“In around Year 3 [at school], I found out about this app called Swift Playgrounds. And I had a lot of fun tinkering with it, trying out the different features and just having fun with it,” said Prohaska as he opened Playgrounds on his iPad to explain the fundamentals of Swift coding to adult noobs like me.
Working through levels in Playgrounds requires a decent amount of patience and concentration, something you don’t always find in kids his age -- except maybe when they’re playing Fortnite or Minecraft. I asked Prohaska to show me a stage that he had never worked on. For around 10 minutes, his mind was solely focused on solving the puzzle in front of him and explaining to me his thought process.
Ethan Saadia, 17, from Houston, attended WWDC in 2019 and says it was an eye-opening experience to meet and interact with computer nerds like himself. This year, while finishing classes in his junior year of high school, he's been creating apps. He's fine-tuning a prototype for a curbside pickup app to bring contactless service to any business with a smartphone and has been running his 3D printer to make headbands for face shields for first responders.
“In my childhood, we weren’t financially strong. But then things started changing when we started buying sometimes useful, sometimes luxury objects. That’s where the name ‘Possessions’ comes from…our possessions tells us what we are.” Chirag Chopra, the 27-year-old founder of Lucid Labs, the only Indian developer to make it to Apple Arcade, is a matter of fact on why his game is called Possessions.
The word ‘Possession’ has deep philosophical meaning, says Chopra, adding he decided to name the game thus because it tells us how successful or financially independent we are. “The narrative and storyline are personal to me.”
In addition to now-standard capabilities such as sound and movement (and non-movement) detection, the Miku tracks your child’s breathing patterns and aggregates all this data in digestible sleep analysis reports. Though some hiccups I encountered during testing suggest there’s still some room for improvement, the Miku has the all the makings of a great baby monitor.
We only expand the realm of the possible when individuals dare to try things that seem impossible.
Only five countries where Apple has retail outlets will be left without any of the stores opened by the end of the week: Brazil (2), Mexico (2), the Netherlands (3), Singapore (2), and the United Kingdom (38).
After being called back by Apple on March 21, Bugnion started explaining the idea in an email, which was then followed by a series of meetings explaining what Apple would have to do, namely relaxing the policies. On determining Apple may not go through with it due to security concerns, Bugnion got hold of Apple head of Health Strategic Initiatives Myoung Cha, who reported to COO Jeff Williams.
By April 5, Apple was willing to invest resources, but it was determined Google had to assist, and that an interoperable system needed to be made. By April 10, Apple and Google made its contact tracing announcement.
When I realize I am going to be using my Mac much more during these... interesting times, I also bought a few apps to make me happier while I am working from home. Little apps here and there.
I've also written a couple of AppleScripts, to toggle between working-mode and not-working-mode. While working, I will see my Dock with its little notification badges. While not-working, I wlll hide the Dock and just see SwitchGlass' application switcher window. I will not even accidentally click on the Firefox icon, which will automatically launch Outlook (for the web), and notify me of all the emails that just came in.
I've almost forgotten I used Windows more than macOS during most of my weekdays...
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Thanks for reading.