I think Apple is missing a key target by staying product elite. You don't always need to drink out of crystal stemware. Sometimes a solo cup works great.
I would love to see stripped-down tablets to used for mass markets. Apple and iOS is positioned where it can integrate itself in everything. My latest example was sitting in a presentation with 50 people. Instead of a stack of printed packets to hand out to each person, why not low cost tablets attached to your seat? iOS is solid enough and user friendly where it could replace these kind of repetitious duties. A $500 iPad times 20 does not bode well for a kindergarten.
iPhone vs Android is a example where Apple win big financially. The same for computer market.
Is learning to code as important as the tech community thinks? I'm skeptical. I think it takes a certain skill set and mindset, one that not everybody has and that probably can't be taught.
It is extremely important and everyone can learn it. It's like learning to read and play music. It trains your mind to think.
Some people may not care for it but they can certainly learn it.
You are too much into coding. Fck no, I ain't need no coding course to become a doctor, a lawyer or an Architect. This world is not filled only with computer engineers for god sake.
I think Apple is missing a key target by staying product elite. You don't always need to drink out of crystal stemware. Sometimes a solo cup works great.
I would love to see stripped-down tablets to used for mass markets. Apple and iOS is positioned where it can integrate itself in everything. My latest example was sitting in a presentation with 50 people. Instead of a stack of printed packets to hand out to each person, why not low cost tablets attached to your seat? iOS is solid enough and user friendly where it could replace these kind of repetitious duties. A $500 iPad times 20 does not bode well for a kindergarten.
Right... Despite 50 years of proof that race to bottom will kill you Apple should "try it".... Oh, my.... If Google still exists and making a profit in 15 years, talk to me.
Never implied race to the bottom. Just stripping off unnecessary components to create a new market. Consider the TV in your living room vs the one in your bedroom. I can almost guarantee one is smaller and less expensive. Why is that?
Sorry Apple. As owner of a Chromebook, I fully understand why CB hits the education market. Collaboration with CB is top. If collaboration machine is test machine then Tim Cook totally miss the point. CB is cheaper, easier to manage, requires much less maintenance, shareable, and more productive than an i Pad. Apple has a lot to do to catch but they are denying the facts. Let's me tell you my own experience, give an i Pad and a CB in kids between 8-10 years old and guess what they are using the most? Sorry Apple, they chose the CB and this is very annoying for Apple. This is in Europe where CB sale is still ridiculous low. You see my questions : if all the kids are like the ones I know, Apple will have to be more creative than denying the facts. The past tells me that trend in US will become trend in Europe.
I think some level of coding in education is certainly warranted and is a good idea, but not remotely to the level Cook seems to be suggesting. Only comparatively very few people will ever need to write any code in their lives or will have an occupation that involves doing so. Writing code to the point you can actually achieve something useful from the effort is time consuming and involved. It certainly wouldn't be cost effective to have legions of people in enterprise spending many hours writing, testing and debugging their code to produce specialised little apps. It's a job for full time professionals. There's an app for that - which is precisely why most people won't ever need to be able to code.
I have always been dubious about the starry-eyed idealism that thinks technology can lead to improved educational outcomes. The latest research seems to indicate that computers in education actually leads to worse outcomes. Which doesn't surprise me.
Education is filled with dinosaurs. I'd rather Apple not compromise for relics of the past. The edu market has consistently shown an unwillingness to get with the times.
I'd say you're behind the times if you think that schools can afford top-of-the-line tablets these days, when their budgets are constantly getting slashed so hard they can barely afford pencils.
Way to not understand the point TheWhiteFalcon was making. He was referring to the very people who cut the budgets for schools.
You mean the voters who refuse to pay higher taxes?
I think Apple is missing a key target by staying product elite. You don't always need to drink out of crystal stemware. Sometimes a solo cup works great.
I would love to see stripped-down tablets to used for mass markets. Apple and iOS is positioned where it can integrate itself in everything. My latest example was sitting in a presentation with 50 people. Instead of a stack of printed packets to hand out to each person, why not low cost tablets attached to your seat? iOS is solid enough and user friendly where it could replace these kind of repetitious duties. A $500 iPad times 20 does not bode well for a kindergarten.
While there will be jobs for low-cost tablets, that is not where Apple will play. There are already hundreds of cheap tablet models available, that make the companies very little money per unit, with a build quality and lifespan that reflect that.
The entire reason that Apple is as successful today as they are is due to a primary focus on markets where design/quality/usability/TCO matter. They provide a premium product that users are willing to pay for (for any number of those reasons). This works best in the consumer market as a % of the population is willing to pay for more than the equivalent of "grey shirt & grey pants". However, this is not how the enterprise market, and potentially a vast amount of the education market, works. Where the purchase is "almost" entirely made based on price, and the user is not the buyer, Apple's strengths are not decisive, so it is not their primary focus.
As for your example above - in a conference why provide anyone with a cheap, soon-to-be-in-landfill-tablet, rather than just provide a soft copy, or cloud-copy, of the material and people access it from their own device?
I've posted about the Chromebook before. It is quite literally perfect for education. They are certainly less powerful when not around a network connection but the schools using them have made sure wifi is available. I would bet that generation 2 of these Chromebooks will be the hybrid touchscreen laptop models that can detach as we are seeing out there on the PC side. When schools can order those for $300 a pop then Apple will lose even more sales.
iPads are not set up to use for multiple users. I haven't seen one where a student can sign in and a completely different student can sign in an hour later and each can have all their documents, settings, browser bookmarks, etc all available.
Apple isn't just lacking in making the iPad have easy to use bluetooth keyboard solution for those that need it. They are lacking in multi-user solutions for iPad and Apple is lacking in their cloud solutions not only for education, but compared to the market overall.
There isn't a race to the bottom. Apple has products in the same categories with regard to price. Apple has completely inferior cloud solutions and has not made real efforts to address this.
Apple could offer a keyboard cover with iPads. They could have it so you simply login with you fingerprint and then all you browser settings in Safari, all your apps, photos and documents are for you when you are on the iPad. Then you sign out, the next kid logs in with their fingerprint and the iPad shows their set up on it.
The third issue is external storage. Macbooks allow you to use flashdrives, microsd cards, etc. iPads turn using these items into a big chore. Apple again needs to address that.
Chromebooks are actually pretty good devices for the school. I agree there's no profit for the device makers, but obviously Google thinks there is future profit in training students to use Google services.
My wife is a teacher, and they have about 20-30 iPads for the whole school. They sit unused most of the time, unless the kids need to do "research" (which means mostly web browsing and goofing-off). This is extremely sad to say the least, because we all know the iPad is capable of so much. The problem here is that Apple loves to be seen as a partner with education, but their devices are actually not useful at all. When the iPads go from classroom to classroom and different kids use them without user accounts for each kid, they have to be severely restricted as to what they can do because they change hands so often. The next time they get the iPad, chances are that the textbook in iBooks they downloaded last time will be missing, any project they started will have to be re-done, unless they use a service like evernote or Google apps, and even then they have to sign back in to multiple accounts, which takes a lot of time before they can even get started on their actual work. Multi-users would allow them to sign-in once, and then have everything all ready to go. Kind of like I have on my Mac. Google has the advantage because once you sign in with them on your Chromebook, all your stuff appears and you're good to go. It's actually pretty amazing to me that Apple still just doesn't understand this very basic concept. It's because they design iPads as individual devices which should never change hands, but in schools even the textbooks change hands all the time. I used to be a big advocate for Apple in education, but their sluggishness is appalling.
I think some level of coding in education is certainly warranted and is a good idea, but not remotely to the level Cook seems to be suggesting. Only comparatively very few people will ever need to write any code in their lives or will have an occupation that involves doing so. Writing code to the point you can actually achieve something useful from the effort is time consuming and involved. It certainly wouldn't be cost effective to have legions of people in enterprise spending many hours writing, testing and debugging their code to produce specialised little apps. It's a job for full time professionals. There's an app for that - which is precisely why most people won't ever need to be able to code.
I have always been dubious about the starry-eyed idealism that thinks technology can lead to improved educational outcomes. The latest research seems to indicate that computers in education actually leads to worse outcomes. Which doesn't surprise me.
It takes a unique mindset to become an accomplished programmer, something I've found to be true after years of struggle. Programming is not in my "wheelhouse"!
I've posted about the Chromebook before. It is quite literally perfect for education. They are certainly less powerful when not around a network connection but the schools using them have made sure wifi is available. I would bet that generation 2 of these Chromebooks will be the hybrid touchscreen laptop models that can detach as we are seeing out there on the PC side. When schools can order those for $300 a pop then Apple will lose even more sales.
iPads are not set up to use for multiple users. I haven't seen one where a student can sign in and a completely different student can sign in an hour later and each can have all their documents, settings, browser bookmarks, etc all available.
Apple isn't just lacking in making the iPad have easy to use bluetooth keyboard solution for those that need it. They are lacking in multi-user solutions for iPad and Apple is lacking in their cloud solutions not only for education, but compared to the market overall.
There isn't a race to the bottom. Apple has products in the same categories with regard to price. Apple has completely inferior cloud solutions and has not made real efforts to address this.
Apple could offer a keyboard cover with iPads. They could have it so you simply login with you fingerprint and then all you browser settings in Safari, all your apps, photos and documents are for you when you are on the iPad. Then you sign out, the next kid logs in with their fingerprint and the iPad shows their set up on it.
