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Microsoft And Apple Target Schools In War With Chromebook (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
"Google [is] commanding 58% of U.S. K-12 schools. Windows is in second with around 22% and the combined impact of MacOS and iOS are close behind at 19%," reports TechCrunch, citing figures from consulting firm Futuresource. But now Chromebooks are under fire from cheaper iPads and Microsoft's upcoming Windows 10 Cloud laptop with its cloud-based software. "For many schools, the dream of a one-device-per-child experience has finally been realized through a consumer technology battle waged by the biggest names in the industry... Fostering an entire generation of first-time computer users with your software and device ecosystem could mean developing lifelong loyalties, which is precisely why all this knock-down, drag-out fight won't be drawing to a close any time soon."
That raises an interesting question. Do Slashdot readers remember the computers that were used in their own high schools -- and did that instill any lifelong brand loyalty?
The girls in the seventh grade thought I came from a "poor" family because we didn't have cable to watch MTV and we didn't own an Apple ][ computer. I hated the Apple ][ with a passion. Before the Apple ][, were just kids. After the Apple ][, we were kids with socioeconomic markers. Being the proverbial fat kid in school, I had all the wrong kinds of socioeconomic markers.
We didn't have computers in our high schools.
Now get off my lawn!
#DeleteFacebook
Typing this on a RM 380Z..
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
device per child a single terminal with 10 in monitor and keyboard using "gasp" CASSETTE TAPES to store data sitting on a cart wheeled from room to room, then no, not loyalty to that brand at all. Maybe you were one of the lucky ones who had an Apple II in your school, or even more than one, again on wheeled carts that moved from classroom to classroom.
School districts are so strapped for cash now whatever is cheapest is what they get. One device per student is a nice idea, provided the business you're contracted with has a good replacement policy for stolen or damaged devices.
What Would Scooby Do?
I had three Commodore 64's from middle school through college over a ten-year period. I had a NLQ dot matrix printer with a Commodore serial interface and Centronic parallel interface that lasted another ten years after I switched from Commodore to PCs. When laser printers became affordable (~$150), I ditched the dot matrix printer.
The first computer I remember using in school was an Apple II, I think it was in fifth grade. I remember playing Lemonade Stand and Oregon Trail. When I got into high school, they had computer labs that were made up of Apple IIs, Apple IIEs and some Apple II clones. Didn't see an PCs until a few years later when I took data processing (basically dBase III) and "office procedures" classes.
My actual first introduction to computers was my uncle, who had a Commodore 64, and between playing with that and in Apple BASIC at school, I pretty much begged and pleaded with anyone would listen to get me a computer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I should be a diehard Trash 80 and apple ][ fan. Linux so don't think the plan worked.
No sir I dont like it.
and ASR33 at school.
Personal computers came after my high school days, but I do remember;
a teacher bringing in an abacus for us to use
most of the top-achieving students were pretty fast with a slide rule (still have mine somewhere....)
It was a truly digital system, 5 on the left palm and 5 on the right.
The middle digits were quite useful in many situations.
I always wanted the HP calculator that could play Missile Command. All the engineering students at the university had them, but they cost $500 each and too pricey for my modest means. I still have my HP calculator that can do Reverse Polish Notation even though I never used that feature.
My school had a room full of Commodore PETs with cassette tape drives to load space invaders from. We were also given access to the nearby university's mainframe with teletype terminals with rolls of paper. These of course printed out your username and password, which was then safely disposed of in the bin next to each terminal. That was the new mainframe. In the next room were the terminals for the punch cards for the old one. Loyalty? Not so much.......
These devices are not about learning computer science, and not so much computer skills either. They are about organizing information, research (internet), typing & submitting homework, etc. Anybody can learn how to use a mac or android or PC or chromebook.
Shouldn't we be teaching children how to critically think instead?
The political parties don't want smarter voters.
They can use inexpensive raspberry pi's for fuck sake and probably learn more.
If any device falls into the "I can't do my job or that task without this one special unique tool" category, it's the Raspberry Pi. Kids are more likely to find Macs and Windows at their future jobs.
