Apple Stores Replace Kids' Table iMacs With iPads

[charlituna]

It all doesn't matter. The more important issue is how to minimize all computer devices usage regardless of their construction by children and let kids experience life. I prefer to see boys hitting something right on target with a slingshot and getting into some good mischief, instead of sitting in front of the screen, which they will do anyway at some point. .

That's not an Apple issue. That is you telling them, or not telling them to go the heck outside and play

If we asked my mom for fast food, candy etc the answer was no. No to the Nintendo etc. video games were something we got to do at the bowling alley when our parents had their monthly league game, if we remembered our allowance (none of that I'll pay you back at home stuff). A cell phone was something that made calls that you were when you were driving and only when you were driving. If dad dropped us off you didn't need the phone and it stayed at home

The issue is that most parents have no balls and won't say no.

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When my son heard about this, his first reaction wasn't "Cool, iPads", it was "Oh no, no more Lego Star Wars".

Here in the US they took the Lego games off like a year ago. It was kid pix, a Dora game and a Diego game and that's it

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Missing the point.

A move like this would mean less coders..... of the kids that would potentially want to code.

Total bs. There are still computers, they don't need to be on the kids table for them to exist or kids to learn them. The damn things were locked down tighter than a virgins chastity belt anyway.

Having iPads there if anything might encourage kids to want to learn cause when junior complains all the games suck you can challenge him to make one himself. Kids as young as 9 have made games that are available on the app store, which is another stack of lessons for junior to experience

 

[JAT]

When computers started shipping with OSes that plainly worked and needed little to no fiddling (think Windows 95)

So, you are refering to the year 1984?

 

[aristokrat]

I'm pretty sure kids who want an IT education won't be stopped by the iPad.

If the family computer is an iPad, there goes any chance of learning to code. This is exactly what the Raspberry Pi guys are fighting against. Not saying what's right, but if you can't write code at home you won't learn how to code, and not everyone can afford multiple computing devices.

 

[SandynJosh]

Great move!

I agree!!

The little ones haven't learned to type yet and the iPad can get them involved without that hurdle in place. With the advent of voice dictation and the decline of keyboard-equipped PCs, these kids will enter a world more in tune with an iPad than a PC. It was only a generation ago that I had to learn how to set margins and tabs on a typewriter.

Time marches on and these little kids are getting ready to enter a world we barely can imagine.

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If the family computer is an iPad, there goes any chance of learning to code. This is exactly what the Raspberry Pi guys are fighting against. Not saying what's right, but if you can't write code at home you won't learn how to code, and not everyone can afford multiple computing devices.

You have the thinking skills of an old foggy. I refer you to an article in TIME magazine, 10 Feb 2011. 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.

Self-coding computers are among us now and by 2045 they will be able to code better than any human mind can comprehend. Coding is so so so last century.

 

[SandynJosh]

This just makes me sad. An entire generation of creative artists, the people who make nearly all of the consumable content the iOS people will be using, have utilized Macs for everything. When Apple abandons us, are we going to switch to something else? After 10 or 20 years of muscle memory and the insane productivity that comes from that?

I think you have it backwards. Apple won't abandon you by not making the products you need. However, the market will abandon Apple if it does not make the products the market calls for.
Apple is always skating to where the puck will be. If you follow that, you can sense where you need to be.
I subscribe to a great blog about the great magazine and book illustrators of the 1950s and 1960s. The problem they ran into as the 1960s began to wane were the increasing use of photography in place of illustrations. The successful illustrators moved to photography to serve their old clients, and others moved to other areas of art.
RULE 1:Nothing is static. RULE 2: Change happens faster then it used to.

Secondly, it's sad because based on the numbers you provided, it's still profitable. It grew by 8%. Sure it isn't insane iOS growth, but it still makes money. Why abandon that? It's like a store putting out lead products to attract you into the store. Sure, you lose all your margins and make no money, but it gets you in. Well, in this case, wouldn't it make sense to continue to support the people who create your content in the closed Apple eco-system, even if it's at a small margin?