The third issue is external storage. Macbooks allow you to use flashdrives, microsd cards, etc. iPads turn using these items into a big chore. Apple again needs to address that.
"Apple is lacking in their cloud solutions not only for education, but compared to the market overall."
Sure, but at least you know a little about it. Just like "math" is not in my wheelhouse, but I'm glad I understand the broad concepts, even if I can't do the problems worth anything.
At the core of learning to code is breaking down processes, or problems, into many steps, each of which can be addressed with a particular set of instructions, or "solutions." Using the available commands to then construct the proper instruction set is a bit like using words to write a story. However, the content is very pragmatic and hopefully aimed at efficiency and elegance of execution. Learning such things can only have a positive impact on the way the student learns to think, and thus I agree with Tim Cook that all should have coding instruction. However, I do not think that every high school graduate needs to be proficient in C or Assembly or whatever programming language. It is the concepts. Just like those of us who studied math in high school did not graduate as mathematicians, but the concepts are important, and the development of the relevant parts of the brain are important. As our world "computerizes" those that understand coding and computers will have better job opportunities even though not all of these jobs will be actual coding jobs.
I'd have thought the whole point of coding would be freeing about 99.999878% of users from ever even noticing it. If we're all going to have to be proficient at that level, we might as well bring back Microsoft.
Didn't know of Xcode for iPad, nice, now Apple is really making sense.
I think that if Apple is really into education they give away the iPads for free, or at least for the lowest price possible ($200 or so). This makes a lot of sense if you consider that Apple burns away its profit on the other end (which by itself is a pretty strong indication that Apple is directed by its - deluded - shareholders).
Totally agreed. Apple's products used to be nice enough at the high end, but the Chromebook is going to take a major bite out of Apple's revenue stream in K-12 because it gets the job done on a budget. If "test machines" is the best diss Tim Cook can come up with, he's out to lunch at one of his fancy benefit dinners in his bow tie and tux, while the rest of us are eating ramen. There is just no reason to buy MacBooks for K-12 when Chromebooks cost 1/4 as much and do all the important stuff just as well. Take a look at the Asus Flipbook. As a long time Mac user, I was impressed.
The Chromebook is also better than an iPad, because you can do more than consume content on it. I tried to respond to this post from my iPad and finally gave up and went back to a real computer with a keyboard and mouse.
So, Tim Cook can say what he likes, but Apple has lost the lock on music under his leadership, and he's going to lose the education market next. The Apple Watch is not worth the money, and every version of MacOS since Snow Leopard has been worse than the previous. Add that to the fact that every recent Mac is sealed up tight so you can't save any money on do it yourself upgrades, and they come out with a new adapter every 6 months when Jony makes the next version more exquisitely thin than the last.
Tim Cook is pretty much saying that he doesn't want any part of the educational market.
Education customers are some of the most price-conscious customers out there. They want something that gets the job done and with the constant budget cuts to schools, they're going to go for whatever gets the job done for the least amount of money. The latest and greatest just isn't important to them.
You are correct. However, Apple products have long had a place in education because teachers could easily set of a LAN of Macs and Apple products require less maintenance. A city of around 250,000 will have 50 or more individual school sites. If each of those sites do not need to hire an IT specialists, that's a lot of savings, and that savings adds up year after year, where a savings on hardware is a one-time expense.
So, It's not about having the latest and greatest, it IS about saving money, as you suggest. School systems look at the cost of implementing tech solutions and the most successful are very cautious in adding people to a payroll if they can at all avoid doing so.
Chromebooks are a tempting solution, the fact that school systems still buy Macs and iPads, indicate to me that it's somewhat of a toss-up as to which is essentially the best cost solution, or the best teaching aid.
Leave it to the government to specify a testing device have a 19th century input device for the 21st century student.
I agree that there are [at least] two "cost" factors to consider: 1) cost of the hardware, and 2) cost to implement and support it. And it's true that Apple had big advantage in #2 with Apple and Mac computers, and that largely offset their disadvantage in #1 for many years. But by all accounts, everything I've read, Apple no longer has an advantage in the implementation and support cost category. And they still have that hardware cost disadvantage.
And with mobile devices there is a third thing to consider. It used to be that all of this equipment was locked down in supervised computer labs and classrooms and in relatively limited quantities. With mobile devices loss and damage becomes a much bigger factor, so hardware cost becomes an even more important consideration.
