“The first comprehensive study of the groundbreaking Apple iBook initiative in Henrico County’s public schools shows that most students want the laptop program to continue even though some are unsure how much it is helping them academically. The survey, conducted for the School Board by a Northern Virginia consulting firm, also found that most parents support the program even though they prefer Windows-based computers and most teachers favor its continuation even though it has added to their workloads,” Tom Lappas reports for The Henrico Citizen. “Henrico became the first school system in the nation to lease laptop computers for all of its high-school students when it entered into a four-year agreement with Apple in 2001. A four-year agreement for middle-school students began the following year.”
Lappas reports, “The School Board is considering whether to extend its high-school contract with Apple for another three or four years or take another direction. Its decision, expected in the coming months, will be made with a national audience watching. Henrico earned international fame for its agreement in 2001, and a decision to continue the initiative or end it will be viewed by many as either a validation or indictment of the overall concept.”
“According to parents who participated in the survey, students spend an average of 1.8 hours per day using their iBooks while at home. The survey did not ask how much of that time was devoted to schoolwork and how much was spent on recreational use,” Lappas reports. “The survey also found that 90 percent of families have another family computer at home, and that 92 percent of those computers are Windows-based. The survey found lukewarm support for the Apple operating system; 54 percent of parents would prefer a Windows-based system for their children, while only 12 percent favor Apple. High-school students also favor Windows over Apple, 51 percent to 24 percent, but middle-schoolers prefer Apple 41 percent to 36 percent. Teachers were split at 34 percent apiece, while administrators showed the strongest support for Apple, selecting it over Windows 66 percent to 8 percent. Surveys were completed by about 80 percent of all students, 81 percent of teachers and 69 percent of administrators.”
Full article with more details here.
MacDailyNews Take: The younger students, perhaps more open to change, favor the Mac, as do the administrators. This bodes well for Apple’s Mac platform’s future. There may be a resistance to change in people who are long-time Windows users or are very familiar with Windows or there may be some students who want the latest games or any number of other interesting reasons for the survey’s results. The survey states favor for Windows or the Mac, but the article doesn’t explain the reasons why some prefer one OS or the other. Why do you think that some of the groups studied prefer Windows and some prefer Mac OS X?
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Henrico poll finds students are using iBooks successfully – February 11, 2005
Henrico iBooks raise concerns among some parents – May 28, 2004
Henrico high school laptop program to continue, but will it still feature Apple Macs? – February 24, 2005
it’s all those damn windows pc’s in businesses. parents think you need to learn windows to succeed in corporate computing, which is total BS. windows won’t look anything like it does now (except that it’ll still suck) in 10+ years when these kids actually are using computers at work…jeez
Are they even using Mac OS X? It was not the default OS on these computers in 2001….
Yes, they are using OS X. I visited the program last spring in preparation for implementing our own 1:1 laptop program in the Fullerton School District in Southern California.
What a Waste of money.
MW “Six” as in maybe *Six* of the students even care they are using an iBook.
A couple of questions:
1) What software was shipped with the iBooks in the program? Were the students using AppleWorks or M$ Office?
2) Were the iBooks equipped with adequate memory, or the sluggish base memory shipped on the retail models of the time? If memory serves me correctly, the iBooks of the time came with 128MB standard- barely enough to run OS X.
As to the parents preference, many average Joes and Janes think that knowledge of Windows is somehow a necessary work skill. I blame Apple for that. People use APPLICATIONS- not operating systems. If the OS is doing it’s job it will stay out of the way and help you get your work done. Windows is an impediment to efficient workflow.
Finally-maybe the students opinion of windows is jaded by their use of Mac OS during the ramp-up of malware/viruses during the time of the program in the schools. If they had to get their work done AFTER cleaning up their Windows boxes on an almost daily basis, their opinion of the M$ OS may have been different.
I hope Apple didn’t shoot itself in the foot by shipping underpowered iBooks with minimal software in order to increase their profit margin. If they did, they were very shortsighted.
