Apple’s statement, called a “Commitment to Customer Privacy,” once again denies any knowledgable participation in the NSA’s secret surveillance program and also shoots us the raw numbers for government requests:

In the six-month period beginning December 1st, 2012 and ending on May 31st, 2013 Apple says that they received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement to access user data. This affected somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000 individual accounts. This includes both national security-related requests, as well as other types of law enforcement queries.

For instance…

“The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide,” says Apple.

Inside the statement, Apple also revealed that they simply cannot decrypt data sent via iMessage or FaceTime:

Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.

We already knew that federal agencies were having a problem with Apple’s messaging products. Back in April a leaked document from the bowels of the DEA revealed just how hard of a time they were having in decrypting Apple’s iMessage data.

Facebook also demanded the U.S. government to allow them more freedom in disclosing national security-related data requests, and they also got their wish. Facebook reported between 9,000 and 10,000 specific requests in the past 6 months. Microsoft also revealed their numbers – between 6,000 and 7,000 requests in the same period.

Which of the latest announcements do you believe will have the biggest impact on webmasters? On your SEO strategy? Let us know what you think.

On Monday, Apple had its big Worldwide Developer’s Conference keynote, where it unveiled the latest versions of its Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. Within these unveilings were a few pieces of noteworthy search news. For one, its adding more search options to Safari, which is significant given that it has made moves in recent memory to distance itself further from Google. The big piece of news here, however, was the addition of Bing (Google’s biggest search competitor) to Siri as the web search provider. We discussed the implications of this in more depth here, but suffice it to say, this could lead to a lot more people accessing your content from Bing if you’re ranking there. In other words, you now have more of a reason to optimize for Bing.

Also on Monday, Google released a video discussing mistakes webmasters are commonly making when using the Disavow Links tool.

The most common mistake is that people are uploading the wrong kinds of files.

Yelp, a frequent critic of Google’s (which generates its own share of criticism) is making moves to become a better local search tool. See its newly revamped “Nearby” mobile feature. Local businesses now have even more incentive to be found in Yelp. Speaking of Yelp, Greg Sterling at Screenwerk shares an anecdote in which a plumber claimed that 95% of his leads come from the service. This caught the attention of CEO Jeremy Stoppelman:

Clearly some are finding Yelp well worth it, despite those decrying the service.

Google made a major announcement in that it is readying ranking changes for mobile content. Basically, if you’re not providing smartphone users with the relevant content you’re providing them on the desktop, you’re going to be in trouble.

“Some websites use separate URLs to serve desktop and smartphone users,” explain Google’s Yoshikiyo Kato and Pierre Far. “A faulty redirect is when a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on the smartphone-optimized website. A typical example is when all pages on the desktop site redirect smartphone users to the homepage of the smartphone-optimized site.”

“This kind of redirect disrupts a user’s workflow and may lead them to stop using the site and go elsewhere,” they add. “Even if the user doesn’t abandon the site, irrelevant redirects add more work for them to handle, which is particularly troublesome when they’re on slow mobile networks. These faulty redirects frustrate users whether they’re looking for a webpage, video, or something else, and our ranking changes will affect many types of searches.”

More on all of this here.

In addition to that, Google’s Matt Cutts hinted at SMX Advanced that mobile site speed could soon become a ranking factor. Google made site speed a signal several years ago, and it looks like they’ll be taking that a step further with mobile in mind.

Cutts revealed quite a few things at SMX Advanced, actually. Here’s the whole discussion he had with interviewer Danny Sullivan:

One thing he mentioned at the conference was that Google started rolling out a new ranking update to clean up more spammy queries. It’s been unofficially referred to as the “payday loans” update. Google had previously warned about forthcoming efforts in this area, and these efforts are now taking effect.

In other algorithm update news, Cutts also indicated that Google hasn’t rolled out a Panda data refresh for a month and a half. Panda is apparently being run about once a month, and rolling out slowly over the course of roughly ten days.

He mentioned a new structured data tool Google is beta testing, which allows webmasters to report structured data errors. Giving webmasters as much control over structured data is going to be increasingly important, as Google is turning to this kind of data more and more for its search results. Optimizing structured data could be considered a vital part of your SEO strategy these days, for better or worse. At least Google providing more and more tools in this area.

Finally, Cutts announced that Google is now including example links in its messages to webmasters regarding manual penalties. Those who have to deal with these penalties find the addition very welcome. Cutts put out a video discussing this:

Facebook, as I’m sure you’ve heard, has launched hashtags, which pretty much turn the giant social network into a real-time search engine, for all intents and purposes. That has some pretty big marketing implications. The hashtags, by the way, can be searched via Facebook’s Graph Search. On a separate note, Facebook is killing its sponsored search results.

