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Comment by s3r3nity | Hacker News Reader

It seems like a lot of folks don't give Tim Cook enough credit in the post-Steve Jobs world for a lot of the philanthropic work Apple has done for education (as well as for the LGBTQ community.) Kudos to them for this initiative - and I'll be excited if this expands to adults at some point.

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When I was an intern at Apple I asked Tim what the hardest part was about filling in Steve's shoes and he said:

"Steve was my friend, and I don't believe a friend could ever replace a friend, so I chose to run Apple like Tim."

I've always respected that answer.

what did you intern as, at Apple?

Can't talk about it ;)

I'm sure Cook and team do great philanthropic work. But this sounds like it's at least as much marketing as philanthropy. I think Microsoft has learned that despite near ubiquity, their platform didn't cross the chasm to mobile computing devices well/at all. They know it was due to the fact that the engineers who targeted those devices preferred to work with linux/BSD.

Apple has invested in LLVM+Swift as a part of this strategy and wants to drive new waves of software development for their platform. These coding camps are part of that effort.

And people say on HN advertising doesn't work :))

It's all to make you buy their products, my friend. No big company is doing philanthropy just for the sake of it.

Instead of paying taxes honestly (yrs, it's legal what they are doing, but not ethical), they bribe you with LGBT campaign. Bufff.

I wouldn't really call it philanthropic. Tech companies do this sort of stuff because of labor costs.

What do you mean because of labor costs? Do you think they're going to hire 12 year olds?

If anything this will increase labor costs because now they need Geniuses to cover these classes (as well as costs for possible damage to the iPads used) in addition to normal Apple store staffing.

If they're playing the long game, then the more people that are interested in developing, the lower their wage bill will be down the track. I'm not sure if that's what the GP is talking about, but it's one way this could help.

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