It sounds like your situation doesn't fit the average college student's, as it looks like there was some circumstance preventing you from finishing your degree.
I went to a school which now costs $40k per year, but then cost around $35. It had a considerable endowment, and therefore offered me a grant of $17k per year, cutting my tuition in half. And yes, I am a middle class white male. That combined with modest family contributions, my own savings (I worked each summer and all through school), and I graduated with around $20k in loans.
As far as entrepreneurship, you find it more in larger cities. I went to school in Pittsburgh, which is a growing location for tech startups (Microsoft, Google, and Apple all have offices near the two major area colleges). I don't know where you went to school, but I dealt with incubators from schools across the country. If there's not one where you live, there's one nearby.
It's a trade-off. To make what you are asking requires resources and Apple sees no benefit of adding a feature that doesn't really do anything for most people.
Not allowing odd schedule events essentially cuts out every student who uses the iPad. At least in America, classes are usually scheduled MWF, or TR. When I hear story after story about how college X or school district Y is looking to purchase iPads for every student. I spoke with the head librarian at my university, who is running a pilot program with the iPads. When I told her about this limitation her reaction was "Huh, well that's dumb".
And you know, it wouldn't be such a problem if Apple would let other calendar apps in the app store. But no, you're left with a bunch of portals to google calendar for $9.99 (which, actually you might as well use since my solution to the calendar app is to sync with google calendar).
Copy/paste was omitted due to engineering trade-offs and getting stuff to market in a timely manner. They added it later because it's deemed to be an important feature, unlike your Calendar issue. Why people keep bitching about Apple product shortcomings after the shortcoming no longer exists is beyond me.
Not bitching, just an example of how Apple is often missing basic features. Call it an engineering trade off or smart business, but that doesn't change the fact that the omission made the device harder to use.
I'm not sure I believe you, since it doesn't make any sense for the same app to work differently on a iPhone or an iPad.
It makes perfect sense. iPad is OS 3.2, iPhone is OS 4.1. I'm hoping this will be fixed in the 4.2 update, but as of now I can tell you for a fact you cannot save a PDF to iBooks from Safari on iPad.
As Steve Jobs would say, you're using it wrong.
And this is exactly my point. Steve Jobs says I'm using my device wrong. The iPad is meant for XYZ and the user experience is great as long all you want to do is XYZ. Remember the topic of discussion was "Apple receives so much media attention because they make their devices easy for people to use." If you are someone who only wants to do XYZ, then ignore everything I'm saying. In fact, this may be most people the majority of the time. But I wager ever iPad owner out there at some point said to himself "I wish it could do W."
Still, afaik nobody made you buy it at gunpoint. (Which would be proof of a conspiracy, come to think of it, so feel free to inform us if that was the case.) You can resell it for a decent price if it doesn't meet your needs sufficiently
Well, I bought it for textbook reading, and since the iBooks updates it does an amazing job at that function. I also have two killer apps for students: iStudiez Pro and Papers, which I use constantly. I've thought about selling it a few times before I found these apps, but I'm keeping it for sure now. I've also been holding out for the November update, since it seems it will fix at least a few of my gripes.
So even though I'm going on about the negatives of the iPad, there are also many positives which make it an overall positive device. That said, if Steve Jobs gets to go on stage and call this thing the most magical perfect device ever created, I at least get to come on slashdot and bring it back down to reality.
Well in my particular case I'm often in areas where I have no wifi (or 3G for that matter). So if I want to transfer files stored on my iPad, I'm SOL. My other devices can transfer files through bluetooth, ad hoc networks, mass storage devices, etc. In a world where our devices are communicating more and more, the iPad refuses to.
Please, tell me AC, from the iPad, how do I transfer files from x application to another computer? If the answer has anything to do with iTunes, you've lost me. Often I use my iPad at school, where I don't have a personal computer or access to iTunes. The only way I can send a file created on say Pages from my iPad to someone else is through e-mail.
What's more, each app has to implement this functionality, so implementation can vary. For example, Penultimate (a note taking app) does not email an editable file, but a PDF of your notes. How do I send it to someone so they can open my notes and edit them in Penultimate? Or take Pages for example, you can only send one document at a time. How do I send my colleague the 3 documents and 4 spreadsheets I've been working on for our project? Apple's answer is send 7 different e-mails, or subscribe to their beta iWork.com service (expect fees after beta). There's that Apple elegance for you.
However, you should be careful not to lump all Apple products into the same toilet. Macs are the most unfettered computing platform available... the opposite of what you claim.
Well, this is true, but more and more it's becoming obvious the future of Apple is not macs, but iDevices in a closed iEcosystem.
On a normal keyboard shift , is more like one keystroke, in my opinion.
I mean, I understand that most people won't type something like this, but it's just an example of how the iPad is great to use as long as you use it as Apple prescribes. This example obviously applies to a small subset but the calendar example I gave applies to virtually every student, who has a class on MWF or TR. Apple didn't approve their schedules, so they have to do things the long way.
The adage is that 80% of users use just 20% of an application's features. The point many people miss is that it's not the same 20% for every person. For example in excel, I use the statistical functions, while another person may only be concerned about the financial functions. So if you're concerned about the happiness of 80% of your users, and you only implement the intersection of features they use, 80% of your users will be unhappy, as each one will request a different feature you have chosen not to implement.
