Techcrunch:

After years of user-growth struggles, Twitter just announced that its CEO Dick Costolo has chosen to step down July 1, though he’ll remain on the board. Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey will be the interim CEO.

Dorsey will continue to be Square’s CEO, but will fill in for Costolo until Twitter finds a replacement. Dorsey was previously Twitter’s CEO before being forced out and replaced by co-founder Ev Williams in 2008. Dorsey became Twitter’s executive chairman in 2011 when Costolo became CEO.

Chaos is never good for a publicly traded company and Twitter has certainly had many ups and downs during Costolo’s tenure. Many hope the next CEO, who ever he or she may be, will finally give the company a direction both users and Wall St can look forward to.

Dave Smith, writing for Business Insider:

It’s no coincidence Jennifer Bailey was chosen to be the first woman to appear on stage at an Apple keynote. As the VP of Apple Pay, she’s in charge of Apple’s most important service, which aims to revolutionize how we pay for goods. And on Monday, Bailey explained how that service will continue to grow and improve.

First things first, I found that really surprising. In the entire history of Apple keynotes, not one woman has been on stage? Not one developer, not one marketing rep, not one product team member? Struggling to accept this as fact, but just the fact that I can’t easily come up with a specific counterexample does say something. [Pointed out by Twitter folks: Roz Ho from Microsoft is one counterexample. Surely there are more?]

But I digress.

Apple’s most important services are the ones that keep you in its ecosystem, and Apple Pay might be the ultimate example of that concept.

Exactly! As I’ve said many, many times, it’s all about the ecosystem. And Apple Pay is truly a linchpin here. This is a terrific read, really shows how much is happening in the Apple Pay universe.

UPDATE: Jeff LaMarche found this article, which adds Stephanie Morgan and Jen Herman to the list. With Roz Ho, that makes three, prior to this keynote. An amazingly small list. Tweet me @davemark if you know of anyone else.

UPDATE 2: I asked Heidi Roizen if she was ever on stage for a keynote (Heidi was Apple’s VP of World Wide Developer Relations from 1996 to 1997). Her response:

I was on stage at the 1996 WWDC announcing Apple’s $20 million app partner marketing campaign (that # seems so quaint now)

So that brings the number up to four. I am astonished that the number of woman on stage at Apple keynotes, prior to this one, numbers in the single digits. Incredible.

Sébastien Page, writing for iDownloadBlog, talks you through the process of exporting data from your Health app so you can later import that data into a 3rd party app, import that same data into a freshly restored device, or a new device. Tuck this one away for later reference.

Federicon Viticci, writing for MacStories.net:

Apple’s iPad announcements – with multitasking being, in my mind, the most profound one – revolve around doing more with apps without relinquishing control of the experience. iOS 9 on the iPad will be able to display multiple apps at once, but you won’t have to use two apps at the same time if you don’t want to. You can swipe with two fingers on the keyboard to control the cursor and speed up text selection, but it won’t become the sole input mechanism of the iOS keyboard. Users of external keyboards will get the ability to Command-Tab through apps and view cheatsheets for shortcuts, but, of course, iOS will remain perfectly usable without a Bluetooth keyboard.

This, I believe, is an important distinction to make when assessing the iPad’s adoption of features that have been exclusive to desktop computers. The iPad’s improved capabilities in iOS 9 are options – deeply integrated with the operating system through gestures, but, ultimately, not the default way to interact with apps. Compare the new iPad multitasking to OS X: when you launch an app on the Mac for the first time, it defaults to window mode without taking up the entire screen; in iOS 9, iPad apps will launch in full-screen as usual and allow you to view a secondary app only when needed.

And:

The iPad is on the cusp of becoming a completely new computer. This is not an overstatement. Anyone who uses the iPad enough has known for a long time that the device could be capable of a lot more, and iOS 9 is Apple’s answer.

Last night, I was watching John Gruber’s live interview with Phil Schiller on my iPad, and I realized that I wanted to read people’s reactions on Twitter. I instinctively reached out to my iPhone, because that’s what I’ve been doing for years when watching live events: my iPad plays video and I use Twitter on my iPhone. Not anymore. Thanks to iOS 9, I put The Talk Show’s video player in a floating popup, opened Twitterrific, and continued watching. When I wanted to take notes, I swiped from the right edge of the screen and I started typing in Notes – all while still watching the video and having Twitterrific open at the same time. It all felt natural, and it was glorious.

This is a great read, gets right to the heart of the matter.

Design Taxi:

To promote its newly announced music service, Apple has rolled out three new ads showing its product’s ubiquity.

