Never in the 17 years I've been involved in educational computing did
the government ever encourage the use of Apples. As far as I know, the
only way the gov't bore any of the price tag for computers in education
was through grants (platform independent) or at the state level through
negotiating volume pricing (all manufacturers included). Also, in
Virginia in 1988 and 1990, the state had an initiative to get a critical
mass of machines into grade levels 5-8. Some of the state money for
education was distributed in hardware form. There were 2 contracts -
one to Apple and the other to the winner of the DOS machine bid (Tandy).
I think IBM challenged the outcome of the bid process but Tandy
received the contract in the end. Each district then specified which
type of machine they wanted. Apple II GSes or the Tandy 1000TL. In 90
the Apple offered was the new Mac LC (with no hard drive). The number of
machines you received depended on your school's enrollment. This was a
departure from the usual method of basing state aid on the district's
financial index.
In the 80s Apple was much more committed to Computers in Education than
any other company. IBM made several abortive attempts, and formed
their Eduquest division to handle the market. The machines were
under-powered and the software was deadly. Apple asked teachers what
they wanted, IBM told us what we should have. Apple also made its
Appleworks software (WP, SS, DB) software available to schools at an
extremely reasonable price. IBMs prices were out of sight. And based
on market share, educational software manufacturers concentrated their
best stuff on the Apple platform. As the percentages changed so did the
mix of available titles. The Mac only label was common in the 80s; now
you rarely see it.
The IIes were real workhorses in the schools - impossible to kill. The
GS, which was supposed to replace them, really didn't offer too much new
for us other than a 3.5" drive. The Appletalk built-in network was
supposed to be a plus - and it was for printing - but using it for
program sharing was a painfully slow process. I remember telling the
Apple rep that I wasn't sure what the future would be, but it wouldn't
be running at 2 MHz and it wouldn't be black and white (as the Macs were
at that time). I taught BASIC and even Pascal on those old Apples until
88 when we bought Tandys. One lab had Apple cards in them to run the
old software.
When Apple introduced its color Macs (1990?), they were so much more
expensive than the similarly powered DOS machines that it was no
contest, we joined the Wintel world. Also, we installed our first
Novell network which helped the decision.
On the West Coast, I think Apple was much more heavily involved in
providing hardware to schools through grants. There were several
showcase "Classrooms of Tomorrow?" And once a district invested in
Apple the tendency was to continue buying the same product.
The introduction of Windows 95 also did a lot to change encourage
education to change platforms.
>Slashdot.org has a story explaining that the UK school system can't
>afford NT 5 and are considering another OS. In light of this, people
>were bringing up Apple's success in schools in contrast to the current
>situation. However, I have heard that the only reason why Apples were
>common in schools was that the gov't bore some of the price tag to
>encourage use of Apples, and Apple didn't pay as much attention to
>education as is generally thought. Is this true? What were the
>particulars of Apple educational licensing?
>
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Received on Sun Oct 18 1998 - 07:40:38 BST