GigaOM’s flagship event and (in my somewhat biased opinion) the best enterprise-computing conference on the planet will feature several high-profile executives of this world (Amazon’s Werner Vogels, VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella) as well as startups hoping to hand those bigger companies their lunch in a few years. We’ll highlight all our coverage from UCSF-Mission Bay in this post, so make sure to check back.

A livestream of the event can be found here. You can also check out the discussion on Twitter by following @gigaom and using the hashtag #structureconf. Hope to see you all there.

Day 1:

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Cook and crew also used the event to show off new Mac concepts, including a battery-friendly revamp for the MacBook Air and a futuristic cylinder-type design for the Mac Pro, its last remaining professional desktop product. Our coverage from Monday’s event follows below, and we’ll update this post as more stories emerge from what appeared to be a pivotal event in the history of iOS.

• Live blog: Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote
• With next-gen Intel chip, new Apple MacBook Air provides all-day battery life – Intel’s Haswell chip has a new home today: You can find it in the latest MacBook Air laptops from Apple, now available. Apple promises 9 and 12 hours of battery life on the two models.
• Soon you’ll be able to read iBooks on your Mac – Apple debuted iBooks for Mac at WWDC in San Francisco Monday. The desktop app will be available as part of the launch of OSX Mavericks this fall and will allow purchasing as well as reading.
• Apple shows off major design overhaul for iOS 7 – Apple announced changes on Monday to iOS 7 at the company’s WWDC conference in San Francisco. The company has revamped and refreshed the overall design and feel of the operating system.
• Apple launches iTunes Radio streaming music service to compete with Pandora – Apple is launching its own music subscription service dubbed iTunes Radio to compete with Pandora. The service will be free and ad-supported, with an ad-free toer for iTunes Match subscribers.
• Much iOS 7 design inspiration came from others but Apple elegantly puts it all together – Watching the iOS 7 debut I couldn’t help but notice design cues from Android, HTC, Microsoft and even Palm. In some ways these have caught up to Apple in terms of design, but Apple is best at putting the pieces together.
• iWork in iCloud: How it may affect my syncing strategy – Between Office 365 and Google Docs, Apple really needed a way for Mac users to edit documents online using Apple’s own programs. Which is why it announced iWork for the cloud.
• The GigaOM Show Special: Apple’s all new iOS 7 and more from WWDC – Look! Up on the WWDC stage! It’s an Apple keynote — and we round up everything Cook and Co. had to say on this special edition podcast.
• After years of neglect, Apple will finally upgrade core apps with iOS 7 – Besides overhauling the look and feel of iOS 7, some of the core iOS apps Apple offers on the iPhone got major updates. And some new features will seem strikingly familiar to some third-party app makers.

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Companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple all claimed this week that they had never heard of a National Security Agency program called PRISM that reportedly gave intelligence analysts access to all kinds of personal data stored on the servers of the largest internet companies on the planet. But while the NSA may not have shared the code name for the project, first disclosed in reports from The Washington Post and the Guardian Thursday, “the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key,” the Times reported, citing “people briefed on the negotiations” between tech companies and the government. And while companies “bristled” at the request, they acquiesced.

Facebook — whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, slammed what he called “outrageous press reports” in a statement Friday — actually built a system for the NSA that allowed it to securely transmit data to the government if requested under the FISA law, according to the report. It’s not clear what any of the other companies named as having negotiated with the government — Apple, AOL, Google, Microsoft, Paltalk and Yahoo — may have done to facilitate access to user data.

The companies’ carefully worded denials were likely constructed because the employees tasked with carrying out these systems “are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance,” the report said.

Twitter, which many noted was conspicuous in its absence from the list of companies named in the original reports, reportedly declined to provide the federal government with any assistance in getting access to user data in response to legal requests. “While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so,” the report said.

Our tracking page on the unfolding PRISM story has a thorough explanation of the background to this report.

This post was updated at 11:43pm with the correct name of the NSA, the National Security Agency.

