Apple’s Everyone Can Code initiative brings opportunities to 500,000 students in Chicago

Apple today announced that it is working with the city of Chicago to bring coding opportunities to Chicago’s nearly 500,000 students through a citywide expansion of Apple’s Everyone Can Code program.

The initiative in Chicago was designed in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools, City Colleges of Chicago, local businesses and non-profit organizations. Together, Apple and local organizations are helping expand opportunities for students to build the skills they need to pursue careers in the app economy by becoming proficient in Swift, Apple’s easy-to-learn programming language that empowers anyone to create world-class apps.

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Uber admits that 815,000 Canadians are affected by the data breach

Uber has admitted that more than 815,000 of their Canadian customers have had their data compromised by the data breach which Uber is accused of having tried to cover up.

Customer information that was exposed in the data breach includes the names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of customers. It is not known if credit card orother payment information. The data breach saw the theft of information from some 57 million Uber accounts globally in October 2016. Uber reportedly paid off the hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach hidden from the public.

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Apple iMac Pro to go on sale December 14 for US $4,999

iMac Pro photo by gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple has announced that its first 'pro' desktop in years, the iMac Pro, will be going on sale on December 14. Starting at US $4,999 for an 8-core model that features 32GB of RAM. This is the most powerful Mac all-in-one to come to market and is the stopgap product aimed to sate the desire for a more powerful-VR-capable Mac until a proper redesigned Mac Pro comes sometime next year.

I see this Mac Pro as an ideal device for graphics designers, video editors and photography pros who want a powerful Mac today and who are okay with the limitations of a non-upgradeable and hyper integrated enclosure.

Source: Engadget

Apple buys audio recognition service Shazam for $ 400 million

Shazam is a pioneering audio recognition service that can quickly listen to and identify music (as well as TV and likely other forms of media). The company and its employees were recently involved in a $400 million purchase by Apple who might look to integrate the service tightly with its iOS and Mac devices.

Shazam boasts more than 120 million active users, using the app 20 million times each day so giving this user base tigher integration with iOS devices will likely keep them longer. The Pixel 2 from Google has a feature that identifies music playing automatically and presents this information on the display.

Shazam can also be used to identify images, determine what TV show or movie is on and has some features related to QR codes and possibly AR (Augmented Reality) functionality. A quiet acquisition, Apple has yet to send out a detailed release about their plans for Shazam and what will happen to the app in other competing paltforms.

Source: CNBC