TUAW:

Apple spent a whole lot of time talking about photos today during its WWDC 2014 keynote address. From iCloud Photo Library to smart image adjustments, there is clearly a lot to be excited about for iOS shutterbugs. But there is one feature that wasn’t mentioned on-stage, yet it has appeared on Apple’s iOS 8 teaser page: time-lapse videos.

I don’t know about “awesome” but it does go to show there’s lots of things Apple is rolling out that they didn’t have time to mention in the Keynote. Expect to see more of these little tidbits as developers get their hands dirty with the new OS.

If you are a registered Apple developer (and not at WWDC), you might want to tune in to the WWDC “State of the Union” and get “deeper info on Xcode and OS API changes”. Thanks to Erik for the link.

Apple:

Watch streaming video from this special event and learn more about our exciting announcements.

Apple now has the downloadable version posted.

Vox:

Apple kicked off the event by announcing major upgrades to both of its flagship operating systems: Mac OS X, which powers Macs, and iOS, which powers iPhones and iPads. The releases included a slew of new features. Here are the most important among them.

Good overview of what developers are looking at right now and what the rest of us will see later this year. Some very exciting stuff coming.

PetaPixel:

Apple has really opened the door for developers to go crazy when it comes to creating and improving camera apps.

Developers can now access manual controls for the camera.

This is one of those things a lot of people don’t get about WWDC. It’s not for consumers – yet. But developers (and photo app users like myself) are very excited about these kinds of “hooks” Apple is giving them access to.

Apple:

Thoughtfully redesigning OS X meant going deep into every aspect of the interface and focusing on details large and small. There are obvious changes to big things, like translucency in windows and streamlined toolbars. And there are more subtle changes to a lot of small things, like the buttons, icons, and font you see throughout the system. The more you use your Mac, the more you’ll notice, and the more you’ll love it.

Given that few (if any) of us have used it yet, what are your initial thoughts about Yosemite? Overall, I’m excited to use it.

Apple’s iOS 8 press release:

Apple® today unveiled iOS 8, the biggest release since the launch of the App Store℠, giving users incredible new features and developers the tools to create amazing new apps. iOS 8 delivers a simpler, faster and more intuitive user experience, including iCloud® Photo Library, allowing you to enjoy your photos and videos more easily across your devices; new Messages features to easily share voice, video or photos with just a swipe; and an entirely new Health app that gives you a clear overview of your health and fitness data all in one place. iOS 8 also includes predictive typing for Apple’s QuickType™ keyboard; Family Sharing, the easiest way to share purchases, photos and calendars within the same household; and iCloud Drive™, so you can store files and access them from anywhere.

“iOS 8 offers simpler, faster and more intuitive ways to use your device with incredible new features like iCloud Photo Library, a new Messages app, the QuickType keyboard and an entirely new Health app,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We’re also giving developers amazing new tools to make managing your health and your home from your devices an integrated, simple and secure experience.”

In iOS 8, the Photos app and iCloud Photo Library give you access to all of your photos and videos anytime, anywhere. Your photos are easy to find and are organized consistently across your enabled devices. The Photos app can automatically straighten horizons and with smart editing tools, you can quickly adjust light and color or access individual tools for deeper fine-tuning. With iCloud Photo Library, every adjustment and effect is automatically updated across your devices.

Conversations in Messages become more immersive with the ability to communicate with just a swipe. Tap to Talk allows you to share your voice and the same simple gesture also works for sharing videos and photos within Messages. Group messaging now gives you the ability to add and remove contacts, leave a conversation and the option to not be disturbed. Users can easily browse through all of the photos and videos within a conversation and share multiple photos and videos at once. You can choose to share your current location from within Messages for an hour, a day or longer.

The new Health app gathers the information you choose from your various health apps and fitness devices, and provides you with a clear and current overview in one place. iOS 8 offers developers the ability for health and fitness apps to communicate with each other. With your permission, each app can use specific information from other apps to provide a more comprehensive way to manage your health and fitness. For example, the Nike+ apps using NikeFuel will be able to pull in other key HealthKit metrics such as sleep and nutrition to build a custom user profile and improve athletic performance.

New predictive typing for Apple’s QuickType keyboard is smarter and more personalized, and intelligently takes context into account, such as who the recipient is and in which app you’re typing. QuickType understands the way you communicate, suggesting favorite phrases, so you can write entire sentences with just a few taps. What the keyboard learns is encrypted on your device and never sent to the cloud.

iOS 8 introduces Family Sharing, making it easier than ever to communicate and share purchases, photos and calendars within the same household. Family members can browse and download each other’s iTunes®, iBooks® or App Store purchases. Up to six members can participate, each with their own Apple ID. Parents can create Apple IDs for children, which includes Ask to Buy, requiring parental permission for purchases. Family Sharing automatically keeps everyone connected by creating a shared family photo stream, shared calendar and provides an option for locating family members and their devices.

With iCloud Drive, documents of any type can be safely stored, accessed and edited across your devices. Make edits on one device and the most up-to-date version of your documents will be available across all devices, whether an iOS device, Mac®, Windows PC or on www.icloud.com. iCloud Drive brings a whole new level of collaboration between apps, providing seamless access and the ability to work on the same file across multiple apps.

For Enterprise, iOS 8 builds on the new IT model for a mobilized workforce by improving the way users are informed of how their devices are configured, managed or restricted. iOS 8 offers expanded security and management improvements as well as new productivity features, including an expanded level of data protection for key built-in apps, the ability to set your out of office response, see your colleague’s availability when scheduling a meeting and support for configurable Thread Notifications in Mail.

Additional iOS 8 features include: • design enhancements that build off the stunning interface of iOS 7, bringing interactive notifications, quick access to key contacts, the ability to quickly switch back and forth between the inbox and drafts in Mail, as well as intelligent suggestions; • extended Spotlight® capabilities that give you results beyond what’s on your device, including articles from Wikipedia, findings from the news and results from places nearby; and • greater continuity between iPhone®, iPad® and Mac, including Handoff to start an activity on one device and finish on another, along with Instant Hotspot and the ability to make and receive calls and send SMS and MMS messages from your Mac or iPad.

The iOS 8 beta software and SDK are available immediately for iOS Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iOS 8 will be available this fall as a free software update for iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPod touch® 5th generation, iPad 2, iPad with Retina® display, iPad Air™, iPad mini™ and iPad mini with Retina display. iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Drive use your iCloud storage with the first 5GB free. Features are subject to change. Some features may not be available in all regions or all languages.

Apple:

Swift is a new programming language for creating iOS and OS X apps. Swift builds on the best of C and Objective-C, without the constraints of C compatibility. Swift adopts safe programming patterns and adds modern features to make programming easier, more flexible, and more fun. Swift’s clean slate, backed by the mature and much-loved Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks, is an opportunity to reimagine how software development works.

Of all the announcement Apple made today, this might turn out to be one of the biggest.

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.