The iOS 8 SDK is truly gigantic:

Apple® today released its iOS 8 SDK, the biggest developer release ever with more than 4,000 new APIs, giving developers the ability to create amazing new apps like never before. iOS 8 allows developers to further customize the user experience with major extensibility features like Notification Center widgets and third-party keyboards; and introduces robust frameworks such as HealthKit and HomeKit. iOS 8 also includes Metal, a new graphics technology that maximizes the performance of the A7 chip and Swift, a powerful new programming language.

I can’t wait to dig into all this stuff, especially the new version of Xcode, the SpritKit playground, and the new Swift programming language.

Apple’s Yosemite press release:

Apple® today announced OS X® Yosemite, a powerful new version of OS X redesigned and refined with a fresh, modern look, powerful new apps and amazing new continuity features that make working across your Mac® and iOS devices more fluid than ever. The new Today view in Notification Center gives you a quick look at everything you need to know, all in one place; iCloud Drive™ is located within the Finder and can store files of any type; and Safari® has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at your fingertips. Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever; Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other; and Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network. Yosemite even gives you the ability to make iPhone® calls on your Mac.

“Yosemite is the future of OS X with its incredible new design and amazing new apps, all engineered to work beautifully with iOS,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We engineer our platforms, services and devices together, so we are able to create a seamless experience for our users across all our products that is unparalleled in the industry. It’s something only Apple can deliver.”

With Yosemite, OS X has been redesigned and refined with a fresh modern look where controls are clearer, smarter and easier to understand, and streamlined toolbars put the focus on your content without compromising functionality. Translucent elements reveal additional content in your app window, provide a hint at what’s hidden behind and take on the look of your desktop. App icons have a clean, consistent design and an updated system font improves readability.

The new Today view in Notification Center gives you a quick look at everything you need to know with widgets for Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Reminders, World Clock and social networks. You can even download additional widgets from the Mac App Store℠ to customize your Today view. Spotlight® now appears front and center on your desktop and adds new categories of results, so you can view rich suggestions from Wikipedia, Maps, Bing, App Store, iTunes Store®, iBooks Store™, top websites, news and movie showtimes.

Built right into the Finder, iCloud Drive stores files of any type in iCloud®. iCloud Drive works like any other folder on your Mac, so you can drag documents into it, organize them with folders and Tags and search for them using Spotlight. With iCloud Drive, you can access all your files in iCloud from your Mac, iPhone, iPad® or even a Windows PC.

Safari has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at your fingertips. A new Favorites view gives you quick access to your favorite websites, and a powerful new Tabs view displays thumbnails of all your open web pages in one window. Safari also gives you more control over your privacy, with separate Private Browsing windows and built-in support for DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track users. When you search for popular or common terms, new Spotlight Suggestions appear along with the suggestions from your search provider. Safari supports the latest web standards, including WebGL and SPDY, and with support for HTML5 Premium Video Extensions, you can watch Netflix HD videos for up to two hours longer.¹ Powered by the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari is over six times faster than Firefox and over five times faster than Chrome when executing JavaScript found in typical websites.²

Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever. With Markup you can quickly fill out and sign forms and even annotate images and PDFs from within Mail. Mail Drop allows you to easily send large videos, images or files up to 5GB from the Mail app to any email address. Messages has a new look and delivers even more options for communicating with friends and family. Now you can add titles to ongoing message threads so they are easy to find, add new contacts to ongoing conversations, or leave those conversations you no longer want to follow. With Soundbites you can create, send and listen to audio clips right in Messages.

Continuity features in Yosemite make your Mac and iOS device perfect companions. When your iPhone or iPad is near your Mac, Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other. Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network.³ Now the SMS and MMS messages that previously only appeared on your iPhone appear in Messages on all your devices. You can even send SMS or MMS messages directly from your Mac and make or receive iPhone calls using your Mac as a speakerphone.⁴

Yosemite delivers platform technologies that make it easier for developers to create amazing new Mac apps. SpriteKit makes it easier to incorporate realistic motion, physics and lighting in games, and integrates with SceneKit to bring 3D casual gaming within reach of any developer. Storyboards for Yosemite and Xcode® 6 take advantage of the new View Controller APIs in AppKit to make it easier to build apps that navigate between multiple views of data. New APIs allow developers to integrate Handoff into their own apps and create Today view widgets for distribution through the Mac App Store. Share Menu extensions add new destinations to the Share Menu, and new APIs let developers create custom Share Sheets.

