D11: All the news from All Things D's 2013 conference

It's been just over two weeks since Julius Genachowski stepped down as chairman of the FCC after four years in charge of the nation's communications policy, and he looks extremely relaxed. You would too: in the past four years Genachowski's FCC has dealt with everything from the rise of LTE networks and the explosion of mobile devices to the net neutrality debate and the government's coordinated opposition to the AT&T / T-Mobile merger. And significant challenges and changes remain. Someone will eventually buy Sprint, demand for spectrum continues to rise, and the TV industry feels ripe for disruption. Obama appointee Tom Wheeler will have plenty to do once he's confirmed by the Senate and takes over from interim chairwoman Mignon Clyburn.

But even though Genachowski is out of politics now — and seriously planning to play in the World Series of Poker — he's still passionate about telecommunications and the internet. I caught up with him at the D11 conference in LA last week, where we discussed his tenure as chairman and the challenges that lay ahead for the broadband industry.

Sony's selling an unlocked version of its Xperia ZL in the United States, but it hasn’t yet gotten a carrier deal for the flagship phones it launched at CES. That's about to change, Sony's Kaz Hirai and Phil Molyneux told reporters today at the D11 conference. "We will make an announcement about the Xperia Z with a carrier very shortly," said Hirai, with Molyneux later saying it would be within the coming weeks. Neither would reveal which carrier, but Sony has a long history with AT&T and the ZL already works on AT&T's LTE network, so that would be a natural fit.

Asked how Sony would differentiate the glass-backed waterproof Z in the hypercompetitive US market, Hirai conceded that the company has "more work to do," to stand out, but noted that the Z was the bestselling smartphone for six weeks in a row in Japan. "We were able to do that — it's above and beyond Sony technology. It's the Sony brand. Think about the marketing prowess we bring." We'll see how Sony manages to set the Z apart in the next few weeks.

Sony and Microsoft launched their next-gen consoles in very different ways: the Xbox One was pitched as a complete living room device, while the PS4 event was a nonstop series of game demos. That's important, Kaz Hirai told reporters at the D11 conference today. "The most important thing we need to do is agree and understand that the PS4 is a great video game console that appeals to video gamers," he said. "If we miss that part, I don't think we get the initial establishment of the console. That formula has worked for us with all our consoles, including the PS3."

Google and HTC made a lot of dreams come true this morning when Android head Sundar Pichai announced a version of the HTC One with stock Android at the D11 conference. Google's Hugo Barra happened to have a stock One in his pocket, and he gave me a quick look. Just as with the stock Samsung GS4, it's exactly what you'd expect: both the hardware and software are familiar, but it's great to see them paired with support from Google and HTC. You'll still have to deal with HTC's weirdo button layout, though: the home button is on the right, not the middle, and it's a long press for Google Now and a double-tap for recent apps.

Of course, the big question with running stock on the One is how HTC's unique hardware features will work without its software, and it sounds like there's good news: Barra told me Beats Audio will still work — the hardware optimization is active all the time, but it won't put an icon in the menu bar. HTC's UltraPixel camera module is still present, but it's being made to work with the stock Android camera app — Barra said it'll just "do what it does," adding that more details would be forthcoming as Google and HTC work on the software. There's never been a stock Android device with a great camera, and it'll be interesting to see how the proven cameras in the GS4 and One perform without custom software.

In June 2011, a Silicon Valley startup released a well received iOS app named Fanhattan to serve as a central place for finding streaming video. More recently, Fanhattan brought its service to the web. But it turns out the apps were something of a feint — for its entire existence the company has been secretly working on its own media-streaming device, and after two years Fanhattan is showing it to the world.

Today on stage at the D11 conference, Fanhattan co-founder and CEO Gilles BianRosa is unveiling Fan TV, an Yves Behar-designed entertainment system that combines the functions of cable set-top boxes and streaming devices like Apple TV and Roku. The device, which does not have a price or a ship date beyond "later this year," will include live and on-demand TV, streaming services, and a cloud DVR. It is controlled using swipe and tap gestures on a pebble-like, touchpad remote control designed to be used without having to look at it.

Google didn't build its own YouTube app for Windows Phone because the platform doesn't have "a critical mass of users," Android chief Sundar Pichai said today at the D11 conference. "It's simply a function of reach," he said, before recommending that Windows Phone users try the mobile web version of YouTube. "YouTube has a great HTML5 experience," he said.

Pichai's comments come in the wake of a public spat with Microsoft over YouTube on Windows Phone. Microsoft built its own version of the app, but it did not include ads, leading Google to demand that the company remove it from its app store. Last week Microsoft updated the app to address Google's concerns, and the companies eventually said they would work together on a new version of YouTube for Windows Phone.

