Apple Losing Out To Microsoft and Google in US Classrooms (macrumors.com)

Apple is losing its grip on American classrooms, which technology companies have long used to hook students on their brands for life. From a report on MacRumors: According to research company Futuresource Consulting, in 2016 the number of devices in American classrooms that run iOS and macOS fell to third place behind both Google-powered laptops and Windows devices. Out of 12.6 million mobile devices shipped to primary and secondary schools in the U.S., Chromebooks accounted for 58 percent of the market, up from 50 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, school shipments of iPads and Mac laptops fell to 19 percent, from about 25 percent, over the same period, while Microsoft Windows laptops and tablets stayed relatively stable at about 22 percent.

Comments

Re:This should surprise no one.

[TWX]

The entire model from the eighties is gone.

As a child that grew up in that era, computers in schools were single-taskers. You got your boot floppy with Number Munchers or the like, put it in the computer, turned the computer on, and played the educational game. When you were done, you turned the computer off, took the floppy out, and returned it to where you got it. You couldn't really do anything else with that computer beyond what you were assigned to do.

This model even managed to perpetuate into the GUI era, the earliest Macintoshes like the Mac Plus models my school had lacked internal storage, You still had to boot up with a floppy and then could only do what you were provided with. Granted, there was that puzzle game, but it was difficult to get off-task with the use of the computer.

That started to change when internal storage became the norm, as suddenly programs were loaded that gave the student options. Then networks were introduced, and if there were network shares mapped for the student then one could access whatever was on those. Then the Internet came and now there were thousands of things that one could do, only one of which was the assigned task.

We need computers for students to be limited-purpose machines again, at least in many applications. Children usually have even more trouble than adults making good decisions, and in the case of educational computing, if the entire system can be structured to simply not make that an option then it probably should be structured that way.