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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.
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.
lol seriously
5GB is small enough to active discourage people from using it to back up their media vs other services that don't even lock you in but give you far more (or unlimited) free storage.
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.
That's not even taking into account the fact that it's almost 1/3 of the cost for the iPad itself!! They're (badly) trying to pad the margin with another crappy accessory. Instead, a chromebook with an actual keyboard...yep.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
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.
This is where Apple's problem lies. I was reading an article about the new ChromeOS tablet from Acer they announced yesterday, and while it may not be as nice a piece of hardware, they said something about the stylus being available to schools in bulk for reasonable cost.
So long as the iPad requires a $90 stylus, they won't make any serious inroads in education.