How Apple Is Reclaiming The Education Market
from the that-didn't-take-long dept
Who says we never post positive stories about Apple? It was just last November when we were pointing out how Apple lost the education market. Well, here it is in July, and we have an article on how Apple reclaimed the education market. The latest numbers show they not only caught up with Dell, but went way past them in sales to schools. They did so by offering exactly what the schools wanted, which was more than just a box. They set up wireless networks using airports, and they bought a software company that specifically made software for schools and bundled that with their offering.
Comments on “How Apple Is Reclaiming The Education Market”
Macs in schools
God, I hate Macs. Why are these schools buying them? Half their students probably don’t even know their way around them well – very few percent of the general public use Macs, and for good reason. They extremely expensive and not compatable with a lot of the most desired programs and games. Ugh!
Re: Macs in schools
God, I love Macs. Why aren’t schools buying more of them? Half their students probably don’t know PCs that well – even though they own them, for no good reason. 😛
Seriously, though, I don’t hate PCs. I just like Macs better. I’m not a huge gamer, so most of my ‘desired’ programs *are* compatible. Say what you will about macs, if they were so terrible, why do so many people like them?
Re: Re: Macs in schools
Nice. 🙂 I’m just saying that let’s face it, the majority of average users don’t have Macs and don’t know how to work with them. Why do schools want to cause extra hassles in teaching the students and staff in using them when you don’t have to? Think about it, though, if students want to transfer documents, such as essays, from their home PC to their Macs in school, conflicts will arise. It’s just a huge inconvenience.
Re: Re: Re: Macs in schools
You make it sound like macs are really hard to use… (they’re not) Have you ever tried transferring a document from mac2pc2mac? It’s pretty easy. Heck, I’ve seen some office admins have a harder time transferring a PC Excel 5.0 file to another PC that had Office2000…. I think hassles and inconveniences are just part of *any* computer network. I don’t care what OS you prefer. I’m not sure using macs ADDS any _additional_ hassles.
In fact, I think the point of the article we’re commenting on is that Apple can make the computer-experience easier & more hassle-free b/c Apple controls both the hardware and software. Also, Apple does have a reputation for making things easier to learn for the uninitiated. It’s the perfect market for Apple. Apple needs to get to users before users naively buy a default PC and never experience the user-friendliness of a Mac. You seem like a person who has already been PC-initiated and unwilling to change. I’m not sure you are the typical educator/student. You’re not a complete newbie.
I never disagree with technical people that PCs are cheaper or more compatible than Macs. But for non-tech people, there are costs associated with owning a PC that Wintel hides quite well. The learning curve for Wintel is much harder than for macs (starting from zero knowledge). The maintenance costs for Wintel can be higher if you add in the time it takes to figure out the Wintel world and the joys of plug&play. If you’ve ever bought a “cheap” second-hand PC and had to replace the keyboard, you’ll know what I’m talking about…. (While mac keyboards are slightly more expensive, I’ll fork over that premium not to have to deal with PS2/serial/whatever-the-hell…)