By Graham K. Rogers

At last week's WWDC keynote presentations, Tim Cook only made two brief appearances on stage. While praising the developers, he mentioned the youngest there, Anvitha Vijay, who had won an Apple scholarship and was nine years old. I have looked at one of her apps earlier: Smartkins Animals. There is also the simpler, Smartkins Rainbow Colors.

Some of the basic adjectives of description are concerned with colours and the rainbow, using the prism-like effects of rain is a spectacular display of the seven main colors. I learned these when I was a child using the mnemonic, Richard of York Goes Battling In Vain - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. These same seven colors are used in the app Smartkins Rainbow Colors by Anvitha Vijay.

This is a simpler app than Smartkins Animals and has no recording options. Instead, the display of different coloured cartoon animals is accompanied by a clear voice announcing which color is shown. Each animal also has the color name displayed below.

The purpose is to expose early learners to the pronunciation (especially) and names of the colours, perhaps with the parent also guiding the learning input. When the color cycle is complete, it will repeat automatically. Control icons on the panels allow for each to be repeated, but this needs some improvement: the developer is learning as well. A Home icon on each panel takes the user back to the start page.

Like the slightly more sophisticated Smartkins Animals this is a basic form of input for youngsters and as a free app Smartkins Rainbow Colors is a good example of what our youngest developers can now produce.

See also: Cassandra: Smartkins Animals - Tim Cook's WWDC Shout-out

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.