Apple Offering Stripped-Down $999 13" MacBook Air to Educational Institutions Buying in Bulk

[smali]

Forget high school - my 9 year old is using FCP to make figurine-based movies she puts on YouTube. And now she's started working with Autodesk 3D modeling apps - by the time she's of high school age she'll probably have mastered Maya.

Kids do more on these things than grownups, often.

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Perhaps you should avoid commenting on people you know nothing about.

Kids do learn ridiculously fast when there is a computer put in front of them. My 12 year old niece can literally touch type, use photoshop etc.

Parents not allowing their Kids at least two hours a day on a computer doing something productive (even if its doodling in MS Paint) are doing a massive disservice for their future.

 

[linuxcooldude]

You have to factor in the low price of their software. Not sure on pricing/installation on educational software. On the consumer side can put up to 5 copies on 5 Mac computers, with one appleID.

 

[damir00]

I'm totally with ya, smali.

And they're learning it mostly on their own - amazing what they can pick up from (amateur!) YouTube tutorials.

 

[mutantteenager]

I would have loved it if my school provided computers let along macs! Glad to see that they didn't nix their education offerings all together.

If you like paying for it in your fees, great idea. My institution gave student's in the year lower a massive discount on Apple laptops - they were practically giving them away. When I complained to our lecturers, and they quickly pointed to the fact that the fees had gone up by the same price as an edu-discounted Apple laptop. I didn't feel so bad after that, our fees remained the same.

 

[bartzilla]

You used FCP in high school? For what?

We use FCP to teach video editing to students. What else?

Factor in software costs and it gets a lot closer, plus most students simply find Macs easier to use, and of course, Apple was much more aggressive in the education space long before MS, so they would probably be changing platforms as well.

Software costs? The cost of what we pay for Microsoft products under educational licensing is negligible. Microsoft and Adobe both price their software very keenly for education, just the same as Apple. Our classrooms contain 30 computers.

Once you take educational pricing into account I can easily supply 2 classrooms with PC hardware running Windows, etc. for about the same as one Apple classroom running the mid-level imacs/mbps we order, broadly equivalent spec machines in terms of h/w & s/w.

Despite the cost premium, we have stuck with Apple and FCP because we felt that was the best platform available to teach our students video editing.

FCP X, and Apple's choice to cease production of serious server hardware is making us re-assess our choice (We also have some apple servers running open directory with XRaid boxes plugged into them as part of our deployment, and an inability to replace those is causing me real headaches... and no, I wasn't counting the cost of the servers in my price comparison above).

It doesn't have to say that. My middle school started giving students Macs to take home back in 1990, precisely for general use for students, NOT only for CS classes. To assert that Apple would abandon one of their basic tenets of spreading easy access to all students in order to only focus on professional-grade machines for professional purposes after 20 years in education is ridiculous.

Oh I wouldn't say that. I would respectfully ask if you've worked in education? You seem to have a lot of opinions about it.

I would also say that Apple are apparently utterly indifferent to the needs of places like mine these days. That's fine, totally their choice of course. It's equally my employer's choice to shrug our shoulders and start making plans to migrate our mac deployment to windows when the macs are next up for replacement.

I still love Apple products for home use. I just can't recommend them at work any more. I know lots of people will disagree with and dislike that last comment... fair enough, but I'm talking about the requirements where I work, not where everyone else works.

 

[Tinyluph]

Most school IT dept. I've worked with actually do upgrade the hardware on their machines often. Not too many institutions buy new outright unless they just have hundreds of thousands lying around.

Even the university I work for now couldn't just drop $210,000 plus on new Mac Pros and display's when we could just upgrade the components.

I'm not talking about professional level devices on a college campus. I may not work in a school IT, but I have seen numerous overhauls for school technology and as far as generic laptop and desktop environments go this has always involved a straight replacement of the devices.

People seem to forget that these Macbook Airs are replacing the old Macbook offering for schools.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I had 4 GB in my laptop in 2007.

4GB in that HP workstation I was telling you about . . . circa 2004.

I'm not talking about professional level devices on a college campus. I may not work in a school IT, but I have seen numerous overhauls for school technology and as far as generic laptop and desktop environments go this has always involved a straight replacement of the devices.

People seem to forget that these Macbook Airs are replacing the old Macbook offering for schools.

Neither am I. I referred to the IT depts. I've worked with, including the enterprise sector and K-12.

I can't speak for some IVY league, super rich private schools, but most of the average public and charter schools upgrade their systems; and not a single one that I've worked with EVER bought entirely new systems until it was YEARS later.

Spending even $5000 on 5 machines only to spend another $5000 on 5 totally new machines 5 years later is a waste of money.

