Apple Offers Customized MacBooks to School Districts

[MacRumors]

Apple has won large contracts for MacBooks in Kansas City and Louisiana. The two contracts are valued at $6.4 million and $5 million respectively

It appears Apple has made efforts to provide custom solutions to educators to meet their needs. Kansas City officials describe additional security measures added to the MacBooks, including a way to track lost/stolen MacBooks:

All of the laptops have stickers clearly identifying them as the property of the Kansas City, Kan., public schools. The sticker will not come off without virtually destroying the laptop. If thieves find a way around that obstacle, a GPS tracking device will help locate it. If all else fails, district officials said, they could also use a remote device to destroy the hard drive.

Article Link

[crees!]

GPS, remote destroyed hard drives... mmm

[queshy]

Wow, that's pretty high tech!!!!

Good for apple, and good for the students.

[deathshrub]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

All of the laptops have stickers clearly identifying them as the property of the Kansas City, Kan., public schools.

Wow, stickers. Cutting edge.

Originally Posted by Macrumors

If all else fails, district officials said, they could also use a remote device to destroy the hard drive.

This is a joke, right?

[discomandavis]

ive been thinking that for apple to work its way to the top of the market is to really make an effort to get its computers in schools. even if it means giving them out dirt cheap. because thats how it all starts. kids use them at school all the time. then they get used to it. whenthose kids buy there first computer they buy mac cuz its what they used in school. there really is no better advertisment then getting these computers out there and getting the students to use them

[PlaceofDis]

Originally Posted by discomandavis

ive been thinking that for apple to work its way to the top of the market is to really make an effort to get its computers in schools. even if it means giving them out dirt cheap. because thats how it all starts. kids use them at school all the time. then they get used to it. whenthose kids buy there first computer they buy mac cuz its what they used in school. there really is no better advertisment then getting these computers out there and getting the students to use them

exactly. which is why its good that apple are going the extra step.

[C00rDiNaT0r]

Trivial ways to get around it would be to not turn it back on until you do all the necessary modding.

[Spider.Jm]

remote hard drive destruction. sounds so Brutal. why not just have a self destruction device lose half the battery, gain c4. Now that would bring down theft

[Kardashian]

I wish I'd grown up and gone to school in the US.

We were stuck with stupid Windows PC's right through school - and only in my last year (6 months ago) did we get Windows XP.

Way to go with the latest technology, guys!

[Gosh, I'm almost paying Windows a compliment in a way.. latest technology? Hehe. I made a funny.]

[goodtimes5]

Holy crap, are you kidding me? Explode the hard drive remotely? What are the safety precautions on these things?

[plumbingandtech]

Originally Posted by goodtimes5

Holy crap, are you kidding me? Explode the hard drive remotely? What are the safety precautions on these things?

Erase. Or possible firmware erase too.

Do you really think they would blow something up?

[ehurtley]

Okay, people, do you honestly think there is a small explosive in the computer that physically destroys the hard drive? No.

It is likely just a software program that writes over the boot sector or something similar. Or, at the most extreme, a firmware modification to the hard drive that renders the hard drive's firmware inoperative, thereby "destroying" the hard drive. (It would require sending the hard drive back to the factory to re-write the firmware to fix.)

[deathshrub]

Originally Posted by discomandavis

ive been thinking that for apple to work its way to the top of the market is to really make an effort to get its computers in schools. even if it means giving them out dirt cheap. because thats how it all starts. kids use them at school all the time. then they get used to it. whenthose kids buy there first computer they buy mac cuz its what they used in school. there really is no better advertisment then getting these computers out there and getting the students to use them

Agreed with you on all counts there. In elementary school all the computers I've used were macs. Every computer I've bought thus far has been a mac, except for one laptop PC. I feel so awful about it that when the new Mac Pros come out, I will immediately plonk down about $6,000 for one.

[TheSpecialist]

That sounds really cool! Good initiative!

[chelseasian]

Apple's been known to customized Macs for corporate clients as well. Where I work, we've had custom built PowerBooks. They are distinct by their non-Ti casing and it was red. So if you order enough of such machines and have some sort of alliance with Apple, I am sure they will build customized solutions.

[extraextra]

Where does it say "exploding", it just says "destroy". That could mean anything, and probably doesn't mean exploding.

In all the schools I've gone to, they had Macs. (eMacs/iMacs) In middle school and high school, there were separate Mac / PC labs.

However in college, 99% of the computers are PCs.

[mcarnes]

SJ watched one too many episodes of Mission Impossible.

[entropys]

"sorry Miss, but a hacker destroyed my homework!"*


* excuse not valid if macbook runs leopard and time machine backups to external HD.

[Modrak]

Awesome. I'd love get hold of one of those. See how the sticker actually sticks and the most important thing...how they plan on blowing up the HDD

[boss1]

i dont see why anyone would rate this as negative. I would imagine that theft of expensive technology from schools is one of the major barriers from purchasing technologies. If this lessens the risk for schools and results in more technologies being implemented than thats most important for our educational system.

[dukebound85]

can i have a gps just in case mine is stolen...

[Superchud]

With all of the recent issues with Leopard Data Loss and defective Seagate HDD's, doesn't seem to be much need for remote HDD destruction. Looks like that feature is already being bundled with all MacBooks without any special customization.

[chaseardoin7]

hot dang. i live in louisiana and i'm an education major. this news is great and even know that the govenor made the announcement like 10 miles from where i'm sitting right now.

this is exciting.

i <3

[bbarnhart]

Apple must have swapped some of these special Seagate remote destroying hard drives with the regular retail MacBooks. Link

[goosnarrggh]

Originally Posted by ehurtley

Okay, people, do you honestly think there is a small explosive in the computer that physically destroys the hard drive? No.

It is likely just a software program that writes over the boot sector or something similar. Or, at the most extreme, a firmware modification to the hard drive that renders the hard drive's firmware inoperative, thereby "destroying" the hard drive. (It would require sending the hard drive back to the factory to re-write the firmware to fix.)

I would rather they put the poison pill inside the CPU or some other component which isn't user-exchangeable.

Of course, this technology is only acceptable if Apple is contractually obliged to turn over absolute discretion for control of the poison pill to the legal end-user as soon as the laptop is purchased.

Speaking hypothetically for a moment, it would be an absolutely unacceptable situation if Apple were to reserve the right to activate such a mechanism themselves without the end-user's explicit request, no matter what justification they thought they had for taking such action. (I mention this because it's just the sort of thing I can imagine a hypothetically evil corporation doing if it detected that the end-user was violating the software EULA...)