Join the women@wwdc and James Dempsey and the Breakpoints for an evening of mingling and music to benefit App Camp For Girls!

I’ll be there tonight with my guitar to help support James and App Camp for Girls. There’s still time to grab a ticket!

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off on Monday in San Jose, California, the first time it’s been in the city since 2002. Not only did Apple have the pressure of putting on the conference in San Jose, they also had to deliver great updates for developers and consumers. They delivered on all counts. […]

Apple today unveiled the all-new App Store, designed from the ground up to make discovering apps and games easier than ever before. The beautifully redesigned App Store is packed with original stories and editorial, updated daily in a new Today tab, as well as new Games and Apps tabs. Compelling stories, in-depth interviews, helpful tips and collections of must-have apps and games will showcase Apple’s unique perspective and aim to inform, help and inspire customers every day. App Store customers have now downloaded more than 180 billion apps and Apple has paid out over $70 billion to developers since the store launched in 2008, making it the most vibrant software marketplace in the world.

Two things I like with this update. First, games have their own tab so those of us that don’t game won’t have to scroll through them all the time. Second, the Today page may just help discovery.

Apple today gave a sneak peek of iMac Pro, an entirely new workstation-class product line designed for pro users with the most demanding workflows. The all-new iMac Pro, with its gorgeous 27-inch Retina 5K display, up to 18-core Xeon processors and up to 22 Teraflops of graphics computation, is the most powerful Mac ever made. Featuring a stunning new space gray enclosure, iMac Pro packs incredible performance for advanced graphics editing, virtual reality content creation and real-time 3D rendering. iMac Pro is scheduled to ship in December starting at $4,999 (US).

It’s pretty safe to say Apple is serious about the Mac.

Apple today previewed iOS 11, a major update to the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, bringing new experiences and hundreds of features to iPhone and iPad this fall. iOS 11 is the biggest software release ever for iPad, with powerful multitasking features, the Files app and more ways to use Apple Pencil. Augmented reality is coming to hundreds of millions of iOS devices with a new platform for developers to build apps that let users place virtual content on top of real-world scenes. CoreML gives developers on-device machine learning capabilities so they can easily make apps that will predict, learn and become more intelligent. Additional features include the ability to pay friends using Apple Pay, Do Not Disturb while driving to help users stay more focused on the road, even more intelligence and a new voice for Siri and new professional capabilities to Photos and Camera. iOS 11 is available as a developer preview today and will be a free software update for iPhone and iPad this fall.

There is a lot to love about iOS 11, much of it centered around the iPad.

Apple today introduced an all-new 10.5-inch iPad Pro and a new 12.9-inch iPad Pro, featuring the world’s most advanced display with ProMotion technology and incredible performance with the new A10X Fusion chip. The new 10.5-inch model reduces the borders by nearly 40 percent to fit into an incredibly compact package that still weighs just one pound. Combined with powerful new iPad features in iOS 11 coming this fall, like the all-new Files app, customizable Dock, improved multitasking and deeper integration of Apple Pencil, iPad Pro gives users the ability to be even more productive and creative.

The 9.7-inch is my favorite because of the screen technologies, but I do use the larger one sometimes just because of the size. It’ll be interesting for me to try the 10.5-inch and see if that’s the perfect combination of both.

Apple today announced HomePod, a breakthrough wireless speaker for the home that delivers amazing audio quality and uses spatial awareness to sense its location in a room and automatically adjust the audio. Designed to work with an Apple Music subscription for access to over 40 million songs, HomePod provides deep knowledge of personal music preferences and tastes and helps users discover new music.

My first thought was the iPod HiFi speaker, but this is so much more. I’m looking forward to trying this out.

Beginning June 6, users of the Waze Carpool app will be able to find rides from Waze drivers already going their way – and vice versa – throughout the state, expanding on a service only available to date in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sadly, my first thought was to be careful of who you drive with. However, it is an interesting experiment.

Apple today announced that its global developer community has earned over $70 billion since the App Store launched in 2008. The App Store is home to the most innovative apps in the world and in the past 12 months alone, downloads have grown over 70 percent.

“People everywhere love apps and our customers are downloading them in record numbers,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Seventy billion dollars earned by developers is simply mind-blowing. We are amazed at all of the great new apps our developers create and can’t wait to see them again next week at our Worldwide Developers Conference.”

Those numbers are just insane to think about. The types of apps being developed have become more complex in recent years, allowing us to do so much more with our iPhones and iPads. Having powerful hardware is very important, but having a thriving ecosystem of apps to run on the hardware is important too.

Apple on Thursday will announce some great new features for Swift Playgrounds, the company’s educational coding app for iPad. With version 1.5, being released on the opening day of its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5, Swift Playgrounds will feature support for robots, drones and musical instruments. I sat down with Apple executives and a couple of educators to talk about the news.

Uber’s first-quarter loss, excluding employee stock compensation and other items, was $708 million, narrower than the $991 million reported three months earlier, the Journal said.