Again, turn your thinking around. Macs do not bring the customers into the Apple store, the iDevices do that. The Macs are gaining from that association, not the other way around. Furthermore it is the laptops that are selling like hotcakes, not the desktops Macs. Content creators that need a lot of power are a very small segment of the total Mac buyers. In addition when a buyer needs a lot of power, like a Mac Pro, they often will go to other more powerful computers that are specific to the task. For example Pixar does not use Macs, and they have a good reason to do so.

It makes sense if you're a sales company. But if you're a creative company still as well, it doesn't make sense to abandon your artists. Otherwise, Apple should just sell of it's Mac division and let it thrive on it's own, which it will.

I think we're going to see Macs around for a long long time, after all, all the products made for illustrators are still being sold...but you don't see any research going into how to make a better Berol pen for illustrator only.

 

[bawbac]

My kids, ages 5 & 3 prefer iOS over OSX

Simple things for simple minds.

 

[KnightWRX]

I completely disagree. UNIX and older generations were already lamenting how DOS users lacked understanding of system and hardware. However because your experience was with DOS and its config.sys, autoexec.bat, etc.

Funny how I went on to become a full time Linux user in my college days to now a Unix systems administrator uh ? Must be that DOS that made me lack understanding of system and hardware.

Have you ever played around with DOS ? If anything, it never abstracted the hardware away (like Unix does) and always required you to understand what was in the machine and how to address it.

Again, spoken like someone that's pretty detached from how the 80s-90s of computing worked and how it works today.

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So, you are refering to the year 1984?

Nope, since thank god, Mac OS was largely irrelevant until recently. The classic system was a mess.

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And that is how each generation started. PCs were ridiculously underpowered compared to mainframes and the first Mac was very limiting and slow as well, as was iPhone was in its first incarnation compared to Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Except it's not. The PC with DOS shipped with 2 programming languages and were self-programmable, customizable, etc.. It's not about computing power, people are talking about the software's flexibility. iOS is locked down, that is what it is, how it is built.

 

[3282868]

Apple isn't following markets, it's begun defining them.

The first iPhone was $600 (later $200 store credits were issued). Many thought it over-priced, no 3G, no apps (at the time), etc. Yet it sold amazingly. Apple marketed the ****** out of it at a time when smart phones were mostly enterprise/business oriented and Motorola RAZR's dominated the market. It was the first device *aside from the iPod* that was cross platform, gave many a taste of Apple products.

In this instance, Apple didn't follow a market trend, it empowered Joe-sumer and fashionista's into the smart phone/mobile industry. Most at the time thought Mac's were limiting, had little software, not Windows compatible (Intel changed that in 2006), over priced. After the iPhone in 2007, Apple enticed consumers into MacBook's for their kids and iMac's as a refreshing alt to the clumsy tower. Soon Apple began disregarding the PowerMac's and displays that gave Apple the money for R&D into the iPad and thus the iPhone. Now Apple makes the majority of its cash from iDevices and consumer products. This doesn't mean professional products aren't making Apple any money, Apple is choosing to focus on one market. With $100+ billions in cash, why can't they do both???

 

[fertilized-egg]

Again, spoken like someone that's pretty detached from how the 80s-90s of computing worked and how it works today.

You are completely wrong. I spent countless hours in config.sys to squeeze the last kb out of that available memory in DOS. Asian language .sys drivers loaded in DOS were a nightmare because games needed that extra memory. I was the go-to person to work the magics of himem.sys and emm386.exe in my class.

To add, it's because I was there I opine all the worry about iPad is unfounded. I wasn't knowledgable in the workings of soldiering and logic gates like some of my seniors were. They lamented how the young ones now know nothing about assembly and workings of hardware itself unlike them who learnt so much low-level stuff from Apple II. It happens every generation.

Except it's not. The PC with DOS shipped with 2 programming languages and were self-programmable, customizable, etc.. It's not about computing power, people are talking about the software's flexibility. iOS is locked down, that is what it is, how it is built.

You're confusing two things. There are the programming part and the hacking part. DOS' GW and QBasic were all about programming and it was debug.com in DOS that allowed you to do real hacking if you knew X86 assembly, and I knew a few people who lamented how little DOS people knew about using assembly compared to "good old days of Apple IIe".

The first part however, could easily by covered by apps that cater to logic development and simple programming opportunities just as Mac Hypercard did. In time you'll get more and more of these apps and kids will develop their thinking mind just as we did and our parents did.

