macxpress

sflocal said:

Sad, but the reality is that most schools will use what is the cheapest, not the best.  My nephews use Chromebooks in school and it just pains me to see the frustrations in their faces when those cheap pieces of junk act up.  

Yes I provide tech support for a school district and they see a ChromeBook for $200 and get a bunch of them and we can then just use Google Classroom. I'm not sold on these devices...its a device that does one thing and pretty much one thing only. For Windows PC's, we can get HP Streams for just a little over $250 and they work well for basic things which is all a student needs. Apple provides nothing in this pricing tier...not even close! You can get a crappy 11" MacBook Air for $849 (edu pricing) and thats as low as you can get for a Mac laptop and thats not even a great laptop. For desktops you can get a Dell 5040 for $499 with pretty good specs and they're a small form factor...Apple doesn't really compete in this space either. Sure, you can get a Mac mini, but not with those same specs for $499. It would end up being around $799-899/Mac and then you still need a display, keyboard, and mouse. You'd be better off getting iMacs in the end.

On the other hand you're stuck spending $500 for an iPad and then you should also get 3yrs of AppleCare+, a good case and keyboard. I've mentioned this many times in other threads but Apple seriously needs to include the smart connector into ALL of its iPad lineup. One of the biggest downfalls of an iPad is the lack of a good keyboard that isn't bluetooth. The bluetooth keyboards function fine as keyboards but the batteries are constantly dead and charging them is an absolutely pain in the ass when you have a cart full of iPads. Its hard enough to get users to charge the iPads let alone a separate keyboard that uses a different connection than lighting to charge.

Macs are just expensive for schools. We have about 100 Macs in our district and students love using them, but they're expensive up front. They are however extremely easy to manage, especially if you have a management suite such as JAMF Pro (aka Casper MDM). For that matter, iPads are also easily managed with JAMF Pro (Casper MDM). We very rarely have issues with our Macs...PC's on the other hand can have its own set of issues.

In the end, schools are trying to save money and they can get this device for $200 and also have a pretty much free Classroom suite (Google Classroom) to go along with them. Apple on the other hand has absolutely nothing for the classroom. They depend on apps for iPads and Macs. That means there's a cost and it can be a significant cost if you have thousands of Apple devices. Apple does have Apple Classroom, but that doesn't do anything compared to Google Classroom or Office 365, both of which have classroom specific apps in their suite. iCloud does nothing for schools as far as classroom stuff goes.

Maybe in the consumer world Apple can successfully play with the upper pricing tier, but its not working as much anymore in the K-12 market, perhaps even Higher-Ed.

harry wild said:

meh, announcement!  I am guessing with same 2GB LPDDR3 too!  LOL!  You get exactly what you pay for with this educational version.

Boy you just like to piss all over everything Apple does huh? Well since its using the A10 Fusion it has 3GB LPDDR4 RAM. Its actually quite an iPad for the price. Too bad all you want to do is complain. In the end, who really gives a shit what type of RAM it is and how much? If you want to create a pissing contest with specs that are meaningless, then go buy an Android device that has more and does less. 

qwwera said:

There is no need for schools as underfunded as they are to use Apple products. Much too expensive for a product that is moving at such a quick pace. And much too expensive in how brutal a classroom will be towards them. And no way for a overtaxed teacher to fiddle with since there is no way to easily configure a classroom of iOS devices remotely. 

Ios as it is today is not classroom friendly on the OS side or the cost side. 
This coming from an education side and with friends on the inside as well. Chrome books are the best solution for that classroom. This is an unbiased response. Just the sobering truth.

With proper management tools, you can configure and manage iOS devices (and Macs) remotely very easily. Its called an MDM (Mobile Device Management) solution. We use Jamf Pro to manage our iPads (and our Macs) and its great. I can have all the management setup before the iPads even get at our door so when we take them out of the box we could literally just hand them out and after connecting them to wifi, they set themselves up automatically along with pushing any necessary apps, web clips, setting up folder layouts, restricting what apps they can use (include the App/iTunes Store), etc, etc. Yes, its a pain in the butt managing them individually, or using Apple Configurator...its very easy to manage them using an MDM and a good MDM. 

You can also use a management system provided to Google to manage ChromeBooks and you can use SCCM to manage Windows devices. All platforms have a management solution. Some work better than others and some are restricted by what the device can or can't do. 

I bought an eGPU for my 2018 Mac mini. I have a Razer Core X with a Vega 56 graphics card. About $630 total for everything. It works natively with both macOS and Windows (Bootcamp). It was fully plug n' play and I'm very happy with it. I game with it in Windows (and sometimes in macOS) and it performs quite well. 

Yes, don't use an iPhone, use an insecure Android device to match our FaceBook service. 

Oh the hackintosh and Windows fanboys are all over this new iMac Pro and how they can supposedly make their own cheaper. Of course, its not a true comparison when they quote Kingston Value RAM, a standard SATA SSD, and a no so great 4K display. They also think this iMac is going to melt down once you get that 18-core Xeon with the high end AMD Vega card going at full steam for any length of time like Apple isn't testing for such a thing. Apple is not going to purposely release something like this knowing its going to overheat and not be very efficient. Its quite obvious they built a specialized cooling system for this iMac Pro. 

As expensive as this is, its an excellent value for those who really need something like this. I've always found that Apple's really high end stuff is actually a great value. So while people like to complain about the supposed "Apple Tax" on regular consumer Macs, the high end products are a great value a large majority of the time. 

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

If what you say is true and the Mac Pro is the perfect combination of engineering and long term business strategy, why does it not have the option of NVIDIA GPUs? For ray tracing, AI and general purpose computing, NVIDA has far better performance at the high end than AMD. Why would Apple not want to offer the very best GPUs in a $25k workstation? The only straight faced answer to this question is that Apple management had a falling out with NVIDIA after some GPUs overheated in MacBooks years ago. Doesn't that seem a bit petty to you?

Maybe you should ask NVIDIA why it's not on Apple's platform, not Apple. Last I knew, NVIDIA didn't support Metal and doesn't really have any plans to do so. If NVIDIA isn't gonna support Metal, then there's no sense in even trying since Apple has deprecated OpenGL in macOS. Please correct me if I'm wrong though. 

IMO, I think it was silly to drop the HomePod and just focus on the $50 speaker market with a $99 speaker. Why can't Apple do both? The regular HomePod was just way too expensive. I own 2 and I only purchased them because I got them on sale for $199 both times. I think they work great, but they're just too expensive. Apple can't always get away with its pricing schemes in every market they try to enter. 

The EU might as well just be Apple's new design/engineering team. They're doing a great job at stifling innovation by mandating ports and speeds....let's not stop there! What's next, Apple has to make every new iPhone with a minimum 50MP camera? Or, perhaps they will mandate that all new iPhones must be able to run both Android and iOS? 

slurpy said:

nunzy said:

This sounds like something Android would do. Apple has too much class.

I don't see what the hell lack of class has to do with color options. Nothing wrong with colors, as long as they look nice. 

I agree and I'm kinda sick and tired of everything Apple releases coming in silver, space gray, gold, and rose gold. I have long wanted an anodized colored aluminum iPhone like Apple did with the iPod Touch. The Red iPhone 8 looks amazing IMO. If Apple can do this with the next iPhone, I think it would work well for them. 

As much as some people didn't like the iPhone 5c, I actually really liked it. I think it served its purpose very well for Apple during that time. Making it colored aluminum which Apple has lots of experience in could make it even better as I don't think it would be perceived as "cheap" looking like some said the iPhone 5c was.