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Google Unveils Acer's Chromebook Tab 10 Ahead of Apple's Education-Focused Event Tomorrow (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Maybe Acer knows what Apple is up to tomorrow, maybe not. Regardless the information and communication tech company announced today the world's first Chrome OS tablet made for the education market, the Chromebook Tab 10. Designed for use in K-12 classrooms, the 9.7-inch tablet could potentially add to Google's Chromebook lead in the US education market and take some of the wind out of Apple's education-focused press conference on March 27. [...] Acer's new tablet, which will sell for $329 in April, is built around a 2048x1536-resolution IPS touchscreen with 264 pixels per inch. A durable Wacom EMR stylus comes standard and stores in the tablet's chassis that's only 0.39-inch thick (9.98 mm). Running on a Rockchip OP1 processor, 4GB of memory and 32GB of storage, the Tab 10 fully supports Google Play giving schools access to educational Android apps.
Most likely reason is that it's more expensive to maintain two different SKUs/product lines than just to pay for the extra cameras. Same reason why older laptops used to be sold without ethernet... except the electronics were all there, just covered by plastic.
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I remember when it was received wisdom that one of the only two markets where Apple fought tooth and nail for was education. Now it seems more like Apple says if they can't give students a tablet, they'd rather cede the market. To them, if it's not a super profitable market, fuck it.
Here's why that's wrong...
At Apple's valuation, they could easily slice and dice the market to build a solid moat to protect their high end.
1. MacBook: $500-$1000. Simple, crappy specs, but solid design aimed at lower income people and students to suck them into the "Apple Lifestyle" as best as you can.
2. MacBook Air: $1000-$2000; ultra mobility laptop.
3. MacBook Pro: Desktop replacement; $2000-$5000 price tag.
The irony? My company wouldn't think twice about dropping $3500-$4000 on a desktop replacement w/ 32-64GB of RAM and rock solid design. Apple could segment the market even higher if they had the vision.
You mean Ubuntu or Mint, so it's not tied to any of the Big Pigs of tech?
That said the cost is not going to be a big deal. it is durability. On reason tablets are so popular is that they are relatively tougher than laptops. If nothing else, the reluctant student is mot going to be able to tear up the keyboard. Any damage on a tablet is intentional.
The second issue is tool to manage the devices. MS is a winner in schools now because they have leveraged their corporate management tools to the classroom. iPads are a winner in the classroom because there are tools to manage them in the classroom.
That said, winning the tablet market is going to require something lower than $300. This is around what laptops costs in the quantities school district buy. But tablets have yet to catch on because they are not yet as usefu, and even $330 retail still quite expensive.
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From my experience. almost no school uses Mac's. iPads have pretty much supplanted them. Chromebooks and ChromeBases are supplanting the Windows PC's since almost every K-12 app is web based anymore, and no IT dept wants to deal with Windows roll-outs and malware anymore.
For a brief time, I worked for a K-12 school with iPads and chromebooks. The biggest issue Apple needs to address is managing them. Chromebooks are pretty much "Get on WiFi, register, and manage through the web console". iPads are "Pray the third party management software works right this time or you're going to be entering iTunes passwords 3 times on 300+ iPads."
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Can I install Windows 10 and actually turn it into something useful that's not tied to Google?
Like a door-stop ?