 

[Eidorian]

Software costs? The cost of what we pay for Microsoft products under educational licensing is negligible. Microsoft and Adobe both price their software very keenly for education, just the same as Apple. Our classrooms contain 30 computers.

Once you take educational pricing into account I can easily supply 2 classrooms with PC hardware running Windows, etc. for about the same as one Apple classroom running the mid-level imacs/mbps we order, broadly equivalent spec machines in terms of h/w & s/w.

Despite the cost premium, we have stuck with Apple and FCP because we felt that was the best platform available to teach our students video editing.

FCP X, and Apple's choice to cease production of serious server hardware is making us re-assess our choice (We also have some apple servers running open directory with XRaid boxes plugged into them as part of our deployment, and an inability to replace those is causing me real headaches... and no, I wasn't counting the cost of the servers in my price comparison above).

Until recently you could get Microsoft software for $5 per disc. Windows would be a base $5 in a single disc. Office might require $15-20 for multiple discs.

On the management side if you are looking at a site license, you can have hot seats rotated around. An entire campus can have Creative Suite or some even more expensive software installed. You are only going to pay for the licenses that are going to be in active use and the software to manage the licenses.

 

[linuxcooldude]

4GB in that HP workstation I was telling you about . . . circa 2004.



Neither am I. I referred to the IT depts. I've worked with, including the enterprise sector and K-12.

I can't speak for some IVY league, super rich private schools, but most of the average public and charter schools upgrade their systems; and not a single one that I've worked with EVER bought entirely new systems until it was YEARS later.

Spending even $5000 on 5 machines only to spend another $5000 on 5 totally new machines 5 years later is a waste of money.

I use to work as an instructor at a major training center for the Navy. Just in our engineering school alone probably a thousand computers. Thats not counting all the other different schools located in the same area.

They all use cloud based training to a central website. I could go back 4 years later and doubt any of their computers were upgraded at all. Probably most were repairs, if anything.

It all depends on the type of software they are running that justify the need to upgrade them.

 

[Abazigal]

You are also forgetting that many institutions are also going to install all sorts of bloatware on it, further taking up more space and further slowing it down.

 

[Tinyluph]

I can't speak for some IVY league, super rich private schools, but most of the average public and charter schools upgrade their systems; and not a single one that I've worked with EVER bought entirely new systems until it was YEARS later.

I should mention that I'm not saying schools buy new systems all the time. They definitely don't do it often. I just find it equally hard to believe that many schools care enough to upgrade some RAM after they've already purchased the machines.

 

[mungo2k]

I just don't understand why Apple, whilst supposedly peddling premium products, is skimping on RAM. RAM is so ridiculously cheap these days that it makes absolutely no sense to do so. A 2GB stick from Crucial is about £10 these days (even though Apple charge about £100 for it).

I work in an educational institution and experience has taught me to never recommend a Mac running Lion with less than 4GB so I won't be buying these. Imagine trying to run one of these in 3-4 years time with OS X 10.9? Cheap netbook speeds!

 

[thekev]

Anyone that has to work with mass deployments of computers knows that it's bad to have just the minimum amount of RAM for the OS, let alone for the software you'd be running.



It does indeed, and I just thought about that $999 price for a 13" NON-upgradeable machine. For another $100 you can get a machine that is more powerful, and more upgradeable.

Minimum ram always sucks, and there's no way of knowing if they'll make it past Lion. Schools may not always upgrade the OS, but having the option is good in case of weird software requirements later on.

AH! Leaking G5s where a thing to remember! It pains me to hear about Mac Pro users wanted to upgrade after 3 years with a tower. Five years for a machine is pretty average based on the specs and those old workstations can easily pull 10 or more. We have an HP workstation from 2003 running 64 bit Windows 7 and it's smooth.

This is a prime example of how buying a Mac doesn't mean it'll run forever. I can remember the guys at the Apple store claiming that the cooling system was designed not to short out the system if such a thing ever occurred . That's impressive on the HP. It must have been quite expensive at the time.

As for price... let’s see what that slow, non-SSD $500 Windows laptop is worth in two years (if it’s even still running, replaceable RAM or no). TCO is great on Macs.

The configuration is bad, and these cost twice the amount of your hypothetical Windows box. You're also speaking like Macs never break. I believe you are just trolling (and yet I responded anyway). They'd be better off with refurbs of a better configuration.

 

[Abazigal]

If you are talking about elementary schools, then a stripped down MBA might make sense. Kids are going to be using them for basic purposes like blogging, creative studio and word processing, so the form factor might be a boon if they are expecting to own one and carry it to and from school every day.