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Pichai’s appearance at D11 Thursday didn’t break a lot of new ground, save for the “pure Google” version of the HTC One handset that Pichai showed off to the crowd and the news that the curiously named Google Play Music All Access service is coming to iOS. He showed off the HTC One, curiously enough, in response to a question from All Things D’s Walt Mossberg about Google’s relationship with Android partners and specifically its relationship with Samsung, a company which dominates the Android world and which introduced a smaller version of its flagship Galaxy S 4 Thursday that Pichai claimed he first learned about on Techmeme this morning.

If that’s true, then Google certainly has different relationships with different partners. Later in the session, Pichai said he was “very excited” about what Motorola has planned over the next six months. While we first heard confirmation of the Moto X Wednesday, the remaining products in what CEO Dennis Woodside called “a portfolio of phones” Wednesday are not something widely known beyond the rumor mills.

There are a couple of interpretations here.

1. Communication between Samsung and Google has dried up if the head of Android didn’t know (or didn’t care to know) that his most important partner was releasing a smaller version of its highest-profile phone until the rest of us did, the same day he was making a high-profile public appearance to show off a competitor-designed phone.
2. Not only is Pichai aware of all the Android products that Motorola has planned for 2013, he’s had a chance to discuss the thinking behind the decisions made in designing the phones, even if the Android team isn’t doing anything special for Motorola, as both Pichai and Woodside insisted this week.
3. This is probably most likely: Nothing has really changed and that Android continues to be a chaotic mess that Google makes a half-hearted attempt to stay on top of but which no one can really manage, given the sheer number of partners and devices involved. Google has certainly worked closely with Android partners in the past as they got their first phones out the door, including Samsung, HTC, and LG, so it’s not that surprising that Android leaders would have worked closely with Motorola as it reboots.

It’s an interesting time for Pichai and Android as he assumes the guiding role vacated by Android founder and longtime leader Andy Rubin, who Pichai said “stepped back” two months ago to pursue other interests at Google. There’s a lot of “co-opetition” in the Android world at the moment, and Pichai has the fun task of dealing with it.

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Musk has a lot to talk about. Tesla is on a roll, reaching profitability amid a stock surge and expanded production. And he’s got that other little project called SpaceX that’s doing some pretty interesting things. Before things get started, check out Katie Fehrenbacher’s epic tale of how Tesla got to this point.

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The Moto X is “more contextually aware of what’s going on around it,” Woodside said, teasing attendees by saying he’s carrying the phone in his pocket but declining to show it off. Other products are coming later, but expect this device to be the centerpiece of Motorola’s strategy this fall. Reports have been circulating for some time about the “X” project inside Motorola but this is the first time the company has confirmed it.

The smartphone industry is famously concentrated in China, where low-cost manufacturing and a lot of specialized factories and suppliers have set up shop. Motorola will assemble 70 percent of the Moto X in Texas, with other component work having to be sourced and manufactured elsewhere. It will employ 2,000 people at the plant.

Woodside reiterated that Motorola, despite being owned by the creator of Android, has “no access to Android code. … There is no advantage that has been conferred to us.” He defended Google’s decision to invest $12.5 billion in Motorola by saying “we don’t need necessarily to see the exact strategic fit with our current business” in order to pull the trigger on a deal; it’s more about investing in technologies that will help shape the future, he said.

Woodside was joined onstage by Regina Dugan, formerly of DARPA and now currently senior vice president for Advanced Technology & Projects at Motorola. She showed off an “electronic tattoo” that could be used for authentication as well as a concept called “vitamin authentication,” producing a tiny pill with a tiny chip in it that apparently can be swallowed and kept inside the body to unlock something. It appears to be a take on the “ingestible sensor” developed and marketed by Proteus Digital Health.

Here’s a look at the electronic tattoo courtesy of AllThingsD’s Asa Mathat:

Regina Dugan of Motorola shows off an “electronic tattoo” at D11. Credit: Asa Mathat/D: All Things Digital

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Diller, of course, is doing all he can to help that along by investing in projects like Aereo, which has the established broadcasters running to the courtroom in an effort to get it shut down. Aereo allows people to purchase a digital antenna and receive over-the-air television shows, and as we’ve covered extensively, broadcasters are not happy that Aereo isn’t paying them for that right.

