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Jaguar Free for K-12 Teachers
Hugh writes "It seems Apple is giving away for free its newest revision of Mac OS X, version 10.2 (Jaguar), to every K-12 teacher in the U.S."
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Apple doesn't have forty billion in the bank. And MS isn't trying to sell hardware in addition to software.
~Idarubicin
Brings whole new meaning to giving the teacher an apple.
I'll take one.
What? You doubt that I am a teacher? Well, come here and I'll teach you a lesson or two.
The best part of the giveaway is that Apple is finally handing out some training software (for what it's worth -- totally sight unseen) for OS X. Having just dealt with transferring my mother and several friends from the old Mac OS to OS X, I can safely say that some training and support will be _VERY_ welcome.
Linux has been doing this since its inception.
I always love these descriptions. Define "teacher." I work at a residential high school as a resident counselor. True, the name "teacher" is not in my title. However, my job description (as written by the state of Illinois) involves teaching students.
Border's refuses to give me a discount on books (even when purchased for programs with students) because they claim (at least my local Border's) that the discount only applies to people that work in a classroom.
I work with very technology-aware students (I work at a the Illinois Math and Science Academy) and, as a big geek, I am often discussing tech issues and comparing computers with students.
(An upcoming program I am putting together will discuss recent copyright debates that are ongoing, for example).
I think that Apple would want nothing more than for me to have a copy of Jaguar to show off to the students.
And Apple might very well send me a copy of Jaguar, who knows...
Of course, being the good little geek, I pre-purchased an educational-discounted copy and got it before it was available retail. That was $75 out of my pocket that I am guessing Apple is not going to reimburse.
I have to wonder how many teachers have already purchased Jaguar.
I might take them up on the offer and give one of the copies to a student.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Yes, Apple may have an agenda but the bottom line is schools are getting free shwag. It's always good to see and I wish more companies would follow suit both in and outside the tech industry. It's also good to see that kids will get more of an opportunity to be exposed to more than just Windows.
The bigger problem is having school districts reponsibly spend the extra money they will save.
1) Teachers are already eligible for discounted hardware (just like almost any major computer company, Apple has educational discounts).
2) Most of this is going to be for the teachers that have an original iMac sitting in their classroom (or their house) that is still running MacOS 9.1 (or even 8.6) on it. No, this will not bring in new users directly, but an argument could be made "Well, if we buy new Macs, Apple might keep us with up-to-date operating system upgrades for free in the future."
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
There is a magic concept at work here: CONTEXT
What makes an action by MS reprehensible or not, is not the actual sequence of events, but the context in which they occur. This is in fact, the determining factor about anti-trust law. A legitimate form of promotion by one entity becomes a prohibited leverage of dominance in the market by a monopoly player.
MS has been determined - in unquestionable legal language - to be a Monopoly player.
Now, make your crack - is MS the Shoe, Top Hat or the Scottie Dog...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This isn't the worst of it.
Occasionally, I substitute teach, so I don't think I'm qualified for Apple's give-away, so.
But, from what I've seen, the worse of this advertising stuff is the Channel 1 network.
In exchange for free TVs in every room (and the cable infrastructior [sp] along with it), the school agrees to broadcast this news program into the school rooms.
The actual content of the Channnel one network is supposedly news, but it's biased, heavily, but I suppose that it's hard to keep bias out of news. I mean, just by choosing which stories to cover you've got bias.
CNN's Anderson Cooper and MTV's Serena Alschule (however you spell it) got their start at channel one. It also allowed for a lot of schools to have the means to make their own news shows, some of which were basically some kid reading in monotone the events of the day and the sports scores, along with the cheesy Video Toaster graphics.
But they (Channel 1) pay for it by showing about 4 segments of 4 ads in about 15 minutes to a very specific and very captive audience.
But I remember this stuff back when I was in school. I remember that they had thousands of ads that students were forced to watch, mostly involving OXY cleansers and Pepsi.
Vaguely depressing, because they had the demographic they wanted and the kids had to watch, sometimes there were quizzes based on the content of the show. (Of course, depending how the student cared about his/her grade.)
There's your advertising in schools for you.
At least my school had a pepsi and a coke machine, for choice, you know. They turned them off before first hour started, though my experiences show that the availability has little effect on the students themselves in the classroom. It's more likely the location and the towns' economic situation.
To try and push this into vaguely on topic-ness, I haven't seen an Apple (other than a few Apple IIs [even still]) in a school I've taught at or attended since my college's graphic design lab.
Dan
I got WinXP, Frontpage, OfficeXP, and Visual Studio from MS for being a college student, why didn't we hear about this?
they are embarrassed to admit it.
photosMy Photostream
I did this for my mom about 10 minutes after Apple made the announcement. I felt authorized, given that I'm her sysadmin.
h ers/i ndex2.html
/.?
Go to:
http://www.apple.com/education/macosxforteac
fill in the zip code of the school of your favorite teacher, and then enter their name and email. OSX will be sent to them. Takes 90 seconds.
P.S. This was announced days ago. What took it so long to make
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
isn't giving away a product for below the price you'd normally charge (except in special circumstances) market dumping, and as such illegal?
IANAL either, but no, giving something away is not illegal in general, although it can be under specific circumstances. Donations to schools are, I believe, generally covered under "charity", and far from being illegal, probably even qualify for a tax write-off.