Its first ad—titled ‘Apple Music—Worldwide’—features music as the go-to companion for every situation in life. From the routine daily commute to moments of sadness, Apple Music never fails you. The second spot gives you a glimpse of the past with the ‘History of Sound’, presenting Apple Music as the future of the music industry.

The final commercial delves into the features of Apple Music and how it houses all your favorite sounds.

Apple Music is available to users at the end of this month—let’s see if it is able to live up to its big promises as advertised.

I always love when Apple posts new ads. I especially love all the “ad experts” pontificating about them the next day.

From the Apple Maps web site:

Apple is driving vehicles around the world to collect data which will be used to improve Apple Maps. Some of this data will be published in future Apple Maps updates.

We are committed to protecting your privacy while collecting this data. For example, we will blur faces and license plates on collected images prior to publication. If you have comments or questions about this process, please contact us.

See below for where we’re driving our vehicles next.

Interesting. [HT to Joe Caiati]

Interesting video on Apple collector Lonnie Mimms and his lifelong dream to create a museum dedicated to old computers and gadgets, especially those made by Apple.

Here’s the list of features Apple is promoting from watchOS 2:

• Nightstand Mode that transforms Apple Watch into a bedside alarm clock, with the Digital Crown and side button serving as snooze and off buttons for the alarm;
• the ability to use merchant rewards and store-issued credit and debit cards with Apple Pay™, which can be added to Wallet;
• support for Transit in Maps*, so you can view detailed transportation maps and schedules, including walking directions to the nearest stations with entrances and exits precisely mapped;
• workouts from third-party fitness apps contributing to your all-day Move and Exercise goals;
• using Siri® to start specific workouts, launch Glances and reply to email; and
• Activation Lock, which lets users secure their Apple Watch with their Apple ID, preventing another user from wiping or activating the device if it is lost or stolen.

All of these are incredibly exciting. But that last one, Activation Lock, might have the biggest impact. Activation Lock for Apple Watch is a big step towards eliminating the problem of Apple Watch theft before it even begins.

New York Times:

While Apple was preparing a splashy introduction for a new service that would stream music over the Internet for a fee, the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut were quietly investigating the Silicon Valley giant’s negotiations with music companies in search of potential antitrust violations.

The attorneys general wanted to know whether Apple pressured the music labels — or whether the labels conspired with Apple and one another — to withdraw support for popular “freemium” services offered by companies like Spotify in favor of Apple’s paid music subscriptions.

In response to the antitrust probe:

The first written response to the antitrust inquiry came from Universal Music Group a day earlier when the company’s legal firm, Hunton & Williams, sent a letter to the attorneys general. The letter said Universal Music Group had no agreements with Apple or music entities like Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group that would impede the availability of free or ad-supported services.

The two attorneys general (New York and Connecticut) at the center of this probe were also at the center of the 2013 eBook price fixing investigation.

The Verge:

On the sidelines of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, marketing SVP Phil Schiller has spoken to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber for a live episode of his The Talk Show podcast. The full interview hasn’t been posted yet, but it’ll be worth checking out for Apple fans when it is — Gruber asked Schiller about a few things that have become hot topics among the company’s community of users and developers.

Can’t wait to see the video. If Twitter is any indication, it was quite the surprise and quite the interview. Kudos to Gruber for scoring a big one.

Billboard:

Apple Music, which launches on June 30 with an arsenal of 30 million songs, has been in the works for more than a decade, says Iovine, who first started talking to the Cupertino-based giant on the heels of the iTunes launch in 2003. Now, it’s a reality, boasting on-demand streaming (with an offline component, to help stem the decline of downloads), a 24-hour human-curated radio station (helmed by former BBC DJ Zane Lowe) and a connect function that facilitates direct-to-fan engagement.

It’s a massive undertaking whose impact is sure to be felt almost instantaneously thanks to the 800 million credit cards Apple already has on file. With a click, users can sign up for $9.99 a month — or $14.99 for the family plan, which allows up to six accounts — price points that, Cue says, took much deliberation.

These interviews are always interesting not only for what they say but what they don’t say. Notwithstanding Iovine’s “unpracticed” appearance and Eddy Cue’s dancing during WWDC, these two guys are the brains and the engine behind the new service.

Apple:

Student Winners – Elementary Minute for iPhone, jump-O for iPhone

Design Award Winners – Shadowmatic, Metamorphabet, Robinhood, Affinity Designer, Crossy Road, Fantastical 2, Does not Commute, Vainglory, Pacemaker.