I really don't see Apple in a "race to the bottom" in the hardware front; however, note that in the past Apple did in fact make special educational versions of their hardware. But regardless of that, until Apple is willing to make a serious investment in tools for the implementation and support of their devices in educational settings, Google is going to continue to eat their lunch.
if the braintrust at apple really cared about the education sector, they would develop a product and offer a hardware/software solution at COST ( same with MS and google ). fact is schools have a finite budget, and apple could care less about it ( again, same with google and MS ). the schoolboards have rightly stated to these big companies, " we need an AFFORADABLE solution, bells and whistles be damned. as a parent, im interested in cost effective solutions, and that solution is the WEB. right now, chrome os delivers on that. apple does not.neither does MS (when overall CoS) is included. i want my teachers to teach. i want my kids to learn. between all platforms, chrome os has demonstrated the ability to meet those goals in the most cost efficient manner possible. WAKE UP APPLE ( shareholders , of which i am one ). education is NOT about making money. IT IS about education.the problem for apple is greedy, self serving shareholders ( like myself ) who could not stand the weakening of share prices due to a BIG play in the educational market. It is not the company, it is us, the shareholder who should bear the blame for apples lame education market stradegy
Comments
You are too much into coding. Fck no, I ain't need no coding course to become a doctor, a lawyer or an Architect. This world is not filled only with computer engineers for god sake.
The entire reason that Apple is as successful today as they are is due to a primary focus on markets where design/quality/usability/TCO matter. They provide a premium product that users are willing to pay for (for any number of those reasons). This works best in the consumer market as a % of the population is willing to pay for more than the equivalent of "grey shirt & grey pants". However, this is not how the enterprise market, and potentially a vast amount of the education market, works. Where the purchase is "almost" entirely made based on price, and the user is not the buyer, Apple's strengths are not decisive, so it is not their primary focus.
As for your example above - in a conference why provide anyone with a cheap, soon-to-be-in-landfill-tablet, rather than just provide a soft copy, or cloud-copy, of the material and people access it from their own device?
iPads are not set up to use for multiple users. I haven't seen one where a student can sign in and a completely different student can sign in an hour later and each can have all their documents, settings, browser bookmarks, etc all available.
Apple isn't just lacking in making the iPad have easy to use bluetooth keyboard solution for those that need it. They are lacking in multi-user solutions for iPad and Apple is lacking in their cloud solutions not only for education, but compared to the market overall.
There isn't a race to the bottom. Apple has products in the same categories with regard to price. Apple has completely inferior cloud solutions and has not made real efforts to address this.
Apple could offer a keyboard cover with iPads. They could have it so you simply login with you fingerprint and then all you browser settings in Safari, all your apps, photos and documents are for you when you are on the iPad. Then you sign out, the next kid logs in with their fingerprint and the iPad shows their set up on it.
The third issue is external storage. Macbooks allow you to use flashdrives, microsd cards, etc. iPads turn using these items into a big chore. Apple again needs to address that.
They're definitely working on it;
http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/15/apple-new-cloud-platform-open-source/
Learning such things can only have a positive impact on the way the student learns to think, and thus I agree with Tim Cook that all should have coding instruction. However, I do not think that every high school graduate needs to be proficient in C or Assembly or whatever programming language. It is the concepts. Just like those of us who studied math in high school did not graduate as mathematicians, but the concepts are important, and the development of the relevant parts of the brain are important.
As our world "computerizes" those that understand coding and computers will have better job opportunities even though not all of these jobs will be actual coding jobs.
If we're all going to have to be proficient at that level, we might as well bring back Microsoft.
Didn't know of Xcode for iPad, nice, now Apple is really making sense.
I think that if Apple is really into education they give away the iPads for free, or at least for the lowest price possible ($200 or so). This makes a lot of sense if you consider that Apple burns away its profit on the other end (which by itself is a pretty strong indication that Apple is directed by its - deluded - shareholders).
http://www.amazon.com/Chromebook-10-1-Inch-Convertible-Touchscreen-Rockchip/dp/B00YY3X678
The Chromebook is also better than an iPad, because you can do more than consume content on it. I tried to respond to this post from my iPad and finally gave up and went back to a real computer with a keyboard and mouse.
So, Tim Cook can say what he likes, but Apple has lost the lock on music under his leadership, and he's going to lose the education market next. The Apple Watch is not worth the money, and every version of MacOS since Snow Leopard has been worse than the previous. Add that to the fact that every recent Mac is sealed up tight so you can't save any money on do it yourself upgrades, and they come out with a new adapter every 6 months when Jony makes the next version more exquisitely thin than the last.
And with mobile devices there is a third thing to consider. It used to be that all of this equipment was locked down in supervised computer labs and classrooms and in relatively limited quantities. With mobile devices loss and damage becomes a much bigger factor, so hardware cost becomes an even more important consideration.
I really don't see Apple in a "race to the bottom" in the hardware front; however, note that in the past Apple did in fact make special educational versions of their hardware. But regardless of that, until Apple is willing to make a serious investment in tools for the implementation and support of their devices in educational settings, Google is going to continue to eat their lunch.