Slashdot Mirror
Apple Announces New $299 iPad With Pencil Support For Schools (theverge.com)
At its education event in Chicago today, Apple introduced a refreshed 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support. "The updated iPad will be available in Apple stores today, in silver, space gray, and a new gold finish," reports The Verge. "The tablet will include Touch ID, an HD FaceTime camera, 10 hours of battery life, an 8-megapixel rear camera, LTE option, and Apple's A10 Fusion chip." From the report: Apple previously lowered the price of its 9.7-inch iPad last year, with a base model starting at $329, but today it's going a step further for students. Apple is offering the new iPad to schools priced at $299 and to consumers for $329. The optional Apple Pencil will be priced at $89 for schools and the regular $99 price for consumers. This is obviously not the $259 budget iPad pricing that was rumored, but it does make it a little more affordable to students and teachers. This new iPad will be a key addition to Apple's lineup as it seeks to fight back against Google's Chromebooks. Apple's iPads and Mac laptops reigned supreme in U.S. classrooms only five years ago, accounting for half of all mobile devices shipped to schools in 2013. Apple has now slipped behind both Google and Microsoft in U.S. schools, and Chromebooks are dominating classrooms with nearly 60 percent of shipments in the U.S. Apple had some other non-hardware, education-themed announcements at its event today. "Apple demonstrated Smart Annotation, which allows teachers to mark up reports in Pages directly, and the company promised new versions of its iWork apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote that support the Apple Pencil," reports The Verge. "Teachers will also be able to use Macs to create digital books for their classrooms, and Apple is building a books creator into the Pages app." The company also announced a new augmented reality app called Froggipedia that lets students virtually dissect frogs using an Apple Pencil. The free iCloud offering for students has also been bumped up from 5GB to 200GB.
$89 for the Apple Pencil? If a student uses it, how easy is this thing to lose?
My daughter's school already switched from having a few iPads to issuing literally every student in the school their own Chromebook. Google's web-based office tools are okay, and probably the only option on something with only 32G of memory.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Less than 10% discount??? For other brands that wouldn't even register as a mention, never mind a headline!
And a $89 stylus... Nice...
The free iCloud offering for students has also been bumped up from 5GB to 200GB.
How about you get with the times and give that to everyone, Apple?
If it is like the current models then it has no means of attachment to the iPad when not in use.
Good if you want a tablet that gets in the way of being used the way the student wants. Rather than have Apple approve every PDF I want to read on my tablet I just use my Android phone to read them off the memory card. Too simple for school.
Hopefully school districts spend their money on more teachers instead of toys.
"If you see a stylus, they blew it.” - Steve Jobs, 2010
before they are able to realize that the walls of the garden are to keep them in.
One would think that the last place that we should allow corporate influence is in education, but i guess what is the alternative when we allow our politicians to constantly cut the budgets on one of the few investments that always pays off in the future.
Comes with a built in sharpener.
Schools should not invest in an eco system with a single vendor for both hardware and software while there are more open alternatives. This is especially true for public schools, which shouldn't be allowed to enter such a high level of vendor lock-in.
Does this mean every teacher will need a school purchased $2,000 to $3,000 iMac computer with specialized software to interface to these new iPads? Will the schools also need additional school system purchased Apple specific centralized server hardware and software for all these iPads to do their job? There could be additional overhead I haven't thought of.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Apple also announced ClassKit api in order to integrate educational software into schools.
No, how about a $500 Mac Mini? :)
As of late, Chromebook seems to be the computer of choice for schools. They're mil-spec and cheap.
...there still being no update to their 2014 Mac Mini is not. *grumble*
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I always flush before using the toilet.
The routine is generally:
1) Flush before use.
2) Wipe any splashes off before papering.
3) Use paper or seat cover if public.
4) Use paper to create a shield to keep the wang from touching the bowl in front if public.
5) Sit and defecate. Generally for each piece of feces I flush, I also flush out urine. Pretty much anything hits the water flush.
6) While waiting I tend to flush while idle to keep the pipes clean.
7) Wipe with 10-15 flushable wipes. Flush every 4-5 wipes. Keep flushable-wiping until all stains are gone from all angles (front back, back front, leg up, etc).
8) Flush at least one extra time as flushable wipes can sometimes clump up.
I also sometimes rig the toilet to continuously flush to clean it.
I also like to urinate into running water, so I tend to pee into sinks that have running water. This way I ensure the best flow characteristics.
I promise to waste water as much as I can because I have unmetered water. I promise. This is to force our stupid scum government who lets half of Mexico show up here on our dime to build new infrastructure rather than have me live Amish style because they are stupid morons who cant plan ahead. I leave the toilet rigged on, shower , a tub and 2 sinks on all the time to protest our stupid government.
Mick mickrussom Russom
Besides that, a $90 stylus that (unless apple forgot to announce it) has no way to attach to the ipad is overpriced and far too easily lost. How well do they really think that will go over? Once again, they ensure no one will use it.
