Apple today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a significant increase to the Company’s program to return capital to shareholders. The Company expects to utilize a total of $100 billion of cash under the expanded program by the end of calendar 2015. This represents a $55 billion increase to the program announced last year and translates to an average rate of $30 billion per year from the time of the first dividend payment in August 2012 through December 2015.

As part of this program, the Board has increased its share repurchase authorization to $60 billion from the $10 billion level announced last year. This is the largest single share repurchase authorization in history and is expected to be executed by the end of calendar 2015. Apple also expects to utilize about $1 billion annually to net-share-settle vesting restricted stock units.

Additionally, the Board has approved a 15% increase in the Company’s quarterly dividend and today has declared a dividend of $3.05 per common share, payable on May 16, 2013 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on May 13, 2013. Apple is among the largest dividend payers in the world, with annual payments of about $11 billion.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt posted a story about Samsung paying people to talk shit about Apple, then this happened.

These have to be some of the scariest pictures I’ve ever seen.

Elliot Hannon:

If we cared more about the journalism than news theater we’d all be watching PBS. But no one’s talking about NewsHour. There are no meltdowns. The circus, itself, becomes the point — the reason to watch. Youtube videos go viral precisely because they are unexpected, unvarnished — embarrassing. This is CNN.

And there you have it folks. He’s exactly right.

Apple dominates the home digital-video sector, in much the same way it dominates digital music. iTunes’ share of electronic sell-through (EST) for television shows reached 67 percent in 2012. EST television sales from Xbox Video, Apple’s nearest competitor, comprised 14 percent of the market. When it comes to feature-length movies, iTunes boasted a 65 percent share of EST, with Amazon and Xbox Video far behind at 10 percent each.

It’s not even close.

Joe’s a great guy. I just downloaded the album.

A new single released today.

I really enjoyed this piece by Abdel Ibrahim looking at the history of Apple’s stock movement.

Harry Marks:

It’s difficult to pull yourself away from the feeling that you need to be posting more and doing everything you can to keep numbers up, but when it comes right down to it, it’s all about who is paying attention to your work, not how many.

Exactly.

Apollo 16 is Universal Audio’s flagship 24-bit / 192 kHz audio interface, delivering world-class conversion with 16 x 16 analog I/O — twice the analog connectivity of the original Apollo model. This uncompromising FireWire/Thunderbolt-ready* interface combines superior sound with powerful onboard UAD-2 QUAD processing.

I love my Apollo.

“Pro Tools 11 represents a quantum leap in creative power,” said Chris Gahagan, senior vice president of Products and Services at Avid. “The newly designed architecture turbo-charges production with more plug-in processing, the ability to run more virtual instruments—and a host of new features—letting users create ambitiously, without holding anything back.”

When you buy an Android app from the Google app store, they give the app maker your full name, email address and the neighborhood where you live. This occurs without clear warning every single time you buy an app.

If you can’t trust Google’s app store, how can you trust them for anything?

Maybe Eric Schmidt can answer that for us.

Security firm Lookout has detailed a clever new bit of Android Malware lurking in the Google Play store. The good news: unless you’re downloading questionable Russian clone apps, you’re probably not affected. The bad news: that hasn’t kept it from being downloaded a few million times.

Nice going Google.

A good look at the smartphone market by Benedict Evans.

Two iconic products will be forming an alliance later this year: the iPhone from Apple and the Beetle from Volkswagen. From that point on, the smartphone will interface to vehicle functions of the Beetle and Beetle Cabriolet via a specially developed app (“Volkswagen Car Net The Beetle”) and a docking station.

Sounds great.

One song is already available for download. The album hits the store on June 11.

World-renowned animator and triple-Oscar-winner Richard Williams presents ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’ for iPad.

Taking the globally bestselling Kit to a whole new dimension, this app provides the underlying principles that every animator needs. Aspiring or professional, digital, classical or stop motion, animators can now engage with Williams and his work like never before. Watch unreleased films or interact with over 100 animated examples — learn from the legend himself.

Dave Addey showed me this app while I was in Dublin for the Ull Conference and it was stunning.

The finished product looks really nice.

Federico Viticci:

It may be called “gaming the system” or “forecasting downloads” — in both cases, I don’t think that “showcasing” apps by finding loopholes in the Developer Guidelines and leveraging advertising techniques as tools to manipulate Apple’s ranking algorithm is good for the App Store. I believe this is true for AppGratis and any other native iOS app that is based on this premise. It’s in Apple’s right — and developer agreement — to ban apps that work in this way.

Good story from Federico — worth a read.

AskingPoint includes “Rating Booster,” the smart rating widget that uses your analytics to ask only your best users to rate your Apps. Proven to increase sales dramatically!

By Developers for Developers.

Patrick Rhone takes you through all the things you’ll need to do if you want to be a consultant. The advice is good for any business really.

What makes mobile typography special is the restrictive nature of mobile screens; they are small and used in brightly lit areas so that it is difficult to see anything. Therefore, when it comes to typography for mobile devices you have to be very careful about how you go about it. Most people would agree that there are three big components that help making mobile typography great: size, contrast and spacing.

This is classic. One headline blares “LG Display Gets Boost from Apple” while another trumpets “Slowdown in Apple orders weighs on LG Display’s first-quarter profit.”

Okay, which one is it?

Philip Elmer-Dewitt takes a look at who’s behind the Apple-bashing. There are certainly others, like the WSJ, but this is a good start.

TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone will be removed from their respective app stores and will stop functioning on May 7. Our Facebook integration will also stop on May 7.

To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter [see update]. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.

A very interesting article by José Luis Antúnez. Every answer leads to another question, but they are all pieces that need to be worked out.

Paul Kafasis on Boston.

Seth Godin:

The original CD ROMs, for example, often had a home screen that started with a bookshelf, and you clicked on the ‘book’ you wanted to ‘open’ (excessive use of quotations intentional). Here’s the thing: bookshelves are a great idea if you want to store actual books on an actual shelf. They’re a silly way to index digital information, though.

I agree that design can’t get in the way of how we use something, but Skeuomorphic design also adds a level of familiarity to the new digital products we’re using. I’m still a fan of using it.

I love this. Photographer Flora Borsi adds herself to historic photos holding a modern item like a smartphone or camera.