Apple Losing Out to Microsoft and Google in U.S. Classrooms

[npmacuser5]

You're pretty much right.

The only saving grace is you can use Office.com on them, and still get a more functional set of programs than what Google Docs offers.

It's troubling that these are the things that are starting to dominate schools. You want a kid to function in the real world someday... and the real world is dominated by Windows, Office, and a host of actual programs. Not websites. There's cloud solutions in each space, but they don't hold a candle to the full fledged programs. SAP and Oracle don't need to worry much about WorkDay and Wall Street Systems (and the guys that made Oracle make Workday)... they simply aren't as capable. We should want to provide our children with a knowledge base that provides the broadest foundation for the future... instead we're giving them an incredibly narrow one, because people are cheap.

Take another look. My Grandson does programming (coding), games, office applications, homework, school specific applications and a bunch more using a Chromebook. They are learning far more real world experiences with Chromebooks then could be accomplished with IOS. A bonus, huge costs savings on top of the learning experience. True, windows has some advantages, the reason some schools are going this way. Either are far superior in the classroom then IOS with Chrome the leader.

 

[convergent]

Good... maybe they will stop trying to be a political activist and get back to innovating technology again. They are getting what they deserve.

 

[mithion]

I work in education and we actually considered going 1-1 with iPads for the students. But 2 years ago we bought iPads for all the teachers in order to test a "soft deployment" of iPads in an "enterprise" setting. I can tell you the user experience isn't the issue. From a user perspective, iPads are awesome to use. They are stable, they have great battery life and the application ecosystem is second to none. The problems arise in trying to manage all these iPads. They are an absolute IT nightmare. We use JAMF to manage all our macs and it is the best solution available but it's terrible. I'm huge mac fan and will continue to use their products at home. But when my boss comes to me to ask me my opinion on acquiring more macs for our school, my recommendation will be a resounding NO!

 

[iObama]

Preface: I work in the IT Department at a school district that uses both iPads and Chromebooks. I am a die-hard Apple fan and have been since the age of 10. I have a MacBook, an iPhone 7, an Apple Watch, and I just spent $160 to buy EarPods without a wire. I use iCloud and have all but shuttered my Google account except for to use YouTube.

If I ever made my way up to IT Manager, the iPads would be gone in two seconds. We can get close to three Chromebooks for the price of one iPad. For those of you in this thread who keep saying how limited ChromeOS is (compared to iOS -- are you kidding me?), you honestly know not what you speak of. Tim Cook calling Chromebooks testing machines is flat-out ignorant. The third-party app and extension ecosystem has massive momentum (and some really killer apps.)

Management of iPads is a nightmare. It wasn't until 2016 that Apple released a management tool that was even remotely acceptable. Paying thousands of dollars for Casper JAMF (and training) isn't an option for most schools. It's cumbersome, it's costly, and the Google Admin Console is ten times easier and more granular.

For those who are saying that people use Windows in the "real world": In 20 years, I highly doubt that's going to be the case. Just because AutoCAD can't be done in a web browser now doesn't mean it won't be done that way in the very near future. Google will have these kids locked in -- especially now that we can convert their student accounts to standard accounts once they leave school.

/rant

 

[44267547]

Yeah, my niece's school dumped their Macs and now loans students Chromebooks. From the way she describes it her use of her notebook is far beyond what Cook describes as a "test machine." Like all of Apple's markets Cook doesn't understand this one either.

Some schools are even giving the option for the student to purchase the Chromebook used. Being the student has the opportunity to take the Chromebook home and use it for school purposes. Partly because its affordably priced between $200/$300 and some students don't have the advantage of having a computer at home. This is also allows the school system to remove/sell used hardware in preparation for newer iterations/devices. Nice advantage for students who can't afford a more expensive notebook.

 

[My1stMacWasLisa]

Smart schools should be teaching the complete cloud experience, for apps and for development. By the time these kids leave school, local compute will be an 80's memory (as in cultural memory, not RAM )

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Smart schools should be teaching the complete cloud experience, for apps and for development. By the time these kids leave school, local compute will be an 80's memory (as in cultural memory, not RAM )

I'm not sure that needs more than 2 minutes -- no longer than our teachers took to show us how to save our documents to floppy. Short learning curve there.

 

[AronDraws]

Coming from a public school where they pretty much cancelled the concept of a field trip due to lack of funds, I'm not terribly surprised by these numbers.

We didn't have a lot of money growing up. We had a PC at home. A 1996 IBM Aptiva. Given the choice between using the computer (PC) lab or the Mac Lab at school, i'd always pick the PCs because there were more of them, they were easier to keep running and repaired, and I was far more familiar with them because I grew up with them. I'm sure if we could have afforded one we might have had a mac and things might have been different, but in all honesty PC was more accessible to us. It's funny to me now because I work on a Mac at work and go home to a PC. I still have an iphone and I have an ipad to draw on with the apple pencil. I still will always own a PC purely because of cost though. There does not feel like a difference between home and work because I use a Cintiq tablet on both, and honestly the main focus is running Photoshop for me. PC runs wonderfully and I can have everything I want and need on it.

