“Most of [Baltimore County] school system’s computers are PCs running Microsoft Windows software, but not in the labs for the graphic and multimedia programs, until now. School system leaders say the move makes sense because it will make it easier to provide technical support and because graphic design software is available for both platforms,” Liz F. Kay reports for The Baltimore Sun. “…the Apple logo has given way to the waving Windows icon in Baltimore County schools’ graphic design and multimedia computer labs…”
Kay reports, “Still, some say future graphic artists should learn using Macs. ‘If people are specifically interested in a career in graphic arts, to not be exposed at all to the Mac is probably a disadvantage,’ said Kevin Keane, president of IAPHC, an international graphic professionals’ network.”
“The Baltimore County Public Schools . . . has embarked on a quality journey, a journey that will take us to our goal of becoming one of the premier school systems in the nation.” – quote from the website of Dr. Joe A. Hairston, Superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools.
“Students and staff can share information efficiently if everyone uses compatible equipment. ‘All of this can happen only if we’re all on the same operating platform,’ said schools spokeswoman Kara Calder,” Kay reports.
“The debate over Macs versus Windows reaches levels of almost religious fervor, with bloggers and Web sites monitoring every statement made for or against either operating system. Most agree that graphics firms chiefly use Macs because their software was originally designed for that operating system,” Kay reports. “Until recently, up to 90 percent of most printing plants used Macs, said Keane, the president of the graphic professionals’ network. It’s now easier to work in either platform, but he estimated about three-quarters of businesses still use Macs.”
“Jill Schuchart, a student in Eastern Technical High School’s multimedia communications program, said she and other classmates were disappointed when they heard the news. They remembered how the PCs always crashed at the multimedia program at Parkville Middle,” Kay reports. “She recalls thinking, ‘Oh, great. It’s going to be like in eighth grade again, when we couldn’t work on our projects.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, Baltimore County Public Schools’ initial plan — to substitute lead paint chips for sliced turkey in school lunches — was deemed less effective than the above scheme in achieving their ultimate goal of impairing their children’s mental abilities. Someone ought to tell these geniuses in Maryland that Macs can run Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows natively, before they flush any more of the taxpayers’ money down the toilet. It’s not a religious argument; it’s an argument about providing the best you can for your students or shackling them to cheap, limited, mediocre Windows-only PCs due to budgetary concerns or, even worse, due to the type of plain old ignorance evidenced in Baltimore County.
What’s better for education, Mac or PC? Info: http://www.macvspc.info/
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The article contains what has to be some of the sloppiest excuses for going to Windows. It appears to me that prestige is the primary reason for pressing in that direction. I notice that they limited their tattered arguments to graphics professionals. They left out small business people, scientists, engineers, and architects among others.
The people that make this decision should be held accountable for the ramifications of their decision – the word is “responsibility”. How about docking each individual that had a hand in the decision a day’s pay each time the computer system goes down. If that were the case, I suspect they would take greater care in their decisions.
Jobs,
I develop professional AppleScript-based solutions for businesses including Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, NASA, PC World, and TV Guide.
Trust me, it’s vastly more than a “Photoshop on Windows is the same as on a Mac” situation.
Windows PCs compare very poorly to Apple Mac OS X machines in publishing and other arenas, too.
http://www.automatedworkflows.com/
I am an Art Director in Baltimore, MD. We run a Mac ONLY design department, about 50 Macs. Whether the artist is proficient on the software on PC or Mac doesn’t help.
If I have two candidates with the same software knowledge, but one knows Mac and the other is on PC, then I am going to hire the one with the Mac knowledge.
Less time it take for a transition into the workflow.
Powermacs with intelchips available before autumn? if not then i sure as hell wouldn’t buy iMacs to be used for heavy graphics work, they simply don’t have the horsepower. Powermacs with intel would be sweeeeee though.
i attended baltimore county schools. in 2003 they started replacing all the old all in one macs that came with system 7 but were upgraded with OS9 with dells. i came back to my high school in 2005, a year after i graduated and it was a completely different set of computers in the library that the macs were originally replaced with. in the sga we wanted to get a mac and we couldnt because the county said all they will support is dells and the only place after the graphics labs that had macs (but apparently wont for much longer) was the biotech lab that had 6 bondi imacs on os 9
“”Still, some say future graphic artists should learn using Macs. ‘If people are specifically interested in a career in graphic arts, to not be exposed at all to the Mac is probably a disadvantage,'”
I think it should be, those who want to learn, shoudl avoid Windows, since you’ll spend more time troubleshooting than teaching.
