Lots has been written about yesterday’s Apple Event. One core thread concerns Apple pricing. One prominent school of thought is that yesterday’s event was a swing and a miss by Apple. That Apple did not price the new iPad aggressively enough to make a dent in the Android/ChromeBook dominated education market.
While the facts on which those arguments are based are certainly true, they miss the point. The new iPad, even at $299, is certainly more expensive than the cheaper alternatives. No question of that.
But two things are lost by those arguments:
1. The new iPad, though more expensive, is a head and shoulders better product than the cheaply produced alternatives. To me, there’s no comparison. If you want cheap, buy cheap. But in the long run, cheap will out. Cheap will cost you more in support time and effort, cheap will cost you more in terms of product life.
2. Yesterday’s event was about so much more than a new iPad. Apple rolled out an entire system of device and curriculum management, new software for collaboration (Pages, most specifically), and a phenomenal computer science curriculum that will help many schools that want one but can’t afford to pay the talent to come in and create one. And all that stuff I just mentioned? It’s free.
Google has a significant lead here. And the Android tablets and ChromeBooks are clearly cheaper. Google has a set of tools that are also free, and they work. So this is no easy get for Apple.
But that said, the experience of using an iPad with a Logitech Crayon or Apple Pencil is creatively freeing. There’s just no comparison between the products when you consider the potential it unleashes in students.
Take a look at the video embedded below, which Apple ran at the end of yesterday’s event. To me, what Apple has delivered is worthy of consideration.
Not specifically related to Apple’s announcements yesterday but related tangentially: for schools that use Google product to manage schoolwork, what if you have a conscientious Google objector for a student? Is there a mechanism to allow that student to participate without using Google services? I would imagine the answer to this question is different for different schools or districts.
I think quality over quantity has been an Apple advantage since the debut of the iPod and while I think $299 might have been a little high, the software integration and polish will make it a great experience for students and educators. I was hoping Apple would do something in the $250 range, say an ePad with a polycarbonate chassis- like the MacBooks of 2006-2012- with Pencil integration, maybe even rudimentary IPXX protection. My child attends a school that has deployed Chromebooks for the last 2 years and they have been a headache for IT support to care for, mostly because of durability- cracked displays, broken hinges, keys falling off the keyboards, etc. Software-wise, they have been ok, just somewhat limited to the usual browser-based software that is Chrome. I hope this push does what they have set out for it to do.
I see Apple is going the creativity route. But I’m not sure saying you can’t be creative with a Chromebook is really a wining argument. If Apple really wanted to make a difference they could have priced the education only iPad at $249 or $299 with Logitech keyboard case. Last quarter Apple reported $19B in profits. They have a lot of margin to play with. And I think they could easily convince Wall Street that being more price competitive in the education sector will be a win in the long as it gets more people at an early age entrenched in the Apple ecosystem.
Are there any studies or objective metrics to show which provides better outcomes? Seems to me it’s not one or the other but a mixture of both.
Ah, school…
Write a sentence using the word ‘pixel’…
Write a sentence using the word ‘nexus’…
Write a sentence using the word ‘phone’…
Mind share battle is ‘where the puck has been’ and mind share was important when you needed to move people toward a niche product. Today the products go to where the people are – into their pockets, onto their wrists, into their ears, and next to their sofas.
Apple, Google, and everyone are (or should be) battling to get into the stream between the producers of educational curriculum (& supplemental materials) and the classroom.
The battle is to be ubiquitous in the classroom. There are worlds of unconquered education space for Apple, Google, and many others to sell into.
https://mobile.twitter.com/arcsine/status/978690463245856768
While cheap will mean more expense in the long term, I think the reason cheaper, lesser products are more popular with schools is that, in the real world, many schools simply don’t have the luxury of thinking long term. They have tight budgets and have to save every penny they have, right now. When making a large computer purchase they have to look at their bottom line at the time of purchase and are forced to compromise. Apple will always be at a disadvantage there.
A friend of mine is involved in edtech and the device management issue is huge, and really more important than the pricing to a degree. The announcement of a ChromeOS tablet the other day is a direct counter to this..
Holy crap Quark is still around? I’m amazed.
Funny, I had the exact same reaction about a month ago when I learned the same through another source. I had no idea they were still alive and kicking.
Rick, I posted on an article on 9to5 the other day on this exact same issue, and was called an idiot. People just don’t realize that device management is 90% of the issue for schools and education districts, and it’s the area where iPad has been most severely lacking.