And the company’s head of finance quit. Damn!

Apple today announced Carpool Karaoke: The Series will be available to Apple Music subscribers starting Tuesday, August 8. The show will feature many of today’s biggest names in music, television, film, sports and pop culture buckling up and belting out their favorite songs for a road trip filled with comedy, conversation and music.

I’m hoping they can pull this off because what James Corden did was really special.

Street View started out as Larry Page’s far-fetched idea to create a 360-degree map of the world. Today, 10 years after the first imagery was published in Street View, people can scale mountains, dive into the depths of the ocean, scout out ramen spots, and walk through museums in far corners of the world.

That was a pretty far-fetched idea, but it is cool.

Uber has long denied the accusations. But when Mr. Levandowski was ordered by a federal judge to hand over evidence and testimony to that end, he asserted his Fifth Amendment rights, seeking to avoid possible criminal charges, according to his lawyers. Uber has been unable to convince Mr. Levandowski to cooperate.

Oh boy.

I do love the crest, cars and everything about the driving experience.

Ryonghung, a North Korean technology company, recently announced a new tablet. It looks a lot like the weird, firewalled computers the country has produced in the past, with the addition of one curious new feature: the name. It’s called… the iPad.

I have no idea how Apple is even supposed to fight this one.

I had such a great time chatting with John Gruber on his latest episode of The Talk Show.

This is the biggest thing that we’ve ever done. The most innovative, beautiful and powerful thing that we’ve ever done. And it’s also the most Mac thing that we’ve ever done! This is what the legendary Pixelmator Team has been secretly and incredibly passionately working on for 5 whole years.

This totally caught my attention today. I love the folks at Pixelmator and the great apps they make, so if they’ve been working on something this long, you know it’s going to be big.

The Essential Phone, brought to us by the person who created Android, is finally ready for the spotlight. It’s an incredibly audacious and ambitious project, with an outlandish screen and the beginnings of a modular ecosystem.

Rubin has been trying to one-up Apple for years but could never quite pull it off. We’ll see how this works out, but I suspect once Apple outlines its next iOS and iPhone hardware later this year, interest in Rubin’s “Essential Phone” will wane.

Much respect for your environmental efforts, Apple.

It always amazes me when I see artists using the iPad and Apple Pencil to make illustrations like this. There is a video on the page showing how the cover was made.

Thanks to Letter Opener for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Letter Opener for macOS

Working together with Windows users shouldn’t be problematic at all. Still, some email messages can not be natively read by the Mac and are packed into Winmail.dat or MSG files that have to be extracted and displayed somehow. Letter Opener for macOS does that with a simple double-click!

Letter Opener for macOS Mail

The plugin to stop the Winmail.dat file flood for good.

If Winmail.dat files are a reoccurring problem, Letter Opener for macOS Mail is the solution. Installed into Mail it opens and displays the files directly inside Apples Mail application, so the user can forget about Winmail.dat files entirely.

Use coupon code ROCKET88 for 30% off Letter Opener for macOS Mail.

This is my last weekly column for The Verge and Recode — the last weekly column I plan to write anywhere. I’ve been doing these almost every week since 1991, starting at The Wall Street Journal, and during that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know the makers of the tech revolution, and to ruminate — and sometimes to fulminate — about their creations.

Cheers, Walt!

I’m very happy to announce that free tickets for my WWDC party are now available. With the generous help of our sponsors iMore, PleyMart.com, MacPaw, and Pixelmator, this year’s party is going to be bigger than ever!

Sir Jony succeeds Sir James Dyson OM, Provost of the College (2011–17), as this key honorary role is renamed. The Chancellor is head of the College, presiding over meetings of the Court, a member of its governing body, Council, and conferring degrees at Convocation. Baroness Gail Rebuck remains Chair of Council and becomes Pro-Chancellor of the university. The posts of Chancellor and Pro-Chancellor are non-salaried.

Congrats, Jony.

Nearly a quarter of American adults sold or traded in a vehicle in the last 12 months, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll published on Thursday, with most getting another car. But 9 percent of that group turned to ride services like Lyft Inc and Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] as their main way to get around.

About the same percentages said they planned to dispose of cars and turn to ride services in the upcoming 12 months.

This makes a lot of sense in urban areas and for people that don’t like to drive. I enjoy driving, so I wouldn’t do that, but it seems to be a growing trend.

James Dempsey joins me this week to talk about his event happening during the week of WWDC. James shares some stories about his time attending WWDC, from singing his first song on stage during the conference, to what it’s like … Continued

Apple has settled a patent dispute with Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia and agreed to buy more of its network products and services, sending Nokia shares up 7 percent.

I’m surprised this was settled so quickly.

Apple Music has some great built-in stations, but one of my favorites is the Rock Workout station. It’s all upbeat music across many generations of rock, which means you can listen without losing that high-tempo groove. I use it on my walk and when I’m driving and just need some great punchy Rock.

This is a really good page. It’s not a lot of specs and things people don’t necessarily care about, just some good fun.