Brand loyalty is a tricky one when all the companies that made computers when I was at school are gone. What I did learn from exposure to primitive 8 bit machines was variety and flexibility which took me into software development. Later when Macs and PCs hit schools, the level of interest kids had in programming or even understanding computers dropped so we ended up with a generation of kids who couldn't do much more than type up a letter in MS Word compared with my generation which were writing hand coded assembly and building robots. Thank goodness Linus came along with his kernel and we were able to have a real OS on cheap PC hardware and that has given me a solid career so if there's any brand loyalty it is to Linux. While I use a Mac today (best tool for the job when dealing with a mixed environment) I'm a Linux admin and programmer by profession. The fight by these companies to control the market is bad, we need a mixture and devices like the Raspberry Pi are what we should be using to get kids hooked. Typing up letters and doing spreadsheets is not computing but seems to be all the schools are prepared to teach.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
In my high school physics class, everyone was required to bring their own slide rule. I still have it. Can't say it inspired any loyalty, tho.
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
No pun intended.
Google isn't pushing the Chromebook, they're pushing Chrome and Google services -- the entire cloud experience. The Chromebook just makes it brain-dead simple for schools.
I think Google would be just as happy with Apple or Microsoft computer in there, as long as they were loaded with Chrome.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It is hard to be loyal to a brand that is gone. Our schools had one apple II in the library, and a lab full of Commodore machines. I had a trs-80 color computer, and a Sinclair zx-81 at home. I don't and won't use a apple anything, and the others are all gone. It is pretty much an intel with whatever flavor of Linux serves the purpose and my windows 10 laptop for work. They all do the tasks they are designed for.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
... and let me know how it works out for you.
I remember MS-DOS, and Windows 3.1 being the in thing when I got into computers. At my first job, MS Visual Studio was a very nice IDE.
At my first job I also learned how sticking to the ANSI-C specification helped our code run on multiple platforms. Combined with the make utility (with small variations between platforms) we got as close to producing cross-platform code as one could wish in the pre-Java days.
I guess my love for Windows waned slowly but surely after Windows NT went away. Running Linux these days. To be fair, many of the tools I use don't care about the platform (as long as there's a JRE) or have multi-platform versions.
I recently started a new job, which is still quite MS-centric. Well, it's their machines and network... But whenever I need to look for a new tool or application, whether it runs on Linux (or if really indispensable, at least on WINE) is one of my first considerations.
MS, G and A should be careful of hubris.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
This is terrible. Only free software should be used at schools.
Seriously, pencil in the cards and wait two days for a print out to see how your program ran. All that instilled in me was a hatred for off-site card based programming.
I know it is difficult to give up the educational space, but I can't see how Microsoft has a chance. Based on previous posts, I'll know I'll get hammered by Microsoft fanboys/employees (who post as AC) who feel that Win 10 is competitive against ChromeOS, but it really isn't.
ChromeOS works very well, has a good ecosystem and has many different very good, inexpensive laptop systems for schools to choose from. Apple has a reasonably good infrastructure and great, but expensive, products for it.
Microsoft, honestly I think they would be better off looking for a new market that doesn't have an established standard platform like the educational market does with ChromeOS. I don't think they can provide a compelling solution at a good cost that they don't try to monetize at every turn.
A big part of the appeal of the Chromebook (to schools) is that there isn't the feeling that for just a few dollars more, customers would get a better, safer, faster experience like Microsoft, in Windows, is always pushing for.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
We had a lot of odd minicomputers in my high school, but the one I used most in school was a Digital Equipment PDP-8. You loaded the bootstrap from a paper tape reader, and you loaded the paper tape reader program by switches on the front panel which allowed you to set memory address contents word by word and set the program counter to a particular octal address. Input/output was through a teletype that printed on a roll of paper.
I have to say that this primitive hardware was as satisfying in its way to work on as the latest core i7 laptop I'm writing this on -- despite the actual core memory's unreliability in our building which was next to a busy subway track. I suppose I did have positive feelings toward DEC, until I got to college and worked in a lab that stored its research data on RK05 disc packs.