Forget pricing, the fact that a teacher couldn’t even configure his students via a Mac was ludicrous. Teachers and administrators have very little time. They need to be able to do this stuff quickly and efficiently.
Apple did a lot yesterday to address their shortcomings in this area. Did they do enough? Time will tell, but it’s a much more viable solution today than it was yesterday.
You’re very correct on the talent to create curriculum point. The education staff for my company is maybe 80 people. Curriculum development is about 23. Our budget? Pushing $30 million. Why? Because we have students all over the world. Classrooms account for about 400 students at a time, but our e-learning runs well over 10,000 at any given time.
We develop all our curriculum now in Quark Publishing System. (Yes, Quark blows Adobe out of the water on this front.) We produce printed text books. lab manuals, e-learning, and classroom presentations, with QPS from a single source. But it still takes a lot of manual work to get it all together. There are so many issues computers simply can’t do on their own.
it all comes down to, do teachers want to manually create the whole stack? Or do they want to create content and let the system present the information to the students in an engaging way? Apple has chosen that path, and for public schools, that’s a very smart approach.
From what I saw yesterday, I would love to have a system like that where the presentation to the students was pretty walled-gardenish. But let us spend the time on the content and much less time on the infrastructure. But we are world-wide, and have over 50 accrediting agencies to deal with just in the US. We translate into six languages.
And our management can’t get a unified idea together of how this stuff should be taught. Until then, manually creating content is our job. (Thank goodness teachers can’t do it all themselves! I have three years to retirement!)
Yeah, well OS/2 was finally put to pasture a few years back.
You bet. I’ve heard plenty of stories about how Chromebooks are a hot mess and not worth the tinfoil they’re made from. My own school tried alternatives to iPad for non-CAD computers our students used. Chrome is not the answer. Web apps are not the answer. And monotizing your students for Google is most certainly not the answer.
I suspect it’s how well whatever interface is implemented for a given use.
“But in the long run, cheap will out. Cheap will cost you more in support time and effort, cheap will cost you more in terms of product life.”
I think this was very true of Windows netbooks 15 years ago, but is this still the case with Chromebooks? That’s the key question here, and reading e.g. Frasier Spiers’ Twitter (highly recommended) suggests otherwise.
“But that said, the experience of using an iPad with a Logitech Crayon or Apple Pencil is creatively freeing. There’s just no comparison between the products when you consider the potential it unleashes in students.”
This is the big difference from my perspective; allowing the creativity expressed with stylus and images, versus keyboard and mouse. While my own skill set is largely satisfied with the latter, I expect many will be more fulfilled by the former.
“But in the long run, cheap will out.”
It seems like you are missing a word in the second half of that sentence. I am unable to parse it in its current form.
Also, not sure if you’ve noticed, but you have a writing tic this week with the word lots 🙂
Your friend is absolutely right. Of course it depends on where your students are. We have dealt with all sorts of hardware, but Apple products are better than anything else so far.
i can no longer toggle embedded YouTube clips into iOS full screen mode on my ipad, it pops up an error message about my browser not supporting full screen.
anyone else seeing this?
No master how compelling the technology, you or your parents have voted in Republicans who systematically destroy public education at every turn. this includes crushing the ability of governing bodies to generate tax dollars needed to fund these initiatives.
Fail
I find it odd that people are adding the cost of the Pencil to the keyboard to the iPad and then saying “Aha! Waaay more expensive than a Chromebook…”
What Chromebook offers handwriting and drawing support with a stylus? My daughters el cheapo school Chromebook definitely doesn’t. And whilst the Surface offers stylus support, not all Surfaces comes with a stylus. It too is an added cost.
Sure the iPad+keyboard+Pencil bundle is pricier for a school than a Chromebook. But that combo is so much more. Convincing them of that is the challenge.
They may not be “the answer” but when they cost half as much as an iPad and come with a keyboard, the schools are going to keep buying them. And if and when Chromebooks do suck, it’ll just be the kids (and Apple) who will suffer. And it’s not as though iPads are durable at all without the addition of expensive fancy cases. Chromebooks, being plastic, are more rugged.
All this because Apple can’t eat a little margin to gain share in one of the few areas where share matters.
Assuming they have the funds to lay out for such prices.
Well, as the saying goes, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
“…you or your parents have voted in Republicans…” Not sure if you’re referring to someone specifically but, as generalizations go, this (like all other generalizations) is demonstrably false. Please try to make more specific arguments.