There’s been a lot of talk here at WWDC about Apple’s confidence out of the gate on Monday.

Craig Hockenberry says it well:

Apple has a newfound confidence in itself. It’s at the top of its game, and it knows it.

This confidence was felt last week when Eddie Cue shared that Apple had the best pipeline he’s seen in 25 years. It was felt when Tim Cook called Android a toxic hellstew.

And then there’s Craig Federighi, who has gone from a hand-shaking mess of a presenter to a true superstar. He’s Apple’s new pitchman, and while his approach is far different than Steve Jobs’ was, I think it’s excellent.

Jonathan Mann even dubbed WWDC “The Craig Federighi Show.”

While it is a lot of fun to laugh along with the rest of the Apple community at Federighi’s amazing performance on Monday, I think Apple’s confidence is more than skin deep.

It’s not a smirk; it’s a swagger.

With OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, Apple’s pushing their world-class operating systems further than ever before, all while building a stronger bridge between them. Apple’s always touted itself as a platform and experience company, and it’s more true than ever before.

With Swift, Apple’s taken its programming language and replaced it with something far more powerful, built with future in mind. If Swift had been the only news Monday, it would have blown developers’ hair back, but announced alongside a pile of new APIs, iOS extensions, a revamped iCloud, and new Photos platform and a redesigned OS X, it’s surprising to me the keynote only took two hours.

This is having great effect on the developer community, many of whom have felt discouraged over the last year. Here’s Jim Dalrymple:

I’ve spent the last couple of days walking the halls of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, talking to developers about the announcements yesterday. One common theme emerged from those discussions: Possibilities.

I haven’t seen developers this excited about a WWDC in many years—probably since Apple first allowed native apps on iOS. There is a real sense of Apple turning a corner with all of the new tools they gave developers during the conference.

I couldn’t agree more. Apple feels good about itself, and that trickles down to the community. You can feel it in the air.

The Teech has rounded up a bunch of facts and figures from this morning.

Today’s WWDC was full of news about the future of OS X and iOS, but perhaps the most exciting consumer-facing news is about what takes up the space between the two platforms.

Continuity is a new collection of OS X, iOS and iCloud features that make moving between a Mac and iOS device easier than ever. A Mac can be used to take phone calls, send and receive SMS messages and more.

The Handoff feature is where the real magic is, however:

When your Mac and iOS devices are near each other, they can automatically pass whatever you’re doing from one device to another. Say you start writing a report on your Mac, but you want to continue on your iPad as you head to your meeting. Handoff lets you switch over and pick up instantly where you left off. Or maybe you start writing an email on your iPhone, but you want to finish it on your Mac. You can do that, too. Handoff works with Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, and Contacts. And app developers can easily build Handoff into their apps.

Apple prides itself on supplying end-to-end solutions: hardware, software and services.

While the company’s hardware continues to be the best in the industry, Apple’s software and services have slipped in recent years. OS X and iOS are still the best two operating systems on the planet, but there are cracks in the hull.

Time will tell if OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 are better than their predecessors, but I think iCloud is finally receiving the type of upgrades it needs to be competitive. The truth is that first-party services that tie Apple devices to the cloud are often brushed aside by those who prefer solutions from Google, Dropbox and others.

By evolving iCloud from a collection of services into the glue that holds devices together, Apple has added a great value to the product.

In a perfect world, Cupertino would have all of its users using an all-Apple solution. Continuity is a big step in that direction. While some may frown at platform lock-in, it has been Apple’s game plan for years now.

In 2010, Joshua Topolosky published an article about what he termed the “Continuous Client,” in which he wrote:

So what is a Continuous Client you ask? Well the premise is simple: when you leave one device, you pick up your session in exactly the same place on the next device you use. Meaning your IM, Twitter, web browsing, applications, even your windows (given the availability of such a thing on the corresponding platform) appear just as they did on the previous device. The situation I describe above would be obviated by this setup, allowing me to move from my laptop to iPad in a seamless manner which would in no way disrupt the activity I was currently engaged in. This solution seems particularly well suited for desktop to laptop transfers, but allowing for a platform which was rich enough for both PC and mobile devices, it could very well be carried out through desktops, laptops, tablets, and even mobile phones. Put simply, you are placeshifting your computing experience from one device to the next with no break in your work, timelines, or conversations.

OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 don’t appear as seamless as Topolosky foresaw, it’s closer than anything we’ve seen to date.

David Sparks tried using the recently-updated service:

While the experiment ultimately worked and he could see what I was typing, it was hardly simultaneous. Basically, we discussed and I wrote and he waited for the changes to show up, which happened about 30 seconds after I typed. If he typed anything on his side (even just a space bar), I got a conflict message on my end and had to pick a version to become gospel.

As nice-looking as this product may be, collaboration should be at the heart of any online document suite. This is just pathetic.

Brian Chen at The New York Times:

Apple, the company that turned digital music into a mainstream phenomenon, said on Wednesday that it was buying Beats Electronics, the rising music brand, for $3 billion, in a move that will help it play catch-up with rivals that offer subscription-based music services.

Apple and Beats executives on Wednesday said that the companies would work together to give consumers worldwide more options to listen to music. The Beats brand will remain separate from Apple’s, and Apple will offer both Beats’s streaming music service and premium headphones.

Don’t miss this quote from Tim Cook:

Could Eddy’s team have built a subscription service? Of course. We could’ve built those 27 other things ourselves, too. You don’t build everything yourself. It’s not one thing that excites us here. It’s the people. It’s the service.

Apple’s press release discusses Beats’ headphone business as well as the streaming service, so I expect both to stay around for the forseeable future.

Apple expects to close the deal later this year.

I’ll be checking off these boxes on Monday: