The Courier News – December 18, 2006:
A task force is being recruited to wean Community Unit School District 300 off Macintosh computers for more “appropriate technology.”
Spearheaded by Eric Willard, the district’s new director of technology, the Platform Transition Task Force will begin meeting in January to develop implementation of the districtwide change.
Willard, shortly after beginning his position in April, decided to phase out the district’s use of Macintosh computers and focus on Microsoft’s Windows Operating System and Lenox Softworks’ open source systems.
Willard said he decided on the new platform because most people use Microsoft programs in “the real world,” and open source systems provide a way for the district to keep students from downloading items such as music and movies onto the school’s computer hard drives — items that, ultimately, cost the district to delete.
“We will have a challenging time at the high school level taking away the Macs,” Willard said. “The task force has to develop an implementation that takes into consideration the emotion involved. For some reason, people have heard about this, and some are very passionate about Macintosh computers.“
The reason for all of this is that the school district hired your typical IT guy, who was trained on PCs, swears by Windows and is among a breed of geeks who perpetuate the “real world uses PCs” nonsense. (Think Jimmy Fallon’s arrogant IT character from SNL.) Here’s a situation in which the PC guy is going into a job where the school district uses Macintosh computers. Rather than find a guy who is trained to perform tech support for the systems they have, the district has hired a guy who is going to change their entire computing system to suit HIS ideaology instead and giving them the “real world uses” excuse.
If I was working for that district, I’d send the guy packing. Talk about a waste of taxpayers money. They’ve made an investment in their district-wide computing system, and it doesn’t sound like there are any problems with the computers except for the fact that this “brilliant” guy they’ve hired can’t fix em. Again, what a waste.
WARNING! Emotional Comment!
Do you want your kid to have the tools and the attitude to solve a problem or the ignorance in only knowing how blame some else?
wayne-
I’m glad you’re not in charge of anything. You know nothing about the situation at hand, but because he went the sensible route (i.e. PCs over the niche mac market) you’d send him packing because he’s using his brain and looking at the big picture?
Nice work enforcing the mac elitist snob stereotype.
In most schools in this very real world, there are no computers, no band or football, and often no electricity.
Time to get with the real world, I say; nothing like stoking some coal fires to build character!
#35 Brian, it is you who is not seeing the big picture. This is not a Mac vs PC issue to me. As a taxpayer in my own district, if the people making decisions said, “Hey, let’s phase out all of these PCs and get all new Macs” I’d still be pissed. This guy is probably making between $50K and $80K a year, yet he’s making a decision that will cost taxpayers in that school district millions. To me, it’s an obvious waste of money issue. Get an IT guy who get work on the equipment they have and keep those computers around for as long as they work. Instead, they’ve got a guy saying, “I don’t how to fix it, let’s just replace it and all of them over time.”
I used to work for the third largest school district in Texas (87,000-plus students), and any change impacting the entire district was extremely expensive. When I left that district at the end of 2004, there were still hundreds of computers running Windows 95 because of money issues. The IT department would have been thrilled to have the entire district working on the same OS, let alone the same platform; yet there were many departments that used Macs, such as the TV Production and Journalism programs. We had one guy who was certified to service the Macs as well as PCs, and he really didn’t spend much time fixing the Macs– one of which I was using (and never had ONE problem the five years I was there.)
PCs or Macs– I don’t care what the kids are using in public schools. Most of them have computers at home and have made their own choice about the platform they prefer. However, I do care whether my tax dollars are being spent wisely, and if a jackhole IT guy like the one in this news story came in and started pushing for changes based on his preferences, then I’d say he can donate his salary to implement it and see how eager he’d be to make those changes.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimi- oh, bugger. Too late.
All levity aside, for over 20 years, enough research has been done to convince anyone who’ll look at it that Mac training and support have always been significantly less than for Win. I’m not gonna cite chapter and verse, the info is out there. Also, the demographics of Mac and PeeCee users have always shown the average Mac user is more educated, makes more money and is more likely to be a professional, a scientist, or a creative artist. It’s obvious if not axiomatic that Mac users have a greater tendency toward nonconformity.
On a personal note, I spent a couple years doing phone support for a major telco ISP people in the NE will be familiar with.
