by admin | May 25, 2021 | Employment, Entrepreneurship, Women Entrepreneur, World
San Francisco : In a bid to empower women coders and creators, Apple has partnered with “Girls Who Code”, a US-based non-profit organisation, to create coding avenues for girls in the US.
“Using the ‘Everyone Can Code’ curriculum, 90,000 girls and ‘Girls Who Code’ club facilitators in all 50 states can learn to use Apple’s easy to learn programming language, Swift, (with which) hundreds of thousands of apps are built,” the iPhone-maker announced in a blog-post on Thursday.
Headed by Reshma Saujani, an American lawyer of Indian origin, the “Girls Who Code” is working to close the gender employment difference in technology aiming to change the image of what a programmer looks like.
The organisation supports and encourages women participation in the field of technology and computer science.
“Women have earned the opportunity to have our ideas shape the future. We’re excited to support ‘Girls Who Code’ as they empower girls to be the developers and tech innovators of tomorrow,” said Lisa Jackson, Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Apple.
As part of the programme, visitors are allowed to attend over 60 sessions of the “Made By Women” series, led by artists, musicians, photographers, app developers, scientists and entrepreneurs.
Marking the International Women’s Day that falls on March 8, the App Store would daily highlight an app founded, developed or led by women.
Apple Music would also feature visionary women in the music industry with highly-curated playlists and editorial packages.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Corporate, Corporate Jobs, Corporate Reports, Employment, Markets, Technology
San Francisco : Apple has reportedly confirmed it is firing 190 employees from its ambitious self-driving car project called Titan.
According to a report in San Francisco Chronicle late Wednesday, the Cupertino-based company has laid off mostly engineers, including 38 engineering programme managers, 33 hardware engineers, 31 product design engineers and 22 software engineers.
The layoffs in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale would take effect from April 16, according to an Apple filing with the California Employment Development Department.
CNBC reported in January that layoffs were occurring in Apple’s self-driving car division. Apple previously cut hundreds of jobs in the self-driving car division in 2016.
In August 2018, Tesla’s former engineering Vice President Doug Field was appointed by Apple to lead team Titan.
The fleet of Apple’s self-driving programmes is made up of 66 Lexus RX450h SUVs, each of which is fitted with huge racks of LIDAR and radar sensors as well as cameras, roaming around the San Francisco Bay Area to perfect the sensors, computer systems and software required for a vehicle to safely drive itself, AppleInsider reported.
The iPhone-maker is also said to be applying some of the Titan-technology into a self-driving shuttle program titled “Palo Alto to Infinite Loop” or “PAIL” — intended to ferry Apple employees between the Bay Area campuses, using specially modified Volkswagen vans, the report added.
In May 2018, with 55 self-driving cars and 83 drivers, Apple touched the second highest number of self-driving cars in California after General Motor’s Cruise, which had 104 vehicles.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, World
San Francisco : Keeping up with the ongoing Martin Luther King Day celebrations, Apple announced that as part of its “Giving” programme, the amount donated by its employees in 2018 to help non-profit organisations globally exceeded $125 million with over 250,000 hours of volunteer work.
The programme came into existence three years ago where for every hour an Apple employee gives, or dollar they donate, the company provides matching funds for both with volunteers working across the globe including in China where Apple is one of the only global companies matching employee donations.
“Thirty-two Chinese charitable organisations are now eligible to receive funds, including the ‘China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation’ which aided more than 175,000 people across 24 provinces with disaster relief and preparedness in 2018 alone,” the iPhone-maker wrote in a blog-post on Monday.
Over the weekend, Apple CEO Tim Cook also became part of the volunteering efforts in San Jose.
“Sixty years ago, Dr. King called on all of us to make a career of humanity. ‘You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in’,” Cook tweeted.
The programme has been assisting several local communities including the “Point of Pride” charity that gives support to transgender people.
“The organisation linked up with an Apple employee who since then has organised almost 20 writing sessions at the company’s Cupertino, Austin and Sacramento campuses which were attended by hundreds of employees,” the post added.
The post also noted that in “Second Harvest Food Bank” in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which includes most of Silicon Valley, in 2018 provided almost 55 million meals.
“Apple’s history of volunteering with ‘Second Harvest’ goes back to 2000 and in 2018, its employees spent almost 3,000 hours sorting and distributing food, which makes the food bank one of the largest recipients of Apple volunteer hours in the US,” the post said.
Apple has been teaching subjects like coding, drawing, photography, music and videography at underprivileged schools in Ireland and other areas to help students expand their career prospects.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Technology
San Francisco : A revised iPod touch and USB-C cables for iPhones could be on Apple’s list of offerings in 2019, according to a report from Macotakara — a Japan-based supply chain blog.
“Details on what changes a new iPod touch might feature are unclear at this point, but it is long overdue for an update. The report also goes on to say that the 2019 iPhones ‘might’ make the switch to USB-C,” 9To5Mac quoted the report as saying on Monday.
The iPod touch is largely targeted at youngsters who are not ready for a smartphone and its 6th generation was released in 2015 which Apple continues to sell with 32GB of storage for $199.
“Further, Macotakara says that those who are working on the iPhone’s USB-C transition indicate it has not yet reached the reference design stage as yet,” the report said.
The iPhone-maker did bring the USB-C cables along with the 2018 iPad Pros.
“Even though Macotakara has a decent track record, but like most supply chain sources, it can struggle with details such as timing,” the report added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Markets, Technology
Representational image
San Francisco : Taking its legal battle with chip making giant Qualcomm to the next level, Apple has claimed it wanted to use Qualcomm modems in its 2018’s iPhone models but the chip maker refused to sell them after being sued by the iPhone maker over its licensing practices.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has accused Qualcomm of operating a monopoly in wireless chips, forcing companies such as Apple to work with it exclusively and charging excessive licensing fees for its technology.
According to Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams’s testimony in court during the FTC trial against Qualcomm, the latter refused to sell its 4G LTE modems to Apple because of the companies’ licensing dispute, the CNET reported late on Monday.
The chip making giant continues to provide the iPhone maker with chips for its older models, including the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
“The strategy was to dual-source in 2018 as well. We were working toward doing that with Qualcomm but in the end they would not support us or sell us chips,” the report quoted William as saying.
Apple reportedly dialled Intel’s CEO at the time, Brian Krzanich, to ask the company to supply all modems needed for the iPhone instead of only half the volume.
However, Williams’ comments appear to contradict testimony from Qualcomm’s CEO Steven Mollenkopf.
Mollenkopf on Friday had said on the stand that as of spring 2018, Qualcomm was still trying to win a contract supplying chips for iPhones but that it hadn’t “had any new business” from Apple since its previous contracts expired, the report added.
—IANS
