Today, Apple introduced a new lineup of fresh and bright band colors that give customers more opportunity than ever to personalize and customize their Apple Watch. Highlights for the season include a wide stripe Woven Nylon band, standalone Nike Sport Bands and beautifully crafted Apple Watch Hermès bands in striking new colors. All-new bands are available to order today from apple.com and for purchase at select Apple Stores, Apple Authorized Resellers and carriers in late March.
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Apple’s responsible sourcing efforts expanded beyond conflict minerals to include cobalt for the first time. For the second year in a row, 100% of Apple’s tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold (3TG) smelters and refiners are participating in independent third-party audits. Apple has also partnered with numerous NGOs to drive positive change on the ground, including Pact, who are working to provide essential health and safety training to artisanal mining and building programs to help children stay in school.
In 2016, Apple trained more than 2.4 million workers on their rights as employees. Since 2008, over 2 million people have participated in Apple’s Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program. It offers opportunities to earn higher education degrees, attend vocational training, and take classes in arts, finance and language skills.
To learn more about Apple’s progress, go to apple.com/supplier-responsibility.
Ibiden’s products help bring together the integrated circuitry and chip packages in Apple devices. Their renewable energy projects will produce over 12 MW of solar power — more than the energy they need for Apple manufacturing — and support Japan’s nationwide efforts to limit its carbon emissions.
“These innovative new clean energy investments demonstrate our commitment to doing business responsibly and economically,” said Kyoichi Yamanaka, Managing Director of Ibiden's Environment Group. “Our products help Apple devices run smarter, and now we’re powering our operations with smarter energy too. We're pleased to partner with Apple and lead the way in helping Japan meet its clean energy goals.”
Apple and its suppliers will be generating over 2.5 billion kilowatt hours per year of clean energy for the manufacturing of Apple products by the end of 2018 — equal to taking over 400,000 cars off the road for a year.
Apple has taken significant steps to protect the environment by transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy. Today, the company is powering 100 percent of its operations in 23 countries, and more than 93 percent of its worldwide operations, with renewable energy.
Apple opened its doors to customers today at new stores in Nanjing, Cologne and Miami, bringing Apple’s latest retail innovations to the heart of each city. More than 350 store employees welcomed thousands of customers at the grand openings, some queuing for days in advance.
Each store complements the local architecture, from the restored facade in Schildergasse to the 90-by-30-foot glass entryway of Apple Nanjing. For the first time in each city, customers explored The Forum, a place where the local community can gather and learn. All three stores also feature The Boardroom, a space for local entrepreneurs, developers and business customers to get hands-on advice and training.
Clips, a new app from Apple that makes it easy to create expressive videos on iPhone and iPad, is now available as a free download on the App Store. The app provides an all-new way to produce quick, engaging videos to share with friends or family through the Messages app, or on Instagram, Facebook and other social networks. Clips’ simple, single-screen interface lets users make polished, multi-clip videos in minutes without video editing timelines, tracks or complicated tools to learn.
“Swift Playgrounds is the perfect app to help our students learn to code, and I’m very excited students in China are now able to use it with Simplified Chinese support,” said Xiaoming Bao, Hangzhou Foreign Languages School. “Last year, we created an optional coding class for my students to learn fundamental coding concepts using Swift Playgrounds. I had no previous experience with coding, but the engaging and easy-to-learn app, along with the comprehensive teacher guide developed by Apple, made me confident that I could inspire and facilitate my students to learn to code, and understand coding as a way of thinking that can be applied to other subjects and everyday life. Chinese language support will make the learning experience with Swift Playgrounds even easier for students.”
Swift Playgrounds performs great on iPad and is a perfect companion app for the new 9.7-inch iPad, also announced today, featuring a brighter Retina display and best-in-class performance at its most affordable price, starting at $329. iPad is a hit with teachers and students around the world, bringing them access to Swift Playgrounds and the more than 180,000 educational apps built specifically for it and the widest selection of high quality Multi-Touch textbooks and rich digital content to personalize learning.
Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.
The Golden State Warriors, as part of Warriors Fan Night at tonight’s regular season finale in Oakland, will feature Rob Zilla’s illustrations of Warriors players, legends, coaches and fans designed on iPad Pro. The Warriors will also recognize the artist and his work at halftime.