“Cable is a great closed system where the masses, now 100 million subscribers of cable, support ESPN that is only watched by 10 percent. That’s a great little plot so long as you can keep everybody inside the closed circle,” Diller said. “We’re out to get the centricity moved to the internet.”

Several days after Diller’s comments, an ESPN spokeswoman reached out in hopes of contradicting his statement on viewership. “Based on 4th Quarter 2012 data for five measured ESPN networks: 88% of households that can receive ESPN networks tune in to one or more of the networks. In 4th Quarter 2012, ESPN networks reached 89 million households and over 200M persons 2+ in those households – about two-thirds of the U.S. population,” the spokeswoman said in a statement, citing data from Nielsen and including viewership of ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNNEWS, ESPNU, and ESPN Deportes.

CNN’s Jeff Zucker, who was billed as a joint speaker alongside Diller but wound up playing second fiddle to questions for Diller, agreed that a shift will take place but wasn’t totally sure, as might be expected given the company that pays his bills, that it would happen all that quickly. Still, “at the end of the day we don’t care which platform you get your information from,” he said, emphasizing CNN’s digital products.

Younger folks are the ones who are going to make this happen, according to Diller. “I think that young people that don’t now subscribe to cable are maybe going to think of Aereo as an alternative because they don’t want to pay 100 bucks a month for cable,” he said.

Which tech companies will make this happen? Diller listed Apple (“I don’t think it’s some big secret that they’ve been working for years on trying to solve television”), Amazon and Microsoft.

This post was updated June 3rd after an ESPN spokeswoman sought to clarify Diller’s remarks.

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Advertising seems to be booming at Twitter (although Costolo wouldn’t share any numbers) but while Twitter is working more and more with traditional media companies, it doesn’t see the need as of yet to start creating its own news content, Costolo said.

“I see us partnering more with news organizations,” he said. He thinks of Twitter as a tool for news organizations and individuals to distribute content and while it’s messy at times, Costolo doesn’t seem to think that Twitter has a responsibility to verify the content itself; it does, however, want to help news organizations verify themselves on Twitter with better security tools. No specifics were provided, but Costolo addressed the question of security very seriously (for a guy that jokes around a lot), admitting “we haven’t moved as quickly there as we wanted to.”

Twitter has famously cracked down on how third-party developers use that content in their own apps, but Costolo claimed his company’s relationship with developers is “great.” Since the crack-down last summer, the company has certainly worked to mend relationships with developers through partnerships and integrations around Twitter Cards, which bring more content to the site. Costolo alluded to a special relationship with Yahoo over data-feed licensing but didn’t get into specifics regarding that announcement from earlier this month.

Twitter’s own developers have an interesting privilege: they’re allowed to roll out any tweak to the system that reaches one percent of users without clearance from upper management in hopes of sparking experimentation, Costolo said. That being said, what Twitter really needs is “simplicity:” it’s still too hard for new users to get the hang of Twitter, like having to put a period in front of a user name at the beginning of a tweet so your tweets reach all your followers.

He sees Apple as a “mentor company,” when it comes to that simplicity. “We like the way they think about simplicity in design.”

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Meeker’s annual attempt to present more than 100 slides in 10 minutes is a little tough on the eyes, but a few key trends emerged Wednesday at D11 (the full deck is embedded below):

• 500 million photos are being uploaded and shared each day, doubling year over year as Snapchat turns into a real phenomenon. But photo-sharing is relatively mature compared to…
• Video, which as Janko noted earlier today is on a tear. At the moment, video growth is being spurred by short-form video sharing like Vine and Dropcam, Meeker said.
• Both of those content types, however, are relatively well understood compared to the next big wave: sound files and data from wearable computers. That’s because we’re at the cusp of a computing shift in which wearables take precedent over mobile.
• Fitness and health data will be a huge percentage of that personal data, Meeker said, as more and more people realize how behavioral shifts can improve their health and how new devices can help people track those behaviors.
• The platform change to wearables will help create that world, Meeker said. While the past ten years have been about mobile computing and the ten years before that were about the PC, the next ten years will be about wearable computers with sensors.

