Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 335 posts

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#311

Post by s3r3nity »

jobu wrote: post #278
ux-app wrote: post #13

I'm a HS teacher. I was so happy when my school finally phased out iPads as the designated device for our year 7 students. It's such a rubbish device for content creation. The touchscreen is a POS for anything other than web browsing and casual games. Teaching coding, image manipulation, file manipulation was utterly painful or impossible. Typing on them is beyond painful and of the hundreds of students I taught, few…

My kids used iPads at a previous school and I was initially thrilled, but that faded immediately when I saw one of them trying to type an essay on it. I think iPads can be useful tools for some things (reading, studying, learning), but even with an external keyboard they suck for writing/creating anything. > Chromebooks are rubbish too, so I don't really see the move to them as a positive either. You get what you pay…

Anecdote on keyboards & iPads: My brother was attending a high school that was experimenting with iPads for students, and humanities classes especially felt this. I bought him a decent external keyboard case and he told me his friends all followed suit, as it was like the "missing link" to making the iPad accomplish like 90% of what he needs.

Separately, I think that the better market opportunity would be for a cheap-ass Surface model -- essentially sitting below the Surface Pro line -- that could be marketed at the education market. I know MSFT has been pushing OneNote for classrooms, agnostic to the medium for how it's accessed, but the Surface pen + keyboard + tablet combination is something I WISH i had in high school

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#312

Post by bskap »

s3r3nity wrote: post #311
jobu wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids used iPads at a previous school and I was initially thrilled, but that faded immediately when I saw one of them trying to type an essay on it. I think iPads can be useful tools for some things (reading, studying, learning), but even with an external keyboard they suck for writing/creating anything. > Chromebooks are rubbish too, so I don't really see the move to them as a positive either. You get what you pay…

Anecdote on keyboards & iPads: My brother was attending a high school that was experimenting with iPads for students, and humanities classes especially felt this. I bought him a decent external keyboard case and he told me his friends all followed suit, as it was like the "missing link" to making the iPad accomplish like 90% of what he needs. Separately, I think that the better market opportunity would be for a cheap…

So the Surface 3, then.

Too bad Intel canceled development on that processor line so they can't make a new one.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#313

Post by nihonde »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #159
nihonde wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you see iPads as a hindrance to education, you are a terrible teacher. If I had been given access to an iPad at age 10, I would have been completely, endlessly obsessed with the possibilities of it. As it was, I had access to a TRS80 at that age, and I had to fight the fussy old math teacher to get access to it, let alone any meaningful instruction or encouragement to match my curiosity. Meanwhile, the same teache…

> If you see iPads as a hindrance to education, you are a terrible teacher. Personal attacks are frowned upon here.

People who live in glass houses...

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#314

Post by remir »

LeicaLatte wrote: post #64

The passing of Steve has affected the iPad product line the most. iPads have pretty much stagnated since his demise and Apple has alienated the education market with their laptops too. I mean look at the Pro features of the iPad - split screen multi-tasking and 100$ pencils. Its a joke.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro (32GB, Wifi only) is selling for $1,049 CAD. Who are they kidding?

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#315

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #222
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they've lost it at the high-end too: the MacPro's internals are now over 3 years old with still no update in site, AV pros are switching to HP Z-series and the MBP is high-end only in price and design: perf-wise it's quite lacking. The MacBook Air (with its low price to clear their stock) and Mac Mini are priced right for education, but spec-wise they're poor investments, especially as even web-pages now require…

Macbook Air is by far the best laptop, price, value, and quality wise, for 90% of users today. The hardware hasn't been updated simply because it needs no updating, there haven't been any big advances in the past few years. As long as you have quality components, any SSD/intel core processor/8GB+ RAM is sufficient for pretty much everything day to day.

I'd argue the screen resolution is poor 1440x900 in a 13" screen considering I have a 7-year-old Sony Vaio 13" with a 1920x1080 display, and the ever-increasing number of 4K Windows laptops you can buy at a similar price-point. macOS' UI is clearly optimized for retina displays now and the information-density is low, heck I find the default workspace on the 15" MacBook Pro very limiting.

I'll concede the rest of the MacBook Air's current specs are acceptable though the processor is 2 years old at this point, but I believe CPU performance has plateaued over the past 4 years, and Apple did recently bump the RAM to 8GB - but they were still selling 4GB until Q2 2016.

The only other negative is the wimpy GPU, the Intel HD Graphics 6000, which scores worse[1] than an entry-level NVIDIA GTS 250[2] - a card released 8 years ago. That's embarrassing!

[1]: Intel HD 6000, released 2014, Score of 823 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+6000&...

[2]: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250, released March 2009, Score of 898 -http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTS+25...

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#316

Post by danans »

Tsagadai wrote: post #68
secabeen wrote: post #2

Finally. It was always so hard to see schools spend millions on expensive Apple tech when there was equivalent equipment available for half the price that met their needs equivalently well. We really don't need to be spending $400-500 per tablet to outfit a classroom with 1 device for every 3 kids, when each kid really needs their own.

It's telling that MIT still lectures with blackboards while other universities spend oodles of dollars on expensive electric whiteboards, projectors and whatnot.

I doubt that MIT eschews computers for project based work. No MATLAB on a chalkboard.

Similarly, when computers are used sensibly in the classroom they are tools applied to certain parts of the instruction, and not the only medium of instruction.

That's true regardless of the equipment manufacturer.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#317

Post by LeicaLatte »

remir wrote: post #314
LeicaLatte wrote: post #64

The passing of Steve has affected the iPad product line the most. iPads have pretty much stagnated since his demise and Apple has alienated the education market with their laptops too. I mean look at the Pro features of the iPad - split screen multi-tasking and 100$ pencils. Its a joke.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro (32GB, Wifi only) is selling for $1,049 CAD. Who are they kidding?

32 GB storage on a 1000+$ device is mind boggling. The cloud storage situation is even worse.

Every Pro device (MBP or iPadP) should come with atleast 100GB cloud storage IMO.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#318

Post by rebootthesystem »

douche wrote: post #151
rebootthesystem wrote: post #144

I read through this entire thread. Interesting range of comments. I had the experience of being consulted by the principal of our local elementary school on this a few years back. They had received a donation and could make their own localized purchasing decision with that money. Based on what we learned at home with our kids and various iOS devices my advice was to avoid them and opt for inexpensive PC laptops runni…

> The last straw was when one of them started to lie about usage and would play Clash of Clans hidden under his blanket in bed instead of sleeping. They exhibited the behavior of alcoholics or drug addicts who deny their reality. That's when the iOS devices evaporated. This is what kids do when you try to enforce a bedtime. I used to get hell for reading actual books under the covers with a flashlight when it was dec…

Well, in our case this has nothing to do with enforcing bed time. When your kids look like zombies in the morning because they only got four hours sleep due to the damn games you go into detective mode very quickly.

It was simple enough to check-in on them at, say, 1 AM (I'm usually up late doing software/hardware/mechanical engineering work) to discover what they were doing. Sleep is an important component of health, particularly for children.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#319

Post by askvictor »

hisyam wrote: post #181
askvictor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs definitely have less downtime, shorter startup time and better battery life than windows machines. Windows has certainly gotten better over the last few years, but 5 years ago it would be taking a minute or two for windows to wake up and log in between each class. Mac is pretty much instant (Chromebooks are fast too). Before you say that a minute isn't much, consider that you have 25 teenagers in the classroom,…

> 5 years ago it would be taking a minute or two for windows to wake up and log in OS boot time depends mostly on storage speed, not just the OS itself. My 2012 MBP takes 90s to boot before I upgraded it to SSD.

I'm not talking about boot time - I'm talking opening the lid of a suspended-state laptop. Which is something a highschool student has to do at least 5 (but probably more) times a day. Windows is better now (my shiny new Windows laptop takes around 5 or 10 seconds) but Mac is pretty much instant.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#320

Post by throwaway91111 »

xiaoma wrote: post #307
throwaway91111 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem like a tech problem, then.

Not being able to install apps to a machine absolutely is a tech problem.

Sure.

Doesn't seem necessary on any level, though. Nothing about hex editing needs to be an app instead of a web page. If that were true, my computer education would have been crippling--especially in high school. I think you're projecting on your students.

Post reply on HN