Macs in high schools?

[kaldor]

I keep seeing threads mention this. I've never heard of and much less ever saw a Mac outside of a university computer room.

Are they just regular school setups or are they there for a purpose? If it's just because the school needs "good computers" it seems like a massive waste.

Some schools here still use Windows 2000 and 98.

[MCVenom]

My high school uses Macs for the broadcast journalism classes, but that's it. Everything else is Windows XP.

[TheNerdAL]

Some schools may have the older Macs like the iMac G3's. My sister's school has those and I remember having those back when I Was in kindergarten I think.

[Bachstelze]

I've never heard of and much less ever saw a Mac outside of a university computer room.

Obvious troll is obvious.

[kaldor]

Obvious troll is obvious.

I'm typing this on OS X.

[RiceMonster]

There was macs in a few classrooms in my highschool.

[MCVenom]

Obvious troll is obvious.

He's not trolling, I myself have never seen a Mac outside of that broadcast journalism class (or Best Buy). I'm sure there are plenty of universities that don't have Macs or have them in some out of the way place. :P

[cprofitt]

Apple used to dominate educations... then it started to die off there except in Art, Video and Elementary classrooms. For the most part the switch to x86 processors removed some of the actual argument for an Apple computer in the world of art, video and photography, but the high end ad studios still use them and the perception is that they are still required. Choice is a good thing -- Apple is a choice, but making that choice eliminates an entire set of other choices. ----- We have Apple computers in our art and music areas and that is it.

[Tombgeek]

My high school only has Windows XP and Windows 2000 computers. It is for our computer gaming club, film club and for Information Technology (a subject I chose). We have to run Borderlands Delphi 7 and Office 2007 for IT and Counter-Strike 1.6 and Warcraft 3: DotA for gaming club, and some random software for video editing.

But they don't run Mozilla Firefox, only Internet Explorer (people can use the internet at school for research).
Some IT specialist.

[chessnerd]

My high school used Macs, as did the Junior High and elementary schools. They had been using Macs since the 80s. For a public school district they were rather wealthy. I think they had a deal with Apple or something.

And they were not "good computers" in any sense of the phrase. They were slow, buggy, and crashed regularly. One time, my computer locked up completely when I tried to print. Firefox was not only always an old version, but it also froze the computer often. Everyone in my school quickly learned to reach behind the computers and hold the power buttons to restart them after a total system failure. The PCs the school had for the business and computer classes, however, were great. I hope they switch over to them soon.

[kaldor]

Lots of people seem to have them at schools then. Maybe that's where the 10% market share thing came from.

I really have only seen Macs at universities or at, yes, Starbucks. One friend had one but switched to Windows because he wanted cheaper.

Edit: And how do Macs manage to suck at schools? I never have a problem with my Mac and I don't even bother with "housekeeping" and such. Been using it since December, and even Linux has broken more than OS X for me.

[Redo]

The only person I know personally with a Mac is my uncle, and he bought his about six months ago.

Otherwise my first computer was an Apple IIe, and that was a lot of fun as a kid to fiddle around with. Macs in grammer school, no macs in high school, they ran either WinNT or RedHat. The first linux OS I had ever mess around with was in HS, and all programming was done via terminal in WinNT to the linux server in VI. I still edit in VI from time to time for good memories.

[Tombgeek]

Lots of people seem to have them at schools then. Maybe that's where the 10% market share thing came from.

I really have only seen Macs at universities or at, yes, Starbucks. One friend had one but switched to Windows because he wanted cheaper.

Edit: And how do Macs manage to suck at schools? I never have a problem with my Mac and I don't even bother with "housekeeping" and such. Been using it since December, and even Linux has broken more than OS X for me.

All Mac OS below Mac OS 9 and X are buggy and crash frequently as far as I heard. But remember, Mac OSX is based on BSD, not on the old architecture that Apple used for their old operating systems. So Mac OSX is more stable and more secure.

BSD is also more secure and stable than Linux

[chriswyatt]

I remember we had 2 Macs at school, the media/journalism students used them.

[kingrobdun]

I always seen macs at schools, except collage.

[chessnerd]

All Mac OS below Mac OS 9 and X are buggy and crash frequently as far as I heard. But remember, Mac OSX is based on BSD, not on the old architecture that Apple used for their old operating systems. So Mac OSX is more stable and more secure.

