What is Digg?170 Comments
- AstroPHX, on 10/12/2007, -20/+109Rather than bag the article for sucking (which it does, btw), I'll point out the biggest issue facing school systems that the article doesn't deal with: price.
Currently, you can get a Dell box for ~$500, monitor and all, versus the Mac Mini, which is $550 before any peripherals are added (e.g., mouse, keyboard, monitor). [And before anyone questions; yes, these are the Educational Discounted Prices.] Even if you cheap out, you're talking at least $100 difference between the two systems. Filling a classroom (or two... or 5..) with Apple will cost you thousands.
In my home state, funding Education is the last thing on people's minds, which is why we place at or near the bottom of state-vs-state comparisons year after year. You're kidding yourself if you think for 1 second that a principal would chose one piece of hardware over the other based on the OS rather than the net capital outlay.
Windows may be in trouble, but not for this reason. No way. - shrewduser, on 10/12/2007, -9/+96"It looks like we are back to the original Apple days where Macs were the dominant platform."
how the hell did you come to that conclusion???
edit: whoops, i'm talking to the original poster not the first comment... - marix, on 10/12/2007, -19/+78OH NO 5% lookout wndows!!!!
- f0dder, on 10/12/2007, -4/+50Apple good? check
Microsoft bad? check
No useful information? check
front page - chocobomog, on 10/12/2007, -13/+41I used to work as computer tech at a state university and I can say from experience Windows has little to worry about. Most universities have lease deals with Dell (or others) to get desktops, monitor, etc. for huge discounts. Every year we would receive 500+ new Dells and monitors to replace ones that were 3 years old. We then put ghosted images on them all and installed our bulk licensed software. We also had a "mac lab" for the artists, and those 20 macs cost just as much as 50+ dells.
Sorting through 500 dells a summer was annoying, but you can have alot of fun with them when you have that many. They are like large building blocks:
http://jayepperhart.com/rrants/Pictures/comp-throne.jpg
Not to mention all of the fun we had with 500 cardboard boxes and packing peanuts.
Beyond that, all of the public schools I've attended only used macs in their labs, and even then Apple hasn't had more than a 10% share of the market. I don't think adding a few more will change much. - RRRobotHouse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28No mention of Wii?
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27Hmm.. Apparently for mac users, the plural of anecdote is "data".
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25My teachers tell me that i have great hair, surely this means I must have the most dominat hair in the entire world.
- mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Do you need to upgrade your hair now?
- darkyoshi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24cat /dev/toaster
- Dragular, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22I think someone threw up some Linux onto my screen...
HAY GUYS IF LINUX IS SO GREAT WHY DOESN'T IT HAVE INTERNET EXPLORER HUH!??!?!?!?!??!?! - JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24debian:~# cat /dev/toaster
toast
debian:~# eject /dev/toaster
debian:~# cat /dev/toaster
crumbs
debian:~# - kKhan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24Holy raging fanboy groupthink batman.
- gbeirne, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23Have you ever kissed a girl?
- gbeirne, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20I was a bit late to catch the edit - but if you're female, the question still stands, for my own reasons.
- JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21@dancrew32
debian:~# apt-get install clue
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package clue
debian:~# - Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14
As has been stated elsewhere, the Mac was never the dominant educational computer system. Now, the Apple //e was back in the day, and even it had stiff competition in some parts of the country (the U.S., I'm referring to) from the Commodore 64.
Apple did this first by convincing the Legislature in the State of California to offer it tax breaks to give one free Apple //e to each school in the State. And this convinced the schools to buy Apples; that along with the educational discount that Apple gave to teachers. Nevermind that the Apple //e was 2 to 4 times more expensive that a Commodore 64, an Atari 800XL, or any of the other 8 bit computers. Heck, the Apple //e pegged at 128k (with a 1-ish Mhz 6502 8-bit processor) back in 1987 cost more than my Atari 1040ST which had 1 megabyte of RAM, an 8Mhz Motorola 68000 16/32 bit processor, 16 bit graphics, etc.
But back to promotional education purchasing programs (aka "incentives"). Commodore had a rival educational program to Apple's. With Commodore, if the school bought two of their computers, they'd get the third one for free. I can't recall if Commodore ever updated that program to include the Amiga 500 finally or if the program died with the C64. - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19Apple will never have dominance as long as they are the sole provider of OS X machines.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19I'd go out and buy OSX tomorrow if Big Jobs unshackled it from the mac hardware.
So too would many others. - rayishu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10i remember back in the days when i was in school Apple donated many comptuers to schools so kids could get used the the platform itself
- valkyries, on 10/12/2007, -12/+21the only reason i bought my ibook was the price/performance not cause it was apple/OSX
- Doghound, on 10/12/2007, -23/+32virus protection - plenty of free ones. My school has their own that they do not pay for and is free to the students.
xp pro not home - My school uses what is bundled on there... they don't upgrade. Also, they usually get a pretty hefty discount from Microsoft
ms office - They either use Works or have a deal with Microsoft (depends on the lab).
and a novel server - If you are going to share apps/files between computers you are going to need a server anyway. Unless I misunderstand what you mean.
and your lab cost more to have windows - Wrong. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+19This whole digg is besides the point, most public schools should be providing a quality education service to their students. Getting them in front of computers they're not accustomed to is a part of this education. I fully support getting linux and mac in front of them since the majority of them probably have Windows at home. School is for education, not a who's dick is bigger contest.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9LOL @ Windows in trouble....
Get real, as an OSX user we still gotta be serious and real.
Windows is going nowhere. - xrisnothing, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16all that did was establish a deep seated hatred for their one button mice in me
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Macs were everywhere in schools, from elementary school til high school where I lived.