In the human history, everyone was always worried the new technology would lessen the sophistication of human minds. I'm sure when writing was first invented, someone thought it'll destroy human mind by taking away the need to memorize things.

 

[3282868]

Sorry man but people have been using that same line since music and tv. Hasn't changed a thing. Oh wait yes it has, we now have ios app developers.

You should work in HR. Recent college grads lack social skills necessary for interviewing (and these range from Ivy League to Liberal Arts). It's not uncommon that they can't make eye connect, are overall socially awkward compared to generations that didn't grow up with phones and texting and I've had a few actually text while being interviewed. We're creating an anti-social environment and people are losing general social skills. Online forums, texting, IM'ing - it's crippling younger generations' ability to socialize. Look around you, I've seen kids in restaurants not talking to each other but texting. I once had a student at Columbia hand in a research proposal in short hand text! At Columbia!

 

[LAG ISSUEZ]

That's nice. You can't generalize all of the youth from a handful of stories. That's like saying all black people like fried chicken and watermelon. There may be a new trend of the things you mentioned no doubt but it's evolution...social evolution. If that's the direction it goes then that's where it goes but as the youth grows up together they won't think anything negative of it. In fact they will be much more likely to understand each other than the "elders" do. I'm 32, work full time, married, own a house, play cod like crazy and write this from my iPhone. I do it all and no one would call me socially inept.

 

[3282868]

duplicate post

 

[LAG ISSUEZ]

Why do you have to be done? Don't you know its fun to for each of us to try to prove our points till we're blue in the face? I think I'm right, you think you're right, so what, we're both right and in the end none of this **** even matters anyway. And for the record I have seen everything you describe, at my work and at restaurants and I've have even been that couple but yeah if you're done then cool, have a good night as well. Nice sparring wih you.

 

[3282868]

Why do you have to be done? Don't you know its fun to for each of us to try to prove our points till we're blue in the face? I think I'm right, you think you're right, so what, we're both right and in the end none of this **** even matters anyway. And for the record I have seen everything you describe, at my work and at restaurants and I've have even been that couple but yeah if you're done then cool, have a good night as well. Nice sparring wih you.

Sorry, just depressed by life and what I've seen, especially from people on here. Guess I'm just losing faith in humanity. Every day I see more people disagreeing and fighting over silly things. It seems we've lost the humane in humanity.

Night

 

[LAG ISSUEZ]

No we haven't, only in America we have. Don't forget there is an entire world out there, one that doesn't even spend time on the Internet or even own a smartphone.

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Besides, only you can make you happy. Don't worry about what others do. Till the end of time humans should look at life this way. As long as your feelings are governed by others you are a slave to them and they own you.

 

[KnightWRX]

You are completely wrong. I spent countless hours in config.sys to squeeze the last kb out of that available memory in DOS. Asian language .sys drivers loaded in DOS were a nightmare because games needed that extra memory. I was the go-to person to work the magics of himem.sys and emm386.exe in my class.

So what was it you think the UNIX folk thought we lacked again ? And why did my collegues and I becoming UNIX people out of a DOS background mean about them ?

To add, it's because I was there I opine all the worry about iPad is unfounded. I wasn't knowledgable in the workings of soldiering and logic gates like some of my seniors were. They lamented how the young ones now know nothing about assembly and workings of hardware itself unlike them who learnt so much low-level stuff from Apple II. It happens every generation.

In the 90s in the BBS scene, there was this thing called the demo scene. Assembly was their black magic. Hence, I'm not wrong. DOS, with its interrupt based syscall interface that matched the BIOS of the early PC was a match made in heavy for assembly.

On iOS... well... nope, nothing.

 

[bawbac]

Apple isn't following markets, it's begun defining them.

The first iPhone was $600 (later $200 store credits were issued). Many thought it over-priced, no 3G, no apps (at the time), etc. Yet it sold amazingly. Apple marketed the ****** out of it at a time when smart phones were mostly enterprise/business oriented and Motorola RAZR's dominated the market. It was the first device *aside from the iPod* that was cross platform, gave many a taste of Apple products.

