Apple has received an A+ rating by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families organization for its efforts to reduce its use of toxic chemicals. AppleInsider reported that despite being found to have some room for improvement, Apple was the only firm given the top rating this year. It builds on last year when it received an A rating from the same organization.  Retailer Target was the only firm to receive an A rating this year. Best Buy and Amazon were only awarded a C rating.

Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families is a body comprised of 450 businesses which has been issuing annual report cards called Mind the Store for three years. Each report awards a point score as well as an overall grade and this year Apple earned 106.25 out of a possible 135 points. Part of that point score was 15 out of 15 for what Mind the Store calls continuous improvement in a steadily expanding safer chemicals policy. It also scored 9 out of 15 for public disclosure and transparency. Other scores included 7.5/7.5 for establishing management responsibilities and 10/10 for supply chain accountability.

LastPass has revealed it’s Christmas naughty and nice list, with Apple top of the pile.  They took the top retail sites and saw who was best at protecting personal information…and who was not. In particular, they looked at «key password requirements and other account security features to develop a ranking of the five most and least secure retail sites, based on whether and how well they met a set of criteria». Apple was deemed the most secure e-retailer, followed by Best Buy and Home Depot. Wayfair was left propping up the naughty list.

Apple is «aggressively» recruiting engineers to develop chip components in San Diego, according to Bloomberg. The move indicates that Apple may be adding San Diego to the locations in which it designs chips. A number of job listings have appeared for the city, which just happens to be the home of chipmaker Qualcomm. Here’s a snippet:

This month, Apple published 10 job listings on its website for chip design-related positions located in the city, marking the first time the Cupertino, California-based technology giant has publicly recruited for such roles in the Southern California hotbed for chip design. Apple is advertising for engineers to work on multiple types of chip components, including engineers to work on the company’s Neural Engine artificial intelligence processor and wireless chips.