In my experience -- which as you can probably tell is by now extensive -- there are two kinds of people, those that adapt readily to new stuff, and those who stubbornly stick with whatever they already know. And as you look at successively older cohorts, the greater the proportion of stick-what-you-knowers there will be.
So the idea that you'll imprint *kids* on your technology is dubious. Yes you will imprint them, but it won't prevent them from switching to something else.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When I got to college I was able to sneak into a lab and use an ASR33 teletype on the Telex network to remotely log on to Dartmouth to use BASIC.
At my own school it was cards in a window, come back later for the printed output. And you'd better have an account that paid for it.
Didn't really get to 'cut my hacker teeth' until my sophomore year, when some oddball ins-and-outs of contract financing left me with a student job where I had, a couple times a day, the remainder of a one-hour time slot with my work on the machine done, blocked waiting for the other department to do my output's tape-to-print, and a mainframe computer all to my self, on which I could do what I wanted while waiting for the results of the real work (or compile attempt) to be printed.
(What I did with it was talk the hardware tech into getting the paper tape I/O working, then bootstrap up a card-image editor, from scratch, on paper tape, to where it could emulate the Dartmouth BASIC environment - with Fortan on card-deck images in RAM or on a tape library - including the RUN command; Once that was working I'd get one compile/debug turnaround per three-to-five minutes, for a couple hours rather than two per day. This ended up with the lab management impressed and me reassigned to be in charge of the OS, library, and doing much of the lab's software.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
High School English teacher here. The kids use Chromebooks for the most part, but I know that some classes use Macs, there's even a Game programming class and it uses Windows. In my classroom, I have a corner where I've installed some old computers of my own, Windows and Linux. The kids use them without a second thought, I don't think they even realize what they're using is Linux. They just need to load up Google Docs or a web browser, and away they go.
This isn't the 80s where just being able to use a computer is considered kind of cool. It's assumed, and there's no reason to go into detail about it - we're not teaching the kids how to work an IT job. Certainly there's no critical thinking involved in going between Windows and Mac and Chromebook, any more than if they switch between Android and an iPhone.
Most of my school days we had Apple ][ in my classroom or computer lab since the fourth grade. It didn't matter much because no one knew how to use the stupid things and couldn't answer the simplest question, like "Where are the manuals?" for example. With the exception of one night a week after school we were also forbidden to touch them in school. I eventually got a PC at home and never looked back, so out of 7 years of K-12 access to an Apple ][, I have absolutely no brand loyalty to Apple but neither did Apple. By time I got to High School the Apple ][ was a dead product that was still being manufactured as far as I could tell. Sure it didn't officially die until the iMac but neither did the Amiga. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the theory but I would point that the cloud app eco system is going to be seen by the students as rock bottom cheap Tonka Toy computers (which they are.) If they have any interest at all they bide their time until they can get their hands on a real computer, Macs for the hipsters, PC's for the gamers, and Linux for the nerds.
want to lock you in in their software/services.
The smart thing to do would be to use open data formats so that your data is not hold ransom by one corporation. Alas, most non-techy people seem to ignore, or not care, about this.
Microsoft And Apple Target Schools More Ad Revenue In War With Chromebook
FTFY
None of them are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts.
Your sig here!
Why is that surprising?
ChromeOS is a mangled up userspace sitting on a linux kernel, and uses EXT4 as the native file system.
Of course the ext4 fs you inserted worked just fine.
It was an HP 2000 series that used punched tape. I think it was a model 2114.
Reality is Apple and Microsoft have always targeted schools , both have lost a significant share of k-12. ChromeOS model is just better for k-12 where the users work isn't connected to individual laptop, kids just destroy things just like the Chromebook commercials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As opposed to using (much more expensive) Apple or Microsoft devices to go online, where you have guaranteed privacy!
Wrong. Google Educational accounts are treated differently for privacy and security reasons because of the children. Google's GSuite is free for education institutions, but licenses for managing a MDM of Chromebooks and Android devices are not.
Apple you are looking at least $1000+ per device. Chromebooks are cheap and not expensive if they break or get broken.
