Burned by updates?
To be perfectly honest, I don't think Apple losing the K-12 market is a really big issue, when you look where they're headed. The big attraction to Macs for primary school (and even preschool!) was the relative simplicity of "classic" MacOS.
Teachers didn't need lots of training to begin doing useful things with a Mac in the classroom.
Nowdays, "simple" computers and OS's just aren't really being manufactured anymore. On the Microsoft side, you have additional new features being added by the thousands with each OS update, and the older ones being officially killed off. On the Apple side, you have everything "classic MacOS" being killed off, and the push is on to get XServe servers running in Corporate America, Powerbooks laptops sold to traditional Unix administrators, and G5's hawked to any self-proclaimed "power user" who wants a fast, 64-bit machine. Sure, they still offer the eMac for education, but it's no longer a "cornerstone" of Apple's sales plan.
There are loads and loads of "outdated" computers still functioning just fine - and I'm starting to see more and more of these "recycled" into daily use in the preschools and grade-schools. Why should a grade 4 teacher spend thousands of dollars on new eMacs and all new software to run on them, when he or she still has a closet full of perfectly good learning programs that run on MacOS 7.6? By the same token, people will gladly give away their old Pentium based PCs to schools, complete with software. As these free hand-out machines break down, I can see these schools buying new PC replacements, one by one, to keep up what they have - rather than blow huge budgets upgrading a whole computer lab.
When it comes to Higher Education, they're *all* out to screw you over. Microsoft loves to play the game of "bait the fish with cheap or free software and reel them in later with licensing fees and update costs". Apple, at least, seems to me like they're a little more up-front about things. They sell you exactly what you buy, and that's that. New upgrade comes out tomorrow and you don't qualify? Well, maybe you needed to keep abreast of the rumor sites and ask more questions before purchasing? Yeah, it may seem "unfair" - but it's no worse than Microsoft's typical schemes. (EG. On version X of MS Office you guys purchased a site license for, we used to let you load copies on both 1 laptop and 1 desktop, since we realize you can't physically be in two places at once using both at the same time. But now on this new version Y of Office you paid for, we changed that. You need to buy a new license for each laptop, too. Sorry!)
Originally posted by Mighty64Lincoln
I am so tired of being burnt by Apple in the Higher Education world. I am one of the few lone community college professors who still believe that Apple is holding in the creative markets. To that end, we will be teaching FCE to our entry level students.
Before the holidays, I just sent Apple a huge license for FCE and now they are going to ship version 2. In the past, Apple says..."To bad!" and we'll have to spend more money getting the newer license.
Macromedia burned us too with this MX and MX2004 fiasco this past summer too.
You know what's interesting about the whole world of Higher Education and technology...Microsoft is the only company that is not screwing us and will glady give their new FrontPage 2003 software license to one of our labs and across campus.
While I'm not a huge FP2003 or MS fan at that, I can tell you that Apple better look before it moves in the Higher Education world. I am of the belief that Higher Ed is the last remaining places you'll see Macs in large numbers. They've lost the K12 market to Dell and that will never be regained. But if Apple does not give colleges free updates when there is less than a month in the purchase process, then I'm willing to look the other way at other vendors who are more, shall I say, budget friendly.
