mnbob1

digital_guy said:

The offering should come with numerous legal strings attached  .

The support is being provided to CFPA. It has nothing to do with the Chinese government. The CFPA provides disaster relief in this case (which unfortunately in many cases is caused by the governments river control programs. Think Army Corps of Engineers but along a river five times longer than the Mississippi and a population along its banks equal to that of all Canada). 

The normal function of the CFPA is to provide micro financing to small businesses and individuals in China to start and maintain their business. Micro finance is becoming a means to fight poverty throughout the world. Interesting that it's not being tried here in the US. Maybe it has been blocked by the large banking lobby since it would cut into their high interest loans that are not growing small businesses but instead seem to be against them?

cpsro said:

"grave harm", my ass. No sympathy for Spotify here, until I know the reason Spotify's update was rejected. I expect it was rejected for good reason, or else Spotify would have told us why. Until then, my assumption is it's all a ploy by Spotify. The app is still available to download and presumably still works, so I don't see how rejecting an app for specious reasons is an issue that anybody outside the company should be concerned about. What a waste of time.

My understanding is that Spotify submitted an app that opened a browser within the app for the user to register to and avoid paying the subscription fee to Apple. Once they registered it returned them back to the Spotify app. This has always been against Apple's app TOS policy and Spotify knew it. It was done knowing it would get rejected so that they could publicly raise this issue. Providing a copy of the letter to Elizabeth Warren was nothing but a publicity ploy knowing that she would admonish Apple publicly and make Spotify look like the underdog that is being crushed by the huge corporation with "a troubling pattern of behavior" that's anti-competitive. 

Is it any wonder that Tim Cook is a supporter of both political parties? The shame that the Democrats have piled on him for hosting a Republican fundraiser (not for Donald Trump!) is unbelievable. I'm a Democrat but it makes me ill to see what Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren are doing publicly to a company and a successful CEO that have worked hard to be successful.

It's not a secret that Apple uses a closed system, not to stomp the competition but to provide the best products for their customers. The app store rules for app requirements are there for user and system security. The fees that Apple charges are to maintain the largest app store in the industry, which I'm sure is not an easy task. Apple is the most profitable company in the country (or is it the world?) and that's what will allow them to compete and keep the doors open for a long time. Companies don't stay in business by sacrificing profit for market share. The computer corporation, computer retailer, computer software graveyard are full of those that made the wrong choice. 

LoneStar88 said:

jasenj1 said:

I guess I'm old and jaded. As a professional software developer I find it really hard to believe coding on the iPad will produce anything "real". Maybe it will give people a taste of breaking a problem down into steps, working with picky syntax, and introduce some other basic software production concepts. But compared to XCode, Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ, and other "real" development environments, Swift Playground seems almost delusional.

You had me at "old and jaded." So why did you go on?

I kinda think Apple knows what it's doing. So, let it be, pal.

I've been trying to learn Apple OS programming for too many years, but none of you smug bastards ever seemed to want to provide any comprehensive path to learning what y'all know. Sure, there's a lot of documentation out there, but that in itself has been a barrier for me: where to start? where to go if I had a problem? how to learn basic concepts and design paradigms?, etc.

Well, this to me seems like finally a comprehendible bridge into Apple OS programming which finally gives some immediate feedback through Swift's "playgrounds" without the relative complexity of XCode.

It also gives me a good reason to need and want an iPad. I'm excited!

Well said! I completely agree with the term "smug bastards". Never helpful, always critical of anyone without experience. Some people just want to learn but don't need the "I don't have time for you and you're stupid" BS.

wizard69 said:

mdriftmeyer said:

It is fun. This is complex stuff that being trivialized only adds frustration to the kid [who Tim thinks every kid should become a programmer: an absolutely terrible fantasy] when they discover they cannot master it.

I'm not sure where the idea that every kid needs to learn coding came from. It is almost as stupid as learning a second language for every kid in school, it really serves no purpose. I think it is a liberal thing where everybody born has the same sets of skills and abilities in their minds. People need to instead realize that people are born with innate strengths and weaknesses, not everyone is a mathematician, nor does everyone have the ability to be an engineer or create fine art.

Liberal thing? Really? Teaching children is an important requirement that here in the United States we seem to have lost sight of while other countries have increased their focus. Our high school graduates can barely read and they have only basic math and science skills. High tech corporations have had to either recruit from other nations or in some cases even move their development groups overseas.

Not every student is going to become a programmer. If they aren't introduced to the basic concepts and what they can accomplish at a young age then an opportunity is lost to find those with talent that can be focused on. If education of children is a liberal thing then I choose that over what the conservative thing is. Actually, I think we are currently witnessing the conservative thing in our nations schools. When private universities and colleges as well as Ivy League schools are resorting to remedial classes for incoming students there is a crisis in our K-12 system. The United States is falling behind the rest of the world at a record pace and Tim Cook is Partnering with IBM to help in this one way to provide our kids a chance for a decent chance in the world.

One more thing. What's wrong with learning a second language? I've traveled to many other countries and have found that almost everywhere I have been most people under the age of 50 speak English as well as their native language. Some speak multiple languages. It's time we all learned that it's a big world and to be successful sometimes a second language could mean the difference between writing a few apps targeting Americans or working for one of the most valuable corporations in the world creating the next thing in search, mobile, desktop, office applications, programming languages or creating a completely new market.

I see Fitbit devices all the time. I hardly ever see them worn by men. They either don't adjust well or people seem to wear them loosely. If they are worn loosely are they accurate? Or do people do that so they appear to get more steps than they actually do? They are ugly. With the Apple Watch you can raise your wrist and see the time. Apparently the FitBit is supposed to do a similar action but worn loosely it creates a two handed problem to see the time.

My wife bought a FiBit and praised how wonderful it was. Now I rarely see her wear it. She used to plug it into an Apple charger in the bathroom with it's stiff little connector cable sticking out and the FitBit hanging in free air like and acrobat! I asked her about how she uses it and the app she uses. What is the FitBit app like? Does she use the Apple Health app? Has she looked at any of the really good fitness apps that integrate with her FitBit? Has she used the FitBit web portal? She admitted that mostly she just looks at the device display as the day goes on to see how many steps she has made. How many FitBit users are like that? How many of those FitBit's were purchased, used for a short period and then thrown in a drawer?

Mr. Park is making statements about the competition that indicate his company may be in trouble. It's true that health-minded products are in a different category than Apple Watch. However his wouldn't be the first company to miss the mark by underestimating consumer demand as technology and features become available. (Blackberry, Windows Phone, Surface/RT, etc.) He reminds me of the Blackberry CEO, what's-his-name, that was trying to hide the fact that his company didn't have the technical resources to deliver their needed products. Of course by that time it was too late. Mr. Park was smart enough to take advantage of  Apple's technology to create a great business. Now it's time to be smart enough to create his own tech that won't be me too but go beyond what everyone including Apple is doing. Unfortunately getting someone to fund such projects is not an easy task. I wish Mr. Park well. Competition whether it is real or imagined is always a good thing.