Apple for some reason is immune to this, however. Call it loyalism or what you will, But users are willing to look past missing functionality (copy/paste, MMS, 3G, multitasking) as long as the device is shiny. As the owner of an iPad, I can report the device is just riddled with gaps in functionality that affect my work flow, and all I can conclude is that my needs are unique among iPad users (because how could they anticipate that someone would want to download a PDF from safari and e-mail it.)
No, what the parent is saying is that the user experience is good as long as you conform to Apple's definition of user behavior. It's not even about including every feature ever, since Apple is notorious for omitting even the most rudimentary industry standard features.
Take copy/paste. Apple allegedly omitted it because for some reason with all their resources they couldn't figure out a way to implement it. I own an iPad, and the implementation they came up with isn't anything special, to be sure. Try selecting a line of text near the top of the screen; the magnifying glass goes over the edge and you can't see what you're doing.
Another example is transferring files from the iPad. This goes beyond the Apple sanctioned usage of the iPad, so they make it really difficult, and it turns out the easiest way to share files is to e-mail them (a function which must be implemented on a per app basis, as the mail application does not allow attachments).
What about downloading a PDF from safari to read in iBooks? You can't do it from safari, you actually have to download it to a computer and transfer it via iTunes (the worst option, as you need the cable due to lack of wireless sync); through e-mail it to yourself (dropbox is a good option too); or download an app like goodreader, copy the link from safari into goodreader, download the PDF, then export it to iBooks. What a great user experience!
Oh, and the calendar app is a dream to use. It can't actually schedule events that repeat on odd schedules, like every Monday and Wednesday. Apple has sanctioned that your events can repeat weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, or yearly. To solve this I have to create a google calendar, manage my events there, then subscribe to it in the calendar app.
Or what about this slashdot post? typing <p> takes 8 keyboard strokes on the iPad. </p> takes 11.
But yeah I agree, iPad and other Apple products are great if you stay within its narrow Apple sanctioned usage.
Nope, I'm just someone who graduated from a 4 year, 45k per year institution with $20k in debt, and am now pursuing graduate studies in Robotics at a top not school.
I agree that there are fields where loans do not make sense, as the "softer" degrees as your link points out (art, music, russian literature).
But the "handful of degrees" you're talking about are the sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, computer), engineering (mechanical, electrical, civil, computer), medicine, law... these degrees make up over half of my undergraduate institution.
But the key mistake you're making is measuring a degree by lifetime earning potential. My friend went to Syracuse for Journalism (one of the degrees your source derides), and now writes for the Phillies. He gets to fly around the country and watch baseball for a living! How do you measure that in "lifetime earning potential"?
I get to work with millions of dollars of robotics equipment every day. I can pull a Honda Asimo off the shelf and run my latest algorithms any time I want. I would gladly take twice the loans out to do what I do today.
And what of those who don't have jobs? Well, I guess that's a shame but it s a tougher economic climate, and it's been shown that unemployment is lower for those that have degrees by almost 50%. I know it's tough now, but when employment is normalized, that diploma will be on your resume as.
So am I worried about compound interest and bankruptcy? No. My loans are deferred because I'm in grad school, but if I had to pay them it would be about $150 a month. That's less than the payment on a new kia subcompact. I'll save up during grad school and pay off as much as I can when I leave, and when I eventually pay them off my credit will be sky high (right about he time I'm ready to by a house, I wager).
So when I'm 65, looking back on my 47 years of productivity I'm confident I'll be looking back at a life lived doing what I loved, rather than a pile of cash and missed opportunities (although I'm also confident I'll be sitting on a pile of cash as well).
I know this reply was long, but it had to be, given your tone. To sum my position, you have to be smart about loans. Want to attend a $40k per year institution for a degree in photography so you can eventually do inner city social work at $30k per year? Not a good idea to take loans. Want to be a scientist, a doctor, a lawyer an engineer? You NEED to go to school, so decide at that point whether loans make sense or not. As in all things, moderation is key. You can leave with $80k in debt, or work through college and leave with $20k in debt or no debt at all.
After reading the source above, I see where the hyperbole comes from: horror stories about statistical outliers who racked up $100 in debt pursuing a degree in photography from a school they couldn't afford even with loans.
Look I agree that that much debt is a bad thing, but it speaks nothing of the situation of the VAST majority of those graduating. Most people are willing to take out much more than $20,000 in debt on a car which will last maybe 5-10 years, if that. Why is $20,000 in an education that will last the rest of your life a bad thing?
College loans are some of the best most flexible loans around. That they're not discharged in bankruptcy is really inconsequential, as there are plenty of options to assist you if you have trouble paying your loans- options such as a graduated payment schedule, deferment, or forbearance. For loans like the Stafford, the government pays your interest while you're in college, so it doesn't compound. Finally, there are many financing options to work with loans, like work study and academic grants.
And of course, there's always the option of attending a school you can afford.
Average student loan debt coming out of college is around $20,000. I went to a $45k per year institution, and with loans, grants, and work study I was able to graduate in 4 years with just under that much. College debt is excellent debt to have. There are tons of repayment options, deferment options, rate discounts for on-time payment, and low interest rates. Mine vary from 2-4%.To top it off, when you pay them off your credit goes sky high, so when you're ready to buy that house in 10 years you'll be saving money due to a lower interest rate. I can easily afford my payments of around $150 per month.
Sure, that person $100k in the hole is not in a good position, but he's not in a usual situation.
Also, if you want to start your own small business, college is one of the best places to do so. You meet tons of talented people just like you who can be potential partners, and you meet professors and other business people who can be mentors and help incubate your business. It's called networking, and it's very difficult to do (though not impossible) if you're not in that kind of environment. I used to be president of the Entrepreneurship club at my university. I knew all the businesses starting up out of my school, local investors, and incubators who specialized in providing seed money to university startups.
First, I want to see *some* sort of check and balance on college expenses.
I think this will be the next bubble to burst. A friend of mine is on the administrative staff at a local (smaller) college, and knows of the situation at others in the area, and she reports that they are out of money and they are living semester to semester on tuition checks. You don't usually see a college or university go bankrupt, but I think this will start happening more and more until tuition gets in line.
Do *not* get too hung up on the prestige of one school versus another.
There is something to be said for school brand. Some alumni are very clicky. I've met hiring manages who say "When I see someone from X school come across my desk, they go to the top of the stack." Where x is either their alma mater or brand name school.
I recently asked the CEO of a company acquired by Cisco (for $800m) about they value of his Harvard MBA in acquiring seed funding (they raised over 90m from investors). I think the word he used was "invaluable." He put it to me this way "Two similar business plans come across your desk. One from a team of Harvard MBAs, and the other from a team of Little Known State University. LKSU might have some quality grads, but if your job is all about hedging bets, the Harvard team might be the better choice. Yeah, I know it may not be fair, but it's the reality of the VC mindset.
Zoho also does not need any bachelor degree programmers.
There's no such thing as a B.S. in Programming, let alone a Ph.D. (well, maybe there is but not ant any university I know about). This is a mistake many people make: Computer Science is not programming.
Zoho's applications are clones of software already done to death, like word processors, spread sheets, and CRM. Why would they hire a Ph.D. or B.S. to do the job any code monkey can be trained to do? Show me a highschool grad who can talk intelligently about graph theory, particle filtering, or pattern recognition (Incidentally if you do manage to find one, I'll show you a highschool grad who doesn't want to do menial programming for Zoho).
I'm a TA at a large university for both introductory programming and senior thesis courses. The difference in competency between freshmen and seniors (competency both at programming and general life skills like problem-solving, initiative, and independent creative thought) is staggering. I'm sure I could train any of the freshmen to spit out any piece of code I tell them, but I would never hire one and expect a well-rounded and independent worker. Freshmen need their hands held at every step of the processes, but sometime during their 4 year stay at university they undergo some sort of metamorphosis when they become self-sufficient and free thinking.
I consider my own degrees (math, business, and comp. sci.) to be a complete waste of time, money, and effort.
I don't know you, but I'm willing to bet this is more of a function of how much you applied yourself while at school, and your general attitudes rather than the degrees themselves. I hold degrees in physics, business, and computer engineering, and now knowing how useful they are I would have spent twice as much time and twice as much money to get them. The reasons why are another long winded post in itself, but it suffices to say I have countless advantages over my peers (graduate students in computer engineering) because of the exposure from all of these degrees.
As a student with an iPad, I'd like to offer some of my experiences to help your assessment.
1) Probably the most useful thing about them is their e-reading capabilities. They used to be terrible, but updates for iBooks made reading PDF books surprisingly easy. I almost prefer it to the real thing, and I certainly prefer it to a kindle for non-linear reading, which most college reading is.
2) There are limitations for e-reading, however. I like reading outside when it's nice, and the screen at full brightness is right on the border of readable in sunlight. However, yesterday I was reading outside and I recieved a prompt that the iPad was overheating, and I would have to wait for it to cool down before using it again. It was only 75 out. I would never use the iPad at the beach or the pool, like that one kindle commercial.
Also currently, downloading PDFs on the iPad is very difficult. You can view them from safari, but you can't export them to iBooks, where reading them is better. There are some apps that work around this, but the current workflow is browse in safari, copy link to other application, download, export to iBooks. Very cumbersome.
3) Related to reading outside is the wireless strength, which is pretty bad. When I'm outside on campus, there are few places I can get and maintain a sigle, while my laptop works just fine. If you have a popular outside are like most campuses, users might find the iPad frustrating. If your wireless coverage is spotty to begin with, it's going to be that much worse with the iPad.
4) iStudiez pro is a killer app for students, and I would suggest loading it on every device. There are many scheduling applications out there, but none of them are tailored specifically for students, with data fields specifically for college study. It's available for iPhone and iPad, very well made, and keeps me organized.