NoPCZone:
WORD.
My biggest bitch is the amount of ram that comes with stock Macintoshes. A newbie rarely has someone to guide them in this area, and there is no reason for a Switcher or a first time buyer to ‘know” they need more ram for a faster computer.
I just switched someone from a PC to Mini last week and made sure he had AT LEAST 512mb. He’s as pleased as punch right now and loves it.
A PeeCee user who swithches from a zippier machine to a Mac is going to have a sour taste that will last for years if they leave the store with 256 megs.
Tell me. If I am a switcher or computer or computer virgin will a sales person automatically try to sell me up to more ram? How about catalogs? Is it perceived as ‘help’ or a predatory sales technique?
This ram thing bugs me a lot, and I don’t know if the follks in the ivory towers at Apple are hip to this problem. Or at least to the length that it affects future sales and word of mouth.
We have a whole new generation of young buyers ‘hatching’ right now (partially because of the iPod) and we have to grab them when they are making their first impressions.
Comments?
david vesey
david@MyPodPuter.com
For those who are hooked on gaming, the newest games are released on PC’s first. Mac is catching up, but for those who want to have ALL the games immediately, the PC is the choice.
IM’ing is another reason. For MSN Messenger, there are more features and interoperability between PC’s than there are between PC and Mac which could also account for a large portion of the audience. iChat/AOLIM is a great service, but, again, you don’t have the full range of features in mac to pc that you do from mac to mac.
Little things like this can make a huge difference in platform preference.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
A bunch of things pop out of that article:
1 – “54 percent of parents would prefer a Windows-based system for their children, while only 12 percent favor Apple.”
What about the other 34%? What do they favor?
2 – “The survey found lukewarm support for the Apple operating system.”
Mac OS 9.x or Mac OS X? Were the systems upgraded regularly?
3 – “while administrators showed the strongest support for Apple, selecting it over Windows 66 percent to 8 percent.”
Hello? What’s that say? People who “know” prefer the Mac?
4 – “The survey did not ask how much of that time was devoted to schoolwork and how much was spent on recreational use.”
That’s like, oh, I dunno, a REALLY important piece of information, don’t you think??
5 – “High-school students also favor Windows over Apple, 51 percent to 24 percent, but middle-schoolers prefer Apple 41 percent to 36 percent.”
Amazingly, Apple’s 2% marketshare becomes 24% “preference share” for high schoolers who haven’t been as heavily indoctrinated by the Microsoft Industrial Complex. Among middle-schoolers (less indoctrination by MIC) Apple is preferred.
Remarkable.
Tera Patricks
Mac360
GOODBYE MDN, it has been swell, but I do not want to suffer your popups anymore.
Hasta la vista baby.
Hold the door… I’m right behind you.
You can turn them off. More info here:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/5042/
Many high schoolers who use computers are addicted to the social networks that are more available to Windows computers. Please don’t make me name names. I know there are OS X alternatives but most of the chat software out there has only marginal support for OS X, lacking many of the extra personal and security-risky features like file sharing and video streaming.
More kids have Windows and that makes more kids want the same things their friends have. Maybe when the younger kids learn to prefer OS X they will stick with it through High School. It’s these social “tools” after all that spread viruses and malware so rampantly. Kids don’t question what their friends send them.
As for Tera Patricks,
#1) The other 34% have no preference.
#2) OS X, but if it’s 10.1, I can understand the preference for Windows in many cases. 10.3 is so much better, but I doubt they are using that.
#3) I am surprised by 66% pro-mac. I would think these people would be the most stuck in their ways. They are the group, however, that chose Apple in the first place.
#4) I might hazard a guess that Mac users would spend more time on homework simply because there are fewer options for games and social networking. I play games on my Mac daily, but Windows undeniably has more options here. And more pirated copies.