BSD is also more secure and stable than Linux

The computers at my high school ran Mac OS X 10.3 and they still sucked. I wouldn't call crashing so regular that everyone, even the computer know-nothings, knew how to hard reboot them, "stable"...

The Macs at my university seem solid (although I've only used them twice) and so are the university computers that run Vista and Fedora Linux.

[Bachstelze]

I'm typing this on OS X.

So am I. And I am not in a university lab.

[kaldor]

All Mac OS below Mac OS 9 and X are buggy and crash frequently as far as I heard. But remember, Mac OSX is based on BSD, not on the old architecture that Apple used for their old operating systems. So Mac OSX is more stable and more secure.

BSD is also more secure and stable than Linux

But OS X has been around for nearly 10 years now. Surely the modern schools aren't using the classic series?

Oh, that reminds me. My idiot technology teacher bought a used bondi blue iMac 2 years ago for 2000 dollars. It ran OS 9 and he kept saying "Windows XP is better and faster". It was quickly put to the side. He wanted it for "video editing"... good luck using a 1999 Mac for that.

@Bachstelze

I am talking about in *my area* of the world. Nobody is very tech-knowledgable here. My uncle still uses Windows 95 (on a PC upgraded from 3.1) and gets pissy when family members can't open his attachments of early 90's Corel documents.

I've no doubt that Macs are more popular where people aren't poor rednecks (I don't like rural Newfoundland much ;) )

[schauerlich]

My high school has 2 labs of ~30 iMacs (from 2007). One set is used for "Computer skills" class that, until recently, was a graduation requirement. It basically consists of learning how to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The other set was used for the graphics program, which used Photoshop, Flash, Final Cut Express and Sketchup. I was in that program for 2 1/2 years, and despite having no design or artistic talents, was pretty much second in command to the teacher by my senior year.

[Tombgeek]

But OS X has been around for nearly 10 years now. Surely the modern schools aren't using the classic series?

Oh, that reminds me. My idiot technology teacher bought a used bondi blue iMac 2 years ago for 2000 dollars. It ran OS 9 and he kept saying "Windows XP is better and faster". It was quickly put to the side. He wanted it for "video editing"... good luck using a 1999 Mac for that.

@Bachstelze

I am talking about in *my area* of the world. Nobody is very tech-knowledgable here. My uncle still uses Windows 95 (on a PC upgraded from 3.1) and gets pissy when family members can't open his attachments of early 90's Corel documents.

I've no doubt that Macs are more popular where people aren't poor rednecks (I don't like rural Newfoundland much ;) )

I don't know, Macs are not popular in South Africa.

I am a middle class individual, but I can not afford a Mac at this stage (I am only 16). But I have played around with it and I love it. Sure it has its flaws, and no doubt Apple exaggurates how awesome their OS is, but I prefer it to Windows. You don't nessessary have to be rich to love Mac

Your uncle uses Windows 95? As in, this Windows 95?

http://www.aresluna.org/attached/pics/usability/articles/biurkonaekranie/windows95.big.png

[kaldor]

I don't know, Macs are not popular in South Africa.

Well, Macs are popular with people like me as well. I am a middle class individual, but I can not afford a Mac at this stage (I am only 16). But I have played around with it and I love it. Sure it has its flaws, and no doubt Apple exaggurates how awesome their OS is, but I prefer it to Windows.

Linux is at the top with me, but very shortly under it is OS X.


It seems like the education system is better elsewhere compared to here. High school computer science for me was building a holiday website for every major holiday of the year. Literally, he'd give us like months to make a simple page that I'd usually have completed in under 5 minutes. I'd copy/paste something from wiki, make the background a picture of snow falling, and call it "Christmas". Rinse and repeat for easter, valentine's day, and Canada day. Wasted year. I would spend those few months either studying for other classes or using my laptop to learn about UNIX.


Edit: Yes... *that* Windows 95. He bought a beast with Vista and 4GB memory last year, but quickly chucked it in the corner and brought back his old Win95 one.

He still uses Netscape 4.x and has had the clouds wallpaper set for the last 16 years. I know that because it's off centre due to him setting it as "Tile" and I remember it from when I was a young child. lol.

[cprofitt]

Edit: And how do Macs manage to suck at schools? I never have a problem with my Mac and I don't even bother with "housekeeping" and such. Been using it since December, and even Linux has broken more than OS X for me.

In general the quality of the IT support staff determines the 'suck level' of the computers and OS in a given school. Bad OS but great IT support and the end user will think the OS is great. Great OS and bad IT support kills the OS and users feel the OS stinks.