So those are some of the biggest stories in a very busy week for search. The mere fact that all of this stuff just happened over the past week really illustrates how rapidly the search game is evolving, and this doesn’t even take into account that Google makes changes to its algorithm every day.

Out of all that was announced this week, which item are you most concerned about? Which are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments.

Reuters reports that Apple is now considering a number of options to revitalize its iPhone brand over the course of this year and next. Sources close to the company are saying that Apple may release a bigger iPhone, a cheaper iPhone and iPhones in many colors. All of these options would be made solely to combat Samsung and other Android competitors that are becoming increasingly popular thanks to multiple screen sizes and designs.

Getting into specifics, it appears that Apple is looking at two bigger iPhones – one with a 4.7-inch screen and another with a 5.7-inch screen. It seems that the company can’t make up its mind, however, and many not even release either of the larger iPhones. If the larger iPhone is real, we likely won’t see it until next year.

As for a cheap iPhone, the company is looking at a $99 price tag. The new report matches up with a previous report that said the cheaper iPhone would come in a plastic chassis and be offered in multiple colors. Unlike the larger screen sizes, the cheaper iPhone seems to be a definite thing. The only potential issue is that Apple may push back its release to next year.

I may have used the word “revitalize” to describe Apple’s plans with the iPhone, but that doesn’t mean the company really needs to change anything. Apple would still sell millions of iPhones if it kept up the status quo. Apple has been doing that for years now, however, and its reveal of iOS 7 earlier this week shows that the company is starting to rethink its flagship device. I would be surprised to see Apple release a drastically different iOS without a drastically different iPhone to go along with it. We probably won’t see that drastically different design with this year’s iPhone 5S, but next year might prove to be very interesting for the iPhone.

And you’ll be able to go see it on August 16th. Yes, that’s a four-month delay.

Here’s the official word from Open Road Films:

Open Road Films will release JOBS – the highly anticipated film chronicling the story of Steve Jobs’ ascension from college dropout to one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century – nationwide on August 16, 2013. JOBS details the major moments and defining characters that influenced Steve Jobs on a daily basis from 1971 through 2001. The film plunges into the depths of his character, creating an intense dialogue-driven story that is as much a sweeping epic as it is an immensely personal portrait of Steve Jobs’ life. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern, written by Matthew Whiteley, JOBS was shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Carpenter and produced by Mark Hulme. JOBS stars Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons and Matthew Modine.

Here’s a clip from the film:

Jobs (formerly titled jOBS) first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in January and received mixed reviews. Many of them praised Ashton Kutcher’s portrayal of Steve Jobs, but insisted that the film as a whole failed to live up to those standards.

The film was originally going to launch on April 19th, but it was held back in order to benefit from additional marketing.

[via Deadline]

Today, Stone announced that Loren Brichter, former Apple engineer who worked on the original iPhone and founder of the popular iOS game Letterpress, had joined the company’s Executive Advisory Board. He’s the first member of the board. Brichter also worked with Twitter, and is responsible for their pull-to-refresh “user interface mechanics” patent.

“Even if you work with some of the best people in the world across several fields of expertise, there will always be more brilliant people outside your company than inside. Jelly has started assembling an external pool of skill to help us build a world-class product,” says Stone. “We are proud and lucky to have Loren as part of our extended team—he will make us better at our own work. More importantly, Loren’s participation means that Jelly will be a finer product in general. That’s just good for everyone.”

Jelly has been on a hiring kick as of late:

About a week ago, Biz Stone announced that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s former assistant, Camille Hart had joined the team as the Chief of Staff.

In the past couple of months – former Twitter employee Ben Finkel (co-founder and CTO), Twitter’s Kevin Thau (COO), and employee #1, designer Austin Sarner.

And a few weeks ago, Stone revealed some of his early investors. That list included Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Al Gore, and Bono.

Stone is keeping a tight lid on Jelly. All we really know is that it will be a free, mobile-focused service. Here are some of my guesses and dot connections following the investor disclosure:

“We chose angels like Al Gore, a Partner at KPCB and Chairman and Co-founder of Generation Investment Management, Greg Yaitanes, a Hollywood director, and Roya Mahboob, an entrepreneur doing amazing work for women in Afghanistan partly because they work in divergent fields. Knowledge diversity is something we prize highly and is also something that will be represented in our product,” said Stone.

When Jelly was first officially announced, Stone said this:

“People are basically good – when provided a tool that helps them do good in the world, they prove it. Jelly is a new company and product named after the jellyfish. We are inspired by this particular animal because neurologically, its brain is more “we” than “me.” Also, for the past 700 million years, this decentralized structure has been wildly successful.”

“Help them do good in the world.” Is that the key phrase here? Is Jelly some sort of mobile social good app? Who knows, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, as Stone is quite serious about keeping a tight lid on this thing. But the addition of Bono, Al Gore, and an Afghani activist hints that Jelly will be striving to do some sort of international good at the very least.

Whatever it is, Stone says that it won’t be ready for quite some time.

Our favorite Taiwanese animators have captured all of the above and more in their latest news report. As an added bonus, NMA also gave us the lowdown on the new Mac Pro.

For more on this year’s WWDC, check out our coverage.

In the iOS 7 demo, it was revealed that Siri has some new features, and among them are Bing web search results, not to mention Twitter search and Wikipedia content. In addition to potentially making Bing more of a factor in users’ search habits, the features also help Apple better compete with Google’s (and Android’s) conversational search and Knowledge Graph.

But that’s not all that Apple has done with search. While the company didn’t exactly announce it, it has also made Russian search engine Yandex available as an option in Safari in both iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. This is the case in Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, where that search engine already has a substantial user base.

Now, Apple hasn’t gone so far as to make Yandex the default search in these countries, at least not in the beta that developers have gotten their hands on.

This signals that Apple isn’t ready to completely abandon Google just yet, despite the increasingly rocky relationship between the two companies. If you’ll recall, Apple recently dropped Google Maps for its own Maps product, and some have speculated that it’s only a matter of time before Google is no longer the default search on Apple products.

That could still happen, and we could just be in the early stages of Apple phasing it out. TechCrunch reported earlier this year, however, that Google could pay Apple $1 billion next year to remain the default search engine on iOS. How much would Microsoft pay? Or Yandex?

[via GigaOm]

Bing Corporate Vice President Derrick Connell took to the Bing blog this afternoon to weigh in on the announcement. He wrote:

Starting this fall with iOS 7, Bing will power Siri’s new integrated web search. When users ask Siri a question either the specific answer or web search links will now be delivered automatically so users can find information even faster.

Bing was designed from the outset to be a great place for web search helping customers quickly find what they are looking for and get more out of search. We are thrilled that all the great results people have come to know and love on Bing.com will now be available to Siri users on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Making sure customers can have access to the power of Bing where and when they need it has been a big focus of the work we have done over the past few years, and we are excited to work with Apple to deliver it to Siri users this fall.

Apple did not make any indication that Bing will become the default search provider on the iPhone, replacing Google in Safari. Neither Apple or Microsoft specified whether Siri will be able to switch between Bing or other search engines with Settings adjustments.

Either way, this is great news for Bing, which can only gain searches from this partnership, which should nicely complement its Facebook partnership, where it provides web results for Graph Search (which has still yet to completely roll out to users).

Siri also has new Twitter search capabilities and Wikipedia integration, making it a more viable competitor to Google’s conversational search and Knowledge Graph (which draws a great deal from Wikipedia itself).

It’s a free radio service with over 200 stations, and a catalog of music drawing from the iTunes Store. People can listen to stations, then download songs if they they like them.

You will be able to use iTunes Radio from an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, PC or Apple TV. It will include stations inspired by stuff you’ve already listened to, as well as stations curated by Apple and personalized genre-focused stations. You will also be able to create stations based on specific songs.

“The more you use iTunes Radio and iTunes, the more it knows what you like to listen to and the more personalized your experience becomes,” the company explains.

“iTunes Radio is an incredible way to listen to personalized radio stations which have been created just for you,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “It’s the music you love most and the music you’re going to love, and you can easily buy it from the iTunes Store with just one click.”

As an added bonus, it will give you exclusive premieres from top-selling artists. It will also host special events like live streams from the iTunes Festival and other exclusive iTunes sessions.

And of course, it includes Siri integration (Siri has some new features of its own).

Apple explains, “Let Siri make your listening experience even more fun. Ask Siri ‘Who plays that song?’ or ‘Play more like this’ and Siri will make it happen. Say something like ‘Play Jazz Radio’ or ask for any of your existing favorite stations and genres. Shape your stations by telling Siri what you like and don’t like, or tell Siri to pause, stop or skip. You can also have Siri add songs to your Wish List to download later.”

iTunes Radio is ad-supported and free. If you’re an iTunes Match user, you’ll get it for free without the ads.

Or you could use the women’s restroom. It’s not very crowded – and it’s definitely cleaner.

This wonderful image taken by CNET’s Dan Ackerman says a lot about something. You decide what it means:

Is this a opportunistic representation of the gender breakdown at Apple’s developer conference? Or is this actually an accurate depiction of WWDC, Apple events, or even tech in general? What does this have to say about gender in tech?

I don’t know. I’m not going to wade into those murky topics. WWDC made me tired, and I think I need a nap. This photo is funny as hell though, don’t you think?

For some more serious coverage of Apple’s WWDC, check here.