In our call center, we had, at various times, between 70 and 100 techs, all handling Windows. Myself and another guy were the entire Mac support contingent. And we still got mostly Windows calls.
Because Mac users have fewer issues with their systems and when they do, they’re better able to resolve it themselves (another time-honored fact) those we got calls from usually had fairly serious issues. And much of the time, the actual root of their connectivity issues was on our end.
Whether for an individual or a school district, the total cost of ownership of a Mac, over the useful life of the machine, is always significantly lower than any PeeCees. Ergo, any so-called IT pro who would do what this Willard clown has done is either a brainwashed incompetent or is corrupt
You can stick your nose up Billy G’s forty-billion-dollar ass as far as your ankles – he still ain’t gonna cut you in on the loot.
Looks like someone made the right decision at last.
Macs are simply NOT used widely in the ‘real world’ and just like forcing kids to use macs like in the 80s was a stupid thing to do, making them use macs when apple’s worldwide market share (not the US one) is less than 2% would have been equally stupid!
39-
The reason you took less tech support calls? NO ONE IS USING MACS. Plain and simple.
As far as the the ‘mac user is more educated and makes more money’? Garbage. Nonsense. Mac users have a greater tendency towards noncomformity? Uhm, please tell me how this ‘tendency’ has any relation to making kids more successful using computers?
Oh that’s right it doesn’t. Mac users have fewer problems with their systems? Please quote stats, and stop using this craptacular generalizations that plague mac elitists.
The overall cost of a mac is always lover than a PC? Again, please quote legitimate sources or take your ‘MACS RULEZ!’ stuff away from here.
You can stick your nose up Steve-Os pompous ass as far as your ankles – you still aren’t going to be using a good computer.
>>Willard said he decided on the new platform because most people use Microsoft programs in “the real world,”
I suspect that, very soon, someone will rock his world!
I think this guy is not reading Dvorak Uncensored! He is just jumping from one old leaky ship to another.
I always say this with these kind of articles: the whole paradigm of the OS is wrong. It is WAY too obtrusive.
The best idea I’ve heard came from Cagematch — and that’s no OS at all. (Well — beyond firmware utilities built into the various hardware components making them “smart”.)
So, if your web browser needed to speak with your harddrive, monitor, keyboard, etc, it would just do so directly without any OS being involved.
I would bet 99% of the mac users on the blog live on the coasts or in a university town. Else ware macs are not to be found except a few niche graphics jobs. I has always surprised me that most tech writers seem to use macs. John excepted. Evan with all this pimping they still only have 5% to !0% maybe market share. I have never seen a company get so much free publicity and still can not get even a 30% share. This is the true mystery of the mac.
This is confusing. They want to go the way of Open Source, yet they want to use Microsoft products. And deleting files is expensive? Who the fuck are these people?
Why does it matter what system they use? If you can use one word processor you can use them all. That goes for e-mail clients, spreadsheets, instant messaging, etc.
If a person can’t figure out how to use a word processor on any type of machine I wouldn’t want them working for me.
Now, you could argue that a person wouldn’t be able to perform all the OS tricks, but the vast majority of people will never figure that out regardless of the system.
I agree with those who said it is not a mac versus PC issue. It is a money issue. If the macs are not broken, why replace them. He will buy more PCs, at a deal I hope. Does he plan to sell the macs? He plans to use linux, couldn’t he install it on the macs?
Frankly, kids always find a way to do what they want on school computers, regardless of prohibitions. Don’t justify expenditures on new PCs because you want more control on limiting functions. In my opinion, have both Windows and Macs, and perhaps add linux also. It is a school. Teach them what systems are out there.
#46 so you think that more money should be spent to purchase licenses for XP/Vista (on top of the cost of replacing the aging macs with newer and significantly more expensive macs compared to dell PCs with the same specs) to install using bootcamp or something???
Great idea!
Many of you are missing the point. It’s about what is used out in the business world. The “real world”.
The University I went do in the late 80’s/early 90’s figured it out way back then. When I started the school was 90% Macs in the computer labs. But they figured something out: Gee, we’re training all these kids how to use Macs and 95% of them will never use a Mac again once they get into the business world. By the time I graduated they were about 50/50 with Macs vs. PCs. The business college itself was nearly 90% PCs because guess what? Over 90% of business use PCs. They didn’t get rid of Macs but they at least got PCs in there to train students on what they will actually be using in the real world.