Following his announcement of Tesla's dramatic Supercharger station expansion, CEO Elon Musk touched on another pet project: Hyperloop. The rapid transit system would connect downtown Los Angeles with San Francisco, 380 miles away. Musk told the crowd that more details for the project would be available on June 20th.

Musk denigrated California's current high speed rail plans, pointing out that the bullet train currently under consideration will be both the slowest in the world and most expensive per mile — "not the superlatives you're looking for." In contrast, the Hyperloop would be "a cross between a Concorde, a rail gun, and an air hockey table." Musk joked, "even if I'm wrong about the economic assumptions, it would be a really fun ride."

Tesla founder Elon Musk took the stage at D today to talk about his company’s plans, but didn't expect to get egged into making an early announcement: the company is going to triple the size of its Supercharger charging station network by the end of June, for the first time letting drivers make it from Los Angeles to New York in one of its electric vehicles. Also, according to Musk, the Supercharger network will cover most of the major areas of the US and Canada by the end of the year. Short range and a lack of fast charging stations have been among the biggest criticisms of electric vehicles, and the dramatic expansion could be a boon for adoption.

Things have been working out financially for the automaker as well. Earlier this month, Tesla turned its first profit, and even managed to pay back its $465 million government loan ahead of schedule. If you're hungry for more details on Tesla's Supercharger expansion, Musk says the company will be making a formal announcement tomorrow, including a map containing the locations of the new stations.

At the D11 conference today, Regina Dugan, SVP for advanced technology and projects at Motorola, showed off some advanced projects. The first was a prototype electronic tattoo on her arm from MC10, about which she quipped "teenagers might not want to wear a watch, but you can be sure they'll wear a tattoo just to piss off their parents."

The second technology was even wilder: a pill from Proteus Digital Health that you can swallow and which is then powered by the acid in your stomach. Once ingested, it creates an 18-bit signal in your body — and thereby makes your entire person an "authentication token." Dugan called it "vitamin authentication." Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, who earlier confirmed the Moto X phone, added that the Proteus pill was approved by the FDA.

At D11, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has just confirmed that the company is working on a flagship phone, and that it is indeed called the Moto X. The phone will be made in the US, it will have an OLED screen, and Woodside has said that "we know when it's in your pocket, we know when it's in your hand, it's going to know when you want to take a picture and fire up the cameras." It'll know when you're in the car, for instance, and promote different interactions.

It's going to be built in Texas, in a 480,000-square-foot facility previously used to manufacture Nokia phones. Woodside says Moto X will be the first smartphone built in the United States, and was clearly proud of that fact. Some components will come from the US, too, though portions will come from Taiwan, Korea, and elsewhere. The phone is explicitly designed to compete with the iPhone and the Galaxy lineup, though Woodside did say that one of the areas Motorola sees as promising is in high-quality, low-cost devices.

Kara Swisher, I. Marlene King, and Anne Marley on stage at D11.

The tension between broadcast networks and Aereo is heating up here at the D11 conference in LA, as ABC Television president Anne Sweeney just said the internet television service is stealing content.

The legal battles between internet television service Aereo and the broadcast networks whose signals it retransmits are actually helping the company grow, says Barry Diller. The media mogul, whose IAC is a prominent backer of Aereo, said he's "happy the broadcasters sued us in such a noisy way" at the D11 conference in Los Angeles today. Diller admitted that Aereo has "very few" customers at the moment, but the increased attention from the lawsuits has boosted subscriber numbers.

Diller also said that the plan is to grow Aereo beyond broadcast television into original content, as Netflix and Amazon have done. "I'm hopeful that if Aereo works, if we reach 15 to 20 million homes with a billing relationship, we can have our own content." And Diller also seemed open to working with networks directly, saying that he would "love to" retransmit what's currently on cable systems. But he insisted that Aereo's goal is to "move the centricity to the internet" and change the way television is packaged and sold.

At the D11 conference on Wednesday, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin unveiled his new project: a quantification app for iOS that's aimed at helping women conceive. It's called Glow, and works primarily as a fertility and health tracker, gauging a woman's menstrual cycle and monitoring cervical mucus levels for indicators. Couples will be reminded to have sex at peak fertility times. Levchin estimates the reminders would arrive roughly every other day.

On stage at the D11 conference in California, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took a question about the service's high-profile security problems, saying that the company takes the matter "super seriously," and that Twitter has "responsibility for high-authority accounts."

