Education
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Apple pulls Education iMac
A little more than a week since Apple began offering a rock-bottom priced iMac configuration targeted at educational customers, the company has stopped offering the machine to anyone other than institutional buyers. The $900 replacement for the eMac differed from the baseline consumer model only in its loss of superdrive, dedicated graphics, bluetooth, and Front Row caused a big stir with students heading back to school this fall. Rumor in the ether is that this is par-for-the-course for an education product release. The cycle goes like this: Product is announced >> lots of people get excited and order it >> Apple realizes that if they keep getting orders at the current pace, they won't be able to supply the institutional buyers who they originally targeted >> Apple pulls product from mainstream consumer stores >> ...time passes... >> the educational buying season ends >> Apple allows us regular people to place orders again. [Via MacNN]
Apple drops new educational iMac, kills off eMac
CRTs are so early 90's, don't you know? After threatening the death of cathode ray for years, Apple has finally managed the chutzpah to kill off their eMac, and have released a $900 Intel iMac to fill the educational void. The specs aren't bad for a $900 Mac, including a 17-inch LCD, 80GB SATA HDD, 512MB of DDR2 SDRAM (though they skimp with dual 256MB chips), a DVD-ROM/CD-RW disc drive, AirPort Extreme, a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor and Intel GMA 950 graphics. An Apple Remote will cost you $26 extra, but otherwise it doesn't look like Apple cut many corners, which students might enjoy, but that $900 pricetag might be unrealistic for most school budgets. That, and we're just jealous of those dang kids who get to mess around with an iSight cam and Front Row. We think we'll just stick with Math Blaster on our 6100 while we wait for that rumored LCD eMac. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
iPod has new role as educational tool
Children will soon have a compelling new argument when begging their parents for an iPod, as the music, movie, and audio book player is about to take on a new role: educational tool. Pearson Education has just announced plans to release downloadable study guides (for use with Pearson texts, naturally) and audible review notes for exam preparation that may convince even the strictest parents to acquiesce and let the little white trojan horse into their homes. Not content with just the youth market, Pearson also revealed that it has purchased Apple's PowerSchool student information system, which is used by teachers and administrators to track student progress. No word yet on when kids can start using the "I'm studying!" excuse when told to take off their headphones in class.
Defining academic scholarship in games [Update 1]
The International Game Developers Association's "Culture Clash" column this month takes a look at the boundary between games and scholarship. Academia, and games academia in particular, can be the victim of a lot of stereotyping, but if developers look beyond the tweed-clad perceptions they may find a valuable resource:"One application of game studies is to help make better games by better understanding the medium. We've already seen it in a few places – think about Microsoft's HCI and usability labcoats working with Bungie on Halo, or behavioral scientists colluding with developers to make next-gen MMOs even more engaging."Of course, persuading your college professor that studying World of Warcraft is really going to help your tribal ethnography project is a different problem, but we've heard of several college papers that studied games.[Via Acid for Blood][Update 1 - fixed IGDA typo]
The Real Reason Behind Apple's Boot Camp
I think I've realized the real reason why Apple has released Boot Camp, and why it'll be part of Leopard when it's released. As C.K. suggests, it's a move to be more competitive in the desktop PC market, but it's more than that. Apple's marketshare in some of their traditional strongholds (like Education) has been slipping for some time, and Boot Camp is nothing short of an all-out frontal assault to reverse that trend. Here's how it works in most schools and large organizations:- most universities still have both PC's and Macs. Of course, some have moved entirely to Dells, but the majority still have both.- the computers in schools and large organizations tend to be refreshed every 3-4 years as part of a refresh program. This is hardwired to the IT budget; it's scheduled to happen.- computer labs and classrooms are designated either a Mac classroom or a Windows classroom, by necessity.Imagine a school budget that simply replaces all the computers campus-wide with new Intel Macs that can run anything we throw at them. Need to run Windows? Image the iMac with the WinXP image. Need to run Mac OS X? Image the iMac with the Tiger (or Leopard) image. Need to run either (because it's a dual-purpose classroom)? Install both and teach the lab assistants and instructors how switch between the environments. It might even be scheduled to reboot the classroom between classes so it's transparent to the end-user.Now imagine that you're a sysadmin and you could tell your boss that you could outfit a classroom or a lab with one model computer that could run either your Mac image or your Windows image, or even both of the images? Suddenly your rooms are dual-use rooms. The AutoCAD kids can simple boot the computer to Windows to turn their software and two hours later, the Graphic Design students can boot the computers to Mac OS X to run their design applications!Boot Camp is a bombshell change in the PC desktop marketplace. Suddenly, there will be options available to us sysadmins that we've never had before. This development is going to allow an organization to achieve the holy grail in computer workstation management--complete standardization on one model computer (e.g. the new Intel iMac). I'm so excited about this possibility that my workchair is spinning. Certainly, I'm not alone.