In this instance, Apple didn't follow a market trend, it empowered Joe-sumer and fashionista's into the smart phone/mobile industry. Most at the time thought Mac's were limiting, had little software, not Windows compatible (Intel changed that in 2006), over priced. After the iPhone in 2007, Apple enticed consumers into MacBook's for their kids and iMac's as a refreshing alt to the clumsy tower. Soon Apple began disregarding the PowerMac's and displays that gave Apple the money for R&D into the iPad and thus the iPhone. Now Apple makes the majority of its cash from iDevices and consumer products. This doesn't mean professional products aren't making Apple any money, Apple is choosing to focus on one market. With $100+ billions in cash, why can't they do both???

I love apples quality but their mindset on how they limit their products and force their consumers to utilize specific protocol/programs/methods is close to myopic dictatorship modeling.

 

[Abazigal]

I love apples quality but their mindset on how they limit their products and force their consumers to utilize specific protocol/programs/methods is close to myopic dictatorship modeling.

And apparently, most people love them despite it (or perhaps, because of it).

 

[edk]

does anyone have a list of which kids apps they have installed on those iPad?

personally, I don't see why anyone is surprised by this. The iPad is more successful a device - why wouldn't they do this?

My 3yr old son can work my ipad better than the wife... it's the future. Only people over 16 will moan and complain. For those growing up, using an iMac would be like going back to a BBC micro to play Elite, when instead, you can play Real Racing 2HD on an ipad3

(bad example... Elite was great. Is there an ipad port somewhere??)

 

[Konrad]

That's not an Apple issue. That is you telling them, or not telling them to go the heck outside and play

If we asked my mom for fast food, candy etc the answer was no. No to the Nintendo etc. video games were something we got to do at the bowling alley when our parents had their monthly league game, if we remembered our allowance (none of that I'll pay you back at home stuff). A cell phone was something that made calls that you were when you were driving and only when you were driving. If dad dropped us off you didn't need the phone and it stayed at home

The issue is that most parents have no balls and won't say no.

Of course moderation via diligence is fundamental and refusal as difficult but necessary. There is however market pressure that parents have to deal with. The other detriment is the loss of manual skills by kids, were interaction with an electronic gadget takes the place of traditional tools. iPads are by definition passive devices and more so than computers. Draw it on the computer, go get some tools and built a tree house. When you do good you can borrow my iPad for an hour.

 

[Sackvillenb]

Well, this really is a far better choice as far as kids are concerned, especially the younger ones. I've watched them at the Apple store (hmmm that might sound creepy), but they find the iPad much more intuitive. Which makes sense, since it's a touch based device, much like the rest of the Universe that they interact with! But it's remarkable, I constantly see really young kids (like 2 or 3 years old) who intuitively figure out how to use the iPad literally within seconds. And that's cool.

 

[robanga]

Very neat. I was in a store last night and the kids table was full. It won't be long until younger children expect all screens to react to touch.

 

[charlituna]

Of course moderation via diligence is fundamental and refusal as difficult but necessary. There is however market pressure that parents have to deal with.

Of course there's market pressure, companies like Apple, Nintendo and Doritos are all about sell sell sell.

But that still makes it your issue to say no to your kids. If you don't have the balls to do that then don't blame the companies making the goods. Blame yourself. Because it will be your fault, not the companies, that your kids are fat, lazy, greedy, have no social skills etc.

 

[winston1236]

Just what we need. I am in my mid 20s and my IT education was primarily word processing and office applications. I pity those kids these days who won't even get the level I got, and instead spend their time consuming videos and pictures on these devices.

The goal of teaching kids how to code (as IT classes in schools should be) seems further and further away with each story like this

Why? This will only make our incomes rise as the workforce shrinks.

 

[BrotherBeagle]

Why would everybody learn how to code?
Do doctors have to know how to code?
Do cab drivers have to know how to code?
Etc.

Future doctors have biology, chemistry, anatomy.
Future cab drivers have driver's ed.
Future coders have Youtube hour.

Very neat. I was in a store last night and the kids table was full. It won't be long until younger children expect all screens to react to touch.

We're already seeing that. Young children that participate in our (rather extensive) iOS K through 2 program have been reported having to acclimate to non-touch screen devices.