The developer preview of Yosemite is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today. To help make OS X even better, Apple is introducing the OS X Beta Program, which gives customers early access to Yosemite and invites them to try out the release and submit their feedback. Mac users can participate in the OS X Beta Program for Yosemite this summer and download the final version for free from the Mac App Store this fall. Customers interested in signing up can visit www.apple.com/osx/preview for more details.

Ouch.

Got an Apple TV? Now you can watch the WWDC keynote on your big screen, courtesy of the new Apple TV WWDC channel.

As we mentioned yesterday in our WWDC live stream and party links post, you can also watch the keynote on Apple’s web site.

The LA Times is the paper of record in Steve Ballmer’s new business center and about-to-be-adopted home town. This is their take on Ballmer’s legacy.

Amid the intensity, Ballmer liked to be funny. Parthasarathy recalled during one performance review when Ballmer slapped his business card down on the table and shouted, “Hit me!” Confused, Parthasarathy stared at the card for several moments while Ballmer smiled and said nothing. Finally, Parthasarathy turned the card over.

“My new salary and my new bonus were written on the back,” he said of the card, which he still keeps in a frame at his house. “I thought, ‘Oh, so this is how you do performance reviews.’”

Fascinating read.

CNET:

Samsung is the world’s biggest Android device maker by a wide margin, but it has been developing Tizen as an alternative to Google’s operating system for quite some time. Tizen gives Samsung more control over its own future, allowing it to rely less on Google and more on its homegrown software. That becomes increasingly important as Google works to support other Android vendors and as Samsung tries to set itself apart from all the other handset makers in the market.

A tricky position for Samsung, stepping off the ledge of Android safety in a bid to take control of their own destiny.

NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest carrier and an early proponent of Tizen, in January scuttled its immediate plans to launch a Tizen-based smartphone. The company, which said it continues to support Tizen, made the move because of the lack of consumer demand beyond Android or Apple’s iOS.

It’ll be interesting to see if that lack of consumer demand for Tizen continues, or if Samsung can spend their way into relevance here.

One last note. Samsung’s Tizen Developer Conference is taking place this week in San Francisco. In my opinion, a tremendous act of hubris.

Technologizer:

Once a year, Apple kicks off its World Wide Developer Conference with a keynote presentation. Many people seem to think they’re famous for involving Apple dazzling consumers with an array of new products, to the rapturous approval of everybody involved.

Which is weird, because that’s not the point at all.

While Apple will announce new hardware on Monday, the focus will be on software – specifically iOS 8 and the next version of Mac OS X.

Washington Post on various aspects of life in the US for centenarians:

So you want to live to 100? Some might say be careful what you wish for. But data culled from two recent reports show fairly high quality of life for the country’s 55,000 centenarians, a population that is expected to grow rapidly.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of 100-year-olds (81 percent) are women. Also not surprisingly, most are widowed.

This story is told in 10 charts. Fascinating stuff.

The Legion Meter plugs into your existing USB charger, and your device plugs into it. The Legion Meter interacts with your device’s charging system and optimizes the flow of current into your device, significantly reducing the time it takes to charge your device.

Check out the page, watch the video. I think this is a brilliant idea, though I think they should offer an option that dumbs down the data display. Instead of showing you detailed numbers for charging speed and capacity (IMO, not many people will care about that), how about a simple number that shows you time left ’til full, or perhaps an estimate on the number of charging cycles left on this battery.

You might have to stare at this one a bit to wrap your head around it, but it’s well worth it.

This is a classic Star Trek “collision” shot, where everyone gets thrown around the bridge and the camera shakes and rotates. But in this example, the shot is reverse engineered, reversing all the effects to stabilize the shot.