Yeah I have several problems it the Apple Pencil.
1) Round so it easily rolls off tables if you set it down. They made it pretty instead of functional.
2) The iPad isn't designed with a place to store it when not in use rendering it clumsy to transport
3) Unless you are a fairly specific kind of artist (I'm not) the app support SUCKS. I'm an engineer and I can conceive of lots of uses for something like this but Apple isn't making it easy.
4) Far too expensive for something that is easy to loose and can't be stored easily
5) Did I mention the apps SUCK. Even for note taking which should be the most obvious thing in the world.
I also have beef with the iPads for similar reasons
1) Why are the icons stored in the same spacing as on an iPhone with WAY too much space in between
2) The apps are either redundant to my iPhone or SUCK for anything more useful like taking notes or doing engineering.
3) The cases are annoying and by and large suck. I really don't like the most common cases and Apple clearly thinks of cases and keyboards as an afterthought at best.
I'd love to get something like an iPad but they simply haven't bothered to work on anything that is a viable use case for me. They just supersized my iPhone and didn't really bother to take advantage of the larger form factor in any serious way.
Schools should not invest in an eco system with a single vendor for both hardware and software while there are more open alternatives.
You mean like Microsoft + Intel? In principle I agree with you but good luck getting a practical setup without a substantial amount of vendor lock in.
lol, nice way to get water revenge there
Whatever happened to regular pencils and paper and having a computer lab for students? As a taxpayer do I really need outfit the marxists in training with every electronic gadget there is??
Guess what, you can do math without an ipad using just a pencil, paper, and maybe a $15 calculator. For wordprocessing, that's what a computer lab is for.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The consumer price for the iPad is still $329 and $99 for the pencil. The school discount is incredibly minor.
For $350, you can buy an Acer laptop with i3-7100U, 1 terabyte of storage, and 1080P, 15.6" screen.
Chromebooks are fine too, but they seem best if managed by a company/school. It's not something I'd necessarily recommend for consumers.
"If you see a stylus, they blew it.” - Steve Jobs, 2010
Yeah he said it. But the reality is that a stylus is fine PROVIDED it isn't used like a mouse. A stylus should be used for drawing only. And drawing letters for note taking falls into that category. Just drawing because that is all it is good for. If you couldn't do it with a real pencil then you shouldn't be able to do it with a stylus as a general proposition. The problem with them tends to be that application developers easily forget this and get tempted into using a stylus like a mouse (or worse a keyboard) and that NEVER works well.
A stylus can be hugely useful on a computer. I'd LOVE something that could be useful for taking notes and annotating documents digitally. But so far that corner of the market has been ignored and Apple is chasing a tiny group of artists and designers instead of the huge market for students and professionals.
No, kids loose pencils because they are very small in two of their three dimensions, meaning they can slip through a tiny hole in a pocket or backpack or even pencil-case (the thing specifically designed to store them). To make matters worse, they are also round (a design flaw Apple could have fixed but didn't) so that when they are inevitably dropped, they will roll away and roll under things or into cracks between things or down more holes.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Neither, they're going to spend the money buying assault rifles and weapons training for teachers. Because there's no way that could go wrong.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Enjoy your new bug ridden system.
A license for what windows, plus client licenses, plus server licences, plus client access licenses, plus directory services licenses and more!
Unfortunately Apple is still way behind the ball on the granular parental restrictions that Android offers if they want to compete. The exact same parental nanny application, FamilyTime.io, on an Android, not only lets me set schedules for when my child can use their applications, but it will let me specify exactly WHICH apps they are allowed to use and which ones they are not during those schedules. On IOS my options include : Safari, Camera, Siri Dictation, iTunes Store, in-app purchases, and ---> ALL OTHER APPS. This means that if my child needs access to lets say the 'Remind' app, during school hours, I also have to give the child access to text messaging, skype, games, and another other stupid shit they happen to have just because the teachers heavily use 'Infinite Campus', and 'Remind' for academia. Whereas the _exact_same_ utility on Android lets me literally say yes/no to every installed app on the device. Many comunication with the developer indicate the fault lies DIRECTLY with APPLE.
Who buys Microsoft should be fired. Way too much lock in.
has had full pencil support for decades. Maybe longer. Anyone know when they pencil was invented?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
in the days of budget cuts and atrocious test scores; i'm really really glad apple is still able to get people to think their technology in the classroom is anything beyond a mixture of corporate welfare and advertising.
The line of thought seems to be "STEM STEM STEM! if we get the kids using technology they'll be the next generation of tech gods!"
But really, these are just tablets. And certainly don't represent much of an improvement over books, pencil, and paper. When it comes to you know, learning.
Which is what they should be focusing on. Drop the common core bullshit, stop teaching to standardized tests, and let kids fail from time to time.
The kids aren't creating a damn thing -- just being trained to consume content.
The world has changed. Apple is now trying to do what Microsoft did 20 years ago. Unfortunately for Apple, you can't get the next generation hooked on your goods if they're not good enough and not the right price. Add in issues getting affordable software into their damned walled garden, and I'm completely confused as to why Apple would even go down this road.