This reeks of some PC centric IT department heads looking to justify their job titles.
ooh and hariston is just a bureaucrat. he is one of the worst people to lead an education system. i and any of the students that know anything detest him
1997 is calling for these sheeple.
“The Baltimore County Public Schools . . . has embarked on a quality journey, a journey that will take us to our goal of becoming one of the premier school systems in the nation.” – quote from the website of Dr. Joe A. Hairston.
And their answer is Windows? Bwa ha ha ha.
Hey, let us all remember. In our schools today, its not about quality of education or even what works, Its about slashing a nickel so the head guy can get a big bonus.
AFter all, next year he will be in another school district so why should he worry about what really works? 🙁
Actually, having worked with teachers and admin people in several school systems, I can say that you WOULD NOT BELIEVE the amount of politics that goes on and it has so very little to do with our kids and more about promotions.
So sad.
Norm
Actually this is GREAT news for kids from other locales. Now they have fewer kids to compete with in the job market. Rock on, Baltimore!
Translated this article merely states:
We done got’em real cheap. Let the students whine and complain…at least the little dorks get a puter to work on…..
Am I right or am I right?
Anyone who supports this decision is an idiot.
I don’t mean to be rude but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. The dirty little secret in education is that Dell workstations are not significantly cheaper than Mac workstations.
School districts can not go out and buy the 499 dollar celeron-based Dell. They have to abide by state standards and have significant support plans in place from the vendor (at least in my state). The bottom line is that a Dell desktop costs us about 200 less than a much better equipped iMac and about 150 *more* than a similarly equipped eMac.
Right now, the MacBook blows the Dell portable offerings out of the water on price/performance
Granted, I would not buy eMacs at this time. Apple does need a cheaper education alternative that runs Intel. I’m sure that that is forthcoming.
A Mac has lower TCO
A Mac can be set to one-button mouse operation (vital for students in younger grades)
A Mac has an all-in-one option much better suited to student labs
A Mac has a much, much better built in suite of software
A Mac is more secure
(for whatever reason. people sometimes say to me “Your Mac is only secure because fewer people use it” To which I respond, “So?!” If there is a road that has far less traffic than the road you usually use and still gets you there in the same time are you going to stay on the busy road because people *might* start using the new road at some undetermined point in the future? Because it *might* get as busy as the road you use now at some point? The ‘security through obscurity’ is the one of the dumbest arguments of all time. If its more secure who gives a rat’s behind *why*.)
A Mac is much less prone to student tampering with spyware, malware, etc.
And, most importantly maybe, for around the same price, a Mac can easily offer *both* Windows funtionality *and* the benefits of OS X. School districts can get the necessary Windows licenses for 40 bucks per seat (less in many cases). Then, with a Mac, they have a fast Windows box, a fast OS X box, the best education/consumer suite of creative apps on the market, and the ability to switch between OSes at will to avoid virus attacks on Windows!
It really, truly is a no-brainer. School districts who swtiched to Windows six or seven years ago…you could understand it. Districts who switch now are run by admins who are either on the take from Dell (or whoever), or are alarmingly uninformed in regard to technology.
I’m not sure which is worse.
“I will shoot myself in the face with a bazooka.”
If the thought of using Microsoft Office makes you mentally unstable and suicidal, I’d suggest you either get counselling, or at the very least stay away from those kids. They don’t need to be taught by wackos.
I was being ironical…Lighten up, dude.
“WOULD NOT BELIEVE the amount of politics that goes on and it has so very little to do with our kids and more about promotions…”
Amen to that!
“Districts who switch now are run by admins who are either on the take from Dell (or whoever), or are alarmingly uninformed in regard to technology.
I’m not sure which is worse.”
Technology scares the crap out of admin types. The IT staff in any given district might as well be a black box. I can’t wait to see what happens when the *thousands* of optiplexes we have now start to crap out in another year or two…
I’ve read a couple of times (can’t remember where, sorry) that the education sales staff and sales staff at Apple in general are not respected by Steve Jobs. If this is true i think it’s a horrible thing as Apple products don’t necessarily sell themselves. If they could, then staff Apple stores only at the payment counter and have a security guard at the entrance.
I think Apple needs a strong sales staff to build relationships and contacts as it’s a customer service issue as well. A personal touch to answer a question or to find out more about the customer’s needs without them having to dig through lots of info themselves can be the simple thing that makes the sale.
So if you’re an Apple Computer Inc. shareholder and the company doesn’t respect sales staff, please write to investor relations with some well thought out comments.
“Someone ought to tell these geniuses in Maryland that Macs can run Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows natively”
That someone should really be Apple. Sure, Apple does have some ads, but they really are not doing that great of a job of educating the people on the benefits of a Mac.
Premier school districts? You just kicked out your best tools for teaching students.
The one thing that annoys me is the stereotype that Macs are only good for graphic design. I know a lot of people who do use the Mac for graphic design, but I also know a lot of people who use the Mac for various other reasons, some as simple as checking email and iChatting. The Mac appeals to anyone, regardless of profession. I wish haters would stop giving lame ass excuses to why one should not purchase or consider purchasing a Mac. It is really getting old, and the arguments are disgusting packs of lies.
Then again, nobody said getting out of the Dark Ages of Computing would be easy.
Heads far up their asses!!!
well I know Baltimore has quite a few poor areas. Usually when it comes to education in poorer districts, the administration spends money unwisely, simply considering the cost of the technology rather than the TCO – total cost of ownership. the result ? under-educated students who provide less value to businesses, society, and themselves. utilizing the mac, with its trio of OSes, may have been more costly, but would have been an exponentially more effective decision contributing greater benefits to the students and community.
Jobs:
“Nope, more likely the school’s looking at the fact that it can buy twice as many PCs for the same money, or the same number of PCs and spend the rest on something else.”
Windows, cheap thru the door… expensive forever more.
Yes, spend the so-called savings on extra technical support and building the IT empire.
Or, will it go to bonuses to execs (ie, Hairston) who have hidden the true extra expenses (TCO)? You can be sure the higher budgets for extra support will be buried or explained away.
As far as I’ve seen, all TCO/ROI studies to date have favoured the Mac over Windows yet “cost” and the lame “everyone uses Windows” excuses often carry the day.
Pity the children within such an uninformed system.
Perhaps it’s the educators that need to be educated???
…
Job security for IT.
“Dear IT Dept.
I’m paying you to tell me what to do. I do what you say to do. Because of what you told me to do I pay you more money and all of the IT employees that it takes to maintain my MS environment. I’m an idiot.
Signed your employer -Baltimore County Public School of de-Education.”
Wouldn’t surprise me if the Macs they are replacing are not even running OS X.
Schools are notorious for this sort of thing. I remember in high school (this would have been 1998), getting sat down in the school’s “typing lab” which was a bunch of Mac LCs running System 6 and MultiFinder!
And then all the students are like, “man, Macs suck!” Gee, what a surprise that Windows XP seems much better. It offers all kinds of superior features, like colored windows.
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“all TCO/ROI studies to date have favoured the Mac over Windows”
Actually the ones funded by Apple or done by somone with a pro Apple axe to grind favor the Mac.
Strangely enough the ones funded by Microsoft or with a pro Microsoft axe to grind favor the PC.
Clearly the market believes that the PC is the better choice, if they really believed that Mac had a lower cost of ownership for the same job done they’d be stampeding towards the platform not moving away from it.
Corporations ARE NOT dumb or Mac Ignorant or so short sighted that they just look at a machine’s purchase price. They’re always looking for how to reduce costs, and if Apple truly offered that, Apple wouldn’t be able to build and sell machines fast enough.
Jobs:
How old are you? Two? How stupid can you be? The reason why Cost of Ownership is ignored is because people are very fscking short sighted. If I want to impress my boss right now (save giving him a blowjob) then I must do some short sighted/faux-pro-active deed. It’s exactly the way politics runs… and pretty much 95% of everything else. Look at the mess we’re in! The safe-easy thing to do (if you don’t think about the consequence) is to buy cheap, buy what the majority “approves” of and hope you get a promotion before someone figures out that you’ve really done nothing… or in this case much less than nothing.
MW: “group”. as in “herd mentality”. as in “mob rules”… as in “idiots all around”
Being a graphics designer for more than 10 years, I do not agree with the Baltimore School systems choice at all. Not only are Macs better suited for the work graphically, but also technically.
The agency for which I work would lose clients left-and-right if we had to deal with the problems that Windows PCs have – constant freezing of apps regardless of the amount of scratch disk space and RAM – which we have never had with Macs.
Most graphics profs and teachers haven’t been in the business in years and aren’t even up-to-date with the software. I know of technical schools and colleges in my area which are still teaching Quark V. 5, PageMaker, and Photoshop 7!!!!!! Most of the industry is using the Creative Suite and CS2 – on Macs, not PCs.