Apple articles

Editor's note: For an assignment in Media Writing, I picked a topic, Apple Inc., and wrote five articles about it in the style of state, national, international, opinion, and feature. Please see them below.

State

Texas removed from list of potential locations for new Apple campus

GALVESTON

Apple Inc. crossed off California and Texas from its list of potential locations Jan 19, two days after it announced it will build a new campus for 20,000 U.S. workers.

Immediately after the announcement, the Dallas Regional Chamber put out a statement to Apple outlining some of what it believed to be benefits of setting up a campus there, including that the Dallas region ranks third in the Milken Institute's 2017 Best-Performing Cities. Also, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dallas had the highest job growth rate and most jobs added between November 2016 and November 2017 among the 12 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.

In December 2017, The Dallas Morning News reported that Apple would spend "$390 million to boost production from a maker of laser technology," which is critical for the new iPhone X's facial recognition feature.

Apple invested the money from a $1 billion fund with the aim of creating more American jobs.

On this venture, Apple opened a campus in Sherman, about an hour north of Dallas. The campus is 700,000 square feet and employs over 500 people.

Another city in Texas with a strong Apple presence is Austin.

The city of Austin is not a stranger to Apple's technology industry. Since 1992, Apple has had a presence in Texas' capital city.

Apple has 8,000 employees in Texas, including at least 6,000 in Austin.

Incidentally, according to Dallas Morning News, this is why Apple has chosen to cross Texas off its list of potential sites for a new campus. Apple prefers to expand its presence in new markets.

Apple's headquarters are located in Cupertino, Calif., which is likely the reason for Apple choosing not to build a campus there as well.

As part of its plan for growth in the U.S., Apple said it will open a campus in a new location.

In September 2016, north Austin was home to a 1.1-million square-foot campus. Located only a 20-minute drive down MoPac is a smaller Apple campus, about 216,000 square feet.

For a while, the Austin campus was Apple's largest site. While short lived, in 2017, Apple opened a campus in Silicon Valley, Calif. The new campus dwarfs the Austin site and is 2.8 million square feet.

Apple's Austin campus features restaurants and a wellness center where employees can get acupuncture for their aches and pains.

The Silicon Valley campus also houses similar features and amenities and also includes a huge fitness center.

This talk of opening a new facility somewhere outside of Texas comes at a time when just weeks ago, League City was removed from a list of potential locations for an Amazon campus facility, which would have served as its second headquarters, that could have provided jobs for 50,000 employees.

League City was in the running as a potential location for the multi-billion-dollar company until a lack of mass transit derailed the city's Amazon bid.

Unlike Amazon, Apple has not released the details of where its next campus is to be built or what amenities it's looking for in a new city.

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National

Concerned parents, teachers calling on Apple to get kids off screens

GALVESTON

In a letter to Apple Inc.'s board of directors, sent on Jan. 6, concerned shareholders from the California State Teachers' Retirement System and JANA Partners LLC proposed that Apple put safeguards in iPhones to "ensure that young consumers are using (Apple's) products in an optimal manner." These two organizations hold more than $2 billion shares of Apple stock.

It's no secret that electronics overuse among children and teens is ubiquitous.

There is evidence that young Apple users are negatively affecting their lives by spending an average of six hours a day looking at a screen. What's worse, Dr. Delaney Ruston said, is when children and teenagers multitask by switching rapidly between screens of say computers, televisions, phones and tablets.

In a study of mice, multitasking between screens compromised the mice's ability to learn and pay attention, Ruston said.

In an American Psychological Association survey of over 3,500 U.S. parents, 58 percent say they worry about the influence of social media on their child's health, 48 percent say that regulating their child's screen time is a "constant battle" and 58 percent say they feel like their child is "attached" to their phone or tablet.

According to a study by the Center on Media and Child health and the University of Alberta, research by Professor Jean M. Twenge shows that U.S. teenagers who spend approximately one hour on screens per day are happier and healthier than teenagers who spend five hours or more on screens.

