the reason they dont move to x is simple. i actually proved the reason at my old highschool. os x is more stable and runs on bsd, right? well tools that you can use to get around set securties are also easier to access. for example, even thought we re unable to use limewire anymore in the comp lab because they blocked the ports on the firewall. we still set up a tunnel through osx and was abale to download. we also had a problem with a crashed harddrive and needed to unload 80Gb in order to save it. we got around password protections all around the network, using a few tools off the internet, it was annoyying but it worked. after we had done it, the tech dept was like well im sorry we cant get you any extra space, and we just told them thats ok we found it anyway. then she was like thats prob. why they wont let us go to os x.
OS X has come a long way since its first release. If you compare 10.0 to 10.2 You'd think they were completely different. Sure the GUI looks similar but the performance difference is huge.\tI have to use PC's regularly and I have to say that windows XP is way behind OS 10.2. Sure, there can be no doubt that 10.2 looks a thousand times better; with XP just being a more colorful version of 2000. Have you ever tried to hook up printer sharing between two PC's ( especially if they are running different versions of windows)? I tell you it took me over two hours to figure it out and make it work right. On our macs, running 10.2, it took about 5 seconds per computer and I hadn't ever done it before in 10.2 (no kidding). Now windows 2000 is so bad that I almost shot one of the PC's running it. I tell you that damned computer would crash 8 times a day. Tried everything on it...even did a clean install but to no avail. I finally went out to buy XP, but Couldn't find the Home edition any where. I eventually bought the professional edition went back to install it, and the damned thing crashed half way through the installer. I can't take this any more!!!!!
\tYou just try using a PC with windows for any real work or play for that matter. It takes forever to do simple things. Especially with the interruptions i.e. crashes. I would refuse to use one for any real work. They SUCK!
If the Stupid schools want to use stupid PC's then f*ck them!
Ok so this wasn't really related but I was so pissed at that stupid PC I had to get it out.
I bet the real reason schools won't switch from OS 9 or windows to OS 10.2 is because there would be no need for the people that would make the decision. You could cut your tech department in half with 10.2...they would all lose their jobs. HEHE I figured it out!
<strong>the reason they dont move to x is simple. i actually proved the reason at my old highschool. os x is more stable and runs on bsd, right? well tools that you can use to get around set securties are also easier to access. for example, even thought we re unable to use limewire anymore in the comp lab because they blocked the ports on the firewall. we still set up a tunnel through osx and was abale to download. we also had a problem with a crashed harddrive and needed to unload 80Gb in order to save it. we got around password protections all around the network, using a few tools off the internet, it was annoyying but it worked. after we had done it, the tech dept was like well im sorry we cant get you any extra space, and we just told them thats ok we found it anyway. then she was like thats prob. why they wont let us go to os x.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's not really a problem in my school...it's fairly small, I don't know the exact number of students but it is less than 200.
Anyway, out of however many we have, very few know much at all about computers, essentially me and my friend.
<strong>Yeah... Gassée was pushing for $200M for Be, but Apple wouldn't budge (I don't remember how much they offered). Then NeXT came in, Jobs did a presentation for Amelio, and Apple paid NeXT $400M to come in and take over the place.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There's a detail that needs emphasizing here: Jobs certainly did not have much of a rep for management savvy at the time, but Gassée is the guy who tried raising Apple's prices 40% just because he thought Apple was good enough - and the user base loyal enough - to get away with it.
In other words, while Jobs was a risk, he at least had his fingers in several of Apple's most successful products, and considering what he was up against he had done quite well with NeXT (he wasn't allowed to release any products that competed with Apple's, which does tend to crimp your options). Gassée had proven that he was not the sort of captain you want at the helm when your ship's taking on water, and he really didn't bring much else to the table. Both had platforms that were good in different ways, but I think NeXTStep was the better investment, given that it traded all-out efficiency for elegance and abstraction. BeOS almost certainly would have had a better initial payoff, though.
