I think that one of the best things that can be done is to give deep discounts to schools and teachers.  With the measly salaries public school teachers get, giving them more incentive to buy Mac for their homes would be a good way for them to promote them at schools.  And while Apple may not be able to give the discounts that Hell, oh I mean Dell can do, it doesn’t hurt for them to discount as much as possible without losing money. 

I think that it was a mistake for Apple to make the eMac available to everyone, it should have stayed focused on the Education market only, and agressively done, with better prices, and loaded with education specific applications. Specifically Office for Mac being standard.  The design is right on, a all in one unit with a decent sized screen, processor, and graphics card. 

Additionally computers going to different departments could be customized with specific software for that department, like Finale for the Music department or Filemaker for the Business Department.  Creating software packages for each department, but keeping the cost per machine equal could be of great benefit for K-12 schools.  Everyone gets what they need/want without the school spending extra money to for custom software.  Sure it might be a pain for Apple, but it would pay off in the end. 

I also agree with the comments about Apple getting real people back into schools.  I am a Band director and you know who gets my business, school reps from the local music stores that come out and make personal visits, not people who send flyers in the mail.  I also worked for Mars Music for a year, their idea of serving local schools with Band supplies was for them to come to us.  Look at where that company is now, going completely out of business.  They missed out on the most lucrative part of the music sales industry.  And Apple is doing that with schools too.  Not that I believe that Apple is in danger of going out of business, far from it, but it is the networking, and real people to people contact that make superintendents and school boards want to do business with you.

Does Apple WANT to sell in education?

I teach at the high school and college level and I’m on the tech committee of both the school and college where I work. Since we replace a third of our hardware every year, I am visited by or called by the PC vendors on a regular basis. My email is generally answered with in 24 hours. I’ve never talked to the Apple rep even though I’ve left numerous messages nor have I received even a flyer from her. I’ve talked to numerous educators and school IT personnel and they all report similar stories. It seems that Apple education reps spend all their time on two or three news worthy sales (Maine and Virginia) and let Dell have the thousands of smaller orders.

At the school we have lots of courseware and other software that runs in OS 8 and 9 - much of it doesn’t run well or at all in Classic. Further, since Classic quits when you log out, precious time is lost each time a student logs in and then has to wait for Classic to boot as well. The fact that Apple will begin selling machines that don’t boot OS 9 in January has led my school district to hold off purchasing new machines in the elementary until we see what happens with the software situation. What happens in the next 9 months in the Apple education software market could determine where the district jumps next year.

Quality control issues, warranty repairs, and repairs are another concern. None of the iMacs have had the same rock solid quality that we’d come to expect from Apple. In fact, the iMacs and the 5400 machines had service records in my district that were every bit as bad as we’d come to expect from PC boxes. Add to this the reduced quality of Apple warranty repairs and other issues like spare parts availability and you have a mess. Especially for schools that aren’t served by a local Apple service center.

[quote author=“coaten”]If you want to help teachers, help them save time.

No, hang the school boards and teachers union reps. That will solve 99% of their problems.

A report from the front line.

I work for a fairly large Jr./Sr. High School district (40,000 students); I’m an on-site tech for one Jr. High and one Sr. High. Both schools have PC’s and Macs; our district is currently pro-PC, as is the high school, while the tech coordinator at the jr. high is pro-Mac. I personally don’t give a darn what’s on the desktop; it’s either broken or it’s not, and if it’s broken, I have to fix it. Fast. I take it as a personal failure if a system is down for more than 24 hours.

I don’t know that Apple’s current corporate culture will ever allow them to return to the dominance they once had in the education. They seem far more intersted in making fashion statements than in producing robust hardware that is inexpensive to maintain and meets the needs of students.

Example 1 The mouse
The optical mice Apple is now using are way cool. No ball to get gunky (or be stolen by some bozo). Unfortunately, to cable is somewhat fragile cannot be easily replaced. The souce our district uses for most of its Mac spares gets $52 for a replacement. I can buy ADB or PC mice for a buck or two (sometimes new).

Example 2 CD/DVD drives
Once again, way cool. No tray to get broken off. Unfortunately, they are still subject to damage due to abuse (what some people will stuff in that slot). Again, I can pick up a PC-compatible drive for peanuts (assuming I can’t just scavenge one out of a surplus machine); I have limited choices for iMac drives.

The point? Students break stuff, and broken Apple stuff is way more expensive to replace.
The answer? For the mouse issue, there needs to be a way to use an ADB mouse and keyboard on the machine (a feature I truly love about the Blue & White G3). For the CD/DVD issue, they just need to use an industry standard drive (no special firmware, either).

Apple needs to be much more cognizant of our needs for backward compatibility. I’ve seen quite a few perfectly good LaserWriters and LaserJets sitting idle because “they can’t be hooked up to the new iMac”. Would it have killed them to put in a LocalTalk port? [As an aside - I actually score mucho points with my zero cost solution to this one. Grab an older Mac (I’m partial to LCIII’s - nice, small package) with an ethernet card in it, stick it next to the printer, and install Apple’s LocalTalk bridge. Presto!]

Another thing - put a floppy drive in the blasted thing! CD-RW is great, but I deal with a lot of students whose home computer (be it Mac or PC) doesn’t have a CD-RW drive. External drives are OK, but they’re expensive and tend to grow legs. I can pick up a PC-compatible floppy drive for $10. No need for the old power eject feature (most external drives don’t have it).

My proposal for a “real world” Mac? Remember the 4400? It didn’t go far enough! I want a Mac in a steel case with a standard ATAPI CD or DVD drive, a 34-pin floppy, and an ATX power supply. It needs to be compatible with our old Apple peripherals (ADB, SCSI, serial, and Local Talk) as well as having FireWire and USB. Lose the integral display; LCD’s are to fragile and they don’t pay me enough to go mucking about inside a CRT. If the display goes south, I want to be able to just plug another monitor in and put the machine back on line.

Yes, such a machine would be more expensive - but it’d be worth it to me.

I talked to a local School IT manager who had just switched his whole system to PCs. When I asked him why, he simply said “cost.” Dell made a “sweetheart deal” with them that allowed them to buy nearly twice as many PCs as comparable Macs. Apparently Apple doesn’t deal on price.

I asked him if the decision was really that simple. “Yes, it was really THAT simple.”

-Dan

[quote author=“Photodan”]I talked to a local School IT manager who had just switched his whole system to PCs. When I asked him why, he simply said “cost.” Dell made a “sweetheart deal” with them that allowed them to buy nearly twice as many PCs as comparable Macs. Apparently Apple doesn’t deal on price.

I asked him if the decision was really that simple. “Yes, it was really THAT simple.”

-Dan

Apple will deal on price. The one thing Apple asks in response to deal pricing is for a commitment to buy if the price is agreeable. In other words, Apple won’t provide deal quotes to someone just asking about price. I was able to get deal pricing on one project from Apple Education becuase I was willing to give them a PO on the spot.

However, the deal pricing is not going to be more than $50 - $100 discount per unit even on large orders. One can arrange for enhancements such as additional RAM or educational software bundles at a discount if the buyer is serious and ready to make a commitment.

From what I understand, exceptions to standard pricing require executive approval at Apple, but it can be done if the buyer is serious and ready to purchase.

Yes, but the unfortunate reality of the poor school budgets (in general) means that in a lot of cases, it boils down to a single number on a ledger. Dell has simply been willing/able to provide the lower number.

I’m not saying it’s right, or that PCs are always cheaper when all aspects are considered. It’s just a fact that some people only care about the amount they are spending right now. Unfortunately, the current management style only seems interested in the short-term costs.
In my opinon, that is why Apple is losing the educational market so quickly. Short-sighted economics by administrators + Apple’s unwillingness to cut very deeply on price.

I understand that Apple can’t “Out-Dell” Dell. But that is also thinking short term. It could prove more costly in the long run for Apple to lose so much student mindshare. Those are future computer buyers after all.

-Dan

[quote author=“Photodan”]

I’m not saying it’s right, or that PCs are always cheaper when all aspects are considered. It’s just a fact that some people only care about the amount they are spending right now. Unfortunately, the current management style only seems interested in the short-term costs.
In my opinon, that is why Apple is losing the educational market so quickly. Short-sighted economics by administrators + Apple’s unwillingness to cut very deeply on price.

I understand that Apple can’t “Out-Dell” Dell. But that is also thinking short term. It could prove more costly in the long run for Apple to lose so much student mindshare. Those are future computer buyers after all.

-Dan

Right. Apple does offer lots of services to schools including valuable tech support directly from engineers. But these benefits aren’t always considered and Apple has chosen not to deeply discount computers in order to maintain share. I think the lower-priced G3 iMacs are about as low as Apple will go on budget-priced PCs.

Several people have asserted that Apple needs fast cheap and reliable to get back into education. I disagree, at least as regards fast and cheap. 

Apple’s model has always been to get people to pay a bit more for a better computer. For the last several years better has meant elegant design, both in terms of hardware and UI, and tight integration.  Elegance has zero leverage in the ed market.  Integration doesn’t matter very much either, because most places have squads of IT people to massage all the poor integration of Windows machines.

Apple cannot compete on price. In order to compete, it must create something which meets a need that a Wintel box can’t and that schools will be willing to pay more for.

Disclaimer:  I’m a community college instructor. Apples at home since 1983. No macs at work since 1999.

First, Apple needs to keep doing what they have always done, that is to make easy to use, plug and play networking systems.  The ease of setting up and operating a Mac OS based LAN is (or should be) the main attraction. (I disagree with scotts13 that OS X Server is significantly more difficult to set up than was AppleTalk IP.  Just enough different from AppleTalk IP that old habits may cause errors if you aren’t careful.)  However, even IP was the high end of Apple’s Plug-and-play LAN capabilities.  Basic Appleshare via localtalk - and later ethernet - made Apple the leader when the wintel side was still learning what LAN meant. But what Apple hasn’t been doing recently is letting people know that this is what Apple has been doing BEST.

I also agree that Apple reps need to get more out into the field and make eye-yo-eye contact with clientel.  I disagree that IT’s are Apple’s worst enemy, and should be the focus of Apple’s marketing force.  Most district and school IT’s who have had ANY experience with Mac OS prefer supporting Mac over supporting a Windows based LAN. (We’re talking 60% LESS maintenance with Mac OS here!!) But IT’s are working under the constraints of budgeting, and under direction of higher level administrators, not to mention school boards, who may not be enlightened to the advantages of Macintosh systems.

I agree that Apple cannot compete with Dell and the like in an all-out pricing war.  (Superior equipment commands a higher price.)  However, I think they could bring prices down somewhat.  For instance, allowing competetive bidding by resellers for certain purchases.  (Say purchases of more that 20 units)  They also need to support more third party hardware, as peripherals, upgrades and repairs are a big portion of keeping a school’s 6+ year old equipment running.

One area in all markets that has been a criticism of Apple is the lack of third party software support.  Apple needs to get out there and convince popular software manufacturers that it is worth their time and effort to write a Mac OS version.  This will be difficult, as Apple ahs always maintained a high standard for software to run on Mac OS.  While this has kept Macs easy to run, and limited the number of crash-causing conflicts, it has also discouraged many manufacturers from making the cross over.  I am not proposing that Apple decrease it’s requirements - that would lead to Macs crashing more often from 3rd party software.  But they do need to get some good talkers out there to convince the software manufacturers that it IS profitable to write for Macintosh.

Writing some iEd applications is good.  Developing a comprehensive Mac OS school administrative package would be a great idea.  There are several school admin packages out there, some of which run on Mac OS; few of which are ready for OS X, hence scotts13’s mention of educators panicking about no longer being able to purchase OS 9 Macs.  Apple should to put together a fully comprehensive (and user friendly - which is Apple’s trademark) school admin package, which would include enrollment, (including issues such as immunization records), bussing routes, attendance records, a complete grading and assesment package, library circulation support, school inventory support, etc. Such a package would sell like proverbial hotcakes. My district currently uses 5 different software packages plus a slew of FileMaker Pro databases to do the job.  FileMaker Pro is the only one ready for OS X.

Lastly, Apple needs to keep in the front of innovations, even risky ones.  I fully agree with scavengerjohn in that Macs need some kind of easy-to-use removeable media.  Not necessarily floppies- they’ve become too small for today’s computing.  CD-r is too expensive writing only once.  CDRW is too clumsy, having to rewrite EVERYTHING each time you make a change to a file you want archived.  But back in 1984 Apple made a risky - but highly successful - move when they decided to include only a 3.5” floppy drive in the new Macintosh.  The rest of the industry thought they were crazy.  Then started putting 3.5” floppies in their machines too.  So, once again Apple needs to bite the bullet and make a decision for the rest of the industry to follow: what will be the next standard in removeable media?

All in all, Apple has a superior product available not only to education, but everywhere else.  The problem is few seem to be aware of it.  Communication is the key.  Get people out there to SHOW the decision makers that while Macs are a bit more expensive, in a few short years of use, the additional features will more than pay the price difference of the hardware.