Mikey Campbell
Following his European tour last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday showed up at an Apple store in Toronto to discuss the importance of coding in education, talk up the company's Swift programming language and visit a few local developers.
The trip, which found Cook at Apple Eaton Centre, marks the executive's first visit to the Great White North as company CEO, reports The Globe and Mail. Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs visited Canada in an official capacity in the late 1980s, but the country is often overlooked as executives concentrate on other key markets.
In Toronto, Cook had a chance to speak with a group of students from Scarborough, Ont., who were visiting the Apple store to attend an "Everyone Can Code" workshop. Apple's custom curriculum exposes younger students to mobile app coding through fun projects based on the Swift coding language.
"Swift came out of the fundamental recognition that coding languages were too geeky. Most students would look at them and say, 'That's not for me," Cook said. "That's not our view. Our view is that coding is a horizontal skill like your native languages or mathematics, so we wanted to design a programming language that is as easy to learn as our products are to use."
Beyond pushing Apple's educational initiatives, Cook was in Canada to thank the company's regional team, as well as the 120,000 developers, designers, entrepreneurs and other professionals who contribute to the iOS and App Store ecosystems.
"Canada is an extremely important market for us. We have a great team in Canada," Cook said. "I want to do everything I can do to highlight their innovation, their companies and their work, because it is a critical part of the entire user experience. I wanted to come say thank you."
Cook also met with employees of Canadian e-commerce company Shopify, which is experimenting with augmented reality shopping features built using ARKit in iOS 11.
Cook's Canadian trip follows a similar visit to the UK, where the executive discussed the benefits of technology both in and out of the classroom. That meeting was time to coincide with Apple's recent launch of the "Everyone Can Code" curriculum in a number of European schools.
Update: Cook also spent time with Canadian singer Daniel Caesar, who was also featured in promotional images of the new Apple Music for Artists tool. A photo of the pair sitting in a music studio was posted to Cook's Twitter profile on Monday.
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21 Comments
I wish I’d known! I was off today! 😳😭
Learning how to program a few lines of code doesn't mean you can single-handedly program an app like FCPX. And while we all need to start somewhere, it's important we go into learning code with realistic expectations. Apple wants kids to learn to code because coding is hard, even in SWIFT, and Apple wants more coders in the future (great coders, A players) to help press their product line ahead of the competition. "ANYONE can code" sounds nice but it isn't reality. If we abandoned our private lives completely and focused exclusively on learning code, then perhaps more people could code. But most people don't or can't do that. Think me dismissive and negative? Hey, I am a realist. Those who disagree with me and really do think that ANYONE can code, just try to teach your grandmother SWIFT. Try even teaching your mother. "Where there's a will, there's a way." I agree. But many people lose the will a few minutes into teaching "code." That clearly makes code a lot harder to learn than Macs are to use.
The day AI progresses to the point we can begin "programming" computers via voice commands is the day "most people can code." I think of it as using a WYSIWYG web design tool to get my creativity on the web without having to resort to HTML or JavaScript coding. It's the superiority of 1984 Mac 128k's GUI versus text "code" of DOS or CP/M. Computers need to get more powerful in terms of their software easy-of-use to empower more people to achieve things that were once unthinkable. And in the end that won't transform us into the Bynars of Star Trek. Advanced computing technology should help push human beings to a higher level without changing us into a computer.