Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

> Charitable causes do not trump the entirety of the rest of human endeavour and for-profit entities are not intrinsically amoral.

These are trivial near-tautologies addressing irrelevant and extreme positions. For example, some "charitable" causes are outright corrupt.

> By that logic Apple's users could have purchased cheaper non-Apple products and donated the remaining money to non-profits.

Most of us buy expensive hardware because we want expensive hardware, not because we want to pretend to be doing good in the world. Anyone foolish enough to think that they are making the world a better place by buying apple products would be appropriately subject to the same criticism: it would be far better if they bought cheaper hardware and used the difference in some intelligent way to make the world a better place.

> This entire line of moral reasonsing just doesn't work.

That's what happens when you apply slippery slope style reasoning unnecessarily. There is nothing illogical about looking at both (a) what one actually does and (b) what one could do - especially if there are entities praising your questionable actions as socially benign.

You are correct that one 'could always do better', but that is not a 'get out criticism free' card. Further, it needn't by itself change anyone's choice of where they draw the line for "more helpful than harmful". I believe that apple's actions here are more harmful than helpful, and the fact that their actions increase the divide between haves and have-nots is part of that evaluation.

I did read past the headline. My impression is that OSX as I know it will largely be the same in the first iteration of macOS, but the big consumer-facing changes are things that integrate the experience of my iOS device with my desktop, such as Siri and copy-and-paste. In terms of technical achievement, obviously the new file system seems to be the biggest change, but I don't see anything that will drastically impact what I do day to day (which is fine with me of course). Going off of Apple's own preview page [0], it's very hard to shake off the impression that what Apple thinks is most exciting about Sierra is that it brings over iOS's most signature features...and the most prominent of those, Siri, is a bit far on the other side of the spectrum from the typical Desktop dev tool.

I don't have a problem with these iOS features being brought over...I like all of these features even if I don't use them often on my phone or iPad. My problem has been the relative dearth of features that are desktop focused...the improvements haven't been bad, but they haven't signalled a desire on Apple's part to overhaul the desktop experience the way that Microsoft has with Windows.

But you can disagree with my assessment, maybe you think OSX is nearly perfect as is (personally, I love it, but that's as a developer), or that the changes since 10.6 have been as significant as Windows 7 to 8 to 10.

But I find it ironic that you accuse me of being too simple-minded to read past a headline when you've apparently already forgotten the public proclamations of Apple officials that the iPad Pro can be a desktop replacement. For fucks sake it's in the iPad Pro's product page right now:

> iPad Pro is more than the next generation of iPad — it’s an uncompromising vision of personal computing for the modern world. It puts incredible power that leaps past most portable PCs at your fingertips. It makes even complex work as natural as touching, swiping, or writing with a pencil...See how iPad Pro can be your next computer

Sure, push it off as fancy marketing talk if you want. I almost felt the same way when they sad the iPhone would replace the camera, despite far more in pro camera equipment than I have spent on computers in my lifetime...and Apple has been right on the ball on that. The full-size camera has its uses, but for all intents and purposes when it comes to photos produced and ecosystems affected, the iPhone (and Android) own the way we take images.

Why the hell should we think that convergence of desktop and mobile device won't and/or shouldn't happen? Microsoft Surface is already very impressive. iPad Pro does decent despite lacking desktop applications. Moreover, looking at past quarterly reports, there is no reason to think the desktop ebb will reverse.

I never said that I thought this iteration of macOS is the turning point...I only meant that if Apple intends to consolidate, the the branding and feature set of macOS is a logical iteration toward that goal. Consolidating the best of iOS and the best of OSX makes good business sense, but convergence will always have a few drawbacks for the edge case users. But don't take me as a total hater of change...my photography experience and experience has been made mostly obsolete by the ubiquitous of high quality cameras in the form of smartphones, but the fact that so many more people can capture and share beautiful memories (and important events) at a scale unthinkable in the pro-DSLR days, far outweighs what monetary damage had been done to the pro photography sector.

[0] http://www.apple.com/macos/sierra-preview/

> That seems like a bit of a red herring. What does blocking the downloading of code have to do with offering coding camps?

How does a kid share? This type of thing is important. Everyone can see the athlete play, hear the singer singing, but how does a young coder get notices if no code can be shared?

Ideally, one kid should be able to "flip / slide" his/her project onto another kids iPad with a option to put a link in the iCloud. Otherwise, its just a solitary activity with no social reward.

Apple released a Linux port of Swift and its standard library when they open sourced it[0], indicating they are neither indifferent nor outright hostile to the language running on other platforms outside their ecosystem.

[0]: https://swift.org/blog/swift-linux-port/