5) The other side of 4) is that the built in calendar app sucks. You can't create events which repeat MWF or TR or any of the crazy ways classes tend to repeat. You're stuck with daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and yearly. I've resorted to maintaining a google calendar and subscribing to it. However I am subscribed to my university calendar, my department calendar, and my graduate student life calendar, and have all that info synced to my class calendar, so I can see all the events I can attend. What I would really like to see is a centralized repository of university calendars (all departments, clubs, etc.), so that is something you could consider implementing.
6) File sharing and collaboration on the iPad is very difficult. Because of a lack of USB and networking, file sharing between iPads is largely done through e-mail. Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Penultimate, and other productivity apps have built in e-mail options to share files, and there really is no alternative other than iTunes, which itself is horrid. Therefore, expect to see a large increase of files going through your mail server. There are actually some apps which look for other iPads locally, but they are few. There are some apps like drop box which make getting files on the iPad easier, but you can't upload files from your iPad to your drop box account.
7) Notetaking on the iPad is virtually worthless. I used to take notes on a tablet PC, where I had a stylus, MS OneNote, and my textbooks loaded and open. My notes were indexed, searchable, taggable, and very well organized. I could share them between computers and different students, and they could edit them. I could even copy pictures and diagrams from my texts and paste them into my notes for annotation. Ink on windows is a system-wide data-type which you can copy, paste, and edit in many applications. Finally, a digitizer with a stylus is very accurate.
None of these features are found on the iPad. Some apps allow you to take crude notes, but capacitive styluses are terrible, and you can do little more than put ink on the page. It's actually less usable than pen and paper. I have my textbooks on my iPad, but I can't c
Get back to me when you can type a diagram, chart, or equation faster than you can write it. Also both my undergrad and grad schools recently published rules against recording lectures. It seems to be a trend at others as well.
oh, and I'm one of the 25 % who thought it was more useful before I used it. I actually own one, and am holding out for November to decide if ill keep it, since the update does look promising.
Welcome to the Apple approach, where easier is harder.
Without any meaningful networking capability or a USB port, you're stuck using apps and iTunes. iTunes is absolutely HORRID at data management, so you're left with apps. Things like dropbox are a good solution, but you're still uploading to dropbox serves, and downloading to your computer. This gets very cumbersome for large files. You're also stuck with a 2gb limit on.
It turns out that e-mail is one of the easier methods of file transfer on the iPad because the app is on there by default, you don't need yet another account, and it's easier than using iTunes (no data cable, no iTunes interface, no fiddling with sync options and file locations).
a device that is being pushed as a educational tool by schools and universities is locked down stopping kids from learning how to program.
It pisses me off to hell that schools are pushing the iPad when it lacks the one thing that made tablets a killer tool for education: a stylus. I did my undergraduate degree in physics and I used tablets throughout for note-taking. I started with a HP TC1100 and moved on to a Latitude XT, but I would not trade a tablet PC for a pen and paper ever.
Tablet PCs with a digitizer for stylus input have very good precision and ink reproduction for comfortable writing. Applications like Microsoft OneNote have amazing features like on the fly handwriting recognition, note indexing, searching, tagging, aggregating, and sharing. I used to keep wiki style class notes my friends and I would edit on our tablets. In Windows "Ink" is a datatype recognized across applications, so you can copy/paste and edit your notes in different apps.
The iPad eliminated all of this functionality. I've tried capacitive pens and they suck hard by comparison. The palm rejection algorithms suck, there's no handwriting recognition to speak of, and the applications are as robust as "put ink on canvas." If that's all I wanted to do, I would use paper.
The sad thing is that tablet PCs never really took off in education, and now that the latest generation of tablets (sans PC) lacks EVERYTHING that made them worth while, they're suddenly being adopted. This tells me one thing: It's not about how well iPads work as teaching tools; it's a marketing ploy. I can see the University Administration sitting around a table saying "The kids love these whiz bang things, lets give them away and maybe they'll come to our school!" They did it with iPods, they're doing it again with iPads.
I guess the concept of a decent thin client escaped you... I don't know enough about the state of thin client software for the iPad... I could be horribly wrong
If you don't know what you're talking about, you might try not being such a dick.
Anyway, the kind of software our university requires in my department is the kind iPad sucks for: Matlab/Mathematica, Auto CAD, Office. By the time you set up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor (who wants to do CAD on a 10" screen?), you start to wonder why in the world you're using an iPad in the first place. A lesson I learned early was to use the right tool for the right job. iPad is not the right tool for everything.
iPad is also pretty awful in low light. The minimum brightness allowed is still pretty damn bright when you're in a dark room. Apps like iBooks allow you to turn down the brightness more than this minimum, but that is not an option found in all reader apps.
Oh, and that's another thing frustrating the hell out of me: reader apps. Why does every book I have to download have its own damn app? Why can't I download books in a portable, DRM free format? Imagine if I needed an music app for every song I wanted to listen to.
Slashdot Mirror
As an anti-poopsocking measure
I feel this term needs some clarification... and no, I won't google that.
It sounds like your situation doesn't fit the average college student's, as it looks like there was some circumstance preventing you from finishing your degree.
But we're talking about averages here. According to the College Board, more than half of US undergrads attend a college with tuition and fees less than $9000. For four years, that comes to less than $36k+room and board. With family contribution, work study, grants, and scholarships it's easy to bring this cost down considerably.
I went to a school which now costs $40k per year, but then cost around $35. It had a considerable endowment, and therefore offered me a grant of $17k per year, cutting my tuition in half. And yes, I am a middle class white male. That combined with modest family contributions, my own savings (I worked each summer and all through school), and I graduated with around $20k in loans.
As far as entrepreneurship, you find it more in larger cities. I went to school in Pittsburgh, which is a growing location for tech startups (Microsoft, Google, and Apple all have offices near the two major area colleges). I don't know where you went to school, but I dealt with incubators from schools across the country. If there's not one where you live, there's one nearby.
This was a very targeted attack, very purposeful attack. I'm sure whatever the system architecture was it would have been compromised.
It's a trade-off. To make what you are asking requires resources and Apple sees no benefit of adding a feature that doesn't really do anything for most people.
Not allowing odd schedule events essentially cuts out every student who uses the iPad. At least in America, classes are usually scheduled MWF, or TR. When I hear story after story about how college X or school district Y is looking to purchase iPads for every student. I spoke with the head librarian at my university, who is running a pilot program with the iPads. When I told her about this limitation her reaction was "Huh, well that's dumb".
And you know, it wouldn't be such a problem if Apple would let other calendar apps in the app store. But no, you're left with a bunch of portals to google calendar for $9.99 (which, actually you might as well use since my solution to the calendar app is to sync with google calendar).
Copy/paste was omitted due to engineering trade-offs and getting stuff to market in a timely manner. They added it later because it's deemed to be an important feature, unlike your Calendar issue. Why people keep bitching about Apple product shortcomings after the shortcoming no longer exists is beyond me.
Not bitching, just an example of how Apple is often missing basic features. Call it an engineering trade off or smart business, but that doesn't change the fact that the omission made the device harder to use.
I'm not sure I believe you, since it doesn't make any sense for the same app to work differently on a iPhone or an iPad.
It makes perfect sense. iPad is OS 3.2, iPhone is OS 4.1. I'm hoping this will be fixed in the 4.2 update, but as of now I can tell you for a fact you cannot save a PDF to iBooks from Safari on iPad.
As Steve Jobs would say, you're using it wrong.
And this is exactly my point. Steve Jobs says I'm using my device wrong. The iPad is meant for XYZ and the user experience is great as long all you want to do is XYZ. Remember the topic of discussion was "Apple receives so much media attention because they make their devices easy for people to use." If you are someone who only wants to do XYZ, then ignore everything I'm saying. In fact, this may be most people the majority of the time. But I wager ever iPad owner out there at some point said to himself "I wish it could do W."
Still, afaik nobody made you buy it at gunpoint. (Which would be proof of a conspiracy, come to think of it, so feel free to inform us if that was the case.) You can resell it for a decent price if it doesn't meet your needs sufficiently
Well, I bought it for textbook reading, and since the iBooks updates it does an amazing job at that function. I also have two killer apps for students: iStudiez Pro and Papers, which I use constantly. I've thought about selling it a few times before I found these apps, but I'm keeping it for sure now. I've also been holding out for the November update, since it seems it will fix at least a few of my gripes.
So even though I'm going on about the negatives of the iPad, there are also many positives which make it an overall positive device. That said, if Steve Jobs gets to go on stage and call this thing the most magical perfect device ever created, I at least get to come on slashdot and bring it back down to reality.
Just curious, what's so bad about that solution?
Well in my particular case I'm often in areas where I have no wifi (or 3G for that matter). So if I want to transfer files stored on my iPad, I'm SOL. My other devices can transfer files through bluetooth, ad hoc networks, mass storage devices, etc. In a world where our devices are communicating more and more, the iPad refuses to.
Please, tell me AC, from the iPad, how do I transfer files from x application to another computer? If the answer has anything to do with iTunes, you've lost me. Often I use my iPad at school, where I don't have a personal computer or access to iTunes. The only way I can send a file created on say Pages from my iPad to someone else is through e-mail.
What's more, each app has to implement this functionality, so implementation can vary. For example, Penultimate (a note taking app) does not email an editable file, but a PDF of your notes. How do I send it to someone so they can open my notes and edit them in Penultimate? Or take Pages for example, you can only send one document at a time. How do I send my colleague the 3 documents and 4 spreadsheets I've been working on for our project? Apple's answer is send 7 different e-mails, or subscribe to their beta iWork.com service (expect fees after beta). There's that Apple elegance for you.
However, you should be careful not to lump all Apple products into the same toilet. Macs are the most unfettered computing platform available... the opposite of what you claim.
Well, this is true, but more and more it's becoming obvious the future of Apple is not macs, but iDevices in a closed iEcosystem.
On a normal keyboard shift , is more like one keystroke, in my opinion.
I mean, I understand that most people won't type something like this, but it's just an example of how the iPad is great to use as long as you use it as Apple prescribes. This example obviously applies to a small subset but the calendar example I gave applies to virtually every student, who has a class on MWF or TR. Apple didn't approve their schedules, so they have to do things the long way.
