diversity

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on diversity:

Apple parts ways with employee over past ‘misogynistic statements’

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Photo: Josh Davidson/Cult of Mac

Antonio García Martínez, the author of Chaos Monkeys and an ex-Facebook product manager, has been hired and apparently fired by Apple within a matter of weeks for sentiments expressed in his 2016 Silicon Valley memoir.

The book includes a description of women in the San Francisco Bay Area as “soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of sh*t.”

Apple plans to make its app developer language more inclusive

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iOS 13.5 golden master is available only to developers.
Apple is changing terms to make them more inclusive.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Apple has made plenty of public-facing moves to show its push for diversity in tech. But it’s making some behind-the-scenes changes, too — like tweaking the terms in its developer ecosystem to remove words the company no longer considers appropriate.

Examples include switching “master” code repository to “main” code repository, and changing “blacklist” to “deny list.” Here’s what Apple had to say in its announcement:

Apple steps up push for diversity with historically Black colleges and universities partnership

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Apple Historically Black Universities 1
Apple is working hard to promote diversity in tech.
Photo: Apple

Apple is deepening its connection with historically Black colleges and universities to create “community hubs for coding and creativity.”

Under the heading of Apple’s Community Education Initiative, the partnership with an addition 10 learning institutes will allow Apple to expand its coding initiative — while also helping widen participation in tech.

Christie Smith, Apple’s VP of inclusion and diversity, leaves the company

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diversity Apple
Diversity is one of Apple's biggest strengths, says Tim Cook.
Photo: Apple

Christie Smith, Apple’s vice president of inclusion and diversity, has left the company after two-and-a-half years in the role. Smith worked under Apple’s SVP of Retail and People Deirdre O’Brien.

Smith’s departure was reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by Apple. Her departure had been planned for a couple of months, but Tuesday was her last day.

Apple donates products to New Orleans’ Ellis Marsalis Music Center

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Tim Cook talks diversity, sustainability, and coming out as gay
Tim Cook was in town to give a commencement speech at Tulane University.
Photo: Apple

After giving his commencement speech for Tulane University on Saturday, Tim Cook visited the nearby Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

He met with founders Ellis Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. He also announced that Apple will be donating Apple products to help produce music in EMCM’s studios.

Apple’s VP of diversity and inclusion is leaving the company

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diversity Apple
Denise Young Smith was promoted to her current diversity-promoting role in May.
Photo: Apple

Denise Young Smith, a.k.a. Apple’s first ever vice president of diversity and inclusion, is leaving the company.

Young Smith won the role earlier this year, having previously been Apple’s head of worldwide human resources. She will be replaced by Christie Smith, who joins Apple from Deloitte.

Apple diversity report shows the company is still white and male

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diversity Apple
Apple is pledging to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s new video published this afternoon is a celebration of diversity, but according to a recent government filing, the company still has a long way to go before it can really call itself inclusive.

Over 80% of Apple’s senior ranking officials are white males, based on Apple’s updated Inclusion and Diversity report. Most of the numbers are stagnant compared to 2016, but there are a few spots to be proud of.

Apple’s VP of Diversity walks back recent controversial comments

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diversity Apple
Denise Young Smith shared her thoughts with colleagues following the comments.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s Vice President of Inclusion and Diversity Denise Young Smith has apologized for comments she made about Apple’s commitment to inclusiveness.

Speaking at the One Young World Summit in Bogotá, Colombia last week, Smith made a comment defending diversity that’s not about skin color or gender, but rather lived experiences — therefore allowing a group of “12 white blue-eyed blond men” to be considered diverse.

However, despite meaning well with the comment, Young’s response was criticized by some commentators, who felt it undermined the need for greater diversity in tech by suggesting a company could remain overwhelmingly white and male, while still considering itself diverse. Read Denise Young Smith’s response letter to Apple employees below.

12 white dudes in room is totally diverse, says Apple VP of Diversity

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diversity Apple
Apple is pledging to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

Creating diversity at Apple isn’t just about making sure more people of color get added to the mix, according to the exec put in charge of creating a more diverse and inclusive culture at the iPhone maker’s offices.

Denise Young Smith, Apple VP of Diversity and Inclusion, was part of a recent panel discussion on fighting racial injustice where she talked about her mission at Apple. White men currently account for 56% of Apple’s workforce, but Young Smith says that doesn’t mean the company isn’t diverse.

Tim Cook says diversity is key to Apple’s ‘magical’ products

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Tim Cook
Cook received a warm welcome from students at Auburn University.
Photo: Tim Cook/Twitter

Apple CEO Tim Cook made a visit to his old stomping grounds at Auburn University today to talk to students about life after after graduation.

During his morning speech at the Telfair Peet Theatre, the Auburn alum told students of all backgrounds to get ready to embrace diversity once they enter the workforce.

Apple pushes back against shareholder diversity demands

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Apple needs to step up its diversity game, a small group of shareholders claim.
Photo: Apple

A small group of Apple investors think the company isn’t doing enough to improve its racial and gender diversity quotas, and suggest that Apple needs to step up its pace.

For the second time, investor Tony Maldonado has filed a shareholder proposal asking Apple to, “adopt an accelerated recruitment policy … to increase the diversity of senior management and its board of directors.”

It seems Apple disagrees, though.

Apple steps up its efforts to be more diverse

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diversity Apple
Apple is pledging to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

It’s time for us to use our favorite headache-inducing gif again as Apple has released its latest set of diversity figures, showing how Apple’s push toward a more representative diverse company is coming along.

The results? That white males continue to dominate the upper ranks of the company, but further down the ladder things are changing much faster — and 54 percent of new hires in the U.S. come from minority backgrounds.

Apple’s interpretation of diversity includes Canadians

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diversity Apple
Apple is pledging to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s iPhone 7 keynote only featured about eight minutes of stage time for women, but after being confronted about its lack of diversity, the company says its definition of the subject is a lot more flexible than normal apparently.

According to an Apple spokesman, both Canadians and British citizens should be counted as a sign of how diverse the iPhone maker is, even though most of the people of color and women that shared the stage don’t actually work for Apple.

Apple says its gender pay gap has been fixed

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Divya Nag helped Apple engineers create ResearchKit and CareKit.
Divya Nag helped Apple engineers create ResearchKit and CareKit.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s workforce became a little bit more diverse in 2016 according to the company’s annual Inclusion and Diversity report that was published today, revealing that minorities made up 54 percent of new U.S. hires.

The company is also hiring more women than ever and says it is finally paying women equal wages, and will continue to analyze the salaries, bonuses and annual stock grants of all employees worldwide to solve the gender pay gap once and for all.

Cherie Blair thinks Apple needs to hire more women

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Cherie Blair, women's rights advocate and wife of a former British prime minister, chides Apple for its lack of diversity.
Cherie Blair, women's rights advocate and wife of a former British prime minister, chides Apple for its lack of diversity.
Photo: HuffPostRise

Apple CEO Tim Cook continues to take fire over the company’s lack of diversity, the mostly white, male makeup of management described by one investor last year as a “bit too vanilla.”

Women’s rights activist Cherie Blair chose words Wednesday with a little more bite. The British barrister and wife of the former prime minister Tony Blair called Cook “so shortsighted” in Apple’s seemingly less-than-urgent effort to add more women to leadership.

Diversity report shows Apple’s U.S. workforce still mainly white

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diversity Apple
Apple has pledged to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s U.S. workforce is a bit more diverse than it was a year ago, but still predominantly white and male, suggests the most recent EEO-1 Federal Employer Information report.

According to newly-released figures, roughly 30 percent of Apple’s U.S. employees are female, around 8.6 percent are African-American, and 11.7 percent are hispanic or Latino. That’s marginally up from 29 percent female, 8 percent African-American, and 11.5 percent hispanic and Latino in 2014.

Apple could be forced to add more ‘executives of color’

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diversity Apple
Apple is stepping up its pro-diversity game.
Photo: Apple

Apple could be forced to add more non-white executives and directors, due to a proposal put forward by an investor who thinks the current makeup of Apple execs is “a little bit too vanilla.”

The possible pro-diversity push was reportedly prompted after the son of investor Antonio Avian Maldonado II, who owns just 645 Apple shares, asked why nearly everyone on Apple’s board of directors was white.

Apple’s diversity figures show increase in number of black employees

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diversity Apple
Apple is pledging to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Conference in Aspen, Colorado, Apple’s head of human resources has revealed that the company will record a 1 percent increase in its proportion of black employees in 2015. “We were pleasantly surprised to realize that we did have some movement,” said Denise Young Smith.

Apple will release its next diversity report this summer, showing increases for both women and racial minorities, Smith continued. She says that diversity in hiring is key to Apple’s talent strategy.

Google reveals its real face: unfocused, unoriginal and a little bit evil

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Photo: Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web
Wednesday's Google I/O keynote offers a window into the search giant's world. Photo: Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web

Google’s keynote presentation at its I/O developer’s conference today offered a revealing picture of the company itself: meandering, unfocused, copycat and just a little bit evil.

The two-hours-plus keynote had a lot of everything, from a new version of Android to new phones, smartwatches, TVs, cars, Chromebooks and big data — but much of it was deja vu from Apple’s WWDC two weeks ago.