Bono is a tireless promoter of his global AIDs and HIV nonprofit, (RED), but according to the U2 frontman (and, more ignobly, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark composer), Apple’s dropping the ball when it comes to charity: not in regards to giving enough money to charity, but in regards to promoting how much charitable work it does as a company.
Apple has donated $500K to the anti-poverty initiative SF Gives, according to people close to the matter.
Launched in March this year, SF Gives is the joint venture of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Daniel Lurie, CEO of the nonprofit Tipping Point. Their goal is to get 20 businesses to contribute $500,000 each to fund local charitable programs.
Of course, when you’ve got more money in the bank than the gross domestic product of the whole of Luxembourg, giving $500K to charity isn’t exactly breaking the bank. But it’s interesting because it shows a public commitment to charity in line with Tim Cook’s vision for Apple as a philanthropic “force for good” in the world.
It’s our T-Day edition CultCast! This time: Jony Ive’s golden touch makes millions for charity; Apple teases underwhelming Black Friday deals; how Apple’s blacklist keeps bad press at bay; the new money in old macs; and we pitch our favorite Thanksgiving Day foods on our holiday edition Faves ’N Raves!
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Write it off as a smokescreen to cover sliding profit and margins if you want, but Tim Cook’s belief in the culture of Apple came across loud and clear during Monday’s conference call with analysts and reporters.
Speaking about Apple as a “force for good in the world beyond our products” Cook claimed that, “Whether it’s improving working conditions or the environment, standing up for human rights, helping eliminate AIDS, or reinventing education, Apple is making substantial contributions to society.”
Ever since Phil Schiller admitted that Apple considered making a standalone camera at one point, we’ve wondered what the results would look like if Sir Jony Ive’s obsessive attention to detail was applied to a full-framed camera. As part of Bono’s charity auction for Project (RED), Leica unveiled The Leica M for (RED) designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson that will be auctioned off at Southeby’s on Nov. 23rd to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.
Jony and Marc redesigned the Leica M by going through a total of 561 models and nearly 1000 prototype parts over 85 days to create the one of a kind camera that features a laser machined aluminum body, and an anodized aluminum outer shell to go with the full-format CMOS sensor inside.
Get a glimpse of all the impeccable details in the gallery below:
We met with Morgan Belford, Game It Forward’s co-founder, when we hit PAX last month, and he told us about his company’s new game, Quingo, a free-to-play mix of trivia and bingo for iOS. The game lets players of all skill levels, including kids, play the trivia game to earn money for some great charitable causes, including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Kiva, PAWS, Seattle Children’s, Splash, and The Martinez Foundation.
“We want to make sure our players can see the concrete results of their contributions, so we worked hard with our charity partners to define specific projects that will receive the funds,” said Belford in a statment. “To that end, players can see how much they’ve contributed and how well each project is doing.”
If you like trivia, it’s a great way to give something back while playing a game. Not too shabby, for sure.
Steve Jobs received a lot of criticism for not giving away more of the cash he made from Apple and his other ventures, but thanks to wife Laurene Powell Jobs, the Jobs family contributes more than you might think. In fact, they’ve been giving money away for more then two decades, they just happen to be very good at keeping it under wraps.
The MacHeist Bundle is a great deal of software for a great price, and it benefits great charities. This much you know, because we already told you.
Today, however, we learned that another app has been added to the run down, the $50 cooking app, MacGourmet, that developer Mariner Software calls the “iTunes for recipes.”
The MacHeist folks have thrown the covers off to reveal all the Mac software that you’ll get if you purchase the latest bundle for $29. In addition to this insanely good deal on some fantastic software, you’ll be gifting a charity of your choice (from a list provided at the site) with 25% of the proceeds. If all 1.5 million MacHeist members end up purchasing the bundle, that’s a lot of extra cash for the many worthwhile organizations in the charity list.
We’ve got a first here folks. Today, we have a “Name Your Own Price” (NYOP) bundle of 9 awesome Mac apps like Forklift 2, Typinator, MacFlux 4, and a little twist. See, in addition to naming your own price (yes you can even buy it for a $1, though the suggested prices is $49), 10% of what you spend goes to either EFF, charity water, or Stand Up To Cancer.
See? Sure you might want to just name a cheepo price for the bundle…but that means a great charity gets less money too. Hmmm.
The Humble Indie Bundle has always been a fantastic source of solid Mac games for a very reasonable price. How much, you might ask? Well, the five initial offerings in this year’s bundle would run you almost $90 retail, but the price you’ll pay for them here is totally up to you.
Yes, you could pay no money at all for games like Rochard or Torchlight, both solidly great games that have been released on other platforms. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? The Humble Indie Bundle gives the money you decide to pay to the developers, to EFF, and to Child’s Play, a charity that raises money for games and consoles for sick kids in hospitals. See? I told you that you wouldn’t pay nothing.
It reads like some kind of fanboy fantasy: Jony Ive To Design Leica Camera. Only this fantasy is totally non-fantastic. Ive is set to design an ultra-limited edition of one single Leica, and it will be auctioned off by Bono (who else?) for charity.
MacHeist 4’s first nanoMission is live as of now, according to an email I just got from the organizers. Solving this one will net you one copy of NetShade, a $30 anonymous proxy software for your Mac that will let you search all those websites privately. While the prize isn’t a slam dunk by any means, it’s a nice little bit of kit for relatively little effort along with a bit of fun. Oh, and you’ll also be helping MacHeist donate 25% of the proceeds to a charity cause, so it’s definitely worth the karma points.
Department of Veterans Affairs is no stranger iOS devices or to developing custom apps to help deliver key services to veterans and their families. In fact, the VA’s CIO last year said that the agency needed to become “iPad friendly” in order to effectively support the agency’s physicians, nurse, and other medical staff and an iOS pilot program was launched earlier this year.
More recently, the VA has been looking for ways that mobile technology can help homeless veterans find food, shelter, and other critical resources. To achieve that goal and raise awareness of veteran homelessness across the country (one out of six homeless adults in America is a veteran), the VA has teamed up with JBJ Soul Foundation, the non-profit charity created by music legend Jon Bon Jovi to launch an iOS/Android app contest called Project REACH.
Proceeds from of a pile of great Mac and iOS apps sold today (December 20th) will be donated to a charity working to provide clean water to those who don’t have it.
Today’s – probably this week’s – Best Thing Ever is the amazing, ear-exploding wonder that is Brian Blessed Alarm Clock.