Twitter rolled out two-step authentication for accounts beginning on May 22nd — a long-awaited feature following a particularly nasty spell of hacks of organizations including the Associated Press, AFP, and The Guardian — but Costolo said today that the measure isn't enough. "We launched two factor authentication," Costolo said, "but two factor wouldn't stop some of these attacks. We've got a bunch of security people on it, and we're investing money."

Could Apple one day develop apps for Android? The very notion seems blasphemous, but in one of his most surprising answers on stage at D11, Tim Cook said his company is at least open to the idea. During an audience Q&A session, Cook was asked if bringing iCloud to other operating systems would be a wise move for Apple. With his answer, the CEO chose to go wider in scope. "To a general question of 'would Apple port an app from iOS to Android?'" he began, "We have no religious issue with doing that. If we thought it made sense for us to do that, we would do that."

Cook went on to say it's the same sort of thinking Apple applies to many of its product decisions. "And so you can take that same philosophy and apply it to virtually everything we do: if it makes sense to do it, we would do it. It's not a religious issue with it." Still, the initial question remained: does bringing iCloud to Android in some capacity make sense for Cupertino? "It doesn't today. Would it forever? I don't know."

During the D11 conference this evening, Apple CEO Tim Cook was pressed on the fact that Apple's software is more closed in comparison to other platforms such as Android, and admitted that the company could be softening on that stance — to a degree. "On the general topic of opening up APIs, I think you'll see us open up more in the future," he said, "but not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience. So there's always a fine line to walk there, or maybe not so fine."

Walt Mossberg asked Cook about Facebook Home; according to Mossberg, Facebook had first approached Apple with the idea, but Cupertino wasn't receptive. Cook didn't confirm the statement, but did admit that some customers wanted the more elaborate customization options seen on platforms like Android. "We think the customer pays us to make choices on their behalf. I've see some of these settings screens, and I don't think that's what customers want," he said. "Do some want it? Yes."

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at All Things D’s D11 conference today, touching on a variety of issues, from wearable electronics and iOS 7 to Apple's tax headaches in the US. One big announcement was the appointment of Lisa Jackson, the former head of the EPA, to head up Apple's environmental responsibility efforts. Cook announced that Jackson would be reporting directly to him in her new role. "Lisa Jackson is joining Apple. Lisa was running the EPA for the last four years," said Cook, as he discussed initiatives like Apple's renewable energy-powered data center in North Carolina. "She's going to be coordinating a lot of this activity across the company," he added.

Jackson served as head of the EPA since 2009, after being appointed to the job by president-elect Barack Obama. Serving nearly four years in that role, she announced plans to step down in late 2012 after it was discovered that she was conducting EPA business using a private email address. Jackson scored some big successes during her tenure, including getting carbon dioxide and other chemicals listed as pollutants in the Clean Air Act, but a proposal for smog legislation that she spearheaded was shot down in 2011 owing to weak economic growth.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed what many have long assumed — that Jony Ive is working on a new version of iOS, and that it will be revealed at WWDC next month. Speaking at the D11 conference, Cook said that Apple "recognized that Jony had contributed significantly to the look and feel of Apple over many many years and could do that for our software as well," calling the designer "absolutely incredible."

Ive is the creative force behind many of Apple's most iconic hardware designs, but was handed an additional role in "human interface" last year following the removal of Scott Forstall as iOS senior VP. Recent weeks have seen rumors that iOS 7 will feature a "flat" UI that removes much of the glossy, realistic sheen currently seen in Apple's software.

Onstage at the D11 conference in California, Tim Cook responded to a question about Google Glass, noting that wearables are a profound type of technology and that Apple may be working on its own wearable tech. "It's an area that's ripe for exploration," Cook said, "it's ripe for us to get excited about. Lots of companies will play in this space."

Cook said that the iPhone pushed Apple forward fast and that tablets accelerated the company's development — but noted that Apple has room for growth. "I see [wearables] as a very important branch of the tree," Cook said. "I think this group will be very involved in this."

When questioned on stage at the D11 conference about Apple's current standing in the TV market, CEO Tim Cook provided some new sales figures for the company's Apple TV set-top box. "For several years we were selling a few hundred thousand," Cook said. "We've now sold over 13 million. About half of those in the last year." That would mean the company has sold approximately 6.5 million units over the last 12 months. "That business has found many many more customers," Cook said. Apple has long described its Apple TV product as a "hobby."

As for what's in store in the months and years to come, Cook unsurprisingly remained vague. "I think many of us would agree that there's lots of things about the TV experience that can be better," he said, claiming Apple has accomplished "some of those." Pressed further on where Apple may take its TV business, Cook opted to refuse further comment, teasing only "there is a grand vision."