Maybe all the C* levels doing Himalayan amounts of cocaine while their engineers routinely micro-dose on acid is the explanation...
From what I'm seeing, the price is still 2x-3x too high for giving to kids. Kids break shit all the time. Unless the iPads are completely indestructible, $300 will quickly turn into $900 after the inevitable third time the kid drops it from a height of only 0.5 meters. A better price point is $100-$150 in which the Chromebooks dominate.
And as others have said here, tablets aren't that useful for anything more than casual use (like reading an ebook, watching YouTube while taking a shit, and shit-posting on your favorite social media). If you want your kid to actually be doing research, writing up papers, and doing homework, tablets are not the device to use.
This is supposed to be apples Chromebook-killer?
What a half ass attempt.
So Apple almost owns the entire space for tablets costing 300USD or more. Amazon sells very very cheap tablets for 50-150USD. Within these tight brackets there exists very little room for Android tablets to exist and strive. If you look at what Samsung offers for the 200-300, it's only the ancient Tab A products.
My daughter's school already switched from having a few iPads to issuing literally every student in the school their own Chromebook.
Those must be amazing Chromebooks if they last for all eternity, for every student coming in!
What's that? Eventually the school could shift to something else again, the way they did to Chromebooks? HMM.
I'm sure the Chromebooks are fine, but they wouldn't be as useful to students as an iPad with a Pencil, and I'm pretty sure not as durable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Mediocre tools? GOOD! Why in God's name would you spend time teaching kids to use complex word processors? You're supposed to be teaching them to WRITE, not use whistles and bells which will change on every release.
Google has been caught repeatedly spying on kids. and no one gives a fuck because they're cheap. Privacy was never even an issue which came up. I work in K-12. Cheap > * It's fucking sad to see kids with such limited locked in walled garden devices and not real computers, especially the federal free lunch crowd we serve (i.e. poor as fuck). They're extremely limited (even more so because Enterprise enrolled) and they don't even know it.
We're paying ~$235 per HP G4 Chromebook, having said that there are schools in my district whose principals like their Kool-Aid Apple flavored and they will spend anything to look cool.
At least in Education, technology is a fashion. Right now Google is in style.
Chromebooks are easy to repair, while ipads are not!
inroads in education where is loans and the school can force you to buy them just like with text books.
does apple have an rack mount server or vm rights on non apple hardware for local MGT servers? or even local storage servers?
with 2014 hardware at 2014 pricing.
well cps should get them free and the union will get up pensions to pay for any thing.
It's been how long since the Apple Pencil was introduced and they are just now getting around to adding support for it into their first party office suite? Not when the Apple Pencil was first released, not with iOS 11 which added drawing support across a lot of apps... they wait until NOW to do it. It's like they were trying to drive people to get Office 365 subscriptions so they can get Word/Excel/PowerPoint for iOS.
It's absurd to claim the Chromebooks are more useful. when you can just run Chrome to do anything on an iPad you could on the Chromoebook - but then you ALSO have tens of thousands of educational apps that are iPad only, and you ALSO have a pressure sensitive stylus for the screen which the Chromebook has nothing like.
If you want to raise a classroom of people who do nothing but browse the web, I'm sure the Chromebook is fine. If you actually want educated children that are well-rounded, the iPad is superior.
the chromebooks are much cheaper than the cheapest tablet
New iPads are $400 with the Logitech rugged keyboard case and pencil. Looks like that gets you about 2.2 decent Chromebooks - replace more than two and you would have been better off with the iPad. The iPad will also last longer component wise as the cheaper Chromebooks will have soldering eventually fail, screens dying, etc.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For a little more than the price of two Apple pencil styluses, I can get two Amazon Fire tablets, which would be so much more useful for me and my family.
If that is your use case then no argument. I'm not so concerned with the price but rather the fact that you just can't frakin' do anything genuinely useful with an Apple Pencil. I'm an engineer, an accountant, and I coach a sports team. Every one of those jobs has a LOT of paperwork that I could easily see doing on an iPad with an Apple Pencil but Apple in their infinite wisdom cannot be bothered to write the software to allow me to do it. They are worried about the three people doing graphics design rather than the millions who take notes and annotate and share documents. If Apple really was chasing the next big thing, it's right there. They just have to write the software to make it happen.
If Apple would write that software it would be VASTLY more valuable than any number of Amazon Fire tablets. I would happily hand them a pile of money to solve the problem of good digital note taking and document sharing. Sadly Microsoft actually seems to be closer with their Surface products though they haven't really nailed it either because they are thinking about it as an operating system expansion rather than from a document process standpoint.
Not only this is silly complicated, you don't even get it.
1) Wash your hands BEFORE you take a piss.
2) Take a piss.
That's all.
If you're gonna shit, shit. Then we don't want a discussion about ass wiping (but muslims take note : toilet paper works because it's used with the right hand)