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It’s been ages since the last Apple public event in September 2012 to introduce the iPhone 5. Since then, one of the premier sources of showmanship in the tech industry has kept a very low profile, surfacing only to deflect pesky questions about taxes and wax poetic about the magic of Apple for a network television audience. Those aren’t exactly the kinds of topics that have made Apple events and appearances must-see theater for going on six or seven years.

Apple Tim Cook D11 Credit: Asa Mathat/D: All Things Digital

And despite Cook’s best efforts to explain his thinking about how Apple works, he covered well-trodden ground Tuesday evening at the exclusive Terranea Resort just outside Los Angeles:

• Cook isn’t worried about Android’s market share. He’s more fixated on stats that show iOS users actually seem to use their devices way more than Android users.
• Cook isn’t worried about the scrutiny over Apple’s taxes. The U.S. tax system is ridiculous, and Apple navigates it the same way any multinational corporation does.
• Cook isn’t worried about TV. “Many of us agree there are things about the TV experience that could be better,” he said, but believe it or not, he didn’t have a TV to talk about.
• Cook isn’t worried about Google Glass. “I would say that the (wearable computers) that are doing more than one thing, that there’s nothing … great out there that I’ve seen. There’s nothing that’s going to convince a kid that’s never worn glasses or a band or a watch to wear one.” Is Apple making a wearable computer? Maybe … “It’s ripe for exploration.”
• Cook isn’t worried about making a lower-cost iPhone. Apple once made a bunch of different kinds of iPods, but “those products all serve a different person. And so on the phone, that is the question: are we now at a point to serve enough people that we need to do that?”

You get the picture. For two straight years at the highest profile executive conference in the tech industry, Cook has been unable to talk about anything relatively new or exciting for Apple. Obviously no CEO worth a damn is going to preannounce a consumer electronics product at a show like D11. But Apple’s crown jewels are old news in a tech industry that moves at light speed: the iPhone will be six years old this summer, and the iPad just turned three. Six years before the iPhone was introduced, the personal digital assistant represented the vanguard of mobile computing.

We know the story of those products. They’re still growing strongly despite shipping in immense volumes, they’re still the favorite of mobile software developers, and they still (for the most part) set the standard by which all other mobile devices are measured.

Cook is talking about mature products and mature businesses when he takes the stage on behalf of Apple. That’s a weird place for a company that has always prided itself on being outside the mainstream to be, and it shows. Ours is an industry that is always searching for that next big thing, and for many years, Apple has been a reliable source for that item.

In mid-2013, we’re in a collective lull. Mobile is old news, dominated by Apple and Android. The Mac/PC market is in freefall, even if Apple is still doing better than the competition. And with apologies to Samsung, the next big thing — disruptive TV, wearable computing, the internet of things, or robot butlers that make drinks and crack jokes — is not here yet.

The Apple that will attempt to shape that next era has yet to show its hand, leaving Cook in a holding pattern talking about the strategies of the past and present while buying time until Apple’s wizards figure out how they’re going to put their stamp on the products of the future.

Let’s be very clear: should these next-generation products Cook has teased for years actually exist somewhere in a secretive lab in Cupertino, this is a blip in time for Apple. We’re simply between breakthroughs as an industry, searching for something that will galvanize a generation of technologists the way the iPhone did. Apple produced the last breakthrough, and people naturally expect that it will produce the next one given that so much of the company remains intact despite the loss of Jobs.

That may or may not happen. But until either Apple or someone else produces that breakthrough, Cook’s public appearances grow less and less important: if all he’s going to do is cover ground he’s covered before without a new story to tell, the need to pay attention to Apple’s every word becomes less and less important.

Let’s hope that next breakthrough comes soon. Technology is a more interesting subject when we’re all watching something new and exciting bloom.

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