'course, I lived within 20 miles of Apple's Cupertino headquarters, so that may have had something to do with it. - awhiteflame, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14:%s/dancrew32/someone_with_humor/g
- kurrent, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8if i see one more Mac topic.......
- JonnyTrombone, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8You're right. Apple lost the desktop wars years ago- admitting that and moving on, they pander to artists and designers. Most people don't need an Apple computer, but they're great if you do need it. PCs are wonderful for gaming- even with the recent resurgence of PC/Mac games and companies that convert games for Mac, no one buys an Apple in order to play video games.
And Linux... Linux is for cool people. - MakinBacon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Once you go Greek, you don't walk for a week.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Every public school I've ever attended (in Indiana as well as California) used Macs. I remember hating that as the CD encyclopedia took forever to spin up and run on the units in the library.
But then again I also remember getting in trouble for sneaking to library to learn... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Windows will never be in trouble. Sorry.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Waiting for Apple fans to rave about Apple being a hardware provider with OSX being an aside. Reality is OSX on commodity hardware would be a serious threat to Windows while on Apples overpriced hardware it won't be.
I'd probably buy a copy of OSX for a commodity machine but I won't pay the Apple tax for basically average hardware.
//edit - wrt verticle integration. It's all dependant on the hardware provider. A good manufacturer will produce real drivers, if you buy quality hardware it will have decent drivers irrespective. Most of Windows problems are cause by NT just being junk anyway.// - dotcom101010, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Ok why do we have to have the fanboy wars ever time a PC or Mac article comes up.
I use them both and like them. There are time when i think both of them suck and yes i use Linux to and it is ok, Linux is not ready for the everyday user. My point is why cant we all just get along.
Ok i am ready to be dug down - illicium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Please. I'll get dug down for this, but OpenOffice is not nearly as complete and polished as MS Office is.
- 13tongimp, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Anecdotal evidence is surely gonna push then into the six to seven percent range!!!!
- magus_melchior, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Funny, I thought the old IIe was dominant when Apple ruled the desktop...
- shrewduser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3macs where also big in australia at the very same time (they we're introduced here almost simultaneously which is amazing...)
- waterdrop, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Since when do girls like Mac users?
- undersky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Ferrari? are you crazy? A Ferrari costs at least 10x more than a fine car like Toyota Camry or Passat. The difference between MAC and PC is far smaller than a Ferrari and a Camry! A better comparison might be the difference between a Camry vs. a Taurus, or a Lexus vs. an Infiniti. (Infiniti is slighter cheaper and has lesser quality.)
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4That's a terrible price. Here at work we build sempron 3000+'s w/1 gig ram and 80 gig SATA drives for $300.
- tdhurst, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I'm sure Apple is desperately at work trying to woo the three other people just like you.
- JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@Dragular
It does... http://www.tatanka.com.br
Is there nothing our fair penguin cannot do? - Halodude1489, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Rowanj I have to disagree, I goto a high school and ive seen these dells (going on 3 years old) take some serious *****. Such as putting floppy disks into cd rom drives and then forcing it to close. Opening and SLAMMING shut the drive. Jamming pencil's in the floppy disk drive and other such antics and I have yet to see a school computer that doesn't have a working cdrom drive. Sure some macs you can't do this in but all it would really take to ruin those is a nice piece of gum. Any who our crt monitors also 3 years old are not blurry at all, so I guess it all boils down to the lame pc's your school bought. Mine uses optiplex (don't know model).
- undersky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I can't really agree with comments claiming that schools care about pricing. Sure, schools do, but no more than you and I do. When a school makes a purchasing plan, while price is important, their overall agenda is education and there is no point sacrificing that for price, otherwise they can buy the cheapest methods possible (such as Linux). No, schools don't buy the cheapest methods possible, but the technology that mostly fit their needs.
You will see an increase in Apple purchase because Apple's improved integration can really compete with PCs in fulfilling schools' need.
Are there schools that more price-sensitive than others? Sure, but there are also schools that are well funded and wishing to spend a reasonable amount of money to provide the best equipments possible for their students.
To say schools always sacrifice agenda/quality for price is like saying schools shouldn't invest money in infrastructure, cutting age technology, world-class researchers, best head coaches, etc.
By the way, few months ago when I walked into Walter Payton High School (A Chicago Public School) on N Wells and W Division, I saw this futuristic looking mobile cart made by Apple that shelved 10 or 20 (depended on configuration) Apple MacBook Pro, and also served as a wireless hub. I spotted carts like these in many classrooms and laboratories. Noted, they didn't use iBook, they used those silver ones.
In their library though, all Desktops were Dells.
I am sure someone here can testify to what I said.
Edit: I found it here:
http://www.apple.com/education/mobilelabs/bretford/ - Nauthez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I go to community college and they just replaced around 400 dells with new iMacs. I hear no complaints from my fellow students
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How do a few students matter to a company whose primary target is NOT, the home consumer. Sure, if they ship a few million units to the home users great, but the real money comes from the corporations that buy huge license deals.
dotcom101010, I am not doubting that they can only be on top for so long, but point out any company that has even hinted at trying to take down MS. Google may try one day, but that day is no where near.
I do however agree with your comment directly below mine :) - Halodude1489, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wow your a moron thx, you dont work at a school so stfu. Next of all you can get a ***** pc with a core 2 duo e6600. a monitor, and the works for $1,000 and I DOUBT your school is buying gaming pc's for classes. So please take your 13 year old ass and leave, you suck at lieing.
- Zeromus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
- drbroccoli, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, what I don't understand is why you think we care....
I think you just wanted an excuse to brag about how awesome you and your computers are. Poor guy. You must be dead on the inside. -
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