The NeXTies are mourning the fact that EOF is shipped with WebObjects. If they had their druthers, it would be shipped with every copy of OS X. And WO would still use Objective-C.
I manage a lab of 18 machines running OSX. (oh ya I also teach Graphics, DTP, Classical Animation, and Video production / broadcast.)
6 x 333 iMacs 160meg ram- 288 meg ram
The rest have apporx 512 ram.
1 DV imac
6 G4?s (assort mhz)
3 eMacs
All are running on 0SX 10.2.2
We are on an NT service pack 6 network
We run InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and FCP in OSX
Word and other apps are in classic.
Printing to an HP5000n printer.
We have scanners, digital cameras, colour inkjet and video cameras.
Here are my experiences.
Last year we tried to go X but because anything under 10.1.5 was incompatible with a NT network. We had to abandon the effort. Apple did not help at all. Many of us were left out in the cold with only apple saying at first, ?that there was no problem? and then later saying ?we are working on it?. (this is the same problem we are experiancing with FCP currently... first dening the problem, then saying they are aware of it, with no mention of when they planto fix it) 10.1.5 came out and the networking problems mostly disappeared.. Some still exist. Especially if you use AFP and SMB on the same machines.
This year we went X in September. Networking works fine in 10.2.2 but students who do not save properly can still mess up some of their files... 10.2 is not as student proof as os9.
Printing is a nightmare!!!! It is ridiculously slow..if it even works. Printers will desappear, stop their spool or just never print. There are MANY people experiencing these problems (just look at the Apple discussion boards). I have used tried GIMP drivers, HP drives, appletalk, IP printing all with varring sucess, but there is no one solution to the mirad of problems.
Security is an issue but none of my students have figured out what they really can do to mess up the machine and the school?s network (think terminal). One of them rendered a login completely unusable I had to reboot into OS9 to fix the problem... I couldn' use root, whatever they did was also crashing the root window of their login's desktop. (Still haven?t figured out what they did???).
Scanning??? Doesn?t exist in OSX. Almost no scanner companies have written drivers for their old scanners. We still have one machine that is always in os9 so that we can scan with one of our 3 scanners (the other two sit on a shelf collecting dust)
Audio software. Currently OSX10.2 is a not so funny joke in the audio world. OS9 works much better. But hopefully Protools and Cubase will come out with X compatible software. Bias Deck is a mess. I am completely dissatisfied with it.
FCP 3.02 and quicktime 6.x are having serious crashing issues. I think I have most worked out, but you have to work around certain file types and export in certain ways not to crash. Not everything is working. (I am not the only one experiencing this , again I refer to Apple?s own discussion boards... 2-pop is also a good place to see what is going on)
All in all I love OSX, I have been using it at home since its debut.
However I do not recommend that people adopt this OS in a work situation, unless they want to spend inordinate amounts of time ?fixing? this OS to work. It does not improve the computing experiance enough to warrent the frustrations it inspires.
Despite Apples press releases, OSX in not yet ready for mass adoption. Home use yes, all work situations, not yet. Hopefully soon because I do believe in OSX?s future.
OS9 is a much better OS for most school situations. It has better driver support and has been working with networks longer and most issues are known and have fixes.
Yeah our local university just replaced a bunch of beige G3 266's with 700MHz G4 iMacs. All of them running OS X, with nary a problem. Slew of Adobe apps and other graphics apps on them...
Apparently they are better at having linear water fowl.
I am pretty lucky. The University of Minnesota is very cross-platform. Most computer labs have both Macs and PCs. Even the dumpy computer lab in my residence hall has two FP iMacs and a Quicksilver tower, all with DVD burners. One of the iMacs is running OS X, only the second OS X machine I've seen on campus (mine is the first).
I've been to three computer labs outside the one in my residence hall and generally there are about 3 Dells for every 2 Macs. Also, all the little internet kiosks scattered throughout the various buildings are bondi iMacs.
