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(credit: Apple)

For all Apple’s obsessive secrecy, even its senior managers acknowledge these days with an on-stage wink that much of what they announce has already been predicted. In the run-up to WWDC, I saw developers on Twitter wishlisting "Xcode for iPad"—a way to write apps on an iOS device, rather than in the Xcode integrated development environment (IDE) that Apple makes available exclusively for the Mac. One suggestion was that this could be an iOS version of Playgrounds, the interactive test builder that Apple added to Xcode when launching its new programming language, Swift, in 2014.

Sure enough, 45 minutes into the WWDC keynote on 13 June, Tim Cook—not an SVP, but Tim himself, so that we knew it was important—unveiled Swift Playgrounds for iPad, "a new way to learn to code." And, because I’d been thinking about this, I tweeted: "I personally think a way to learn Swift is not what the iPad needs—it needs a 21st Century HyperCard. But let’s see."

Later, John Gruber, whose Daring Fireball blog is to Apple what BBC Radio 4’s Today show is to British politics, tweeted: "Swift Playgrounds = the new HyperCard?"

Microsoft's Surface Book. (credit: Nathan Fitch)

Microsoft is continuing to expand. At its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, Microsoft announced new ways that its all-important partners can sell not just the company's software but also its hardware as it seeks to grow its Surface business.

At Surface's initial release, it was sold strictly as a consumer offering, available only from consumer retail outlets. As the product has grown more successful and better defined, Microsoft has expanded its sales channels to include a wider range of retailers, business suppliers, and earlier this year, the "Surface Membership Plan" rent-to-own offering. Today, the company added "Surface as a Service," a new leasing scheme that allows Surface hardware to be bought alongside Office 365 and Windows 10 subscriptions. The company says that customers of this scheme will have access to the latest hardware and faster device refresh cycles.

The expanded availability and better products have already seen the Surface business grow; Microsoft says that it has gone from generating $1 billion a year in revenue to $1 billion a quarter.

(credit: Shawn Campbell)

If you've ever tried to post a GIF to Twitter only to be told that the file size was too large, you're in for a pleasant surprise. According to Twitter's Help Center, the company has increased the maximum GIF size to 15MB on the web, a much-needed change from the original 5MB limit.

Twitter didn't mention this change on social media, nor did it make a big announcement about it. Rather, its Help Center page detailing image, video, and GIF-posting regulations reflects the change under the "size and file type requirements" section. "Photos can be up to 5MB; animated GIFs can be up to 5MB on mobile, and up to 15MB on web," the page states. That means you'll only be able to take advantage of the higher limit if you're posting to Twitter from your computer—you'll still have to live with smaller GIFs if you're posting from your smartphone.

While Twitter's inherent limits have been a large part of its popularity, the company has recently been loosening some of the restrictions. It stopped counting images, polls, and usernames as part of the service's 140-character limit, and it has also relaxed the rules of its quick-video platform Vine by increasing the video length limit from six seconds to 140 seconds.