I go back home once in a while and I honestly cannot see the finances favoring running Apple in the classroom when the PCs are able to handle everything the students need at much less cost.
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I'm not sure that needs more than 2 minutes -- no longer than our teachers took to show us how to save our documents to floppy. Short learning curve there.

Oh the floppy. My gosh I kid you not my brain couldn't handle the concept of the ZIP disc when they announced it.

 

[mkeeley]

Laptops/pc used to be luxury items at home or school now there a must have tool for all

What's that got to do with now?

 

[nutmac]

Most schools use Chromebook for 2 reasons only: price and built-in keyboard. School ITs don't want to deal with keyboard add-on, which further increases the overall price.

If Apple makes an educational version of iPad (ePad?) with built-in keyboard using A7 processor (first generation 64-bit processor on iPad mini 2 and iPhone 5s) for $299, many schools will gladly switch from Chromebook.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Oh the floppy. My gosh I kid you not my brain couldn't handle the concept of the ZIP disc when they announced it.

You mean how to use it or the fact you could put like 70 floppies on one ZIP? I was boggled by the latter myself back then and $25 128GB flash drives today which can fit 10 original ZIP disks.

 

[macTW]

I'm a long-time macOS & iOS educational software developer. And I bet that I haven't fired up Xcode more than 3 times in the past year. If you're not developing your edu apps in HTML5, you're really stupid.

To be brutally honest -- lacking a keyboard, iPad is about the dumbest thing a school system can buy for middle school and up.

Sure, price is the key driving factor for schools, but an equally important factor that no one seems to ever mention is Google Sign-In. That's what's really eating Apple's lunch in education.

It's hard to believe that Apple at Tim Cook's level doesn't understand all of this. I don't think that they care -- they'll just keep telling marketing stories for products that are a mismatch for education. And some will still buy them at their incredible markups.

Apple cares a lot more about watchbands than education.

In iOS 10, Apple released a version of google sign in that allows each device to have many students' profiles to sign in to... it even syncs device to device.

 

[emm386]

Especially students should be able to tinker around with computers and hardware to a bare - metal - degree to eventually have a better understanding of how computers really work.

The Apple platform is locked down to such a ridiculous deree, that all kids will learn is how to consume a.k.a. "buying apps".

To be fair, Chrome OS - in this aspect - is absolutely no better. Just a hellofalot cheaper. And very nice to manage... Which is probably why Google could strike the deal.

 

[FelixDerKater]

iPad in the classroom is more crippled than the old LC's with AtEase.

 

[AronDraws]

You mean how to use it or the fact you could put like 70 floppies on one ZIP? I was boggled by the latter myself back then and $25 128GB flash drives today which can fit 10 original ZIP disks.

The fact that one zip could hold so many floppies. Now I look at the ridiculous 3TB drive that's about the size of a deck of cards that fits into my purse and I wish I had a time machine to go back and amaze the past with such witchcraft.

 

[atomsmith]

In iOS 10, Apple released a version of google sign in that allows each device to have many students' profiles to sign in to... it even syncs device to device.

You just affirmed my point. Apple had to scramble to allow multiple users on a single-user device to sign in to the tech ecosystem that almost all schools use. Note: it's not called "Apple Sign-In."

Single sign-in and teachers/students have frictionless access to a growing world of apps and services that run on ...any device. Those last two words (should) terrify Apple.

My HTML5 apps use Google Sign-In. Schools sign up and don't even have to send me usernames. And I don't have to manage passwords. They love it. And for good reason.

And to those who say "no Word," "No AutoCAD," no "business apps" ... get your heads out of the sand. Seriously, where do you think this all headed? And it's not about Chromebooks, per se. It's about multi-platform support. (And that terrifies Apple.)

Google "WebAssembly" and start using your imagination. Then come back in about five years and try to tell me what "platform" even means.

 

[960design]

This is all on Cook. Totally dropping the ball...

Yep... missed the gift horse's mouth all together.

