Apple to offer free coding workshops in Retail Stores

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering: “Coding is just like any language, the earlier you’re exposed the more successful you’ll be."

Apple today opened registration for Hour of Code workshops at all 487 Apple retail stores worldwide, from December 5 through 11 in celebration of Computer Science Education Week. Among the most popular events at the Apple Store, Hour of Code workshops teach the basics of computer science with Code.org’s programming tutorials. Apple and Code.org share the goal of giving every student the opportunity to learn computer science.

“Hour of Code embodies our vision for Apple stores as a place for the community to gather, learn and be entertained,” said Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail. “We’re proud to introduce the Swift Playgrounds app into the workshops and honoured to again work side-by-side with Code.org on this incredibly important initiative. Hour of Code is one of the absolute highlights of the year for both our teams and the families that visit our stores.” 

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The Apple Beat: Apple Pay now an option for donating to causes and non-profits, MacBook Pros in the wild

 

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple Pay has been touted as the next generation mobile payments platform and Apple’s done a great job of securing global banks and partners, making ApplePay an option in major retailers and restaurants and even tuning their hardware so Apple Pay is one fingerprint or password away from enabling a quick and secure sale, even the new MacBook Pros feature a Touch ID button to make this easy.

According to their newsroom, Apple Pay now ‘makes it easier and more security to donate to nonprofit organizations.’ This is a great and safe option not just for responding to emergencies such as earthquakes, floods and other catastrophes but also for sending funds to causes, nonprofits and other charities. The list of nonprofits and charities is up on Apple’s website, it’s mostly from International and American organizations, I hope Canadian nonprofits can be included soon, specially as we’re headed into the season of giving.

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Analyst: Apple's iPhone captures 103.6 % of smartphone profits in wake of Samsung Note fiasco

Analysts at BMO Capital Markets estimate that Apple captured 103.6 % of total smartphone industry profits in the wake of Samsung's monumental product recall for its faulty and now discontinued Galaxy Note 7 flagship. Samsung's profits are at 0.9%. BMO says that Apple also took more than 100 % of profits because a majority of vendores (i.e. LG, HTC) recorded losses on theri smartphone divisions this third quarter.

Samsung tried to steal the thunder from Apple's iPhone 7, they rushed their product to market and even bumped up the name to Note 7 (foregoing the Note 6). This backfired completely when Note 7 devices started exploding and causing fires. This propelled Samsung's brand into notoriety to the extent that no Note 7's were allowed on any airlines and the company recalled the product to the tune of $2 billion loss.

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Emoji get redesigned and detailed in public beta of iOS 10.2

Emoji have replaced letters and words for many users specially in messaging and chat apps. Apple's given various emoji more than a fresh coat of paint and added more detail and nuance to various designs. Older emoji weren't designed for viewing on larger displays or on high resolution displays.

Participants of Apple's iOS Public Beta program who install iOS 10.2 on their devices will get the new emoji that conform to the Unicode 9.0 standard. these include about 72 new icons, such as a clown, bacon, a selfie, and a sneezing face. Existing ones have also been redrawn with more detail, and/or different styles. These emoji will be standard once the OS is rolled out as an update to all users.