What you end up with is what the director saw: A well-choreographed dance, one that was likely repeated a few times until it felt just right. [Via ParisLemon]

Not to be confused with Google TV:

Android TV won’t be another device, but rather a platform that manufacturers of TVs and set-top boxes can use to bring streaming services to the television. In that way, it is similar to Google TV, the platform the company unveiled at its 2010 Google I/O conference. But while Google TV was focused on marrying existing pay TV services with apps, Android TV will at least initially be all about online media services and Android-based video games.

At the core of Android TV is an interface called Pano:

Android TV’s key focus will be on simplicity, which will be reflected in the user interface. Key to that is something the company has internally been calling Pano. The idea behind Pano is that apps can surface individual pieces of content right on the home screen in a card-like fashion so that users can browse movies, TV shows and other types of media as soon as they turn on an Android TV.

Content will be presented in a series of cards that can be browsed horizontally, and each movie or TV show episode has deep links into publisher’s apps, giving users the option to start playback right away. That’s different from the traditional smart TV experience, where users generally first have to launch an app from a publisher, and then browse that apps catalog before they can play a title.

I do like the concept. It’ll be interesting to see the actual implementation. Sounds to me like a direct link into content, bypassing the various apps. Will Netflix be OK with this? Or is this intended purely for your cable/satellite provider’s content?

The Verge:

Apple’s 25th annual developers conference kicks off next week, and as usual, the company’s spent the past week putting up large, colorful banners all over the Moscone West building in San Francisco. That includes large Apple logos to the two sides of the three story building, as well as product banners on the inside of the building.

One of those is a banner with a large 8 on it, the first indication of iOS 8, which is expected at the show.

Join me in saying, “Duh.”

Sports Interaction:

The World Cup returns to Brazil, the home of the beautiful game, o jogo bonito, for the first time in sixty-four years this year. It’s the 20th playing of the greatest sports tournament in the world, bigger even than the Olympics, with TV viewership in the hundreds of millions all across the globe.

All the pressure is on Brazil – hosts, favorites, winners of five World Cups and all-too-aware that the last time Brazil hosted the World Cup, neighboring Uruguay beat them 2-1 at the Maracana to claim Uruguay’s second and last title. Spain try to become the first team to win four major international tournaments in a row, the Germans are overdue, Argentina looks to Messi while Portugal, Belgium and Columbia dream of a first-ever World Cup title. Add in the Netherlands, previous champions Italy, England, France and Uruguay and all the ingredients are there for one of the best World Cups of all time!

Go Italia!

But we didn’t stop there. To make it super easy for you to have your promo codes with you and and ready to share in Moscone and its environs, we’ve added Passbook support to Tokens.

Add the campaign pass to your Passbook and when you want to share a promo code with a new friend, they simply scan the barcode using Passbook on their phone. We then vend them an individual pass that’s valid for a single promo code. That token is marked as shared and reserved for the person who scanned it.

I love this app.

Re/Code:

A few hours after announcing their $3 billion deal, Apple SVP Eddy Cue and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine came to the Code Conference to talk about what brought them together, and what they want to do next. You can watch their conversation with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher

Always interesting to see what is (and isn’t) said during these interviews.

I pre-ordered my copy.

Good article by Bradley Chambers. Personally, I like Apple’s Photo Stream—it works well and does what I need it to do.

Motorola announced on Friday it will close its Fort Worth, Texas manufacturing plant by the end of the year. The factory opened in September 2013.

Damn, things are bad at Moto.

Vox:

Over the last few months, the cost of coffee has risen dramatically. Since January, the average price of coffee futures on commodity markets has increased by more than 50 percent.

It’s taken a while for this to be reflected in the retail price of coffee, because roasters generally have a few months’ stock of beans on hand. But we’re finally beginning to see slight increases in retail prices of coffee too.

So what are the causes of this recent price increase?

Oh, this is going to suck.

Liveleak:

It’s amazing how these motorists don’t even notice the cyclist. There were a number of near misses but in the end they got him.

Car drivers, please keep a eye out for those of us who ride on two wheels and give us a break. Thanks to Dan Frakes on Twitter for the link.

