5 ms·

I saw this today: https://www.reddit.com/r/KidsAreFuckingStupid/comments/1rk3tz5/absurd_amount_of_chromebooks_broken_by_students/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KidsA

by lm28469 8mo ago

I saw this today: https://www.reddit.com/r/KidsAreFuckingStupid/comments/1rk3tz5/absurd_amount_of_chromebooks_broken_by_students/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KidsAreFuckingStupid/comments/1rk3t... If apple products are even a tiny bit more durable I wouldn't be surprise if it's more cost effective to switch to the neo for a lot of institutions

prcrstntr 8mo ago
I don't think institutions will care much about the enhanced durability since they treat laptops as disposable units anyway. Apple can only complete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks.
- runjake 8mo ago
  No, we really care about durability. The amount of damage is crazy. So many units are damaged that it would be cost-prohibitive to dispose and replace them. The screenshot in that Reddit post more or less looks like ours. Schools generally repair these, if they have the technicians. And everyone is cannibalizing parts out of last generation models. It's like a Jawa shop. > Apple can only compete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks. I've never seen, nor heard of Apple providing competitive prices, even in quantities of ~10,000 units. They haven't even gotten close and they've largely given up on the idea of Macs as a standard K12 school device. ~$250 iPads are still strong in low primary grades and special education, though.
  - joezydeco 8mo ago
    Can confirm Apple gave up on education. If they really cared you'd be able to have multiple accounts/profiles on iPad, and that's still not a thing that exists. I did a major PTA fundraiser to buy iPads for our classrooms and they were pretty much never used because of this.
    - k3nx 8mo ago
      Have you seen the classroom app? It allows for multiple profiles on an iPad. I've never used it, so I don't know how well it works. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...
    - thewebguyd 8mo ago
      > you'd be able to have multiple accounts/profiles on iPad, and that's still not a thing that exists. It does exist, it just requires the iPad to be managed via MDM, which most schools would have (and should implement if they don't have it). JamF, Mosyle, Business Essentials, InTune and probably any other MDM can put an iPad into shared iPad mode with multiple profiles.
  - mghackerlady 8mo ago
    I worked in my High Schools repair room in Junior year, and the Jawa shop is an apt description haha
6SixTy 8mo ago
Kids are given those for free, so there's no responsibility for them to keep them in good condition. It would take a restructuring of laptops within the school system to kids/families having a joint ownership over the laptop to stop them intentionally destroying them. Even then, there are complications like kids that will absolutely destroy anothers' for fun. And knowing how laptop makers treat keyboard repairs, the keyboard switches are easy to damage beyond repair and expensive to replace, making them a target for "problem" kids in school districts with a dysfunctional penal system.
- el_benhameen 8mo ago
  My kids have (insanely shitty) chromebooks from school and we are absolutely responsible for the cost if they break. We have to sign a release at the beginning of the year. Whether or not they’d be able to collect from the vast majority of families is a different question, granted. But the responsibility is there.
  - doubled112 8mo ago
    In practice, there's a huge difference in responsibility between buying and sending your kid with a laptop and signing a paper that says you're responsible if it breaks. I'd also guess it depends on where you go to school. My child's school provided Chromebook was broken from the beginning, so clearly they're not paying that much attention.
- cptskippy 8mo ago
  Who pays for the laptop when the school bully pours water on a kid's backpack? Or a kid has their bag in a seat and someone sits on it accidentally? What happens when a kid's laptop is broken, regardless of the reason, and the family is unable to afford to repair it? Are we going to run into a similar situation that we had when kids couldn't pay for school lunch? Do teachers write "pay for a new laptop" in sharpie on the kid's arm for the parent? A child's educational environment is a lot more chaotic, violent, and uncontrolled compared to an office environment. If you're issuing my child a $600 laptop and making me responsible for any damages, guess what's going to be kept at home in a secure location? Making a child responsible for securing a laptop in an insecure environment isn't accountability, it's just a form of imprisonment.
jonhohle 8mo ago
Not just durability, but ergonomics. My kids have crappy screens, literally the worst trackpad I’ve ever used, and awful keys that hurt my hands minutes after typing (but I go all day on my personal computer). If schools are found to be neglecting a minimum standard of care by subjecting kids to hardware that causes long term physical issues, they would have wished they would spend a little more (it amortizes to about $20/student year difference the way our school district does it).
- Aeolun 8mo ago
  I think my school solves this by telling the parents to buy ‘something’ for the kids, as long as it has a webbrowser and keyboard.
  - jonhohle 8mo ago
    Our district had BYOD and just got rid of it this year. We used it because the teachers couldn’t manage keeping kids off games or YouTube on their Chromebooks during class. Even then, personal devices could not be used for state testing.
- the_sleaze_ 8mo ago
  > Not just durability, but ergonomics. Somehow while spending the most per capita of any nation on the planet, American schools are in a perpetual budget crunch. It's about getting internet access not whether the trackpad is good. You think a chromepad is crappy - have you ever tried to do something in Blackboard? > If schools are found to be neglecting a minimum standard of care They won't be. Pizza sauce is considered a vegetable. An aside: Why do school board super-intendants and administration make more money than teachers themselves? I believe they shouldn't.
  - dragonwriter 8mo ago
    > Why do school board super-intendants and administration make more money than teachers themselves? The more and less cynical explanations (and both play a role, IMO): (1) Because individuals in those roles have closer relationships to the people that set the salaries than do individual teachers, and (2) Because otherwise people with experience in education would continue as teachers and not seek roles as superintendents or other administrators (or seek the advanced degrees sought for those roles whose only financial payoff is greater competitiveness for those higher paying roles.)
notatoad 8mo ago
Chromebooks don’t have a durability problem. I doubt the MacBook is any more durable, even with an all metal construction - if anything, that probably makes it worse at absorbing impact than nice soft bendy plastic. This is just how students treat laptops, and a more expensive unit only makes the problem worse.
- malloci 8mo ago
  Actually metal's pretty bendy when compared to plastic (most anyway...mmv based upon formula). The metal construction is what prompted me to switch over to macbook pro's back in the day. The plastic dell laptops i used to use couldn't handle the abuse that it took during all of the travel i was doing at the time (cases kept cracking). I switched to a pro and was rewarded later with it surviving a 5 foot fall from a car rental counter. It bent part of the corner, but the screen was still in tact and it continued to work well enough to get me through the trip. I suspect the plastic alternative would have been toast. Having kids today and seeing how rough they are with their toys, I'm not confident that a plastic laptop would survive them long.
  - 8ytecoder 8mo ago
    Metal is technically more elastic than an elastic band. With a Young’s modulus of 69 GPa for aluminum versus just 2 GPa for ABS, metal has the "memory" to snap back from significant pressure. Plastic, true to its name, is far more likely to hit its limit and stay permanently deformed. (That’s why metal bars are used to provide “flexibility” to buildings. Concrete provides the strength)
stickfigure 8mo ago
That's a big if. Kids are little engines of chaos and destruction. The Neo might not be more durable, just more expensive.
themingus 8mo ago
I could see the Neo as a viable option for teenage students. The high school I attended distributed a Chromebook to each student and hardware faults were far more common than student inflicted damage. Low build quality in everything from the hinges to the logic boards. Most students feared seeking a replacement device when theirs would break without having done anything wrong. A device with higher build quality and software longevity has the potential to save these institutions a reasonable sum of money in the long run. Younger students on the other hand, Chromebooks remain the way to go. Most of the time, kids'll win in a race between their destructive tendencies and crappy hardware giving out.
- runjake 8mo ago
  > I could see the Neo as a viable option for teenage students. 100% agreed. My statements weren't meant to indicate the Neo wasn't viable. They were meant to state that the Neo isn't going to replace Chromebooks in schools (as far as being District-purchased). > The high school I attended distributed a Chromebook to each student and hardware faults were far more common than student inflicted damage. Low build quality in everything from the hinges to the logic boards. Build quality has been steadily improving over the years. It's all still budget (target ~$290), but is more and more durable with each new generation.
Sohcahtoa82 8mo ago
While I was in high school, as a punishment for a fake "hacking" prank [0], I had to spend half of my lunch breaks with the school IT guy for two weeks as he went around and fixed the damage students were doing to the school computers. There wasn't actually THAT much going on and we mostly just sat in his office and chatted, but when he did have to deal with something, it was absurd the vandalism that happened. One kid had unplugged a mouse and managed to jam the plug into the floppy drive. The IT guy was like "It takes talent to be this much of a piece of shit" as he had to disassemble the case to get it out. When it comes to issuing laptops to public school students, I'm torn. On one hand, people need computer skills, but on the other, I just don't think many students can be trusted with a piece of equipment costing hundreds of dollars. Hell, how many people can't even own a personal cell phone without somehow shattering the screen in just a few months? [0] I had created a two-page slide deck with a black background and white text, then filled both slides with the same text that made it look like a DOS prompt and that Windows had been deleted. It had a C:\> prompt, and on one slide, there was an underscore after the prompt. I then made the slide show auto-play and loop, making the underscore blink, which made it look like an actual prompt. Keep in mind, these were Macs. There was no "C" drive, and certainly no Windows. A teacher insisted I broke the computer, despite showing that pressing any key ended the show, took me to the Principal's office, who gave me my punishment. My first time talking to the IT guy, he was like "you did what now?" and I showed him, and he thought it was funny as hell. Honestly, my "punishment" ended up being pretty fun. That was all 25 years ago. I wish I remembered his name so I could look him up.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  That's hilarious! I can only remember winnuke being a thing in the shared computer lab.
- matwood 8mo ago
  I’m old, so all our computers were in the library or lab. But, kids will be kids. We would stick paper clips into the sockets to see if we could trigger the breaker, among other idiotic things.
iqandjoke 8mo ago
https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished

by lm28469 8mo ago

prcrstntr 8mo ago

I don't think institutions will care much about the enhanced durability since they treat laptops as disposable units anyway. Apple can only complete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks.

runjake 8mo ago
No, we really care about durability. The amount of damage is crazy. So many units are damaged that it would be cost-prohibitive to dispose and replace them. The screenshot in that Reddit post more or less looks like ours. Schools generally repair these, if they have the technicians. And everyone is cannibalizing parts out of last generation models. It's like a Jawa shop. > Apple can only compete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks. I've never seen, nor heard of Apple providing competitive prices, even in quantities of ~10,000 units. They haven't even gotten close and they've largely given up on the idea of Macs as a standard K12 school device. ~$250 iPads are still strong in low primary grades and special education, though.
- joezydeco 8mo ago
  Can confirm Apple gave up on education. If they really cared you'd be able to have multiple accounts/profiles on iPad, and that's still not a thing that exists. I did a major PTA fundraiser to buy iPads for our classrooms and they were pretty much never used because of this.
  - k3nx 8mo ago
    Have you seen the classroom app? It allows for multiple profiles on an iPad. I've never used it, so I don't know how well it works. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...
  - thewebguyd 8mo ago
    > you'd be able to have multiple accounts/profiles on iPad, and that's still not a thing that exists. It does exist, it just requires the iPad to be managed via MDM, which most schools would have (and should implement if they don't have it). JamF, Mosyle, Business Essentials, InTune and probably any other MDM can put an iPad into shared iPad mode with multiple profiles.
- mghackerlady 8mo ago
  I worked in my High Schools repair room in Junior year, and the Jawa shop is an apt description haha

6SixTy 8mo ago

Kids are given those for free, so there's no responsibility for them to keep them in good condition. It would take a restructuring of laptops within the school system to kids/families having a joint ownership over the laptop to stop them intentionally destroying them. Even then, there are complications like kids that will absolutely destroy anothers' for fun. And knowing how laptop makers treat keyboard repairs, the keyboard switches are easy to damage beyond repair and expensive to replace, making them a target for "problem" kids in school districts with a dysfunctional penal system.

el_benhameen 8mo ago
My kids have (insanely shitty) chromebooks from school and we are absolutely responsible for the cost if they break. We have to sign a release at the beginning of the year. Whether or not they’d be able to collect from the vast majority of families is a different question, granted. But the responsibility is there.
- doubled112 8mo ago
  In practice, there's a huge difference in responsibility between buying and sending your kid with a laptop and signing a paper that says you're responsible if it breaks. I'd also guess it depends on where you go to school. My child's school provided Chromebook was broken from the beginning, so clearly they're not paying that much attention.
cptskippy 8mo ago
Who pays for the laptop when the school bully pours water on a kid's backpack? Or a kid has their bag in a seat and someone sits on it accidentally? What happens when a kid's laptop is broken, regardless of the reason, and the family is unable to afford to repair it? Are we going to run into a similar situation that we had when kids couldn't pay for school lunch? Do teachers write "pay for a new laptop" in sharpie on the kid's arm for the parent? A child's educational environment is a lot more chaotic, violent, and uncontrolled compared to an office environment. If you're issuing my child a $600 laptop and making me responsible for any damages, guess what's going to be kept at home in a secure location? Making a child responsible for securing a laptop in an insecure environment isn't accountability, it's just a form of imprisonment.

jonhohle 8mo ago

Not just durability, but ergonomics. My kids have crappy screens, literally the worst trackpad I’ve ever used, and awful keys that hurt my hands minutes after typing (but I go all day on my personal computer). If schools are found to be neglecting a minimum standard of care by subjecting kids to hardware that causes long term physical issues, they would have wished they would spend a little more (it amortizes to about $20/student year difference the way our school district does it).

Aeolun 8mo ago
I think my school solves this by telling the parents to buy ‘something’ for the kids, as long as it has a webbrowser and keyboard.
- jonhohle 8mo ago
  Our district had BYOD and just got rid of it this year. We used it because the teachers couldn’t manage keeping kids off games or YouTube on their Chromebooks during class. Even then, personal devices could not be used for state testing.
the_sleaze_ 8mo ago
> Not just durability, but ergonomics. Somehow while spending the most per capita of any nation on the planet, American schools are in a perpetual budget crunch. It's about getting internet access not whether the trackpad is good. You think a chromepad is crappy - have you ever tried to do something in Blackboard? > If schools are found to be neglecting a minimum standard of care They won't be. Pizza sauce is considered a vegetable. An aside: Why do school board super-intendants and administration make more money than teachers themselves? I believe they shouldn't.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago
  > Why do school board super-intendants and administration make more money than teachers themselves? The more and less cynical explanations (and both play a role, IMO): (1) Because individuals in those roles have closer relationships to the people that set the salaries than do individual teachers, and (2) Because otherwise people with experience in education would continue as teachers and not seek roles as superintendents or other administrators (or seek the advanced degrees sought for those roles whose only financial payoff is greater competitiveness for those higher paying roles.)

