Apple Accepting Donations for Hurricane Harvey Relief Efforts
Apple has added banners to its United States website and iTunes Store in an effort to encourage its customers to donate to those affected by Hurricane Harvey.
Similar to past relief efforts, users can choose to donate $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, or $200, and Apple will transfer 100 percent of the proceeds to the American Red Cross, which is providing relief efforts for people in the path of Hurricane Harvey. All donations will be processed as normal iTunes purchases through a connected Apple ID.
Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted about the donations early this morning, as rescue workers in Houston and other parts of southeast Texas attempt to help residents trapped in their homes by "catastrophic flooding." Harvey made landfall late Friday night as a Category 4 hurricane and has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, which is expected to stay in the region over the next few days.
Apple is known to create donation pages across its various storefronts in the wake of natural disasters. In the past, Apple has collected Red Cross relief funds for the
British Columbia Wildfire,
Hurricane Matthew,
the 2016 Louisiana floods,
the 2015 Nepal earthquake, and many more.
Popular Stories
Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories, according to the Apple leaker and prototype collector known as "Kosutami." In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kosutami explained that Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability. The company may move to another non-leather material for its premium accessories in the future. Kosutami has revealed...
The lead developer of the multi-emulator app Provenance has told iMore that his team is working towards releasing the app on the App Store, but he did not provide a timeframe. Provenance is a frontend for many existing emulators, and it would allow iPhone and Apple TV users to emulate games released for a wide variety of classic game consoles, including the original PlayStation, GameCube, Wii,...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple Vision Pro, Apple's $3,500 spatial computing device, appears to be following a pattern familiar to the AR/VR headset industry – initial enthusiasm giving way to a significant dip in sustained interest and usage. Since its debut in the U.S. in February 2024, excitement for the Apple Vision Pro has noticeably cooled, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Writing in his latest Power On...
It was a big week for retro gaming fans, as iPhone users are starting to reap the rewards of Apple's recent change to allow retro game emulators on the App Store. This week also saw a new iOS 17.5 beta that will support web-based app distribution in the EU, the debut of the first hotels to allow for direct AirPlay streaming to room TVs, a fresh rumor about the impending iPad Air update, and...
Top Rated Comments
I had a look at other companies websites to see what they're doing:
* Microsoft - nothing
* Google - nothing
* Amazon - nothing
* Visa - nothing
* MasterCard - nothing
* American Express - nothing
* Target - nothing
* Walmart - nothing
Wow.
Now, remember that Houston is the oil capital of the US, with no less than 25 Fortune 500 companies headquartered there. Surely they'd step up and offer web resources to help their local community organize and recover? Wouldn't you think? (Self interest, if nothing else.)
So I checked the websites for the ten largest Houston corporations (the number below in bold is their Fortune 500 ranking). These are big, multinational, oil-rich players who pump money out of the ground 24x7:
* 4 Phillips 66 ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_66')
* 45 ConocoPhillips ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConocoPhillips')
* 64 Enterprise Products Partners ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Products')
* 65 Sysco ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysco')
* 77 Plains All American Pipeline ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plains_All_American_Pipeline')
* 106 Halliburton ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton')
* 135 Baker Hughes ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Hughes')
* 144 National Oilwell Varco ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oilwell_Varco')
* 167 Apache ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Corporation')
* 174 Marathon Oil ('https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Oil')
Nothing.
So well done Apple. Thinking different indeed.
That said, for a massive effort like this, the infrastructure of a huge charity like Red Cross is valuable.