By Brandon Shaw

Dear Apple,

I wanted to love Apple Music, I really did. It had all the potential in the world, and with all the hype surrounding the WWDC keynote, I watched with cautious optimism. Ultimately, though, I was disappointed. Here’s why.

Based on the highly acclaimed novel of the same name, The Martian will chronicle astronaut Mark Watney’s incredibly plausible scientific survival on the surface of Mars for four years in a habitat designed for 30 days.

With Matt Damon in the title role, an all-star cast and Ridley Scott in the director’s chair, The Martian is shaping up to be the one film science nerds must see this summer.

The official trailer came out Monday and you’re going to want to see it right now. Too bad you’ll have to wait until the end of November.

Every other year Apple releases an “S” version of the iPhone. Later this year, we’ll see the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. The “S” models generally deliver modest improvements — better cameras, better networking, faster chips. But the basic design remains the same. The “S” suffix means the same, but better.

And so it goes with this Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. In terms of announcements of import, WWDC 2015’s kickoff was an “S” upgrade. It built on the spectacular announcements of last year, but didn’t break huge new ground.

And that’s OK. “S” upgrades are often underrated.

The Apple Design Award winners are in, and they showcase the cutting edge of game and app design.

At a ceremony Monday at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple handed out 12 awards to the best apps of the past year. Games scored half of the nods, with some really cool productivity, finance and utility apps also taking honors.

Here are all of this year’s winning apps — and why they won.

Apple Music may be a streaming service, but you won’t always need an Internet connection to enjoy it. Apple has confirmed that you’ll also be able to download songs for offline listening, so you can enjoy albums and playlists when you’re on the road without data.

If you’re an early adopter of Apple Watch as well as a registered Apple developer, you can get the new watchOS 2 on your wrist right now. It takes a bit of effort, including getting into your copy of Xcode, but it seems like that might be worth it for those of us who like to get all the new stuff right away, as well as the folks that are making tomorrow’s apps for today’s it device.

Here’s how you get your Apple Watch beta set up.

If you’re curious about the new changes coming to iOS 9 and you’ve got an Apple Developer account, you can head over and get the latest operating system for Apple’s mobile devices (iPhone and iPad) from the developer website.

You’ll need to register your iPhone or iPad with the Developer website, first, then download the new iOS 9 beta and install it. Here’s the breakdown of getting iOS 9 onto your iPhone or iPad, which is required if you want to try and install watchOS 2 beta for your Apple Watch.

Apple Music could be the best music service for mobile devices ever created if it lives up to the hype Eddy Cue danced into it during today’s keynote, but it won’t play nice with Internet connected speaker systems like Sonos.

Sonos speaker lovers won’t be able to jam out on their favorite tunes through Apple Music, the company revealed in a statement today. While Sonos has been a supporter of Beats Music since 2014, the company confirmed says Apple’s not ready to focus on home listening yet:

Once again, Apple has shown its desire to be your go-to for everything you do in your life.

During its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote this morning, the iPhone maker talked up software updates, services and new functionalities aimed at making several of its competitors’ offerings redundant.

Here are the things Apple’s trying to take out with new stuff at WWDC 2015.

I’ve finally been able to start processing Apple’s overly long WWDC that was packed with celebrity appearances, tons of great software, and Eddy Cue’s horrible shirt. All of my nerd friends are chatting about iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, which is kind of hard to do because Apple hasn’t added ‘El Capitan’ to its predictive keyboards yet.

Try texting your buddy about how stoked you are for the ‘El Capitan’ beta from Mac and it’s automatically corrected to El Capital, which actually might have been a better name for it now that it’s suggested.

This is me in basically every chat window today:

While Eddy Cue was busy winning this year’s worst-dressed award for WWDC 2015, hip-hop icon Drake surprised us all by hitting the stage with a vintage Apple jacket that oozed fashion from every stitch.

The hip-hop icon said he used “this tool called the internet” to score his dope threads, and you can, too, thanks to a number of eBay auctions that are selling vintage Apple jackets just like Drake’s. We haven’t found one yet with the exact same brown leather sleeves, but you can score an all-black Apple jacket that looks pretty similar for $350. If that’s out of your price range there are a bunch of other stylish options.

Check out some of the awesome Apple jackets below:

Please, please, please let Apple’s Beats 1 radio station be good.

Of all the announcements at Monday’s WWDC keynote, that’s the one I personally am most excited about. When it launches June 30, Beats 1 will be a 24-hour global radio station run by three DJs from three different cities around the world.

I’m a music junkie. I listen to music radio all the time, especially Radio 1, the BBC’s flagship radio station in London. To be honest, a lot of it sucks, but a lot of it doesn’t. It allows me — an expat Limey living in California — to keep tabs on Britain’s awesome musical culture.

And that’s what I’m hoping for — that Apple’s billions will privately fund a radio station that’s like the BBC’s publicly funded Radio 1 — on a global scale.

Apple hinted at such ambitions in the launch video played during Monday’s keynote. Done right, it could be the great music discovery mechanism the entire music industry’s been looking for.

Apple’s big idea for transforming the way we experience music is bringing a personal touch — and a simple, unified platform — to the tangled technological mess that music’s become in 2015. Apple Music is classic Apple: putting a human face on technology that threatens to overwhelm us.