Wikipedia on your iPod
Way back in 1993, I can remember purchasing the entire works of Shakespeare on a CD-ROM to help me in a college course I was taking. I also had the printed works, but the CD-ROM allowed me to do keyword or character searches in a way the printed text didn't. For me, it was a breakthrough in how I was using computers to access content in a different way. The CD-ROM was accessible with hyper-links to other content on the disc which is notable because before the World Wide Web, hyper-links were really only being used in content like this Shakespeare CD-ROM (and in HyperStudio and HyperCard projects). It was my experience with this CD-ROM and gophering into the University of Minnesota's system to study 1990 Census data that opened my eyes to the coming World Wide Web explosion.My point is that while content doesn't actually change much over the years, the way in which we access it does. And today, I've learned of yet another interesting way we access content. You can now get the Wikipedia on your iPod. [Note: this requires you to install Linux on your iPod].The Wikipedia is the free, online, open-source encyclopedia. I've been consulting it for years, particularly for entries that likely wouldn't appear in a traditional encyclopedia. Since Wikipedia content is all user-contributed, it tends to be significantly more up-to-date than traditional sources. Some people worry about the accuracy of the Wikipedia's content, but I've never found it to be a problem.
eMac disappears from Apple Store (again), goes edu only?
TUAW reader John Gaskell, whose rig we featured last week, noticed that, once again, the eMac has disappeared from both the online Apple Store as well as their edu store. Further, while I haven't seen the eMac product page in a while, I thought it used to live at apple.com/emac, while it actually lives at apple.com/education/emac/, with plenty of "just for education" blurbs all over the page. I can't even find the eMac at the edu store in a search, which leads me to think it's probably only available by phone order now. I wonder if all this positive growth Apple is experiencing has allowed them to shuffle the eMac back into its original education slot in the Mac lineup.
Apple Introduces iTunes U.
Last Fall, Stanford University began a partnership with Apple to publish and host lectures for download via the iTunes Store. Called Stanford on iTunes, it's been a resounding success and now Apple is looking to replicate that success with other schools around the country and world.iTunes U. (for University) will be a partnership between Apple and schools for hosting and distributing audio and video lectures, podcasts, and vidcasts to their student bodies. Modeled after the Stanford on iTunes program, iTunes U. will be a free service and allow a school to create an environment for instructors to upload their audio and video podcasts for distribution to their student bodies.It will likely incorporate some of what Apple has been calling Quicktime 2 RSS, a set of tools for recording a lecture and then encoding it for playback on a computer or an iPod.iTunes U. is looking like a powerful way to expand how students get content. We're living in an increasingly digital world, we may as well embrace learning digitally, and it's good to see Apple take the lead in providing the tools, the hosting, and the technology to allow such a shift to happen. I'm definitely going to be lobbying for my employer (a university) to get involved in this program.I've been complaining that Apple hasn't been as competitive as they should be in the Education market for some time. Perhaps this is a sign that the times are a-changing. Truly interesting.If any TUAW readers have used the Stanford pilot program, we'd definitely be interested in your impression of the system.
