guys truly are amazing.

While the party is an invite-only event, I always hold a few tickets for readers of The Loop and listeners of my two podcasts, The Dalrymple Report with Merlin Mann and Amplified. So, if you’ll be in San Francisco for WWDC and would like to attend the party on Monday night, send me an email and I’ll see what I can do. I can’t guarantee entry, only that you’ll have a chance to come—as you can imagine, it’s a packed place.

We have three great sponsors for this year’s party:

• Pixelmator
• Microsoft
• UserTesting

Thanks to those companies for all the support.

Deal with it.Thanks to Bold Poker for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Bold Poker: Deal with it.

I’ve been a Marshall guy forever, but those new Marshalls can’t touch what Boogie is doing. I’m getting one of these Mark Five 25 amps. I’ll post my thoughts.

Jim and Dan talk about next week’s WWDC, Apple’s interest in music and television, and more.

Deluxe editions of Led Zeppelin’s final three studio albums: Presence, In Through The Out Door, and Coda will be released in July. As with the previous deluxe editions, all three have been newly remastered by guitarist and producer Jimmy Page and are accompanied by companion audio comprised of previously unreleased music related to the original release selected and compiled by Page.

Jimmy has done a good job on remastering some of the band’s other works, so this should be worth picking up.

I can’t imagine how much data Heineken is pushing through the cloud.

I almost had a goddamn seizure.

Seasonality Pro offers meteorologists and advanced weather enthusiasts a powerful way to explore current weather model data on iOS. View weather forecast model data at full resolution quickly while on the go.

That’s some detailed weather.

Just in case you were wondering.

Jim and Merlin cover all of the exciting news from this year’s Google IO conference.

Deal with it.

My thanks to Mapbox for sponsoring The Loop this week. Mapbox lets iOS developers add beautiful maps to their applications. Our building blocks make it easy to swap out Apple maps with our open source SDK. Choose the map design that fits your app and feels good in your hand.

I don’t often write about email clients, but I love this app. Spark is designed well, full-featured, and it’s easy to use. With support for Apple Watch, using Spark is a no-brainer.

From VentureBeat:

Today was a pretty big day for Google. At its annual I/O developer conference, the company unveiled Android M, Android Pay, Brillo, Google Photos, and more.

Google explains its new photos app and service. For now, I’ll stick with iCloud. It works well for me, syncs to all of my devices and optimizes the photos. I also don’t have to wonder what Google is doing with them when I’m not looking.

There are two basic ways to read this news. The first is to take Apple at its word — that this is a promotion for Ive that will let him focus more of attention on, well, design. That he’s delegating management administrivia to Dye and Howarth, not decreasing his involvement in supervising the actual design work. The second way — the cynical way — is that this is the first step to Ive easing his way out the door, and that his new title is spin to make the news sound good rather than bad.

Personally, I think it’s both. Jony deserves a “chief” title and this is a perfect way to introduce the public to the other lead designers on Jony’s team. I don’t think Jony is going anywhere in the near future, but it’s important for Wall St. and the public to realize that he won’t leave a giant vacuum when he does leave.

It would be impossible for Apple not to have a succession plan in place for someone as important and well-known as Jony. That plan may not come into affect for years, but it’s in place nonetheless.