I’m no Mac hater by any means, but the reality of the situation is if you train kids to use only Macs and they’ll most likely never see one in the business world then you are wasting the kids time let alone taxpayer money. I don’t agree in replacing all the Macs with PCs but get the ratio correct. It’s not about what’s “better”. It’s about what is used more and to better prepare our kids for the reality they will face. I can’t tell you how many interns I have had to train on basic PC skills because all they ever used in school was a Mac.
bon scott,
I disagree. Even Apple computer is reliant upon Windows PC’s for their day to day operations. As far as I am concerned, 100% of businesses (that use computers) use Windows PC’s.
Also, if you go to any university now days, you will see the labs being filled with multi monitor computers. Your paper goes in a word processor on one monitor, and your research is on the other monitor. I am seeing this more and more in the business world as well, as offices move in a paperless direction. Any $400 beige box is capable of this, while you are looking at a $3000 dollar mac before this is possible.
Conclusion: Macs lack multi-monitor support. That makes them an unsuitable and inadequate computer for most uses going forward.
(on re-read, matrox makes a device but it costs $300 and doesn’t work as good as actually having multiple display cards, also there is a software utility that lets you screen span but breaks warranty, and has bugs, and occasionally bricks your iMac or powerbook)
Windows, best in class for multi-monitor support. Mac, inelegant solution, designed for corporate upsell.
GregA – Do you get your information from Microsoft’s marketing dept?
The Mac supported multiple monitors long before the PeeCee did.
You open the box, plug in a vidcard, close the box, plug in the 2nd monitor and boot the machine. That’s it. No drivers, no reconfiguration, nada. As I recall, 2 or 3 years later, you could, if you were lucky, get a 2-monitor setup working on a PeeCee.
Once again, Apple innovates, Micro$oft imitates. As it always was, and always wil be.
Lauren the Ghoti,
Why then does this product exist?
http://www.rutemoeller.com/mp/ibook/ibook_e.html
Whats that bold red text at top of page say? “This software may brick your computer”
Apple sells crippled computers!!! You don’t get more inelegant than that. You have to buy a $3000 power mac to get multi-screen!
“Although many people assume that Apple’s consumer-level computers don’t support screen spanning because they use lower-end video cards or because of some other type of hardware limitation, that’s not really it — the video cards found in all of Apple’s latest consumer models fully support this feature. The real reason is that Apple has disabled extended desktop mode in Open Firmware. If you don’t know what Open Firmware is, don’t worry; the key here is that if this feature can be disabled in Open Firmware, it can also be enabled in the same way. The trick is how to do it. You could manually type the appropriate commands in Open Firmware at startup, but the sight of Open Firmware — which looks a lot like Terminal — is scary for many users. Even worse, a typo could leave your Mac unable to even boot.”
Macworld Magazine – http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2004/10/imacscreenspanning/index.php
Would suggest I get my info from mac sources.
Also it seems that expose is broken and loses applications when you switch back to single monitor. I can’t find the fix, other than adding a second monitor, and very inelegantly manually moving all the applications back to a single monitor.
Should I start talking about the death of iChat now?
macs suck and will be extinct in a few years.
the sony beta max of computers
The Mac supported multiple monitors long before the PeeCee did.
Maybe so. I did it with Win 98 in 1997 with $30 video cards. I think my mobo maxed out at four or five, which was more fun than it was useful. I’ve been using two monitors ever since.
#52 – Ya, Pedro. Quality is determined by popularity. That’s why Britney Spears is the best singer, the Taurus is the best car and McDonald’s serves the best food.
#54 – You know, I’ve heard that same idiocy for 22 years now. You Win fanboiz just keep repeating it, like that’s makes it so. Yuk-yuk.
Incidentally, Beta was a superior format to VHS, just as the Mac is superior to PeeCees. In the real world, however, consumers are suckers for marketing hype. As usual, we who’re smart enough to know what’s better – and aren’t scared shitless of peer pressure: “Gee, I better buy what everybody else who knows nothing buys…” – there may be fewer of us, but we’re not consumeroid drones.
#53 – Like I’m scared of patching OF. Maybe Grandma can’t do it, but I don’t know any Mac users who couldn’t. Anywho, I’ll look into it. Sounds fishy to me.
Two kinds of computer users these days…
Those that own a Mac, and those that make up excuses as to why they don’t.
#54 – Your opinions cannot be backed up by fact. Stop posting. Really. You’re an idiot.
A similar mix of Macs and PCs to what can be found in the real world would be a good thing in terms of preparing students. Having been on a few state and Federal level hardware selection committees you can forget that though. It’s all about cost per unit to install and maintain. A not unreasonable point that drives a lot of decisions is can a manufacturer supply machines with identical components that facilitate roll outs using a single master image. On a purchase of say around 20K PCs the cost for installation would run around 12 to 15 million. Seems high? It is. Move away from the cookie cutter approach and bids and quotes jump to nearly double that amount. Additionally, vendors would require details about each machine to be replaced. There’s another million to add to the tab for a consultant to pop a disk in each machine and consolidate the information into reports. Part of the high cost of projects like this stems from there being only a handful of vendors who are willing to assume the risk and can honestly state that they have the resources in place to do the job if selected. If you are thinking, that can’t be right, try finding 5 vendors who can supply references on on-site installations of even a few thousand machines. It’s not a big club.
Pedro,
Hey bub! Thats 1.85 percent!
Ya. 1.8% my hairy yellow ass. Try 4.3, up from 3.3 the year before. Mac sales went up 45% in the same period. Apple stock was under $7 in 2003. It’s currently about $83. That’s why my BMW is paid off and you’ve still got 3 years of payments left on your Hyundai.
“…will be extinct in a couple years” AAAHhahahahahahahahaha. That must be some killer shit you been smokin’, d00d.
Meh, I might go buy my Mercedes today.
Check of this pic of my Bonus check.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62968623@N00/329516805/
Besides, BMW’s suck ass, cars for paupers. Mercedes is the way to go! I was lookin at the CLS550 class. http://www.mbusa.com/models/main.do?modelCode=CLS550C
Whoops! Almost forgot to make a point.
In a weird coincidence of Kurt Vonnegut logic, both numbers are right. In the world market, apple has a ~1.8% market share. In the US market, they have the about ~4% market share.
However in my study of the issue, it is much more complex than that. There is good news for Apple share holders, but bad news for the OS X platform.
First off, the good news. Apple laptop computers are a hit! They sell lots of laptops. Between them and the Ipod apple will have their best quarters (financially) ever. That is also the problem however, they sell more laptops and IPods than desktop computers…
On the other hand, sales of the mini mac’s, the iMac, and the mac pros are stagnant, at best. In those segments, this is actually a very grim time for Apple. One of their most under performing (sales wise) products is the mac pro. (kinda funny, but that was the only mac product I considered buying, but for the deal breaker UDMA in windows thing)
As a systems integrator/analyst IMO this is bad news for the OS X operating system. It means there is very little interest in Apple computers as desktop systems. See, in my job I see how people use laptops. They, browse the web on them. Really, they do very little after that. I’m sure there is some paper writing going on, but nothing really heavy duty.
But there is lot of strategy going on in background. Google, wireless, scaled down OS X. Weird telephony features being added onto OS X…
As a result, I will make a Dvorakian prediction. Apples next big new product, will be a cut down version of OS X, that runs a browser(and little else), and connects to apple web 2.0 services, for applications. It will connect to the Internet through wifi if available. If wifi is not available, it will automatically connect through apples new virtual wireless service. I suspect they will ditch the hard drive in favor or flash memory. The dvd drive is gonna go away as well. It will be a computer that fits into the consumer electronics category. It will be able to run iChat, a browser capable of using rich Internet applications, and iTunes(music and video). I’m thinking they are gonna call it iPod People, or some other more suitable social hipster name. It will be released early 2008 or late 2007.
So no iPhone, or iPDA. Might get a preview of this in January??
Hmmm, that post started as one thing, became something entirely different…. Bah sleep depravation (thinkin about that check) and lookin at too many apple sites….
pedro,
They also use them in Ford plants. But im not sure if that is a good or a bad thing… As Ford is finishing laying off about half of their US work force.