Macbooks Are Essential For Education
Today, I ran across a disturbing piece of news.
A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer to prepare kids for a high-tech future. Source
Horrible news, right? Oh wait, that's the good part. All students should have a computer, and for school a laptop can be great. The article goes on to say:
The money for the $900 Apple MacBooks will come out of parents' pockets.
Oh, the humanity! Oh wait, families unable to pay will receive aid, and the option to pay $20 per month instead of the $900 lump sum. If you look through the comments of the article, you will see people even complaining about the $20/month. Though, some latched on to another issue. The computer has to be a Mac, and if the students have another computer other than a Mac, they will have to buy the Mac regardless.
"We have one platform," Hayes said. "And that's going to be the Mac."
Macs, and Macs only! Macs clearly have features that are absolutely vital to the educational environment and that will prepare students for the "high-tech future" much better than any PC (Windows or Linux based).
So, what would students use these shiny Macbooks for? Well, firstly, and probably most importantly, communication. Here's a bunch of things they will probably use for that.
Hmm, but those aren't Mac apps... What about this?
It's the Mac Mail app, if you're not one of the 11.83% of my readers who use a Mac.
Oh yeah, the students will be all over that. Let's see, they'll want to write their assignments up on their shiny new computers. They will use the best software available for the task, specially made for their Macs. You know, software that won't run on any other, cheaper computer.
Psst, don't tell anyone that they're actually the same thing as these same programs on Windows. Maybe they won't notice.
And heaven forbid they realize that they can get much of the same stuff for free with one of these.
And actually a bit more with Google Docs, since you can do collaborative editing -- a feature that made it essential for all group projects at my high school. That, along with a web-based class management system, would be really sweet. The students could access it with the best browser of them all, offered by Apple! Because it wouldn't work in any other browser.
OK, that's it. The sarcasm is killing me.
As I see it, and as I have shown above, none of the needed software on a student computer is operating system dependent, much less architecture dependent. So why doesn't that school district get more cost-effective, more portable, and equally functional netbooks for its students?
Beats me.
And this is why school 'administrators' with very little tech knowledge should not the ones to implement blanket policies like this...
macs are amazing, Filip. Geez. Leopard is the most stable and perfect operating system ever...the macs are very cost effective and pretty too :D. I don't see what the problem is
One of those kids should walk into school on the first day of class with an ibm thinkpad running FreeBSD. How apple screwed up FreeBSD so bad to make OSX so insecure and easily hackable is beyond me. Sometimes a BSD license is a very good thing, and sometimes it results in proprietary, locked-in abominations.
One this that consistently disappoints me about your blog is that your primary driving point tends to be that you don't like to spend money. You are too stingy to even _consider_ paid software... and that led to the driving need for FOSS.
I'm not saying that I agree with this school, but with the points you use against it.
OpenOffice and GoogleDocs cannot hold a candle to the power of Office or iWork. Basic functionality is there, yes, but the level of integration of the program into the OS and the interface are appalling.
You called Netbooks "equally functional" to full laptops. That's a disgusting comparison. Netbooks are too small to do anything other than quick internet browsing or watch a movie by yourself. The keyboard is too small to type a report, the video output can't drive a respectable external screen, and you're stuck huddling 15 inches away from it in order to see what you're doing.
--Another Ex-TJ student
You misunderstand. I do not mind paying for something if it is worth the money. I have used OpenOffice.org and Google Docs throughout my high school and the start of my college career, even when I was told that MS Office was "absolutely necessary" and did not lack any features. The "integration into the OS" that is some sleek shiny orb in the top left of the window is not enough to make me pay the obnoxious price for it, if it has no features that a free option does not provide me with.
The point of this post is that neither the OS X operating system, or the Mac platform, or an expensive office suite are required for an education-oriented portable workstation. They can be nice, depending on the preferences of the user, but they should not be mandatory.
Plus, I called a netbook equally-functional to a full-sized laptop for educational purposes. I don't know what experience you have had with a netbook, but mine can be found here. I use that netbook as my main computer for most things. The only things it can't do are 1080p video, and games. For that I have a desktop. But those two things aren't exactly required for an educational machine now, are they?
Just because a top of the line Alienware is excellent at being a school machine, does not mean everyone should have one. Why not go with the cheapest solution that works?
Oh, and to preempt a "but Linux/Openoffice are not ubiquitous enough to warrant being sponsored by schools": a) neither is OS X and b) a netbook with Windows 7 Starter and MS Office Student on a schoolwide license would still be much cheaper than those Macbooks, and would be a more "standard" and future-useful experience for the students.
Even if they can't watch the latest Futurama in 1080p while the teacher is lecturing.
Even if a netbook -is- too small for a given user (though not everyone has trouble typing on them...)
You can get a smallish laptop with pretty much anything you need for $500-600 which would eliminate all of your complaints and still be cheaper.
I don't think he's arguing that students shouldn't be able to use what they want. His point is that paying extra for a macbook is a decision based on personal preference. It doesn't have any extra functionality, especially not any needed for a high school student.
As he said above, it's like forcing students to buy an Alienware laptop just in case they want to play videogames with their laptop instead. It's nonsensical.
You have some points about OpenOffice and Google Docs. But if a student wants to use them instead of Microsoft Office, why shouldn't they?
My guess is that the school official is just a dumb Apple fanboy.
.....FAILFAILFAIL. *sad*