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US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

36 points by thunderbong 3mo ago

The_suffocated 3mo ago
Why? Aren’t people saying that Chromebooks are easier to deploy and manage in schools?
- kotaKat 3mo ago
  Google can't decide what the hell they wanted a Chromebook to do and IT departments everywhere are fed up with it. Plus I don't think schools are ready to have to deal with managing glorified Android laptops now that Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform.
  - pwdisswordfishs 3mo ago
    > Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform When?
    - laughing_man 3mo ago
      They announced a Chromebook replacement called the Googlebook in May. It's supposed to be "AI native", whatever that means.
      - frollogaston 3mo ago
        Android as the base OS does make sense, and idk why it wasn't this way from the start, but the rest of this says to run for the hills.
- SllX 3mo ago
  The article doesn’t say why, but at launch the MacBook Neo was the most inexpensive Mac Apple ever made, and it’s a full proper Mac. Despite being inexpensive, it also isn’t junk. Chromebooks can be had for cheaper, but if a school district was on the fence before about moving to Macs, then Apple made the decision much easier for them.
  - throwaway89864 3mo ago
    It is a good idea to give children well designed and nice things, if this can be afforded. An item that is well designed and nice looking tends to receive better care. To a degree this is what you'd want to teach - to really care. There isn't a guarantee, if you'd give a child a nice looking thing, that a child would care. But given a piece of junk, they'd surely would not, that is guaranteed.
    - jolmg 3mo ago
      > Apple's latest earnings call revealed a wave of K-12 districts abandoning Chromebooks and Windows machines in favor of the company's new MacBook Neo It's not just Chromebooks but Windows machines. Schools really should be providing OS-agnostic computer education, and for that they really should support any machine, especially Windows machines which more easily support changing their OS. This just changes from having them teach "click this Windows-specific icon to do this" to "click this Mac-specific icon to do this". Schools are still being used as a tool of OS companies to lock-in users for life.
      - pavel_lishin 3mo ago
        You're not wrong, but I've sat in an elementary school classroom while a teacher was doing the computer class. It was already difficult with a class attempting to follow instructions in a single OS; if a teacher had to be giving three sets (at least three!) of instructions to a bunch of kids, they realistically wouldn't get anything done in the 50 minutes they have each week. I could see a proposal to using one trimester for Windows, one trimester for Mac and one for Linux - because it genuinely is kind of hard to switch from one to the other, and it would be useful if kids had a basic familiarity with all three. (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?)
        jolmg 3mo ago
        You work almost exclusively with the common ground, the common conventions. Teach them file managers, "programs" in a very general sense, windows (being able to resize and position them, the window buttons (to close, maximize, etc.), window menus, etc.), the concept of saving a file from a program, file extensions. You take little pauses to explain how things may differ slightly between OSes. You take the same approach with programs (web browsers as opposed to simply Chrome, spreadsheets as opposed to simply Excel, etc.). Once they have the common ground, you can expand on differences, but always OS- and program-neutral, because schools shouldn't be a marketing tool. The idea is that students should be able to use any computer in a very basic extent. It doesn't take much. > (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?) You pick the one that has the most common ground with the other OSes.
- mchesters 3mo ago
  At a similar time as the MacBook Neo launch, Apple unified their Device Management programmes as one 'Apple Business'. So perhaps things have improved on that front.
- ksudb 3mo ago
  [dead]
- tapoxi 3mo ago
  You can assign a mobile device policy on the Mac, and the OS is image based (like a Chromebook). They are much more flexible than Chromebooks, you're not running Adobe Premier or Logic on ChromeOS. The price is also close enough that its probably worth the migration. I think Google completely failed to capitalize on its lead, and is probably making things worse by replacing the platform with Android and rebranding things.
- neverartful 3mo ago
  One aspect that is most definitely easier with Chromebooks is that it only takes a powerwash (1-2 minutes) to make the device ready for someone else. With Windows devices it takes our school district hours to get a device re-imaged and fully updated to be ready to issue to the next person. Not sure what the process would be with Macs but I strongly suspect it's much more akin to Windows than Chromebooks in this regard.
Bullhorn9268 3mo ago
Just seem it was a question of time.
frollogaston 3mo ago
Chromebook has a browser-first Linux OS that can run on ARM and is easy to manage, so why did these schools need to switch to Mac? Chromebooks seem to have a bad reputation like earlier Android phones, why can't they fix that? Meanwhile they aren't successfully taking Windows users while Microsoft keeps making that experience worse.
- throwfaraway4 3mo ago
  Because they’re low quality trash
  - frollogaston 3mo ago
    Sure but this should be fixable. They tried with the Pixelbook and gave up. Feels like a languishing product that's also not stable. Edit: Oh, there's the Googlebook now, which I vaguely remember people complaining about when I worked there but it had a different name. Classic Google rugpull.
- yndoendo 3mo ago
  As others have pointed out Google is dropping Chrome OS for an Android AI OS that still is not out. They no longer list Chromebooks in their official store. Both Microsoft and Google are pushing AI into everything. Studies keep showing that AI reduces quality of understanding and long term retention. AI in schools is oxymoronic. Out of the three, Apple is the only company focused on a quality tool and that is decoupled from AI. To get the maximum out of education, schools need to return to physical books and use laptops as a limited resource.
  - frollogaston 3mo ago
    Ok, "current thing deprecated, replacement not ready" is a very obvious reason to ditch this.
Grombobulous 3mo ago
According to Apple’s earnings call

