Jim and Dan discuss the Úll conference, Apple’s Q2 earnings, secret new products, the iWatch, the Mac Pro, the iMac’s missed opportunity, the WWDC announcement (and the hidden meanings in the image), how to attend WWDC, the state of Windows, and more.

According to a Charitybuzz release today, Apple CEO Tim Cook is holding a charity auction (the listing says ‘donated by Tim Cook’) for ‘coffee’ with him at the company’s headquarters. The auction benefits the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights and just went live this morning.

This is great. And a percentage of each sale will be donated to help fund Alzheimer’s research.

As it works to build all types of connected devices, that leaves a natural next step: a television set-top box. The e-commerce giant is planning to introduce a device this fall dedicated to streaming video over the Internet and into its customers’ living rooms.

This makes a lot of sense for Amazon and it would certainly be a bigger competitor than Google.

I can’t ruin the surprise, I’ll let Gruber tell you.

A meticulously illustrated catalog of 100 landmark cameras, culled from over a century of photographic history, depicting both professional and consumer models and tracing photography’s history from the first models to today’s digital wonders.

Apple on Wednesday posted “A Decade of iTunes” celebrating the 10th anniversary of iTunes and the achievements of the music and videos that came to the store. I must say, the timeline format that Apple chose for this feature is really great. It’s like a walk through memory lane for me.

Ian Betteridge:

Gewirtz may be a brilliant example of anti-journalism, but he’s really just a symptom of how low technology journalism has sunk, and how the average pageview-hungry “anti-journalist” treats readers with contempt.

Ian is a long time journalist with a lot of respect in the industry, including mine.

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.