#5) See my lead paragraphs. That said, my niece, a high schooler in a Windows world and very social would much rather have an iBook because she’s sick of the problems with her Dell laptop.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink. So let them have Windows and all of it’s headaches if that’s what they prefer. There are always going to be people out there that wouldn’t know quality if it slapped them in the face anyway, so just let them live that way…
Hazard’s Dad
Re: #3
Remember these are Education IT Admins. They have most likely been continuous Mac users over their careers.
What strikes me after reading the article, and every time I read about one of these laptop programs, is that they seem to simply add computers to the curriculum and say nothing about a computer-centric curriculum.
I think that if they wrote a curriculum that used the computers as a true multimedia textbook replacement we would see some benefit.
I work in Henrico and have found the kids really like the Macs. For the most part the teachers do to. There are a few who hate them but I think they would be unhappy no matter what. It is very easy to blame the Mac rather than their own lack of knowledge/skil.
The kids laptops are a little slow and light in the RAM department. 128, I think. They have a decent amount of applications. I’ll list exactly what if anyone is interested.
The bottom line is that laptops really do make a huge difference in what you can do in a school and they interest the students. Being in a school they are also used very roughly. You need a robust operating system like OS X. I can’t imagine the problems we would have using windows.
Hey, if you are such an ignorant moron that you cant figure out how to stop a popup with your browser, and it hurts you so much, leave. No one gives a shit.
O-U-T, crybabies!
I remember when snowboards cameon to the scene. The parents didn’t like them, and the ski resorts wouldn’t allow them. It’s always the kids who “get it”. Same here with the middle schoolers. It’d be a real shame if the parents got their way here…
GSpank’s showing his age
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Ditto JC’s comments. Give them four years with PC’s and lets see how much fun they have keeping that crap working and virus free. Especially with this social network Hazard brought up. Sounds like a virus super-highway to me.
Can someone (or Hazard’s Dad) fill me in as to what he is talking about? Are there commonly used chat, VoIP, or video chat services that PC kids use that are not functional with a Mac? (note I said commonly used. Please don’t mention some obscure bit of software that only 10,000 people worldwide use it and call it something common that all the the Mac users are going to die without)
I would have to see the survey questions. How a question is phrased can have a tremendous impact on how it is answered?
For example:
The laptops your children use have “OS X” installed. Would they work better if they had Windows on them?
vs.
The iBooks distributed to Henrico students came installed with “OS X”. We chose this operating system over Window because it was less prone to viruses and programs that install child-inappropriate material. Do you think choosing “OS X” was a good idea?
I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the surveyed parents didn’t really know what “OS X” was. So again, I’d really need to see the survey questions before I could decide how I feel about the survey results.
MilwaukeeMacOPhile;
I like your style. Done a little survey work myself and I like a lot more info about surveys like this before I trust them.
To repeat Tera Patricks:
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
District issued G3 500-800 mhz iBooks with OS 10.2.6 running 320 megs of ram.
Still, the survey numbers show a much higher support for Apple than the market share numbers would indicate. More proof that market share is held up to be more important than it really is and also anecdotal evidence that Apple’s market share is in for a wild ride up.
As for RAM, I agree that 128MB is not enough for running Panther, but to those of you who think that 256MB isn’t enough, what the hell are you running on your Mac that needs more, and would you consider it a consumer app or professional app? My girlfriend has an iBook with 256MB RAM and it works fine for MS Office, Mail, Safari and iLife.
People who run apps other than those that need more memory should get it, but why would you want Apple to raise the price points of it’s consumer machines by adding more RAM if it isn’t needed by the majority? If you want more RAM, get more RAM. Oh, and trust me, retailers are trying to sell people RAM, but if you are a smart consumer on a budget who isn’t sure, you’ll see how it runs on 256MB and then upgrade if you’re not happy.
I leraned how to use computers at school on an Apple II and was able to get cozy with any other system that was out at the time; Commodore 64, Atari 800, IBM PC (running DOS). I think kids are smart enough to go from one system to another without much of a problem. I surely did when I was young and I can go from Mac to Windows to Linux with ease.
Kids need to be taught the concepts and fundamentals of computing, not just one way of computing (hence the Microsoft way).