1. Free or paid ( seriously discounted for education ) MDM the same day, or at worst by the time the iPad2 came out
2. Actually have their engineers deploy 500 iPads each and come up with a perfect, apple inspired workflow for distribution
3. Hire a couple of PhDs in each category and write your own Common Core based text books ( this is definitely too late now, but they could at least release standards based text books ); everyone hates paying $100 dollars for a new science book that is out of date the moment it comes out... pluto a planet? $10 / year for an up to date text book... sign me up
4. Better classroom management... they almost had it with the classroom app, but decided that it only works if it comes down from the top and has a current SIS... this is not the case for 100,000 student school districts... teachers need to walk by and NFC tap an iPad to take control of it, as long as it is supervised. The teacher's iPad will store the students... they could update the student names and add a new student the second they walk in a class. The teacher's iPad would store and sync to a local server via json for enrollment grades, ect.
5. Apple inspired grade book, one time cost of a mac mini plus $20 ( if the bean counters make you charge anything ) at the school level... teachers would beg to use an iPad that allows them to quickly check roll, push grades, assignments to 'classroom controlled iPads'... the iPad sales would kick back up as long as you don't force updates to something like an iPad Pro... they are awesome, but too expensive for a classroom.
6. Back off the tech for classrooms, just a bit. iPad Air 2 is awesome and light weight and if Apple could get the price to $299 and build an excellent bumper that would protect from drops, they couldn't build them fast enough... as long as all of the above is already in place

Apple? Can you hear me now?
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Apple cares a lot more about watchbands than education.

It is a common company cycle. As a company improves in the market place the salesmen get moved up higher and higher into the executive positions, until all the tech guys are gone and only the marketing geniuses are left. Then we get truly fantastic commercials, fantastic products that no one actually needs and/or cannot use past the one salesman.

I'm not tongue and cheek here... Apple makes some very good commercials and some amazing products. Wrist bands just tend to improve the stock a lot more than tools for enterprise / education.

I had hoped that a multibillion dollar company would finally one day understand that you have made the money... now give something back.

 

[AppleMad98004]

I am very surprised Chrome OS is this popular. I thought computers at schools were meant to run software to learn like programing, designing like photoshop, and office work like Microsoft Office (Maybe Google Docs does this?).

I thought Chrome OS was more of an internet browsing OS

It's basically a flavor of Linux paired down.... Could be the first massively widely used Linux Desktop OS. My feeling is it will become more robust the more the cloud is used every day.

 

[960design]

You just affirmed my point. Apple had to scramble to allow multiple users on a single-user device to sign in to the tech ecosystem that almost all schools use. Note: it's not called "Apple Sign-In."

Single sign-in and teachers/students have frictionless access to a growing world of apps and services that run on ...any device. Those last two words (should) terrify Apple.

My HTML5 apps use Google Sign-In. Schools sign up and don't even have to send me usernames. And I don't have to manage passwords. They love it. And for good reason.

And to those who say "no Word," "No AutoCAD," no "business apps" ... get your heads out of the sand. Seriously, where do you think this all headed? And it's not about Chromebooks, per se. It's about multi-platform support. (And that terrifies Apple.)

Google "WebAssembly" and start using your imagination. Then come back in about five years and try to tell me what "platform" even means.

I am with you. Work with an SPA that stores locally to the browser, because people have to move around and wifi drops... alot. Send updates to a server via JSON, when connection is available, to keep the enterprise network guys happy about bandwidth and you have a complete package.

Heck to make everyone happy, zip it all up into Atom Electron ( https://electron.atom.io/ ) and distribute it out to Windows & OSX as applications as well.

 

[jozero]

1) Swift Playgrounds is one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had. Its like a marketing executive decided to make a "learn to code" tool. I can't imagine anyone learning anything from it. Like actually learning, not making a robot walk around a square then forget about it. The iPad Pro keyboard barely makes it better

2) All Apple products have become precise jewelry. Things that are sheets of glass in the front and precision refined metal on the back. Is that a tool you want to give to children ?

 

[SeattleMoose]

Just what I would expect from cash starved school districts.

 

[macfacts]

School systems are much more likely to purchase computers than invest in them. They'd rather spend less today and buy recurrently than buy once every 5-6 years.

Schools aren't buying new Chromebooks every year.

 

[8281]

The vast majority of school budgets are for union negotiated labor contracts including benefits and pensions vastly more generous than most private sector jobs. Schools pay zero rent, get free supplies from landowners via property taxes, especially if you don't have kids in schools. For the longest time schools had Apple II computers, and that was when they were quite expensive. Now they buy Chinese made confusers with a FREE OS installed.

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/03/high-school-makes-24-million-snap-ipo/

Yeah, oh the humanity, all those taxes you have to pay so kids can go to school. How can our country be so unfair!

 

[Works4Me]

I don't think I ever recall a time in Apple's history when management at Apple was so out of touch with the real world. Cook may be a nice guy, but he is truly starting to sound delusional. Sure, Jobs sometimes seemed to be out of touch (people don't read books anymore), but Cook and company are just out of touch. I can't think of a computer CEO who has spewed more meaningless sound bites than Cook. Yes, Apple is still making money - lots of it - but the missteps are piling up!

 

[9081094]

Always comes down to price. Apple has no chance to dominate education.

Apple used to dominate with in education. They just neglected it for too long like they're doing with most of their hardware. Lag of focus and no certain future is the main reason for companies or institutions to not invest.
When was the last time iBooks Author got an update? Most things Apple introduces going the same route as HyperCard. Sad and stupid.

The above picture goes down in history and will never happen again.