36 points by thunderbong 3mo ago

The_suffocated 3mo ago

Why? Aren’t people saying that Chromebooks are easier to deploy and manage in schools?

kotaKat 3mo ago
Google can't decide what the hell they wanted a Chromebook to do and IT departments everywhere are fed up with it. Plus I don't think schools are ready to have to deal with managing glorified Android laptops now that Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform.
- pwdisswordfishs 3mo ago
  > Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform When?
  - laughing_man 3mo ago
    They announced a Chromebook replacement called the Googlebook in May. It's supposed to be "AI native", whatever that means.
    - frollogaston 3mo ago
      Android as the base OS does make sense, and idk why it wasn't this way from the start, but the rest of this says to run for the hills.
SllX 3mo ago
The article doesn’t say why, but at launch the MacBook Neo was the most inexpensive Mac Apple ever made, and it’s a full proper Mac. Despite being inexpensive, it also isn’t junk. Chromebooks can be had for cheaper, but if a school district was on the fence before about moving to Macs, then Apple made the decision much easier for them.
- throwaway89864 3mo ago
  It is a good idea to give children well designed and nice things, if this can be afforded. An item that is well designed and nice looking tends to receive better care. To a degree this is what you'd want to teach - to really care. There isn't a guarantee, if you'd give a child a nice looking thing, that a child would care. But given a piece of junk, they'd surely would not, that is guaranteed.
  - jolmg 3mo ago
    > Apple's latest earnings call revealed a wave of K-12 districts abandoning Chromebooks and Windows machines in favor of the company's new MacBook Neo It's not just Chromebooks but Windows machines. Schools really should be providing OS-agnostic computer education, and for that they really should support any machine, especially Windows machines which more easily support changing their OS. This just changes from having them teach "click this Windows-specific icon to do this" to "click this Mac-specific icon to do this". Schools are still being used as a tool of OS companies to lock-in users for life.
    - pavel_lishin 3mo ago
      You're not wrong, but I've sat in an elementary school classroom while a teacher was doing the computer class. It was already difficult with a class attempting to follow instructions in a single OS; if a teacher had to be giving three sets (at least three!) of instructions to a bunch of kids, they realistically wouldn't get anything done in the 50 minutes they have each week. I could see a proposal to using one trimester for Windows, one trimester for Mac and one for Linux - because it genuinely is kind of hard to switch from one to the other, and it would be useful if kids had a basic familiarity with all three. (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?)
      - jolmg 3mo ago
        You work almost exclusively with the common ground, the common conventions. Teach them file managers, "programs" in a very general sense, windows (being able to resize and position them, the window buttons (to close, maximize, etc.), window menus, etc.), the concept of saving a file from a program, file extensions. You take little pauses to explain how things may differ slightly between OSes. You take the same approach with programs (web browsers as opposed to simply Chrome, spreadsheets as opposed to simply Excel, etc.). Once they have the common ground, you can expand on differences, but always OS- and program-neutral, because schools shouldn't be a marketing tool. The idea is that students should be able to use any computer in a very basic extent. It doesn't take much. > (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?) You pick the one that has the most common ground with the other OSes.
mchesters 3mo ago
At a similar time as the MacBook Neo launch, Apple unified their Device Management programmes as one 'Apple Business'. So perhaps things have improved on that front.
ksudb 3mo ago
[dead]
tapoxi 3mo ago
You can assign a mobile device policy on the Mac, and the OS is image based (like a Chromebook). They are much more flexible than Chromebooks, you're not running Adobe Premier or Logic on ChromeOS. The price is also close enough that its probably worth the migration. I think Google completely failed to capitalize on its lead, and is probably making things worse by replacing the platform with Android and rebranding things.
neverartful 3mo ago
One aspect that is most definitely easier with Chromebooks is that it only takes a powerwash (1-2 minutes) to make the device ready for someone else. With Windows devices it takes our school district hours to get a device re-imaged and fully updated to be ready to issue to the next person. Not sure what the process would be with Macs but I strongly suspect it's much more akin to Windows than Chromebooks in this regard.

Bullhorn9268 3mo ago

Just seem it was a question of time.

frollogaston 3mo ago

Chromebook has a browser-first Linux OS that can run on ARM and is easy to manage, so why did these schools need to switch to Mac? Chromebooks seem to have a bad reputation like earlier Android phones, why can't they fix that? Meanwhile they aren't successfully taking Windows users while Microsoft keeps making that experience worse.

throwfaraway4 3mo ago
Because they’re low quality trash
- frollogaston 3mo ago
  Sure but this should be fixable. They tried with the Pixelbook and gave up. Feels like a languishing product that's also not stable. Edit: Oh, there's the Googlebook now, which I vaguely remember people complaining about when I worked there but it had a different name. Classic Google rugpull.
yndoendo 3mo ago
As others have pointed out Google is dropping Chrome OS for an Android AI OS that still is not out. They no longer list Chromebooks in their official store. Both Microsoft and Google are pushing AI into everything. Studies keep showing that AI reduces quality of understanding and long term retention. AI in schools is oxymoronic. Out of the three, Apple is the only company focused on a quality tool and that is decoupled from AI. To get the maximum out of education, schools need to return to physical books and use laptops as a limited resource.
- frollogaston 3mo ago
  Ok, "current thing deprecated, replacement not ready" is a very obvious reason to ditch this.

Grombobulous 3mo ago

According to Apple’s earnings call