I always love this list because, if nothing else, the vast majority of these award winners are gorgeous looking apps.

ZDNet:

With iOS 9 Apple is making a direct play for Android users with an app to help them migrate their data and apps to the iPhone.

The new app, called ‘Move to iOS’ will be released this fall with iOS 9 and is one of two apps targeting the Android platform, the other being Apple Music.

According to Apple, the apps will allow Android users the ability to securely transfer “contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs and books” wirelessly to an iPhone.

Great move by Apple to make this process as easy, painless and efficient as possible.

Six colors:

Now that the main show is over, I’ve combed through Apple’s site and press releases to try and find more about those details that didn’t make the cut for the presentation, as well as those announcements that may have been glossed over.

Dan has a good overview of yesterday, recapping what was and wasn’t announced. He caught a bunch of little stuff I missed or that Apple didn’t even mention during the keynote.

Nieman Lab:

The big news — and pitched as one of the biggest new features in iOS 9 — is an app called News. It’s an awful lot like Flipboard — though the power of being installed on every iPhone and iPad is obviously huge.

The presentation features all the same sort of bells and whistles we’ve seen in Facebook’s Instant Articles — animations, swipe-able photo galleries, fluid movement. And it promises, like other aggregator apps, to get better with time, as it learns which sorts of articles you’re interested in.

Its importance remains to be seen. I don’t necessarily think “Apple just sherlock’ed Flipboard” but, depending on how news organizations take to this, it will be another medium to publish rich content on. I’m interested to see whether or not average people will be able to create “magazines” with these tools.

John Welch:

WEDR, and its DJs taught me things. Like what funk was. What soul was. Not the calm, whitewashed things you saw on TV when they trotted out Ray Charles for yet another rendering of “Georgia on My Mind” or “Hit The Road, Jack”. But the deep dirty funk. It’s where I first heard Prince, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and so many other artists.

But here’s the thing: WEDR and the DJs were the only way I was going to hear that. My friends were all into either Zeppelin & Pink Floyd, or Disco. From them, I’d have never heard this stuff.

My friend John Welch makes a great point about Apple Music and Beats 1. Like him, I’m interested, if not excited, by what Apple and their DJs come up with. Like John, I’m of an age when DJs mattered. Maybe Apple can bring that age back.

Ars Technica:

All of the Apple Watch’s third-party applications so far have used WatchKit, a small SDK that limits apps’ functionality and UI and restricts them from using all the watch’s underlying hardware. At its WWDC keynote today, Apple announced that it would be moving beyond WatchKit and giving its third-party developers a more capable, native SDK that can take advantage of more of the Apple Watch’s features.

With WatchOS 2 and the native SDK, third-party apps will be able to do more of the things that Apple’s first-party apps can do.

This is a really big deal, akin to the launch of the App store the year after the original iPhone launch. It’s going to make the Apple Watch app ecosystem positively explode.

Macworld:

On Monday morning at WWDC, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed new enhancements to iOS 9, calling it “the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.” Among the key features are a major Siri update, deep-dive transit Maps and a ton of useful user-experience improvements.

According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering who led the iOS presentation and demo, Apple wants to add “intelligence throughout the user experience.”

Watching the keynote, I thought the same thing – Siri will not only get more “intelligence” but, for me, a lot more functionality.

Re/code:

Apple today introduced the next version of its Mac operating system, OS X El Capitan, focusing on two key areas of improvement: Experience and performance.

Mac OS X El Capitan is available to developers today, and will be released to the public in the fall as a free download.

I’ll get it just for the cool “find my cursor” feature.

Apple:

WWDC15 is the epicenter of change. Experience the keynote live today at 10 a.m. PDT.

Apple has already begun posting photos from outside the Moscone Center.

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.

Mashable:

The day before Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), the company hosted a special orientation session for the recipients of its WWDC Scholarship Program — with a special surprise guest, CEO Tim Cook.

Cook, who surprised the scholarship winners by making an appearance at the orientation session. He looked at apps, talked to the winners and took selfies.

Good interview.

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.

BBC:

Closely related to sharks but with long, flat bodies and wing-like pectoral fins, they are ideally suited to swooping through the water yet seem equally at home in the air, so much so that they have earned the name “flying rays”.

Mobula rays can reach heights of more than two metres (6ft 6ins), remaining airborne for several seconds, but their landings are much less graceful, creating a loud bang as they belly-flop back into the sea.

The video on this page is spectacular. I’d love to go scuba diving with this group but I’d be afraid of a 5.2 m (17 ft), 2,000 lbs ray landing on me.