And they're not shunning the Mac platform either, the online instructions for setting up your email and the like have side-by-side directions for Windows and Mac, including OS X.
<strong>I am pretty lucky. The University of Minnesota is very cross-platform. Most computer labs have both Macs and PCs. Even the dumpy computer lab in my residence hall has two FP iMacs and a Quicksilver tower, all with DVD burners. One of the iMacs is running OS X, only the second OS X machine I've seen on campus (mine is the first).
I've been to three computer labs outside the one in my residence hall and generally there are about 3 Dells for every 2 Macs. Also, all the little internet kiosks scattered throughout the various buildings are bondi iMacs.
And they're not shunning the Mac platform either, the online instructions for setting up your email and the like have side-by-side directions for Windows and Mac, including OS X.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i think you can thank mr. alcimedes for some amount of that.
"The problem with that is that OS 9 is broke. It crashes constantly. It is also prone to viruses."
Erm...no. No, it isn't. It crashes more than X, that's tru, and when it crashes it knocks the whole system down, but 9 can be very reliable--and it certainly isn't virus-prone.
<strong>I am a student at a Big Ten University, and I have not yet seen a OS X Mac in any of the computer labs (there are dozens)... There must be SOME reason...
...but I don't know what it is...
(oh which one?... think NCSA)</strong><hr></blockquote>
The reason the labs here at my Big 10 school are not OS X is because of problems with integrating OS X with Novell and Active Directory. Someone actually got authentication to work with AD, which is the way we're going now, but the powers that be shot it down because the schema wasn't Microsoft certified. I'm sure it will work out eventually, but it's definitely been a headache.
Well... this thread started out with high schools and such who are not using OS10, so this answer relates to those, and not universities...
In those respects the upgrade path and how to advance it to include a wider audience seems to require a large amount of education from Apple for the parties involved in the computer labs.
Apple has to promote the capabilities and security settings to shool and lab administrators. Inform and educate them on the various ways of setting up the computers, notably the methods to boot all lab computers from one main computer instead of having each computer booting seperately, and the monitoring of student use.
Apple should build a collaboration forum for schools to collect and dissiminate information about the various work arounds to get hardware working which is not supported by companies or apple. (Personally, I don't believe it is Apples' responsibility to provide drivers for your ten or five year-old equipment because you won't buy new. Talk to the company)
Education services, school administrators and teachers in general have to take the time to learn and appreciate the savings in time and energy using this system will offer. Apple has to take the time and devote the energy to building and maintaining a rapport with the people who are responsible for maintaining these systems.
It's one thing to build a client base because of educational discounts. It is another to keep that base by providing solid service and instruction on how to use the machinery to the best ability.
Otherwise you will end up with schools upgrading out of your market niche because the people responsible for maintaining the network or system don't know how to use it properly.
Nosey... well thought out post. If I could add some light to a few of your points.
nosey posted
"... the methods to boot all lab computers from one main computer instead of having each computer booting seperately, and the monitoring of student use."
most schools use non-apple servers. Usually NT, or Win 2000. They will not change. They have too much invested to switch to Apple, so unless I am missing something, the features you mention are not available to the vast majority of schools. However OSX's support for active directory needs to be better sold!! (we have an NT network so it doesn't help me. (yet)) As per the security of logins and capablilies... most of the Mac lab administrators already know about this.
nosey posted
"Apple should build a collaboration forum for schools to collect and dissiminate information about the various work arounds to get hardware working which is not supported by companies or apple."
