101–110 of 184 posts
Microsoft already does one day events in their stores. My SO who's an elementary school teacher took her class to one of them.
https://www.microsoft.com/about/philanthropies/youthspark/yo...
I am pretty surprised by the general lack luster comments bordering on negativity here. Personally, I think it is great to see a major retailer take even a misguided stab at improving child tech education which has quickly fallen behind demand (in America). Do I think the approach is more than a little bit wrong? Sure, GUI programming a non-useful task wouldn't be my choice. Would I prefer a more robust longer-term p…
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I don't see this as a PR stunt at all, this goes to one of Apple's core values. Apple's very good at marketing, if this were a PR stunt they would have large brand building ads and little substance, whereas this initiative requires a lot of resources, logistics and investments to run and are offering it for free. Since Tim took over Apple's been doing a lot more towards "We want to leave the world better than we foun…
Perhaps add privacy to that list as well. Hopefully.
I am pretty surprised by the general lack luster comments bordering on negativity here. Personally, I think it is great to see a major retailer take even a misguided stab at improving child tech education which has quickly fallen behind demand (in America). Do I think the approach is more than a little bit wrong? Sure, GUI programming a non-useful task wouldn't be my choice. Would I prefer a more robust longer-term p…
Why do I get the feeling that they'll only teach swift (or maybe scratch in order to lead into swift)...
Apple's other Obj-C/C/C++ languages are terrible for teaching kids how to program with.
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For me, it has the feeling of being more of a PR stunt than a sincere effort to help education. Plus, its an opportunity to build brand allegiance at a young age. I would rather Apple donate an equal amount of money to any of those entities out there which help to bring technology to the youth.
I don't see this as a PR stunt at all, this goes to one of Apple's core values. Apple's very good at marketing, if this were a PR stunt they would have large brand building ads and little substance, whereas this initiative requires a lot of resources, logistics and investments to run and are offering it for free. Since Tim took over Apple's been doing a lot more towards "We want to leave the world better than we foun…
I agree with the op but want to take this one step further.
When you're apple's size, perhaps what's good IS good for your bottom line, in the long term.
Can you really grow a company when most people are too poor to afford your products? No, you really can't.
Will apple do better if there are many more people with disposable income enough to buy more apple products? I think so.
Maybe spending money on education and fixing the environment are necessary for them if they want to keep growing. I'm not saying this to be cynical - i'm saying this because if it's true, it doesn't actually matter whether this is a dollars and cents calculation.
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For me, it has the feeling of being more of a PR stunt than a sincere effort to help education. Plus, its an opportunity to build brand allegiance at a young age. I would rather Apple donate an equal amount of money to any of those entities out there which help to bring technology to the youth.
While your skepticism is easily justified and I share it, I would just point out that: > Plus, its an opportunity to build brand allegiance at a young age. If this leads to other vendors like Microsoft, Google, etc. launching their own coding camps geared towards youth I think it's a net win and results in competition in an area which is currently under served. I also think it's a little unrealistic to expect a corpo…
http://news.microsoft.com/2015/09/16/microsoft-expands-globa...
Well, personally, I think the cookie-cutter "I'm surprised by the negativity here" comments at the top of every marginally controversial HN post are a bit surprising.
Another distressing characteristic of apple's tactics is that it increases social inequality. (Let's set aside those irrational SJWs that have arisen lately - there can be a rational approach to social justice). There are some pretty clear demographic divides in apple users vs everyone else. Apple could have donated to non-profits that especially serve under-privileged people, especially financially disadvantaged chi…
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Yes, given the level of competence of the staff at Apple stores, it seems unlikely there could be a worthwhile coding camp at that venue. Apple would need to bring in some much higher caliber people.
It'd be nice if they made an area available for random mall-goers who are also software engineers to come voluntarily hang out and instruct / help out random kids or teens that stop by, with potential for networking or further tutoring services for those really interested or who want to do something more interesting. Unfortunately I bet if a lot of us just camped out unofficially for a couple hours we'd be branded as…