S'pore teens embrace

Some have done well in global contests while others have had their work released on Apple's App Store

- Venessa Lee

Secondary 4 student Jatin Rakesh is the rare teenager who has met Mr Tim Cook.

The famed Apple chief executive briefly interacted with the 16-year-old and other young people earlier in June, during an event at the iPhone maker's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Jatin and selected students around the world spent a few days at the company's corporate headquarters Apple Park in Cupertino, California, as part of their prize in an annual competition organised by Apple.

The St Joseph's Institution student is one of 50 Distinguished Winners - the top-tiered award for this contest, and the only such winner in Singapore - in the Swift Student Challenge in 2025, where participants use Swift, an Apple programming language, to code.

The game that Jatin designed over two months, called Attention Tractor, addresses the issue of short attention spans.

He says he was excited, anxious and honoured to meet Mr Cook, adding that "the other highlight was meeting the other Distinguished Winners and Apple engineers, and learning from them".

For instance, one of the other students, from Germany, had created an app playground - the term used for an interactive coding space made with Swift - that deals with dementia. Jatin had thought it was too complex a topic to tackle in this way.

In Jatin's Attention Tractor, users help the main character Theo, a cartoon hamster, come to grips with attention deficiency through a series of mini games. These raise awareness about the importance of sleep and nutrition, and how to improve one's focus.

Jatin says: "My generation is deeply affected by short attention spans. When I have to do homework or run errands, there are distractions in my environment or on my phone.