The linked essay makes the case that the music industry is going through an artist-friendly disruption, as evidenced by the business success of Lady Gaga. Drawing parallels to the disruptive rise of Uber, the case is made that this new business model is Beats’ true underlying value and a large part of Apple’s motivation in making this acquisition.

Good read.

In a nutshell, Amazon is sweetening its $99 per year Prime membership by adding a free streaming music component.

The company will expand its Prime membership offerings by adding a stockpile of old and newish music for subscribers to stream on demand. The Prime music service, which is scheduled to launch this June or July, will not include recent releases but instead restrict its catalog to songs and albums that are 6 months old and older, five music industry sources familiar with the company’s plans confirmed to BuzzFeed.

Similar to Prime Instant Video, the on-demand video option available to Prime members, the Prime music service (the official name of which is still unknown) won’t aspire to the full universe of existing content, instead offering a potluck of select songs and albums it has licensed from labels at a discount. That distinguishes it from the prevailing business model of stand-alone streaming competitors like Spotify, Rdio, and Beats Music, all of which have tried to lure customers by promising all of the world’s music with a few precious exceptions.

Interesting. A logical extension of the Prime Instant Video model.

Adrian Perica went to West Point, did some intelligence work, got an MBA from MIT, and made his way to Apple via his experience as an investment banker. He is now Apple’s head of M&A (mergers and acquisitions).

Perica doesn’t get a lot of press, but he played a significant role in the Beats acquisition.

Apple (AAPL) is arguably the most famous company in the world, but its top dealmaker prefers to stay in the shadows. Adrian Perica, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker, sometimes holds meetings with executives of companies he’s interested in buying at an unmarked building adjacent to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters, according to two people who have negotiated with Apple. Such precautions are warranted: A February report in the San Francisco Chronicle that Perica had hosted Tesla Motors (TSLA) co-founder Elon Musk at Apple’s main campus set off a frenzy of speculation that the iPhone maker was considering buying the carmaker.

Good profile from BusinessWeek.

The Guardian:

Google has launched a webpage where European citizens can request that links to information about them be taken off search results, the first step to comply with a court ruling affirming the “right to be forgotten”.

The company, which processes more than 90% of all web searches in Europe, has made available a webform through which people can submit their requests but has stopped short of specifying when it will remove links that meet the criteria for being taken down.

Google said it had convened a committee of senior executives and independent experts to try and craft a long-term approach to dealing with what is expected to be a barrage of requests from people in the EU.

From the removal request page:

A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.”

In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.

If you have a removal request, please fill out the form below. Please note that this form is an initial effort. We look forward to working closely with data protection authorities and others over the coming months as we refine our approach.

From the LA Times:

Ballmer, who was chief executive of Microsoft for 14 years, was chosen over competitors that included Los Angeles-based investors Tony Ressler and Bruce Karsh and a group that included David Geffen and executives from the Guggenheim Group, the Chicago-based owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, according to three individuals familiar with the negotiations.

One of the individuals with knowledge of the negotiations said the Geffen group bid $1.6 billion and Ressler at $1.2 billion.

The Geffen group supposedly included an Apple employee by the name of Jimmy Iovine.

S.B.LattinDesign:

If your kitchen drawers are anything like ours, you never have the right measuring implement for the recipe you’re tackling. Keep this chart on hand, and the next time you find yourself asking “How many…” you’ll know just what to do.

While most of the world has gone metric, there are still a lot (at least here in North America) of measurements that are “Old School”. This would make a handy poster to hang in your kitchen to help with various unit conversions.

The Verge:

Milan-based coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring has teamed up with Mini’s design team to build a truly spectacular one-off, electric-powered concept roadster that somehow manages to meld the classic British design with sleek Italian looks.

The so-called Mini Touring Superleggera Vision will almost certainly never see the roads in this form, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love with the design.

I’ve always been a fan of Mini Coopers (even if I’d never buy one) but this one? I’d love be able to buy. Sadly, it’s a one-off. Make sure you watch the very cool video too.

Brilliant story on a real music impresario. A terrific read.