 

[nutmac]

This just isn't true on the Air. I have the original 11" with 2GB and Lion.

In many ways it outperforms my 8GB 2.53ghz i5 MBP. It's all about the SSD. I don't have major memory issues with it.

And remember, mine is the *slow* 11" MBA, not the way faster newfangled one.

SSD is masking the issues. Open Activity Monitor (from Utilities) then click System Memory tab. If you are like most, page outs should be quite high. Paging out to SSD is far speedier than hard disk, but it comes at the expense of heavy writes. And since each block on SSD has lifecycle of about 10,000 writes, that's not a good thing in the long run.

 

[dacapo]

Xcode? Really? These are for students to type up book reports, spreadsheets, and do general research. What a silly post.

I'm going over to our local high school in a couple weeks to speak to them about their iOS app projects at school. Yeah, I know. Kids these days.

 

[andiwm2003]

I know, I'm an idiot.

I get it now.

no you're not. At first glance I also though this could be a cheap way to get a travel notebook. well if you find four friends.......

 

[toxic]

I think a big problem is the SSD. one big reasin to get Macs is that they can run any OS...can't do that well with 64GB.

2GB RAM is low, but not a big problem by itself since swapping to an SSD isn't terribly slow like with an HDD, though real RAM is still a hundred times faster. the real problem is that it can't be upgraded later.

 

[G4DP]

It doesn't have to say that. My middle school started giving students Macs to take home back in 1990, precisely for general use for students, NOT only for CS classes. To assert that Apple would abandon one of their basic tenets of spreading easy access to all students in order to only focus on professional-grade machines for professional purposes after 20 years in education is ridiculous.

You school was buying Mac Laptops in 1990? Or were they the desktops?
Becuae if it's a laptop then it's a miracle.

 

[raybo]

CD/DVD shiny discs still in use

I know they're quickly becoming obsolete, but many schools including High Schools still use the shiny discs to accompany textbooks (also pretty soon to be obsolete as well). In the short term, the whitebooks are more practical for K-12.

 

[coachingguy]

Why should most educational institutions be interested in this product? It's simply not competitive in price with Windows 7 laptops. I can understand why consumers with disposable income would be willing to pay more, but I don't see how schools could justify spending $1000 for a laptop when I'm guessing they could get a Windows laptop for $500 each or maybe less. The only reason would be if they wanted to use some specific software like Garage Band or something but other than that, it seems like a pretty tough sell.

As a teacher, my district has begun getting rid of our Windows machines that were bought with Bill and Melinda Gates foundation grant. The Dells are on the way out due to 2 things:

1)Downtime for too many reasons.
2)Ease of use.

The trade off in price, higher up front for Macs, is equalized by more uptime, and less time having to use our limited Tech help... Also, bear in mind the impact that Googledocs is having on schools, both K-12 and Higher Ed.

Do I think this is necessarily a good deal? The bigger screen real estate will be nice, there's been a lot of good reviews of the toughness of the MBA... I'm not concerned about the 64 gigs of storage, as the students will save to the network. The 2 gigs of RAM however maybe a concern if you expect to use Graphics intensive apps. For example, our students use iMovie, iDVD, Garageband and Aperture all the time... It might be tough to have more than one open at a time, with Safari and iTunes going as well?

As far as the poster who addressed the "Why don't districts by bulk in refurb?" Our district is looking into this, but the biggest reason why not, is the unreliability of the quantity...

However, I may be wrong.

Coachingguy

 

[Mac2012]

Not much help for educators...you'd think they'd offer a stripped 11" model for even less.

Na, just give em 12 core Mac Pros for 50 bucks! You're loosing it man!
Apple IS a business for PROFIT after all...

 

[Darien Red Sox]

The Airs would pose a problem with students with sticky fingers, way too easy to walk out of the room with.

 

[Mac2012]

Anyone that has to work with mass deployments of computers knows that it's bad to have just the minimum amount of RAM for the OS, let alone for the software you'd be running.



It does indeed, and I just thought about that $999 price for a 13" NON-upgradeable machine. For another $100 you can get a machine that is more powerful, and more upgradeable.

Little kids aren't running pro apps... 2 GB is fine with an SSD... mine pulls off FCP easily, but I know how to use software, some don't and think they can have open 20 apps in the background blogging and posting to FB... sorry, focus on ONE thing, and do it well.

 

[speedylomeli]

Bad Deal

This is a bad deal. bad bad bad. Ok maybe it's not that bad if it's targeted to the public schools. Maybe elementary or middle school would be ok. Some kids are already getting laptops in middle school, but it seams that the schools getting laptop are private schools and not the poor kids are public schools.