GREAT IDEA!!
nosey posted
"(Personally, I don't believe it is Apples' responsibility to provide drivers for your ten or five year-old equipment because you won't buy new. Talk to the company)"
You are right to a point. It is not Apples responsibilities, but they do need to be aware of it. Schools do not have the money to buy new. It is not going to happen unless you live in a wealthy well supported school system (very very rare!!) So we have to work with old equipement and it must work with the new system, or we will not adopt the new system. So if Apple does not lean on these third party companies, to produce drivers... then they can't expect people to change. Just won't happen. Yes I have complained to the companies about my driver issues. But i don't expect much. Macs make up such a small part of their sales, that they will first work on Windows drivers and patches before they even consider Macs. Again Apple needs to get involved if they don't want to loose market share.
nosey posted
"Education services, school administrators and teachers in general have to take the time to learn and appreciate the savings in time and energy using this system will offer. "
Just not going to happen. We are already pushed to the wall just trying to keep students in school and trying to get through the curriculm. we do not have the time to deal with this OS right now. It is not ready enough to use in wide scale applications. I am working with it to about only 50% of its capabilities and I know there is still way more to learn... but fhonestly.. I have other way more important things to deal with.
as example, I have three students that ran away from home this week, about 1/3 of my students use drugs on a daily basis, some are recovering addicts, some even have parents who are their dealers. We have a suicide watch on many students in our school two of which are in one of my classes.
Trust me when I say... dealing OS problems are so far from an important issue for me. I would much rather have an older system that works than a new system with tons of bells and whistles that is not fully working.
nosey posted
"It's one thing to build a client base because of educational discounts. It is another to keep that base by providing solid service and instruction on how to use the machinery to the best ability."
well said.
All of our IT managers in our district are NT and win 2000 trained. Not apple. most have no clue how to work with apple beyond the memos of how to get the system running sent to them from the board office.
Schools generally do not get very good IT managers anyways, their pay is no where near on par with the private sector. Those that are good quickly leave. This wil never change. School funding is getting lower not higher. The situation will only get worse. Our only saviour lately has been the huge down turn in private sector IT has allowed us to keep more competant employees. Apples system needs to work out of the box. The fact that I needed to install a GIMP print driver and run two different print drivers for the same printer just so I could print from classic, and OSX with our collection of software... is a joke. Definately not easy to set up!!! Yes this one is Apple's fault. Their documentation even states that 10.2 supports my printer... well it doesn't (fully)
In addition they claim that OS 10.2 fully connnects to Windows... so that is also a lie. It does for SMB.. but then you need to type in a string of adresses to get it to connect (definately not out of the box technology) AFP logins, log out after a period of time and hang the machine for between 5-10 minutes. You can either wait, or reboot. No force quit will save you. (this problem is only with NT not win 2000)
Nosey you have some good ideas, but in my opinion, we can not impliment what you suggest until the system works. Right now it is hobbling along.
Areas that need repair
Printing.
Networking
Audio
FCP and Quicktime
Scanning
Then we can get down to the education of how to use the system.
<strong>"The problem with that is that OS 9 is broke. It crashes constantly. It is also prone to viruses."
Erm...no. No, it isn't. It crashes more than X, that's tru, and when it crashes it knocks the whole system down, but 9 can be very reliable--and it certainly isn't virus-prone.</strong><hr></blockquote>
OS 9 crashes daily, more when you use Microsoft apps. OS 9 is reliable if you do a clean install and let it sit there.
As for being virus prone...there are plenty of viruses for 9, they just aren't common.
In those respects the upgrade path and how to advance it to include a wider audience seems to require a large amount of education from Apple for the parties involved in the computer labs.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
And this leads to a pet peeve of mine about many more vendors than Apple:
SHIP BOOKS.
Not (just) 6-page glossy leaflets with no text. A big, thorough, meaty book with a fat troubleshooting section and a comprehensive index. OS X might be easy to use much of the time, but it's still a huge, complicated system, and that matters when things don't go well.
Even a set of basic tips (lots of KPs? you might have bad RAM: try swapping the RAM modules out one at a time and restarting) would do wonders. If Apple doesn't want to go to the trouble of whipping one of these manuals up, they can ship Pogue's, or someone else's.
There is no replacement for a good book. Certainly not Apple's currently anemic online help, which also needs some serious beefing up...
