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.

Thanks to Bold Poker for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Bold Poker: Deal with it.

Peter Cohen, writing for iMore, talks you through the process of adding spacers into your dock, creating natural groupings for all your dock icons.

I really like this idea, though I wonder if there’s a way to add an additional hairline to the dock, like the one on the right side of the dock, just to the left of the trash can. Anyone know how to do that?

As it is today, Apple sells every single WWDC ticket it puts up for sale. Apple can charge a premium price for each ticket, because WWDC is the only game in town and, perhaps, the biggest tech event each year. This focus point is a crown jewel for Apple’s marketing efforts.

AltConf is a free, community driven event, breathed into life by the exclusive nature of WWDC. Couldn’t get into WWDC? It’s OK. Come to San Francisco anyway, drink from the AltConf tech firehose during the day, then reunite with your friends in the evening once the WWDC/AltConf sessions are over.

AltConf planned to stream the WWDC keynote, taking the publicly available stream, which Apple controls and purposefully puts on the net, showing it to all attendees. Those plans were put on hold when Apple Legal sent them what was, in effect, a cease and desist letter.

From the AltConf blog post:

According to the correspondence from Apple’s legal representatives, “Apple exercises control over not only the content of its messaging, but also the manner in which those messages are packaged, distributed and delivered.” AltConf’s streaming of Apple content “would strip Apple of exclusive control over one of the most anticipated events of the year, and could deprive Apple of potential revenue generated from its exclusive rights.” Thus, AltConf must “refrain from publicly streaming or showing any WWDC content. Apple further demands that AltConf and each of its organizers refrain from reproducing or distributing any WWDC content belonging to Apple, in any manner.”

Why would Apple do such a thing? To me, it’s all about control.

Consider the phrase “could deprive Apple of potential revenue generated from its exclusive rights”. Apple is in a tricky position here. They recognize the incredible value of the WWDC franchise. It provides a leveraged focal point for their marketing and developer messages. It also provides a revenue stream, albeit a small, almost insignificant sum when compared to the rest of the company’s efforts.

AltConf is a diluting effect. The mere existence of AltConf dilutes the value of and demand for a WWDC ticket. If I can go to AltConf and see the keynote, immerse myself in the latest Apple technology, network, get to hang with my buddies, and get the session content online, I am less inclined to lay out US$1599 for an official WWDC ticket.

This letter from Apple Legal is an acknowledgement of the real disruptive threat posed by AltConf.

I think it is unnecessary. Apple should offer AltConf a free license to show the keynote, extracting a promise from AltConf to not show any other WWDC content. In return, Apple gets a very subtle benefit: They get to control any potential erosion of the value of a WWDC ticket.

Why? This year, Apple charged you for your ticket the moment the lottery ended, taking away the chance of canceling if you got in, but a critical work colleague, business contact, or close friend did not.

AltConf softens the damping effect this might have on ticket sales. After all, if you can count on getting in to AltConf if you don’t get into WWDC, you’ll still get to brainstorm with cohorts and network with new folks when it counts, at dinner and at the parties.

The biggest benefit to Apple? WWDC + AltConf equals way more fun for everyone.

UPDATE: I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on this post, some positive, some negative. The negative focuses on two facts. First, the fact that AltConf is not strictly free. They charge $300 for a guaranteed seat. Second, the fact that they offered a stream of something they do not have rights to. I can see Apple’s point of view here. AltConf could have avoided all this by seeking permission first.