As somone in charge of the IT resources of a small K-12 public school, this is not going to save me any money. Previously Apple sold a site license to K-12 schools for both iLife '09 and iWork '09. The cost was $249 each. That was a deal! To install both on about 150 Macs in one building came to a whopping $3.34 per machine. I don't want to upgrade the OS of every machine either, as all but a few machines are already running 10.5. Additionally, iLife & iWork are not always updated annually. So instead of $498 for both every 18 months or so, it becomes an every 12 month cost.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Introduces New Educational Software Licensing Program for Institutions
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
My elementary school was Windows 98
Our 'lab' in elementary was TRS-80 Model IIs.
They did have an Apple II the in office though doing the real work.
If I were running a country's education department I'd try to get as much open source software as possible mandated into the system. But of course there is something quite special seeing a room full of Macs, e.g. iSamurai's uni.
most of the cost of IT is support. OSS might be free, but you need to hire people to support it. i support mostly Windows and SQL Server but have some experience with other software. Windows became popular because MS made a lot of things a lot easier to do. One time years ago me and someone else had to copy a bunch of data from Novell to WIndows. About 300 people's worth of data. i used all the keyboard shortcuts and finished in 3-4 hours with my half. the Novell/Unix admin said he had to write a script and spent 3 days writing a script that ran for for an hour or so to do the same thing
But if you go with all Apple stuff then you don't need IT. The Apple equipment just supports itself. <end sarcasm>
It is pretty easy though. My lab has 40 Macs and two Xserves. I never been in IT before teaching at this school. I was able to use some grant money to switch from old PCs. I was able to set up an Open Directory Master, DNS, DHCP, etc. one one server. FTP, PHP, MYSQL, and Web and the other, plus run it like a Web host so students can have accounts for their sites. Then I also figured out how to image and deploy a lab via the server/network.
It doesn't support itself, but it was pretty easy for a noob design teacher like me without ever working in IT. Three years machines still run great, I don't have do much. Updating/imaging the whole lab only takes a couple of hours. There is also a cool software update server and using remote desktop, keeping the lab up to date is a breeze.
Way more expensive, almost Microsoft expensive
Found the pricing page which makes it clearer. If you are a university and use pro apps, you have to buy licenses for all your Macs even though you'll probably not install it everywhere (some machines are too old).
100 Seats:
Final Cut Studio $7499 per year plus the $3499 per year for the OS. Luckily I just bought Final Cut and snow Leopard which will keep me going for the next three years. Time enough to switch to Premiere although not as good as FCPS. We have no money so we usually make a piece of software including the OS last three years. Under the new licensing, we'll be paying approximately $12000 more.
Found the pricing page which makes it clearer. If you are a university and use pro apps, you have to buy licenses for all your Macs even though you'll probably not install it everywhere (some machines are too old).
100 Seats:
Final Cut Studio $7499 per year plus the $3499 per year for the OS. Luckily I just bought Final Cut and snow Leopard which will keep me going for the next three years. Time enough to switch to Premiere although not as good as FCPS. We have no money so we usually make a piece of software including the OS last three years. Under the new licensing, we'll be paying approximately $12000 more.