Along the same lines, children and teenagers who spend more time than average playing outside, participating in sports, hanging out with friends in person or doing homework are significantly less likely to experience depression.

"It is both unrealistic and a poor long-term business strategy to ask parents to fight (the battle against keeping their kids safe but also happy) alone," according to the letter.

The letter goes on to list some potential solutions.

The shareholders are not requesting Apple take an "all or nothing approach," but that it take a look at the parental controls on its devices and tweak them more toward a balanced approach.

“For example, the initial setup menu could be expanded so that, just as users choose a language and time zone, parents can enter the age of the user and be given age-appropriate setup options based on the best available research including limiting screen time, restricting use to certain hours, reducing the available number of social media sites, setting up parental monitoring”

If Apple chooses to implement options such as these, the next step would be to educate parents on why they’re offering these additional parental controls and explain the research that went into the software design to help parents make more informed choices.

The final step the shareholders are asking Apple to take is to then hire or assign a high-level executive to monitor the issue and to also issue annual progress reports, much like Apple already does for environmental and supply chain issues.

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International

The Apple has come a long way since that first bite

GALVESTON, Texas, U.S.A.

While the serpent in the Garden of Eden led Eve astray with greed, so, too, is Apple Inc. being greedy by not intervening with its smelters and precipitating mining for ore in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mining for commodities in war zones is not a new endeavor. Gold, tin and tungsten — all used in modern electronics — are called conflict minerals because they are mined in places under conflict.

Tantalum is the conflict mineral currently being mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has triggered a debate among human rights activists who have long called for more transparency from companies doing business internationally.

Tantalum is a blueish-gray mineral found in Brazil and Australia but also in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It's no secret that the war torn-country of the Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in ores and minerals. However, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed up to 6 million lives since 1998, either as a direct result of fighting or because of disease and malnourishment, according to BBC News. Rape is a common weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and slave labor and recruitment of child soldiers is common.

Tantalum is mined by villagers in small artisanal mines oftentimes under the thumb of warlords, who control exports. This leads to the widespread smuggling of ore across porous borders.

After the ore is mined and exported, it goes to China and Russia to be smelted.

Once smelted and processed, Tantalum is used in nearly all computers and cellphones. It's known as a "transition" metal — meaning it, like iron and copper, has a strong tendency to form coordination compounds — and is highly corrosion-resistant.

It is unlikely another material would work to replace tantalum in today’s technology and electronic devices.

Apple has already started to police itself in its role in “encouraging” the mining and exporting of the conflict minerals in that it went above and beyond a new regulation passed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2012 under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation act. The rule requires companies to audit their supply chains and disclose any use of conflict minerals. Apple decided to specifically name the smelters it uses in its report.

Because of the scrutiny of the conflict minerals, more information from smelters has been gathered, however, the trade remains hard to track. As of November 2017, Apple’s list of smelters globally are located in China, Brazil, the U.S., Japan, Germany, India, Austria, Estonia, Russia and Kazakhstan.

In 2014, Rwanda disclosed that it had exported twice as much tantalum in 2013 as it did in 2012.

The spike increased suspicions that the ore was being smuggled across the Rwandan border from the Democratic Republic of Congo and was being laundered through Rwanda’s domestic tagging system as “clean” material.

Despite Apple’s transparency under the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act, smelters are still withholding information from the audits and conflict minerals are being mined under the direction of warlords for a profit and exported under false pretenses. The greed abounds.

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Opinion

Apple privacy policy clear, respectable

Apple Inc. should keep up the good work with their privacy policies

People in this day and age (and country) are very conscientious of their privacy.

In the average smartphone, a person has a contact list of everyone they know which might include addresses, phone numbers, contact photos, birthdays or anniversaries.

More importantly, it is now easier than ever to store passwords to websites and credit card numbers. Not to mention an abundance of private text messages and direct access to apps such as Facebook or emails without having to enter a password; simply click the icon and you're in.

When you consider the amount of information stored in your phone, it might overwhelm you a bit.

That's not to say Apple doesn't have some pretty nifty security features. Most iPhones — and smartphones in general — are password protected by either a four-digit keypad number, a pattern, word or phrase or some even have fingerprint or facial recognition.

If a thief steals your iPhone, it's likely he wouldn't be able to get past the lock screen and attempting to get in would likely cause the phone be disabled until connected to iTunes. Some users opt to have the phone erase all data if the password is entered too many times incorrectly.

When an individual or law enforcement officer needs Apple to get information out of their device, there's a rigid policy Apple adheres to in granting or denying that request. This way, that thief couldn't just call Apple and have them unlock the phone for him. Apple's policy is in place for this reason paramount to all others.

From Jan. 1, 2017, to June 30, 2017, in the United States alone, Apple received 4,479 device requests and 80 percent of those requests received provided data, according to Apple's Report on Government and Private Party Requests for Customer Information.

"Apple is very seriously committed to protecting your data and we work hard to deliver the most secure hardware, software and services available," according to the report.

It was a good move for Apple to come up with such a restrictive privacy policy.

Not only do requests have to be extremely specific in the form of subpoenas, court orders or search warrants — all of which involve a judge — if Apple's lawyers believe a request to be too broad, they deny it.

For example, if law enforcement contacts Apple because a person's stolen credit card was used to buy Apple products, Apple can decide whether or not — based on the request — to comply or to fight it, according to the report.

It is in Apple's best interest to ensure how many legal hoops the government has to jump through to access individuals' personal information. Again, they are only allowed access in the narrowest scope possible to the data requested. The policy protects its customers.

"Apple has never created a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services," according to Apple's privacy policy. "We have also never allowed any government direct access to Apple servers. And we never will."

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Feature

Users continue to prefer Apple over Android in 2018

GALVESTON

What's the smartphone device with the best features for you? Let's go over the options to find out which brand will best suit your needs for 2018.

Does anyone remember back in January 2007 when the first smartphone, the iPhone, came out? All I can remember from 2007 was Britney Spears' meltdown and watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" on repeat.

It seems technology has come a long way since those dark days without touch screens, apps and digital media.

When the first generation iPhone came out it was marketed as three devices in one: a touch screen iPod, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a truly mobile web browser.

Since Apple Inc.'s iconic technology breakthrough, many different smartphones have emerged. The second-most popular of which is Android.

Android phones became instantly trendy since they were cheaper than iPhones and completely customizable.

In today's world, when shopping for smartphones, there are dozens of options for Android phones. Apple, however, was a little more particular about their devices and have only launched 14 models (not counting the larger "Plus" versions).

All smartphones have things in common, such as being able to make calls, send texts, access the internet through wifi, connect to other devices with bluetooth, have a touchscreen and an app store with endless applications available for download at your fingertips. But what sets Apple apart from Android?

Apple has made improvements to its iPhones every time they release them, not to mention sending updates to the software frequently to keep them as fast as possible, up to date and to address any glitches that may have manifested.

Apple's newest phone, the iPhone X, has taken its predecessor model one step further. While the iPhone 7 model got rid of the traditional headphone jack, the iPhone X has completely gotten rid of the home button. The phone is also costly as it's priced at a whopping $999.

Android's phones have come a long way, too, but since so many are released so often, the improvements are harder to spot and mainly have to do with the look, graphics and speed of the device. An interesting phone to keep an eye out for is the Samsung Galaxy X which boasts the ability to physically bend and fold up, essentially solving the problem of a cracked glass screen upon dropping it. But this phone won't be released until December.

Other smartphone features to pay attention to before purchasing are the security features.

Apple and Android have a plethora of passcode locks on their devices from traditional keyboard pass code to number pad pass codes and all the way from pattern pass codes to fingerprint and facial recognition.

Whatever your smartphone needs, be it sturdy or secure, battery longevity or technology, smartphones are only getting better with each device and, who knows, maybe someday we'll have a smartphone that can do all of the above and it's cheap and durable. Until then, choose the device that does the trick.