From what I recall, it wasn't the integration of IE with Windows that landed Microsoft in court originally, it was their practice of giving it away for free in order to get an advantage over Netscape.
MS was violating the terms of their earlier consent decree, where they had agreed not to try to put potential competitors out of business by bundling new stuff with the OS. Remember, the rules are different for a monopoly, and even more different for a monopoly that repeatedly violates anti-trust laws.
I'm no fan of Apple, I wouldn't switch on a bet, and if you gave me a Mac, I'd wipe off that OS/X junk and install Debian in a heartbeat, but Apple is clearly doing nothing wrong here.
I see this move as apple trying to convince those educators who bought an apple under OS9 or OSX / 9 to upgrade so that the students coming out of the schools are tutored in OSX helping to foster the OS.
I do security
...Bentley is offering all K-12 teachers free 19" 5-spoke split-rim titanium bolted alloy wheels with and Pirelli P-Zero tires with the purchase of any Bentley Arnage T!
Apple's not forcing this stuff down anyone's
throat. I agree with you that people who run
schools should weigh the costs and the benefits.
But that's their responsibility, not Apple's.
I think it's pretty clear that this is meant to
boost OS X at the expense of OS 9. I don't see
why that would put a bad taste in your mouth.
If you're just saying that this shouldn't be
viewed as philanthropic, then I agree wholeheartedly.
If I ran the IRS, Apple would be allowed to write
off the cost of the materials, but not the retail
value of the software.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Seems to me that the only time that such action on Microsoft's part really brought about a major outcry was when they offered to do such as penalty/in settlement for what the government and many /.'ers deemed monopolistic practices. Now that is a completely different situation than the one that is currently at hand with Apple.
Apple is not offering to give away their software and a bunch of hardware because they've had charges of unfair trade practices leveled against them. Apple is clearly trying to win the hearts, minds and screens of teachers, and thus students, but how is that different from anything that any marketing ploy ever does?
So in a way, you are right, there is a similar motivation between what Microsoft offered to do and what Apple is doing but the reason that your point doesn't stand up, in my opinion, is that the context of their actions is different. Apple is doing it simply as a marketing scheme, Microsoft did it as an attempt to get away without any stronger penalty for the charges brought against them. Therefore, in light of the dramatically dfferent contexts of the two cases, it seems to me that the differential reaction by the /. masses is completely understandable and justified.
-tcp
Can any teacher get this upgrade or must they actually own a Mac? Becuase think about it this way, a school employs 80 teachers and most likely doesn't have 80 Macs but doesn't want to buy 30 copies for their lab. If all 80 teachers get a copy then the School now has 80 liscenses of Jaguar. Upgrading the lab is no longer a problem.
G3's and OS X is a pretty bad mix... It's like windows 98 of a pentium 100 mhz machine...
Hardly.
I've been running Mac OS X since beta on my six year old Beige G3/300 which has 256MB RAM and was running off the original ixMicro 3D video card. Once I hit 10.1.5 things ran quite smoothly, although things will slow down if I'm playing MP3s over NFS. (My 10/100 NIC and SCSI hard disk are both sitting on the PCI bus, along with the video card.) I was able to run dual monitors one off the Rage II and the other off the ixMicro just fine.
I recently upgraded to a RADEON 7000 PCI so I get better dual monitor support and can play some 3D games at low resolution.
This is my primary workstation and I am often running ~10 applications including Photoshop, OmniWeb, iChat, Mail, iCal, iTunes, BBEdit, XFree86, Terminal, etc. Things work wonderfully.
Don't be an idiot. You can use your Crucial RAM
and generic LCD screen with a Mac. I just bought
256 MB of RAM for an old iMac for the princely
sum of $42 -- from Crucial.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
That's twice as good in most categories compared to the Imac (right down the number of mouse buttons).
[Insert standard "Mhz Myth" argument here]
[Insert standard "One Button Like God Intended" rant here]
Also, you forgot to factor in the labor involved in building and troubleshooting the computer. Most teachers would have to hire somebody to do this. Since this is a one-off build (I know if you're making dozens of the same computer you can do it faster, since you only need to troubleshoot once), assume four hours at $25/hour to build and troubleshoot. Since most teachers add Windows XP Home for $186.99, and Office XP Standard for $416.99, and you're looking at a total of $1,508.96 for your system.
Anyway, you're missing my point. My point is not that low end Macs are a better deal than low end PCs (they probably aren't). My point is that there are low end Macs which are affordable on a teacher's salary.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
OS X "Jaguwire" requires a 3d video card with T&L engine (ie, Nvidia geforce1 or ATI radeon +)
Then how come I'm writing this on 10.2 with an ATI 128?
I'm a high school senior right now. Being a geek, I help out a lot with our school's highly overworked IT people. I've seen a large resistance throughout the district to change over to OS X. These people don't like change. Change requires retraining teachers and changing infrastructure. Its a great effort just to teach most teachers how to check their email. Now when we change to OS X, a lot of things are going to be done differently. Apple has probably seen this resistance in action. Apple has shown they want to completely get rid of classic as soon as possible. To smooth this transistion it makes sense for them to give it away along with training materials. It will also help cash strapped districts create a homogenous OS enviroment. OS X runs a little slow on older g3s, but it runs it fast enough for most educational purposes. This is a sound business and PR move for apple in my opinion.