I still want an 1130 with Hollerith cards and line printer...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Computers? We actually had hand cranked calculators (reallly, I'm not kidding), and there was an attempt to build a computer out of discrete components. ... tada.. an IBM 1130 with 4096 words of memory (yes, words, 16 bit words, none of these new fangled bytes for us), a card reader, and (intake of breath) a 5kb hard disc. We programmed it in Fortran, on punched cards. I eventually got it playing the worlds worst chess, and thence started my long and continuing computer career. ... pah! Spoilt, you kids were!
In my later school years, I went to a local technical college, where they had
Commodore 64
"Cats like plain crisps"
instead of locking me in to an ecosystem.
How exactly are you "locked into an ecosystem"? What does that even mean?
Nobody is stopping you from using different platforms or different applications or even saving your data locally.
I thought "I have grown quite attached to it, over the years" was particularly good. Well, ..
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My high school had Commodore PET 4032 computers and my first computer was a Commodore 64, and our school computers probably influenced my decision.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Do Slashdot readers remember the computers that were used in their own high schools -- and did that instill any lifelong brand loyalty?
With today's few wallen gardens and social networks, this more about network effects than loyalty. In the eighties, most computer brands were incompatible with each others, but they were not the key to online social life.
My high school combined with 36 other schools to time share a PDP8-E. Connection was via an unbelievably fast hard-wired 110 baud data line. We had one online TTY model 33 and one offline 33. You wrote your programs on the offline 33 by directly punching them to paper tape, backspaces corrections and all, then loaded them on the online 33 when you have your turn. Once you were done editing and debugging the program you once again punched it out of paper tape.
How do I have brand loyalty for DEC and Teletype in this day and age?
I don't see it becoming a loyalty to the Operating System (OS)
It's going to be more about the Office Suite and other tools used in school.
For many, MS Office was introduced in school. Decision makers chose it for the their offices. It is that brand loyalty that has stuck until today. Now the younger generation are using Google Docs on Chromebooks as well as other available editing tools often outside of what we have come to know as the common suites. As soon as someone says, "Hey, I don't need the Photo Suite on a Mac, the one in xxx is good enough." Apple and Microsoft know they are in trouble.
Chromebooks do a beautiful job of making those tools easy to use and in general life easy. The other vendors know that as well for their "key" suites. But what they are all ignoring is the near zero maintenance of the Chrome OS. Suddenly, the school can live on one IT person or possibly even less to support the student population. That is huge in itself.
It is the tool loyalty, not the OS.
Times have changed. People want to do tasks now. They don't give a shit what platform it happens to be using.
Web browsing, email, composing school or work documents, even editing pictures are all platform-agnostic.
Apple and Microsoft inevitably bring their own product ideas to these tasks when it's just not needed. Maybe 20 years ago, yes. But not any more. And Chromebooks get it. The thing only does a few tasks, but they happen to be what 99% of people need. And they do it cheaply and with relative security and safety.
Windows is too busy trying to be all things to all uses and charges a cost in terms of buying a license and also in the increased hardware you need to run to make it a non-miserable experience, because Windows is not a lean OS. It's full of bloat so some version of some product from 10 years ago will still work.
Apple is scarcely better. The iPad is good but still carries with it all the baggage of being an iOS device. And iPads demand a premium price.
So if a cheap Chromebook will do what you need, or you can give it to grandma and not have to worry about ever supporting it or trying to remove viruses from it, you would almost be an idiot to buy a full computer solution. This means the whole foundation of Windows and even the product name are basically obsolete.
I get why they would fight this trend but NOBODY Is going back to the old days. More and more tasks will migrate to phone apps and in turn become simple enough to do on a Chromebook-type device.
Sig for hire.
I started on Apple 2's in elementary school and then my dad got a Windows 3.1 computer at home which I used for about the same amount of time year over year. The only thing I did on either machine was play games, some of which had educational merit. The first time I used a computer for educational purposes was in middle school and those were Windows 95. In HS we only had Windows 98 machines. In college we used Ubuntu or Redhat linux exclusively, so I switched to using it on my own computers except when I played video games and even then I tried hard to use Wine but abandoned it eventually. Professionally I've only used Windows machines, sometimes interacting with Linux servers.
So, my story is that I have no brand loyalty but I use Windows because it's less of a hassle for every day use than Linux (found this out in college) and cheaper than Mac. I also think giving kids ChromeOS is not wise because no professional work environment is going to use ChromeOS; so they're training kids on an OS of limited usefulness in the workforce and college.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
I should add that I do remember some class had a Radio Shack Model I (or maybe it was a Model II or III, they were hard to tell the difference), but I never used it. I do remember watching someone play Trek on it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
My high school had a Honeywell mainframe. (1970s)
I learned to program Apple Basic on an Apple IIe when I was in the 6th grade. My family's first computer was the 128 Mac. We had no brand loyalty -- my father simply recognized it was a paradigm shift and he didn't want his kids to be left behind. So my senior year of high school, I programmed Apple Basic in class and typed up papers in MacWrite. In college I was exposed to NeXT, Sun Solaris, and DOS, and became manager of a Mac/PC computer lab. Our Dells and Compaqs were complete pieces of shit compared to my dad's Mac IIcx and the IIci lab at school. I recognized that these are all simply tools, and they'll change over time.
I'm typing this from an i7 MacBook Pro running Sierra while my Samsung i5 Windows 10 laptop, iPhone, and iPad sleep.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
TRS-80's, where I first learned programming. I built a cheap-ass & slow Space Invaders clone.
Table-ized A.I.
Kinda, Windows 10 seems to be switching from a lan domain to a microsoft based one with windows10 you can login with myname@outlook.com instead of the local domain on other systems.
Google kind of does the same once you're in chrome just login with your account and all your settings and applications come with you.
Apple not so much although your app store account will let you bring your software to other macs.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Most of the machines I used in my youth are relegated to the trash heap of computer history.
My first home computer was a Commodore VIC-20, followed by a C64, a C128, and brief flirtation with an Adam, then an Amiga. Eventually I went to Windows 95. Now I use a Mac.
In high school we used TRS-80's. I was already a seasoned BASIC programmer by that time, and the teacher let me do whatever I wanted.
Brand loyalty? That's funny...
We had DOS at my high school. Upon joining college I was introduced to C-shell on a UNIX terminal. For many years to come I could not comprehend how did the invisible hand of the market could fail us so badly, with the shitty and crashy OS being the monopoly.
No malware, easy to use. Generic browser interface. They're cheap and reliable ideal for computers.
Apple are overpriced, have a User Interface almost no-one will use once they hit the corporate environment, people may have them for their home PCs, but few at work. They do have the advantage of fewer viruses. (yeah, I know if you're doing art stuff, and wearing sunglasses indoors, you may use a Mac in your office- but I'm talking about the majority of people).
Microsoft products would be a midlevel price and a User Interface worth learning from the standpoint, they will probably be using MS for most of their careers. The problem is, Microsoft gets expensive with maintenance and preventing the kids doing stupid things and downloading viruses.
For kids and schools, Chromebook just make way more sense.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
When I was in high school, just before being thrown out of math class, the teacher brought in a calculator. It was about the size of an electric typewriter and was programmable (!) by using punched cards. I don't remember the brand. My first contact with computers was the ZX Spectrum my sister in law sold. I became an Apple salesman in the late '80s and my home computer was an Atari 520Stf.
I am not brand loyal, I am function loyal - I always choose the best tool for the job at hand. Since about 1997 that has been a custom assembled Linux desktop running a Redhat variant (latest stable Fedora ATM). There was also a PowerMac G3 B&W in my life which was running MacOS as soon as it became available from the public beta on up to the latest version we could install.
Since the early 2000s my hardware has been a mini-itx board in a hush case (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article123-page1.html). IIRC I am at the third MB in that case. I have a 2013 nexus 7 tablet and another cheap android device that could be used as a phone, if I ever needed such a thing, but which also functions as a wi-fi tablet. I would love to have an iPad or iMac but can't justify the expense.
realkiwi
I graduated in '60's. The only computer we had in HS were Slide Rules.
You're seriously *forcing* kids to create profiles and give their most personal information to an advertising and data mining company.
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade .