School Provided Air

TehFalcon · Oct 27, 2012

So my highschool provided 11" airs to us this year, teachers getting the 13", but it has firmware password, along with us only being a Standard User. They use the installable "Profiles" that you make with the configuration utility to restrict us on some things, but what i'm getting at, is they are the 2011 models, so they are on Lion. How should I go about getting Mountain Lion on mine, or letting the school know they should be updating them? Dont get me wrong lions great on this thing, but having been using Mountain Lion on my iMac since DP1, ML is SOO much better, and seems it would better suit me for school as it has the Note App, notification center, better mission control, better battery life, and the general stuff.

GGJstudios · Oct 27, 2012

As the computer belongs to the school, it's up to them if they want to upgrade to ML. If they don't, they have their reasons. Rather than mess with the school's computer, if you want ML, buy your own Mac with ML on it.

TehFalcon · Oct 28, 2012

GGJstudios said:
As the computer belongs to the school, it's up to them if they want to upgrade to ML. If they don't, they have their reasons. Rather than mess with the school's computer, if you want ML, buy your own Mac with ML on it.

No, they really don't have reasons lol. They are completely new to the whole apple platform. They switched to all Apple this year from Dell, this is the whole district. All elementary and middle schools get iPads, Highschoolers MacBook Airs. All staff and teachers in every school get the 13" MBA. They are brutal all the whole thing. I'm basically one of the only ones in the entire school that knows every little thing about Apple Products. So anyway, the only reason they are on lion, is because they arnt aware of Mountain Lion.

GGJstudios · Oct 28, 2012

WAM2 said:
No, they really don't have reasons lol. They are completely new to the whole apple platform. They switched to all Apple this year from Dell, this is the whole district. All elementary and middle schools get iPads, Highschoolers MacBook Airs. All staff and teachers in every school get the 13" MBA. They are brutal all the whole thing. I'm basically one of the only ones in the entire school that knows every little thing about Apple Products. So anyway, the only reason they are on lion, is because they arnt aware of Mountain Lion.

I doubt they're unaware of ML, but if you believe that, tell them about it. It's more likely that they don't want to pay for the upgrade for all their computers and want all computers standardized on the same OS version, which makes supporting them much more manageable. The fact remains that it's not your computer and you don't have the right to install a different OS on it.

TehFalcon · Oct 28, 2012

GGJstudios said:
I doubt they're unaware of ML, but if you believe that, tell them about it. It's more likely that they don't want to pay for the upgrade for all their computers and want all computers standardized on the same OS, which makes supporting them much more manageable. The fact remains that it's not your computer and you don't have the right to install a different OS on it.

Well I Purchased it at the beginning of the year, they dont get completely unlocked though until the end of the school year. And I basically feel that telling them about ML would be pointless as only being a freshmen, they will think im dumb, and don't know what im talking about.. Next year i'll be working in the place where they repair them and such, so then would be a better time for me to tell them about it I guess.

JoeG4 · Oct 28, 2012

Come on man, there's hardly a difference between Lion and Mountain Lion lol.

Source: I'm using Mountain Lion right now and bought it earlier this month.. kinda wish I didn't lol. Oh well!

Edit: I will take that back - kinda. The big change was notifications

If your laptop isn't your primary computer and I'm betting it isn't, then I don't think you'll really miss that anyway.

Not trying to be mean or anything

but this is one of those cases where you're really not missing much.

TehFalcon · Oct 28, 2012

JoeG4 said:
Come on man, there's hardly a difference between Lion and Mountain Lion lol.

Source: I'm using Mountain Lion right now and bought it earlier this month.. kinda wish I didn't lol. Oh well!

Edit: I will take that back - kinda. The big change was notifications If your laptop isn't your primary computer and I'm betting it isn't, then I don't think you'll really miss that anyway.

Not trying to be mean or anything but this is one of those cases where you're really not missing much.

I actually use it much more as a main computer now. Ive always wanted an Apple laptop after getting my iMac and loving it, but wanting to be able to be portable. So ive been on my Air 99% of the time.

xparaparafreakx · Oct 28, 2012

Cost is one. If we gonna give all the machine ML, it would cost us lots of money to do them all. Is the machine tied to Mac OS X Server, Open Directory? There might of been issues you dont know about that might be the reason they didnt go to ML.

Having mix oses might be a support issues if they do not have enough people as techs or reduce confusion. If I saw you, I might upgrade yours to ML but then everyone would start putting in support tickets for ML upgrades cause they saw your when they don't need it. Its hard enough to fix id10t errors already.

mrsir2009 · Oct 28, 2012

Why don't you just ask them if you can upgrade your MacBook Air to Mountain Lion if you pay for it with your own money?

bartzilla · Oct 28, 2012

WAM2 said:
No, they really don't have reasons lol.

I bet they do lol.
I'm a network manager for a college here in the UK and part of a community of people who work in educational IT including people from various US districts. I can assure you that we're all well aware of what the newest versions are of all the software we support across Windows, OSX and Linux, and if we don't upgrade it is for a reason.

Cost - even with educational pricing there's a big difference between updating one machine and several thousand. If this money isn't budgeted for then where do you think it comes from.
Support - People will explore the new ML stuff and will want support with using it. Remember that the district don't just have to support kids who think they know all there is to know about Apple, they also have to support people who can barely turn on a computer unaided and all points inbetween those extremes. Training costs, see my earlier comment on budgets.
Compatability - its possible that some of the district's line of business apps, or curriculum software, are only validated with Lion.
Time - they have a finite amount of resources. Every hour that a support person spends testing a ML upgrade/rollout process or testing application compatability is an hour when that person isn't available to support real actual problems that users are logging (and those are probably considerable if they've just switched a whole district at once to a new platform).

WAM2 said:
So anyway, the only reason they are on lion, is because they arnt aware of Mountain Lion.

Frankly that's insulting to the people responsible for supporting your systems. You mention getting a job working with them next year - I suspect you'll quickly find out you know far less about managing OSX in a business environment than you imagine you do. lol.

Mrbobb · Oct 28, 2012

WAM2 said:
ML is SOO much better

Says you.

ML is only been out a few months and I dare say no all kinks are ironed out.

There is a review out there of battery life and ML is not better than Lion. In fact 10.8.0-1 was atrocious and they made in better for 10.8.2.

The administrators are the one who have to maintain these things so they have the say what to use.

U have a prayer if your parents is a big donor to the school to convince the "priests" to have a listen to their son.

WesCole · Oct 28, 2012

So you get to use an Air, for free, in high school? Count yourself lucky...the vast majority of high schools have outdated Windows computers that are only available in limited numbers in labs. If you want to customize an Air, buy one yourself.

bumzo1 · Oct 28, 2012

Expect to be on Lion for a while, just remember there's a lot more than just a bunch of macbook roaming around, you also have to account for all of the servers and infrastructure. My HS switched to mac when I was a sophomore (2009) and we had leopard on the machines through my senior year (last year). It wasn't until this past summer that they finally upgraded them to lion, where they will probably stay for a few more years. You underestimate the amount of time and money required to update all of the infrastructure to the latest and greatest, and they likely won't let you upgrade due to concerns of incompatibility with some things. Get used to it and be glad you don't have the incredibly outdated PCs I did my freshman year.

mrsir2009 · Oct 28, 2012

bumzo1 said:
Expect to be on Lion for a while, just remember there's a lot more than just a bunch of macbook roaming around, you also have to account for all of the servers and infrastructure. My HS switched to mac when I was a sophomore (2009) and we had leopard on the machines through my senior year (last year). It wasn't until this past summer that they finally upgraded them to lion, where they will probably stay for a few more years. You underestimate the amount of time and money required to update all of the infrastructure to the latest and greatest, and they likely won't let you upgrade due to concerns of incompatibility with some things. Get used to it and be glad you don't have the incredibly outdated PCs I did my freshman year.

Yeah, having outdated software in schools & businesses is quite common. Up until last year my school has Windows XP along with the 2003 version of MS Office on all the computers (not to mention half of the computers had no sound-cards...)

TheRichboy247 · Oct 28, 2012

I think they're sticking with Lion is because its reliable and their server software is probably Lion.

Archerious · Oct 28, 2012

Shoot, my brothers in his sophomore year and they don't even have Dells let alone Macs, instead A;vin HS has Compaq's! You take for granted, hell before this Alvin didn't even have a computer lab! Instead one or two eMachines Windows 2000 desktops in the "School Library" that was less than 500 square feet lol. Seriously school's should put more budget into getting good teachers and fixing the school system, rather than "a mac for everyone" lol. I am not trying to troll, but you really are making me laugh, in fact is this thread real? I mean my god, you sound like my friends brother. The kid says "Mom my iPad 1 is slow", and his dad precedes to get him a iPad 4 with retina. The kid is 5 years old.

Signed,

Thomas

asting · Oct 28, 2012

WesCole said:
So you get to use an Air, for free, in high school? Count yourself lucky...the vast majority of high schools have outdated Windows computers that are only available in limited numbers in labs. If you want to customize an Air, buy one yourself.

It's more likely that it's not a public school and mom and dad are paying for it through tuition.

Steve121178 · Oct 29, 2012

They probably planned the Mac roll-out well in advance. As ML is still quite new it probably wasn't even considered.

Let them come up to speed with everything and perhaps they will push out a ML update next year? Or just ask and see what their plans are, if any.

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