The adage is that 80% of users use just 20% of an application's features. The point many people miss is that it's not the same 20% for every person. For example in excel, I use the statistical functions, while another person may only be concerned about the financial functions. So if you're concerned about the happiness of 80% of your users, and you only implement the intersection of features they use, 80% of your users will be unhappy, as each one will request a different feature you have chosen not to implement.
Apple for some reason is immune to this, however. Call it loyalism or what you will, But users are willing to look past missing functionality (copy/paste, MMS, 3G, multitasking) as long as the device is shiny. As the owner of an iPad, I can report the device is just riddled with gaps in functionality that affect my work flow, and all I can conclude is that my needs are unique among iPad users (because how could they anticipate that someone would want to download a PDF from safari and e-mail it.)
No, what the parent is saying is that the user experience is good as long as you conform to Apple's definition of user behavior. It's not even about including every feature ever, since Apple is notorious for omitting even the most rudimentary industry standard features.
Take copy/paste. Apple allegedly omitted it because for some reason with all their resources they couldn't figure out a way to implement it. I own an iPad, and the implementation they came up with isn't anything special, to be sure. Try selecting a line of text near the top of the screen; the magnifying glass goes over the edge and you can't see what you're doing.
Another example is transferring files from the iPad. This goes beyond the Apple sanctioned usage of the iPad, so they make it really difficult, and it turns out the easiest way to share files is to e-mail them (a function which must be implemented on a per app basis, as the mail application does not allow attachments).
What about downloading a PDF from safari to read in iBooks? You can't do it from safari, you actually have to download it to a computer and transfer it via iTunes (the worst option, as you need the cable due to lack of wireless sync); through e-mail it to yourself (dropbox is a good option too); or download an app like goodreader, copy the link from safari into goodreader, download the PDF, then export it to iBooks. What a great user experience!
Oh, and the calendar app is a dream to use. It can't actually schedule events that repeat on odd schedules, like every Monday and Wednesday. Apple has sanctioned that your events can repeat weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, or yearly. To solve this I have to create a google calendar, manage my events there, then subscribe to it in the calendar app.
Or what about this slashdot post? typing <p> takes 8 keyboard strokes on the iPad. </p> takes 11.
But yeah I agree, iPad and other Apple products are great if you stay within its narrow Apple sanctioned usage.
Nope, I'm just someone who graduated from a 4 year, 45k per year institution with $20k in debt, and am now pursuing graduate studies in Robotics at a top not school.
I agree that there are fields where loans do not make sense, as the "softer" degrees as your link points out (art, music, russian literature).
But the "handful of degrees" you're talking about are the sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, computer), engineering (mechanical, electrical, civil, computer), medicine, law... these degrees make up over half of my undergraduate institution.
But the key mistake you're making is measuring a degree by lifetime earning potential. My friend went to Syracuse for Journalism (one of the degrees your source derides), and now writes for the Phillies. He gets to fly around the country and watch baseball for a living! How do you measure that in "lifetime earning potential"?
I get to work with millions of dollars of robotics equipment every day. I can pull a Honda Asimo off the shelf and run my latest algorithms any time I want. I would gladly take twice the loans out to do what I do today.
And what of those who don't have jobs? Well, I guess that's a shame but it s a tougher economic climate, and it's been shown that unemployment is lower for those that have degrees by almost 50%. I know it's tough now, but when employment is normalized, that diploma will be on your resume as.
So am I worried about compound interest and bankruptcy? No. My loans are deferred because I'm in grad school, but if I had to pay them it would be about $150 a month. That's less than the payment on a new kia subcompact. I'll save up during grad school and pay off as much as I can when I leave, and when I eventually pay them off my credit will be sky high (right about he time I'm ready to by a house, I wager).
So when I'm 65, looking back on my 47 years of productivity I'm confident I'll be looking back at a life lived doing what I loved, rather than a pile of cash and missed opportunities (although I'm also confident I'll be sitting on a pile of cash as well).
I know this reply was long, but it had to be, given your tone. To sum my position, you have to be smart about loans. Want to attend a $40k per year institution for a degree in photography so you can eventually do inner city social work at $30k per year? Not a good idea to take loans. Want to be a scientist, a doctor, a lawyer an engineer? You NEED to go to school, so decide at that point whether loans make sense or not. As in all things, moderation is key. You can leave with $80k in debt, or work through college and leave with $20k in debt or no debt at all.
What is with all the hyperbole when stating college loan debt. I graduated with $100k debt! $400k! $10 million dollars in debt!
In fact, the average graduate caries somewhere around $20,000 in student debt, and 93% of graduates have debt under $40,000.
After reading the source above, I see where the hyperbole comes from: horror stories about statistical outliers who racked up $100 in debt pursuing a degree in photography from a school they couldn't afford even with loans.
Look I agree that that much debt is a bad thing, but it speaks nothing of the situation of the VAST majority of those graduating. Most people are willing to take out much more than $20,000 in debt on a car which will last maybe 5-10 years, if that. Why is $20,000 in an education that will last the rest of your life a bad thing?
College loans are some of the best most flexible loans around. That they're not discharged in bankruptcy is really inconsequential, as there are plenty of options to assist you if you have trouble paying your loans- options such as a graduated payment schedule, deferment, or forbearance. For loans like the Stafford, the government pays your interest while you're in college, so it doesn't compound. Finally, there are many financing options to work with loans, like work study and academic grants.