notatoad 8mo ago

Chromebooks don’t have a durability problem. I doubt the MacBook is any more durable, even with an all metal construction - if anything, that probably makes it worse at absorbing impact than nice soft bendy plastic. This is just how students treat laptops, and a more expensive unit only makes the problem worse.

malloci 8mo ago
Actually metal's pretty bendy when compared to plastic (most anyway...mmv based upon formula). The metal construction is what prompted me to switch over to macbook pro's back in the day. The plastic dell laptops i used to use couldn't handle the abuse that it took during all of the travel i was doing at the time (cases kept cracking). I switched to a pro and was rewarded later with it surviving a 5 foot fall from a car rental counter. It bent part of the corner, but the screen was still in tact and it continued to work well enough to get me through the trip. I suspect the plastic alternative would have been toast. Having kids today and seeing how rough they are with their toys, I'm not confident that a plastic laptop would survive them long.
- 8ytecoder 8mo ago
  Metal is technically more elastic than an elastic band. With a Young’s modulus of 69 GPa for aluminum versus just 2 GPa for ABS, metal has the "memory" to snap back from significant pressure. Plastic, true to its name, is far more likely to hit its limit and stay permanently deformed. (That’s why metal bars are used to provide “flexibility” to buildings. Concrete provides the strength)

stickfigure 8mo ago

That's a big if. Kids are little engines of chaos and destruction. The Neo might not be more durable, just more expensive.

themingus 8mo ago

I could see the Neo as a viable option for teenage students. The high school I attended distributed a Chromebook to each student and hardware faults were far more common than student inflicted damage. Low build quality in everything from the hinges to the logic boards. Most students feared seeking a replacement device when theirs would break without having done anything wrong. A device with higher build quality and software longevity has the potential to save these institutions a reasonable sum of money in the long run. Younger students on the other hand, Chromebooks remain the way to go. Most of the time, kids'll win in a race between their destructive tendencies and crappy hardware giving out.

runjake 8mo ago
> I could see the Neo as a viable option for teenage students. 100% agreed. My statements weren't meant to indicate the Neo wasn't viable. They were meant to state that the Neo isn't going to replace Chromebooks in schools (as far as being District-purchased). > The high school I attended distributed a Chromebook to each student and hardware faults were far more common than student inflicted damage. Low build quality in everything from the hinges to the logic boards. Build quality has been steadily improving over the years. It's all still budget (target ~$290), but is more and more durable with each new generation.

Sohcahtoa82 8mo ago

While I was in high school, as a punishment for a fake "hacking" prank [0], I had to spend half of my lunch breaks with the school IT guy for two weeks as he went around and fixed the damage students were doing to the school computers. There wasn't actually THAT much going on and we mostly just sat in his office and chatted, but when he did have to deal with something, it was absurd the vandalism that happened. One kid had unplugged a mouse and managed to jam the plug into the floppy drive. The IT guy was like "It takes talent to be this much of a piece of shit" as he had to disassemble the case to get it out. When it comes to issuing laptops to public school students, I'm torn. On one hand, people need computer skills, but on the other, I just don't think many students can be trusted with a piece of equipment costing hundreds of dollars. Hell, how many people can't even own a personal cell phone without somehow shattering the screen in just a few months? [0] I had created a two-page slide deck with a black background and white text, then filled both slides with the same text that made it look like a DOS prompt and that Windows had been deleted. It had a C:\> prompt, and on one slide, there was an underscore after the prompt. I then made the slide show auto-play and loop, making the underscore blink, which made it look like an actual prompt. Keep in mind, these were Macs. There was no "C" drive, and certainly no Windows. A teacher insisted I broke the computer, despite showing that pressing any key ended the show, took me to the Principal's office, who gave me my punishment. My first time talking to the IT guy, he was like "you did what now?" and I showed him, and he thought it was funny as hell. Honestly, my "punishment" ended up being pretty fun. That was all 25 years ago. I wish I remembered his name so I could look him up.

fragmede 8mo ago
That's hilarious! I can only remember winnuke being a thing in the shared computer lab.
matwood 8mo ago
I’m old, so all our computers were in the library or lab. But, kids will be kids. We would stick paper clips into the sockets to see if we could trigger the breaker, among other idiotic things.

iqandjoke 8mo ago

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished