AppleCentral (Part 1 of 2)
AppleCentral (Part 1 of 2)
- Subject: AppleCentral (Part 1 of 2)
- From: Karan Misra <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 02:06:38 +0530
How can Apple appeal to schools and businesses alike?
Whatever any pro-Apple person might tell you, but Apple's share has not
increased (or even stood still) in a single sector for the last 5-6
years. It has been declining. Unfortunately, having a proprietary OS
and Processor Architecture hasn't really cut it for Apple.
Having recently studied the dual-nature of electrons in chemistry, Ive
thought of a dual-nature strategy for Apple to push into the large
computer deployment markets. I have seen the problems that my schools
system admins face while attending to over 200 Windows computers. They
catch viruses, sometimes the hard drives fail, the floppy drives almost
never work and its a tough job.
My first advice for Apple would be to scale down its systems for
education. The eMac includes a lot of things it shouldnt, which of
course means a higher initial cost. If there was a lab full of eMacs in
my school, here are some features I would find completely unnecessary:
- FireWire
- S-Video and Composite Video
- 40 GB Hard Disk (most schools need basic software that easily fits on
to 5 GB still leaving 15 GB free on a 20 GB Hard drive)
- Support for Airport (even *support* for Airport should be an option
because most schools use Wired Networks for their speed and those
antennas arent free)
What Apple does need to include with the eMac is:
- A two-button mouse
- A better keyboard (a lot of people may not agree with me on this)
With these modifications, the eMac can easily come down from $800 to
$500 or $550.
Continuing my opinion on scaling down systems, Apple definitely needs
to bring the Cube back to life whether it has a G3 or a G4 processor.
Schools dont necessarily want to replace tons of monitors lying
around. It should have the same specs as the eMac (with the changes
Ive made).
The bottom line, which Apple doesnt understand is that, when the Head
of the Computer Sciences department (or whoever is in charge of
purchases) proposes a budget to the School Principal or a companys
General Manager, everyone jumps on the numbers. Why should we purchase
something that costs even a 100 or 200 dollars more (because if we
purchase, say 40 machines, it adds up to thousands of dollars)? After
all, its not that the Macs are completely trouble-free. Theyll still
need the system admins and we will be paying them the same salary that
we used to before.
My second advice for Apple is to design a centralized server system.
First, lets consider the needs. What kind of software does a school
lab run? Well, Windows computers in my school run Microsoft Office
applications for Informatics Courses, Microsoft QuickBasic (DOS) for
Grade 8, Borlands Turbo C++ (DOS) for Grade 11 and 12, Microsofts
Notepad (for HTML and DHTML) for Grade 6 and 7 and Oracles Database
products for SQL for Grade 9. Lets see the software matrix on the Mac
side. We can use BBEdit or TextEdit for HTML. Oracle is also developing
its products for the Mac now. Microsoft Office is of course ever
present on the Mac. Turbo C++ and QBasic pose a different problem
however. There are no command line software development software for
the Mac unless you intend to use Virtual PC. Now, a lot of you may
instantly say that there are software such as REALbasic and
Codewarrior. But, schools usually use command-line software for a
purpose they want the students to grasp the basics of these languages
which is easier to do in a command prompt and I agree with that. For
C++, I can suggest that you type out your code in a plain text file and
use the command line tool g++ to compile your program, but that really
is not intuitive.
Continued....
- Karan Misra, New Delhi
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