And of course, there's always the option of attending a school you can afford.
To audit a course is to attend for no credit. There are different rules, some don't want you to participate at all, others require you to participate.
McDonald's loves suing business with Mc in the name. Oh, charities too.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2010/01/26/McDonalds-sues-teen-over-McFest/UPI-33901264537338/
Average student loan debt coming out of college is around $20,000. I went to a $45k per year institution, and with loans, grants, and work study I was able to graduate in 4 years with just under that much. College debt is excellent debt to have. There are tons of repayment options, deferment options, rate discounts for on-time payment, and low interest rates. Mine vary from 2-4%.To top it off, when you pay them off your credit goes sky high, so when you're ready to buy that house in 10 years you'll be saving money due to a lower interest rate. I can easily afford my payments of around $150 per month.
Sure, that person $100k in the hole is not in a good position, but he's not in a usual situation.
Also, if you want to start your own small business, college is one of the best places to do so. You meet tons of talented people just like you who can be potential partners, and you meet professors and other business people who can be mentors and help incubate your business. It's called networking, and it's very difficult to do (though not impossible) if you're not in that kind of environment. I used to be president of the Entrepreneurship club at my university. I knew all the businesses starting up out of my school, local investors, and incubators who specialized in providing seed money to university startups.
First, I want to see *some* sort of check and balance on college expenses.
I think this will be the next bubble to burst. A friend of mine is on the administrative staff at a local (smaller) college, and knows of the situation at others in the area, and she reports that they are out of money and they are living semester to semester on tuition checks. You don't usually see a college or university go bankrupt, but I think this will start happening more and more until tuition gets in line.
Do *not* get too hung up on the prestige of one school versus another.
There is something to be said for school brand. Some alumni are very clicky. I've met hiring manages who say "When I see someone from X school come across my desk, they go to the top of the stack." Where x is either their alma mater or brand name school.
I recently asked the CEO of a company acquired by Cisco (for $800m) about they value of his Harvard MBA in acquiring seed funding (they raised over 90m from investors). I think the word he used was "invaluable." He put it to me this way "Two similar business plans come across your desk. One from a team of Harvard MBAs, and the other from a team of Little Known State University. LKSU might have some quality grads, but if your job is all about hedging bets, the Harvard team might be the better choice. Yeah, I know it may not be fair, but it's the reality of the VC mindset.
Zoho also does not need any bachelor degree programmers.
There's no such thing as a B.S. in Programming, let alone a Ph.D. (well, maybe there is but not ant any university I know about). This is a mistake many people make: Computer Science is not programming.
Zoho's applications are clones of software already done to death, like word processors, spread sheets, and CRM. Why would they hire a Ph.D. or B.S. to do the job any code monkey can be trained to do? Show me a highschool grad who can talk intelligently about graph theory, particle filtering, or pattern recognition (Incidentally if you do manage to find one, I'll show you a highschool grad who doesn't want to do menial programming for Zoho).
I'm a TA at a large university for both introductory programming and senior thesis courses. The difference in competency between freshmen and seniors (competency both at programming and general life skills like problem-solving, initiative, and independent creative thought) is staggering. I'm sure I could train any of the freshmen to spit out any piece of code I tell them, but I would never hire one and expect a well-rounded and independent worker. Freshmen need their hands held at every step of the processes, but sometime during their 4 year stay at university they undergo some sort of metamorphosis when they become self-sufficient and free thinking.
I consider my own degrees (math, business, and comp. sci.) to be a complete waste of time, money, and effort.
I don't know you, but I'm willing to bet this is more of a function of how much you applied yourself while at school, and your general attitudes rather than the degrees themselves. I hold degrees in physics, business, and computer engineering, and now knowing how useful they are I would have spent twice as much time and twice as much money to get them. The reasons why are another long winded post in itself, but it suffices to say I have countless advantages over my peers (graduate students in computer engineering) because of the exposure from all of these degrees.
1) Probably the most useful thing about them is their e-reading capabilities. They used to be terrible, but updates for iBooks made reading PDF books surprisingly easy. I almost prefer it to the real thing, and I certainly prefer it to a kindle for non-linear reading, which most college reading is.
2) There are limitations for e-reading, however. I like reading outside when it's nice, and the screen at full brightness is right on the border of readable in sunlight. However, yesterday I was reading outside and I recieved a prompt that the iPad was overheating, and I would have to wait for it to cool down before using it again. It was only 75 out. I would never use the iPad at the beach or the pool, like that one kindle commercial.
Also currently, downloading PDFs on the iPad is very difficult. You can view them from safari, but you can't export them to iBooks, where reading them is better. There are some apps that work around this, but the current workflow is browse in safari, copy link to other application, download, export to iBooks. Very cumbersome.
3) Related to reading outside is the wireless strength, which is pretty bad. When I'm outside on campus, there are few places I can get and maintain a sigle, while my laptop works just fine. If you have a popular outside are like most campuses, users might find the iPad frustrating. If your wireless coverage is spotty to begin with, it's going to be that much worse with the iPad.
