Rana Sweis

Digital Digest

The Shape of Things to Come

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In recent months, Sir Jonathan Ive, the forty-seven-year-old senior vice-president of design at Apple—who used to play rugby in secondary school, and still has a bench-pressing bulk that he carries a little sheepishly, as if it belonged to someone else—has described himself as both “deeply, deeply tired” and “always anxious.” When he sits down, on an aluminum stool in Apple’s design studio, or in the cream leather back seat of his Bentley Mulsanne, a car for a head of state, he is likely to emit a soft, half-ironic groan. His manner suggests the burden of being fully appreciated. There were times, during the past two decades, when he considered leaving Apple, but he stayed, becoming an intimate friend of Steve Jobs and establishing the build and the finish of the iMac, the MacBook, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. He is now one of the two most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company. He sometimes listens to CNBC Radio on his hour-long commute from San Francisco to Apple’s offices, in Silicon Valley, but he’s uncomfortable knowing that a hundred thousand Apple employees rely on his decision-making—his taste—and that a sudden announcement of his retirement would ambush Apple shareholders. (To take a number: a ten-percent drop in Apple’s valuation represents seventy-one billion dollars.) According to Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, who is close to Ive and his family, “Jony’s an artist with an artist’s temperament, and he’d be the first to tell you artists aren’t supposed to be responsible for this kind of thing.”


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Rana Sweis Articles

Digital Digest

Why is digital Arabic content key?

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"Arguably, vernacular is one of the reasons that mobile phones have spread so fast: the main applications (voice and text messages) are offered in the language that is most relevant to their users. Over 60% of Arabic speakers prefer browsing internet content in Arabic according to Arab Media Outlook 2009-2013. More than half of them do not speak English. For the extreme poor and the bottom 40% of the population that the World Bank seeks to help, access to online knowledge and services in a native language is likely to matter even more.

The prospects for stronger digital Arabic content are exciting. Consider these last few numbers: only a quarter of women in the Arab world participate in the formal workforce. New forms of work such as online contracting and microwork could offer a chance to bypass physical barriers or social restrictions and empower women."

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