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

US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

finance.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#21

Post by frollogaston »

ifwinterco wrote: post #19
jolmg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 havin…

At least MacOS is unix based and has a proper shell etc (not that school kids will be using it). For someone who picks up technical stuff easily learning how MacOS actually works is much more useful (and closer to linux/bsd) than Windows. Modern windows is just a weird, locked down mess that doesn't teach you much about anything

Both Windows and ChromeOS have Debian subsystems that are easy to enable and use. I prefer the macOS way for my job, but for students it doesn't really matter.

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#22

Post by frollogaston »

jolmg wrote: post #16
SllX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t get too excited on this topic. The differences between a Mac or Windows PC round to nearly zero in basic GUI operations, and the primary software kids will be using regardless of hardware is likely either G Suite or Microsoft Office depending on what the school district prefers, and most likely accessed through Google Chrome either way. If they want to game, they’ll eventually get a Windows PC. Even if the…

> The differences between a Mac or Windows PC round to nearly zero in basic GUI operations Which should make things easier to educate OS-neutrally. > and the primary software kids will be using regardless of hardware is likely either G Suite or Microsoft Office depending on what the school district prefers. That's what I object to.

Meanwhile we learned to use Appleworks in elementary school, haha

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#23

Post by throwfaraway4 »

frollogaston wrote: post #20

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.

Because they’re low quality trash

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#24

Post by frollogaston »

throwfaraway4 wrote: post #23
frollogaston wrote: post #20

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.

Because they’re low quality trash

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.

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#25

Post by frollogaston »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #12
jolmg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 havin…

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 trime…

Imagine doing this with non-ChromeOS desktop Linux and every kid has a different DE, distro, maybe even window system installed lol

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#26

Post by frollogaston »

laughing_man wrote: post #9
pwdisswordfishs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform When?

They announced a Chromebook replacement called the Googlebook in May. It's supposed to be "AI native", whatever that means.

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.

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#27

Post by yndoendo »

frollogaston wrote: post #20

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.

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.

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#28

Post by frollogaston »

yndoendo wrote: post #27
frollogaston wrote: post #20

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.

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 decoupl…

Ok, "current thing deprecated, replacement not ready" is a very obvious reason to ditch this.

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#29

Post by neverartful »

The_suffocated wrote: post #2

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

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.

Re: US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

#30

Post by BenjiWiebe »

frollogaston wrote: post #25
pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trime…

Imagine doing this with non-ChromeOS desktop Linux and every kid has a different DE, distro, maybe even window system installed lol

And they all have Firefox and LibreOffice Calc installed, so you can teach them how to use a web browser and a spreadsheet in an OS-agnostic (and DE/distro/WM-agnostic) way.
Post reply on HN