And this leads to a pet peeve of mine about many more vendors than Apple:
SHIP BOOKS.</strong><hr></blockquote>
But? but all this stuff is so intuitive! It's like being a fish in water, right? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> Is printing and packing really that expensive?
Maybe they started believing the hype about the paperless society. Well, at least a few of these developers have a specific reason for not printing paper manuals -- they're the same ones who don't like shipping CDs and packing them in boxes either.
Comments
OS X has come a long way since its first release. If you compare 10.0 to 10.2 You'd think they were completely different. Sure the GUI looks similar but the performance difference is huge.\tI have to use PC's regularly and I have to say that windows XP is way behind OS 10.2. Sure, there can be no doubt that 10.2 looks a thousand times better; with XP just being a more colorful version of 2000. Have you ever tried to hook up printer sharing between two PC's ( especially if they are running different versions of windows)? I tell you it took me over two hours to figure it out and make it work right. On our macs, running 10.2, it took about 5 seconds per computer and I hadn't ever done it before in 10.2 (no kidding). Now windows 2000 is so bad that I almost shot one of the PC's running it. I tell you that damned computer would crash 8 times a day. Tried everything on it...even did a clean install but to no avail. I finally went out to buy XP, but Couldn't find the Home edition any where. I eventually bought the professional edition went back to install it, and the damned thing crashed half way through the installer. I can't take this any more!!!!!
\tYou just try using a PC with windows for any real work or play for that matter. It takes forever to do simple things. Especially with the interruptions i.e. crashes. I would refuse to use one for any real work. They SUCK!
If the Stupid schools want to use stupid PC's then f*ck them!
Ok so this wasn't really related but I was so pissed at that stupid PC I had to get it out.
I bet the real reason schools won't switch from OS 9 or windows to OS 10.2 is because there would be no need for the people that would make the decision. You could cut your tech department in half with 10.2...they would all lose their jobs. HEHE I figured it out!
[ 11-18-2002: Message edited by: Algol ]</p>
<strong>the reason they dont move to x is simple. i actually proved the reason at my old highschool. os x is more stable and runs on bsd, right? well tools that you can use to get around set securties are also easier to access. for example, even thought we re unable to use limewire anymore in the comp lab because they blocked the ports on the firewall. we still set up a tunnel through osx and was abale to download. we also had a problem with a crashed harddrive and needed to unload 80Gb in order to save it. we got around password protections all around the network, using a few tools off the internet, it was annoyying but it worked. after we had done it, the tech dept was like well im sorry we cant get you any extra space, and we just told them thats ok we found it anyway. then she was like thats prob. why they wont let us go to os x.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's not really a problem in my school...it's fairly small, I don't know the exact number of students but it is less than 200.
Anyway, out of however many we have, very few know much at all about computers, essentially me and my friend.
<strong>Yeah... Gassée was pushing for $200M for Be, but Apple wouldn't budge (I don't remember how much they offered). Then NeXT came in, Jobs did a presentation for Amelio, and Apple paid NeXT $400M to come in and take over the place.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There's a detail that needs emphasizing here: Jobs certainly did not have much of a rep for management savvy at the time, but Gassée is the guy who tried raising Apple's prices 40% just because he thought Apple was good enough - and the user base loyal enough - to get away with it.
In other words, while Jobs was a risk, he at least had his fingers in several of Apple's most successful products, and considering what he was up against he had done quite well with NeXT (he wasn't allowed to release any products that competed with Apple's, which does tend to crimp your options). Gassée had proven that he was not the sort of captain you want at the helm when your ship's taking on water, and he really didn't bring much else to the table. Both had platforms that were good in different ways, but I think NeXTStep was the better investment, given that it traded all-out efficiency for elegance and abstraction. BeOS almost certainly would have had a better initial payoff, though.
The NeXTies are mourning the fact that EOF is shipped with WebObjects. If they had their druthers, it would be shipped with every copy of OS X. And WO would still use Objective-C.
[ 11-18-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
I manage a lab of 18 machines running OSX. (oh ya I also teach Graphics, DTP, Classical Animation, and Video production / broadcast.)
6 x 333 iMacs 160meg ram- 288 meg ram
The rest have apporx 512 ram.
1 DV imac
6 G4?s (assort mhz)
3 eMacs
All are running on 0SX 10.2.2
We are on an NT service pack 6 network
We run InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and FCP in OSX
Word and other apps are in classic.
Printing to an HP5000n printer.
We have scanners, digital cameras, colour inkjet and video cameras.
Here are my experiences.
Last year we tried to go X but because anything under 10.1.5 was incompatible with a NT network. We had to abandon the effort. Apple did not help at all. Many of us were left out in the cold with only apple saying at first, ?that there was no problem? and then later saying ?we are working on it?. (this is the same problem we are experiancing with FCP currently... first dening the problem, then saying they are aware of it, with no mention of when they planto fix it) 10.1.5 came out and the networking problems mostly disappeared.. Some still exist. Especially if you use AFP and SMB on the same machines.
This year we went X in September. Networking works fine in 10.2.2 but students who do not save properly can still mess up some of their files... 10.2 is not as student proof as os9.
Printing is a nightmare!!!! It is ridiculously slow..if it even works. Printers will desappear, stop their spool or just never print. There are MANY people experiencing these problems (just look at the Apple discussion boards). I have used tried GIMP drivers, HP drives, appletalk, IP printing all with varring sucess, but there is no one solution to the mirad of problems.
Security is an issue but none of my students have figured out what they really can do to mess up the machine and the school?s network (think terminal). One of them rendered a login completely unusable I had to reboot into OS9 to fix the problem... I couldn' use root, whatever they did was also crashing the root window of their login's desktop. (Still haven?t figured out what they did???).
Scanning??? Doesn?t exist in OSX. Almost no scanner companies have written drivers for their old scanners. We still have one machine that is always in os9 so that we can scan with one of our 3 scanners (the other two sit on a shelf collecting dust)
Audio software. Currently OSX10.2 is a not so funny joke in the audio world. OS9 works much better. But hopefully Protools and Cubase will come out with X compatible software. Bias Deck is a mess. I am completely dissatisfied with it.
FCP 3.02 and quicktime 6.x are having serious crashing issues. I think I have most worked out, but you have to work around certain file types and export in certain ways not to crash. Not everything is working. (I am not the only one experiencing this , again I refer to Apple?s own discussion boards... 2-pop is also a good place to see what is going on)
All in all I love OSX, I have been using it at home since its debut.
However I do not recommend that people adopt this OS in a work situation, unless they want to spend inordinate amounts of time ?fixing? this OS to work. It does not improve the computing experiance enough to warrent the frustrations it inspires.
Despite Apples press releases, OSX in not yet ready for mass adoption. Home use yes, all work situations, not yet. Hopefully soon because I do believe in OSX?s future.
OS9 is a much better OS for most school situations. It has better driver support and has been working with networks longer and most issues are known and have fixes.
Sad.
Apparently they are better at having linear water fowl.
Too bad I'm still in HS...
I've been to three computer labs outside the one in my residence hall and generally there are about 3 Dells for every 2 Macs. Also, all the little internet kiosks scattered throughout the various buildings are bondi iMacs.
And they're not shunning the Mac platform either, the online instructions for setting up your email and the like have side-by-side directions for Windows and Mac, including OS X.
<strong>I am pretty lucky. The University of Minnesota is very cross-platform. Most computer labs have both Macs and PCs. Even the dumpy computer lab in my residence hall has two FP iMacs and a Quicksilver tower, all with DVD burners. One of the iMacs is running OS X, only the second OS X machine I've seen on campus (mine is the first).
I've been to three computer labs outside the one in my residence hall and generally there are about 3 Dells for every 2 Macs. Also, all the little internet kiosks scattered throughout the various buildings are bondi iMacs.
And they're not shunning the Mac platform either, the online instructions for setting up your email and the like have side-by-side directions for Windows and Mac, including OS X.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i think you can thank mr. alcimedes for some amount of that.
he's sysadmin @ umn, if i'm not much mistaken.
Erm...no. No, it isn't. It crashes more than X, that's tru, and when it crashes it knocks the whole system down, but 9 can be very reliable--and it certainly isn't virus-prone.
<strong>I am a student at a Big Ten University, and I have not yet seen a OS X Mac in any of the computer labs (there are dozens)... There must be SOME reason...
...but I don't know what it is...
(oh which one?... think NCSA)</strong><hr></blockquote>
The reason the labs here at my Big 10 school are not OS X is because of problems with integrating OS X with Novell and Active Directory. Someone actually got authentication to work with AD, which is the way we're going now, but the powers that be shot it down because the schema wasn't Microsoft certified. I'm sure it will work out eventually, but it's definitely been a headache.
[ 11-18-2002: Message edited by: Simple Ranger ]</p>
<a href="http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/software/wheresosx.html"; target="_blank">http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/software/wheresosx.html</a>;
In those respects the upgrade path and how to advance it to include a wider audience seems to require a large amount of education from Apple for the parties involved in the computer labs.
Apple has to promote the capabilities and security settings to shool and lab administrators. Inform and educate them on the various ways of setting up the computers, notably the methods to boot all lab computers from one main computer instead of having each computer booting seperately, and the monitoring of student use.
Apple should build a collaboration forum for schools to collect and dissiminate information about the various work arounds to get hardware working which is not supported by companies or apple. (Personally, I don't believe it is Apples' responsibility to provide drivers for your ten or five year-old equipment because you won't buy new. Talk to the company)
Education services, school administrators and teachers in general have to take the time to learn and appreciate the savings in time and energy using this system will offer. Apple has to take the time and devote the energy to building and maintaining a rapport with the people who are responsible for maintaining these systems.
It's one thing to build a client base because of educational discounts. It is another to keep that base by providing solid service and instruction on how to use the machinery to the best ability.
Otherwise you will end up with schools upgrading out of your market niche because the people responsible for maintaining the network or system don't know how to use it properly.
'nuff said. Apple... go do your homework.
nosey posted
"... the methods to boot all lab computers from one main computer instead of having each computer booting seperately, and the monitoring of student use."
most schools use non-apple servers. Usually NT, or Win 2000. They will not change. They have too much invested to switch to Apple, so unless I am missing something, the features you mention are not available to the vast majority of schools. However OSX's support for active directory needs to be better sold!! (we have an NT network so it doesn't help me. (yet)) As per the security of logins and capablilies... most of the Mac lab administrators already know about this.
nosey posted
"Apple should build a collaboration forum for schools to collect and dissiminate information about the various work arounds to get hardware working which is not supported by companies or apple."
GREAT IDEA!!
nosey posted
"(Personally, I don't believe it is Apples' responsibility to provide drivers for your ten or five year-old equipment because you won't buy new. Talk to the company)"
You are right to a point. It is not Apples responsibilities, but they do need to be aware of it. Schools do not have the money to buy new. It is not going to happen unless you live in a wealthy well supported school system (very very rare!!) So we have to work with old equipement and it must work with the new system, or we will not adopt the new system. So if Apple does not lean on these third party companies, to produce drivers... then they can't expect people to change. Just won't happen. Yes I have complained to the companies about my driver issues. But i don't expect much. Macs make up such a small part of their sales, that they will first work on Windows drivers and patches before they even consider Macs. Again Apple needs to get involved if they don't want to loose market share.
nosey posted
"Education services, school administrators and teachers in general have to take the time to learn and appreciate the savings in time and energy using this system will offer. "
Just not going to happen. We are already pushed to the wall just trying to keep students in school and trying to get through the curriculm. we do not have the time to deal with this OS right now. It is not ready enough to use in wide scale applications. I am working with it to about only 50% of its capabilities and I know there is still way more to learn... but fhonestly.. I have other way more important things to deal with.
as example, I have three students that ran away from home this week, about 1/3 of my students use drugs on a daily basis, some are recovering addicts, some even have parents who are their dealers. We have a suicide watch on many students in our school two of which are in one of my classes.
Trust me when I say... dealing OS problems are so far from an important issue for me. I would much rather have an older system that works than a new system with tons of bells and whistles that is not fully working.
nosey posted
"It's one thing to build a client base because of educational discounts. It is another to keep that base by providing solid service and instruction on how to use the machinery to the best ability."
well said.
All of our IT managers in our district are NT and win 2000 trained. Not apple. most have no clue how to work with apple beyond the memos of how to get the system running sent to them from the board office.
Schools generally do not get very good IT managers anyways, their pay is no where near on par with the private sector. Those that are good quickly leave. This wil never change. School funding is getting lower not higher. The situation will only get worse. Our only saviour lately has been the huge down turn in private sector IT has allowed us to keep more competant employees. Apples system needs to work out of the box. The fact that I needed to install a GIMP print driver and run two different print drivers for the same printer just so I could print from classic, and OSX with our collection of software... is a joke. Definately not easy to set up!!! Yes this one is Apple's fault. Their documentation even states that 10.2 supports my printer... well it doesn't (fully)
In addition they claim that OS 10.2 fully connnects to Windows... so that is also a lie. It does for SMB.. but then you need to type in a string of adresses to get it to connect (definately not out of the box technology) AFP logins, log out after a period of time and hang the machine for between 5-10 minutes. You can either wait, or reboot. No force quit will save you. (this problem is only with NT not win 2000)
Nosey you have some good ideas, but in my opinion, we can not impliment what you suggest until the system works. Right now it is hobbling along.
Areas that need repair
Printing.
Networking
Audio
FCP and Quicktime
Scanning
Then we can get down to the education of how to use the system.
<strong>"The problem with that is that OS 9 is broke. It crashes constantly. It is also prone to viruses."
Erm...no. No, it isn't. It crashes more than X, that's tru, and when it crashes it knocks the whole system down, but 9 can be very reliable--and it certainly isn't virus-prone.</strong><hr></blockquote>
OS 9 crashes daily, more when you use Microsoft apps. OS 9 is reliable if you do a clean install and let it sit there.
As for being virus prone...there are plenty of viruses for 9, they just aren't common.
Viruses for X: 0.
Crashes in over a year in X: 0.
<strong>
In those respects the upgrade path and how to advance it to include a wider audience seems to require a large amount of education from Apple for the parties involved in the computer labs.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
And this leads to a pet peeve of mine about many more vendors than Apple:
SHIP BOOKS.
Not (just) 6-page glossy leaflets with no text. A big, thorough, meaty book with a fat troubleshooting section and a comprehensive index. OS X might be easy to use much of the time, but it's still a huge, complicated system, and that matters when things don't go well.
Even a set of basic tips (lots of KPs? you might have bad RAM: try swapping the RAM modules out one at a time and restarting) would do wonders. If Apple doesn't want to go to the trouble of whipping one of these manuals up, they can ship Pogue's, or someone else's.
There is no replacement for a good book. Certainly not Apple's currently anemic online help, which also needs some serious beefing up...
If it needs to charge more to offer quality manuals, it should go right ahead. Nobody's going to notice an extra $50 anyway.
Macromedia's manuals are great. Full text and graphic books included with upgrades as well as full price versions.
<strong>
And this leads to a pet peeve of mine about many more vendors than Apple:
SHIP BOOKS.</strong><hr></blockquote>
But? but all this stuff is so intuitive! It's like being a fish in water, right? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> Is printing and packing really that expensive?
Maybe they started believing the hype about the paperless society. Well, at least a few of these developers have a specific reason for not printing paper manuals -- they're the same ones who don't like shipping CDs and packing them in boxes either.