Tim Cook brought out high-profile artists, and Apple’s team of industry insiders, to show off what he called “the next chapter in music” today at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

“I know your are going to love it,” Cook said, introducing Apple Music. “It will change the way that you experience music forever.”

Here’s what Apple Music will bring to your ears.

Apple spilled all the details on iOS 9 at its WWDC keynote today. The new operating system will be rolling out to iPhones and iPads this fall — here’s what you have to look forward.

Apple put on one of its biggest shows ever for WWDC this year. Not only did the conference kick off with a hilarious video starring Bill Hader, Matt Walsh, Danny Pudi and others, but they also had a series of great short videos to promote some of the company’s new products.

The new ‘History of Music’ clip might have been my favorite new video from Apple today. It showed not just how the iPod and iTunes changed music, but also tossed in nods to vinyl records, radio, and the days of burning one mixtape after another onto CD. We’re still waiting for Apple to upload its star studded videos to YouTube, however you can get a look at the company’s ‘History of Music’ video right now.

Watch it below:

During the part of the WWDC keynote where cool is most required, the Apple Music rollout, Eddy Cue took the stage in an untucked, salmon-colored shirt and proceeded to dance. Twitter gasped, laughed and even threw up a little as Cue extolled a new service that is supposed to be hip enough make us all dump Spotify.

Twitter followers streaming the Worldwide Developers Conference, already grumpy about the drawn-out opening, were tired and hungry when Cue and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine took their turn onstage. Some feasted on Cue’s appearance.

“Eddy Cue is one undone shirt button away from getting kicked out of Margaritaville,” wrote Jessica Misener. “Eddy Cue is like everyone’s dad at a wedding, but if everyone’s dad at a wedding was 10X more excruciating,” wrote Guardian Tech.

About 95 percent of the coffee shops and stores I frequent in the Phoenix area use a Square reader or terminal to process payments, and virtually none of them support Apple Pay. That could soon change, though, thanks to a new contactless payments terminal from Square that will bring Apple Pay to businesses small and large this fall.

Tim Cook said the iPhone 6 would trigger an avalanche of Android users to switch to iPhone and so far he’s been right. Previous iPhone owners have been slow to upgrade to the newer, bigger iPhones, but Apple is coming out with a new tool that will make it even easier for Android users to switch to iOS.

With upgrades to iOS, OS X, Apple Pay and watchOS, Apple is ready to take its massively successful platforms to the next level.

Find out what’s in store for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch as Apple builds on previous greatness — plus get an earful of a new little project called Apple Music — as revealed today at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

Apple Watch apps have been ridiculously slow ever since Jony Ive’s timepiece started slapping itself onto wrists in April, but that could change by this fall thanks to the introduction of watchOS 2.0.

The next generation of Apple Watch’s software and apps was unveiled today at WWDC in San Francisco by Apple VP Kevin Lynch, who showed off a number of new features that probably should have been included on the device at launch. As we predicted, third-party apps will finally be able to run natively on the Apple Watch and there are a bunch of smaller improvements coming to the timepiece as well.

Here’s everything you need to know about watchOS 2.0.

Named after a giant granite cliff in Yosemite National Park, Apple’s latest version of OS X looks pretty good, with new ways to manage windows and better performance. Most importantly, it’s now easy to mute annoying audio in open browser windows!

Unveiled during the Monday morning keynote at Apple’s big WWDC programmers’ conference, Apple’s OS X version 10.11 is called “El Capitan.” It will be available to the public as a beta in July and a final release in the fall.

OS X El Capitan looks pretty nifty. It has several new window management features — including a split-screen mode — that make it productivity nirvana!

Here’s a recap of everything that was shown off Monday.

Father’s Day is fast approaching…but there’s still time to get your audiophile Dad an awesome gift. We’re partial to the Sound Kick Bluetooth speaker—and we’ve got it for $49.99 at Cult of Mac Deals right now, with guaranteed free shipping in time for Father’s Day.

After getting an ear-full from Eddy Cue during Game 1 of the NBA Finals, LeBron James single handedly carried his team to a win last night to even the series at game a piece.

LeBron’s leadership has been unparalleled this season, and that extends on and off the court. Before the Cavs vs Warriors series kicked off last week, insiders revealed that LeBron gathered his teammates at the Four Seasons in downtown San Francisco for a bonding session and presented everyone with their own Apple Watch.

Apple is going to kill off its Newsstand app for iOS and replace it with a Flipboard-style news reader, according to a new report. The new service will be free, and it is expected to feature sample content from partners like The New York Times, ESPN, and Conde Nast.

Before Craig Federighi and Apple’s other software gurus unveil the future of iOS and OS X, let’s take a minute to appreciate Scott Forstall. If Scott hadn’t been kicked out of the company three years ago we would probably still be stuck with leather and felt interfaces.

Getting removed from Apple has paid off for Scott too. He’s helping Snapchat suck less, and last night, he won an award Tim Cook and Jony Ive will never be nominated for: The Tony award for Best Musical.

Forstall has been serving as a producer on the Broadway musical “Fun Home” the past year and last night the effort paid off big time, with ‘Fun Home’ sweeping up and taking home a whopping five awards, including best new musical, best book, best original score, best direction, and best leading actor.

Check out Scott with the rest of the team on scooping up an award: