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We all know by know that Apple doesn’t do social well at all, and that includes Apple Music. Its failed attempts with Ping and Connect underscore the company’s lack of understanding in attempting to engage customers in the social realm. However, I’ve been testing a free new app called SoundShare that really gets the integration of social and music.

I never thought Axl could pull this off, but this is pretty damn good.

As a Nova Scotianer, I’d love to be buried at sea off the coast of my home province. After all the food the ocean has provided me (I’ve eaten hundreds of pounds of lobster), I think it’s only fair I feed the little fishies right back.

As a stutterer myself, there is some great advice in this piece if you know anyone who has a stutter. Patience is the key.

I’ve only ever seen skywriting once, when I was a kid, and I distinctly remember being utterly fascinated by it and driving my father nuts with questions.

I’ve never heard of an electret microphone but this is a fascinating story.

Late last month, Apple brought seven leading podcast professionals to the company’s campus in Cupertino, Calif., to air their case to a room full of employees, according to two people who were there. The people would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. The company made no promises, the people said, but several pressing issues for podcasters were discussed in frank terms.

Apple has problems, there’s no question about that. I hope these types of meetings will help, but we’ll see—I have my doubts.

In honor of the NHL playoffs on now (I’m halfheartedly cheering for Nashville and Pittsburgh – both cities I used to live in), this is a really interesting back story of one of the greatest action photos ever taken.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been named as one of several tech industry executives that will speak at Startup Fest Europe, a festival geared towards helping startups grow faster, according to the event website.

That would be an interesting talk!

In the iOS 10 Apple Music redesign, the Connect feature will follow Ping’s lead and will be demoted. Apple Music Connect currently exists as its own tab across the Apple Music interface, but multiple sources say that the feature will lose its tab and become integrated into the “For You” recommendations page.

I do hope this is true. Connect is the most useless thing since Ping. However, I hope that “integrated” into For You doesn’t mean that it will be mixed in with my recommendations—that would completely ruin the For You tab for me. Just kill Connect and be done with it.

Immersion, a company which developers haptic feedback technology, has filed its second complaint of the year against Apple. The company claims that 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and the Force Touch trackpad found on the 12-inch MacBook and recent MacBook Pro models violate a number of Immersion patents.

I wonder how Apple will argue this case.

I don’t even know what to say about Cupertino Mayor, Barry Chang. He complains in an article The Guardian that he showed up unannounced at Apple’s headquarters and was denied a meeting—I assume with Tim Cook–he was asked to leave. […]

This looks pretty cool. All done from the menubar.

I’ve known David for 15 years or so now—he’s one of my favorite bass players ever.

SAP, whose business software runs inside 87 percent of the world’s 2,000 biggest companies, said it would work with Apple to develop mobile business apps for iPhones and iPads that run on its HANA database software.

Another good move for Apple and its customers in the corporate world.

This is insanely cool. Make sure you click on the menu in the lower left and go through some of the viewing options. But make sure you don’t have anything to do for the next hour.

I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler but this latest version of the very popular SketchParty now supports both the Apple Pencil and the new Apple TV. I still won’t be able to draw but it does look like a fun game for families.

I know developers, big and small, who have products in the Apple Retail Stores. The common refrain is, “It’s the best and worst thing to happen to your company”. Apple’s attention to detail extends outwards to vendors who want to sell in their stores.

The study, now in its fifth year, measures customer satisfaction with tablets across five factors (in order of importance): performance (28%); ease of operation (22%); features (22%); styling and design (17%); and cost (11%). Satisfaction is calculated on a 1,000-point scale.

I love my iPad. I don’t care what Wall Street says, my 9.7-inch iPad Pro is a brilliant device and I recommend it to everyone.

John brings up some great points about Apple Music’s product design and marketing. Definitely worth a read.

Jim talks to Dave Wiskus and Joe Cieplinski of the indie rock band Airplane Mode about their stage setup, the perils of performing live, and their appearance at the upcoming WWDC 2016 Beard Bash.

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Relevant links:

• Airplane Mode — Official site
• Clickarus — Stage-friendly metronome app from Airplane Mode
• Some notes on how the band sets up their metronome
• Setlists — iPad app for creating set lists and viewing lyrics
• BeatMaker 2 — For Joe’s fancy foot samples

About a month ago, I set out to find every color of iMac G3. At the time, I only owned one model — a Sage. Today, the family is complete.

This is impressive.

Some of these photos are so spectacular, they make me want to throw away my camera gear because I know I’ll never come close to capturing the beauty of travel in the way these shooters have.

Elizabeth Dwoskin, writing for the Washington Post:

The stealthy, four-year-old Viv is among the furthest along in an endeavor that many in Silicon Valley believe heralds that next big shift in computing — and digital commerce itself. Over the next five years, that transition will turn smartphones — and perhaps smart homes and cars and other devices — into virtual assistants with supercharged conversational capabilities, said Julie Ask, an expert in mobile commerce at Forrester.

Looking forward to seeing this in action this Monday with the first public demo.

At WWDC 2015 we announced the transition to IPv6-only network services in iOS 9. Starting June 1, 2016 all apps submitted to the App Store must support IPv6-only networking. Most apps will not require any changes because IPv6 is already supported by NSURLSession and CFNetwork APIs.

If your app uses IPv4-specific APIs or hard-coded IP addresses, you will need to make some changes.

Apple announced this last year, so most of any work that needs to be done by developers is probably taken care of already. If not, this is a good reminder from Apple.

Tom is the “Grand Old Man” of the Mac Community. He and his lovely wife Dori have been involved on many levels – users, authors, speakers – for decades. Both of them are wonderful, kind, funny, smart and fierce people. I’m proud to know them and even prouder to call them friends. This is terrible news but, Tom being Tom, he will handle it with the dignity and intelligence for which he has always been admired. My thoughts are with both of them as they go through this awful ordeal.

One of the complaints from developers is that there’s just no there there. In other words, there’s just not enough to the Apple TV to make developing for it worth the effort, particularly for smaller developers working on iOS.

News came today that Apple is planning a major revamp of Apple Music at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June. This is welcome news for sure. While the service has improved considerably since its introduction, there are still some things that need to addressed—hopefully, this is it.

However, there are some lessons I hope Apple learned from last year’s introduction.

So Apple:

Accessibility enables people with disabilities to perceive, understand, navigate, interact with, and contribute to the web. Imagine a world where developers know everything there is to know about accessibility. You design it and they build it… perfectly. In this world, only the design itself can cause people with disabilities to have trouble using a product.

How the hell can this be possible?