4) iStudiez pro is a killer app for students, and I would suggest loading it on every device. There are many scheduling applications out there, but none of them are tailored specifically for students, with data fields specifically for college study. It's available for iPhone and iPad, very well made, and keeps me organized.
5) The other side of 4) is that the built in calendar app sucks. You can't create events which repeat MWF or TR or any of the crazy ways classes tend to repeat. You're stuck with daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and yearly. I've resorted to maintaining a google calendar and subscribing to it. However I am subscribed to my university calendar, my department calendar, and my graduate student life calendar, and have all that info synced to my class calendar, so I can see all the events I can attend. What I would really like to see is a centralized repository of university calendars (all departments, clubs, etc.), so that is something you could consider implementing.
6) File sharing and collaboration on the iPad is very difficult. Because of a lack of USB and networking, file sharing between iPads is largely done through e-mail. Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Penultimate, and other productivity apps have built in e-mail options to share files, and there really is no alternative other than iTunes, which itself is horrid. Therefore, expect to see a large increase of files going through your mail server. There are actually some apps which look for other iPads locally, but they are few. There are some apps like drop box which make getting files on the iPad easier, but you can't upload files from your iPad to your drop box account.
7) Notetaking on the iPad is virtually worthless. I used to take notes on a tablet PC, where I had a stylus, MS OneNote, and my textbooks loaded and open. My notes were indexed, searchable, taggable, and very well organized. I could share them between computers and different students, and they could edit them. I could even copy pictures and diagrams from my texts and paste them into my notes for annotation. Ink on windows is a system-wide data-type which you can copy, paste, and edit in many applications. Finally, a digitizer with a stylus is very accurate.
None of these features are found on the iPad. Some apps allow you to take crude notes, but capacitive styluses are terrible, and you can do little more than put ink on the page. It's actually less usable than pen and paper. I have my textbooks on my iPad, but I can't c
Get back to me when you can type a diagram, chart, or equation faster than you can write it. Also both my undergrad and grad schools recently published rules against recording lectures. It seems to be a trend at others as well.
oh, and I'm one of the 25 % who thought it was more useful before I used it. I actually own one, and am holding out for November to decide if ill keep it, since the update does look promising.
Welcome to the Apple approach, where easier is harder.
Without any meaningful networking capability or a USB port, you're stuck using apps and iTunes. iTunes is absolutely HORRID at data management, so you're left with apps. Things like dropbox are a good solution, but you're still uploading to dropbox serves, and downloading to your computer. This gets very cumbersome for large files. You're also stuck with a 2gb limit on.
It turns out that e-mail is one of the easier methods of file transfer on the iPad because the app is on there by default, you don't need yet another account, and it's easier than using iTunes (no data cable, no iTunes interface, no fiddling with sync options and file locations).
a device that is being pushed as a educational tool by schools and universities is locked down stopping kids from learning how to program.
It pisses me off to hell that schools are pushing the iPad when it lacks the one thing that made tablets a killer tool for education: a stylus. I did my undergraduate degree in physics and I used tablets throughout for note-taking. I started with a HP TC1100 and moved on to a Latitude XT, but I would not trade a tablet PC for a pen and paper ever.
Tablet PCs with a digitizer for stylus input have very good precision and ink reproduction for comfortable writing. Applications like Microsoft OneNote have amazing features like on the fly handwriting recognition, note indexing, searching, tagging, aggregating, and sharing. I used to keep wiki style class notes my friends and I would edit on our tablets. In Windows "Ink" is a datatype recognized across applications, so you can copy/paste and edit your notes in different apps.
The iPad eliminated all of this functionality. I've tried capacitive pens and they suck hard by comparison. The palm rejection algorithms suck, there's no handwriting recognition to speak of, and the applications are as robust as "put ink on canvas." If that's all I wanted to do, I would use paper.
The sad thing is that tablet PCs never really took off in education, and now that the latest generation of tablets (sans PC) lacks EVERYTHING that made them worth while, they're suddenly being adopted. This tells me one thing: It's not about how well iPads work as teaching tools; it's a marketing ploy. I can see the University Administration sitting around a table saying "The kids love these whiz bang things, lets give them away and maybe they'll come to our school!" They did it with iPods, they're doing it again with iPads.
I guess the concept of a decent thin client escaped you ... I don't know enough about the state of thin client software for the iPad ... I could be horribly wrong
If you don't know what you're talking about, you might try not being such a dick.
Anyway, the kind of software our university requires in my department is the kind iPad sucks for: Matlab/Mathematica, Auto CAD, Office. By the time you set up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor (who wants to do CAD on a 10" screen?), you start to wonder why in the world you're using an iPad in the first place. A lesson I learned early was to use the right tool for the right job. iPad is not the right tool for everything.
iPad is also pretty awful in low light. The minimum brightness allowed is still pretty damn bright when you're in a dark room. Apps like iBooks allow you to turn down the brightness more than this minimum, but that is not an option found in all reader apps.
Oh, and that's another thing frustrating the hell out of me: reader apps. Why does every book I have to download have its own damn app? Why can't I download books in a portable, DRM free format? Imagine if I needed an music app for every song I wanted to listen to.