[corrytonapple]

I've seen them in elementary schools. Every room had a least two or three. In addition they were in the computer lab and library that the school had.

[Kimm]

Until very recently I had only seen a modern mac in one of the computer labs at Uni (Macs are not big here, iPhones and iPods are a different story though).

One of the larger chains of bookstores here (Here being Sweden and the chain being Akademibokhandeln) have begun putting Macs in their shops now, for browsing their online range. They are idiots though... they've put Windows XP with IE on them :x

[Nano Geek]

My College has a mix of Macs and PCs, and MacBooks are popular among the students.

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

My high school used almost exclusively pc's, while my jr. high used almost exclusively macs. That was while ago though.

[NMFTM]

My school district (located in a middle class area) uses exclusively Macs as far as I can remember until I got to high school and the CAD classroom used PC's (Windows). But that was it.

I remember hating Macintosh until they ditched the classic series and based their OS on BSD. OS9 and before was slow and buggy. I wish they wouldn't have ditched their PPC processors though. Now they're just PC's that run a different OS.

[earthpigg]

it isn't really a question of whether OS X is superior to Windows 95 is superior to Ubuntu is superior to OS X etc.

it's all about the staff on hand, and what they can manage.

a great IT staff managing a lab of Windows 2000 computers will be an overall better experience for the clients/students/users than a crappy IT staff managing a lab of OS X or Ubuntu computers.

If your IT staff is stacked with Microsoft-centric certifications, go with the latest-and-greatest you can afford of Microsoft-centric offerings.

Got a bunch of Linux guys with Red Hat experience working for you? So be it, Fedora or CentOS, whatever they recommend. (Acquisition cost here is zero, anyways, though the salaries of the IT staff may or may not be higher.)

Got a bunch of Apple guys? OS X.

The IT guys (hopefully) aren't going to recommend a setup that will make them look bad. They will recommend a setup that will make them look good, and keep them employed.

If HR can't/wont hire good IT guys, then you are screwed no matter what.


As an aside, I subscribe to the San Fran LUG mailing list. About once every month or two, there is a note about some school in SF having replaced Win98 or Win2k with Ubuntu.

[nmaster]

revery classroom at my elementary school had 5+ macs in addition to a few computer labs with 20+ macs. that was a while ago, but at the time i remember the G4s were considered high-end. my high school had a bunch of iMacs for the multimedia classes most of the other computers were dells running xp.

waste of money... maybe. but i grew up in a fairly snooty area, so the public school could afford stuff like that. if its what the citizens want, then its what they get.

EDIT:
elementary school was over a decade ago... damn i'm old.

[Groucho Marxist]

I keep seeing threads mention this. I've never heard of and much less ever saw a Mac outside of a university computer room.

Are they just regular school setups or are they there for a purpose? If it's just because the school needs "good computers" it seems like a massive waste.

Some schools here still use Windows 2000 and 98.

The first and only time I've seen a school make extensive use of Macs was when I attended high school in Indiana. The teacher in charge of journalism was a hardcore Apple fan and featured iMac G3's in every color styling available.

In his defense, though, it was through him that I discovered Ubuntu Linux (which was v 5.04 at that time) thanks to an official install disc he gave me.

[murderslastcrow]

My high school has Macs specifically for the photography classes. Ironically, the multimedia classes used Windows XP since OS X 'didn't have wide enough software availability'. It was funny, since all the programs we used were ported to OS X already. Also, all of the programs we used would work with Wine, which would've saved our teachers a lot of trouble with bugs.

[NightwishFan]

When I was in school we used iMac G3 computers. State of the Art back in the 90s. Everyone else used Windows95 at home.

[Old Marcus]

At my secondary the media suite had a set of Macs, not sure which, never saw them running, but definitely OS X of some brand, judging by the distinctive hardware.

At my college we have a build called CCI (Centre for Creative Industries) and they have some Macs in the library there. I assume they have a couple of rooms with them as well. I don't work in the CCI, so I don't know. But yeah, they are around.

[Jayayess1190]

I went to a private school in Philly that used Macs, this was a K-12 school. Then I went to a charter high school downtown that used Macs too. I remember the old multicolored Macs at the private school.

[Shining Arcanine]

All Mac OS below Mac OS 9 and X are buggy and crash frequently as far as I heard. But remember, Mac OSX is based on BSD, not on the old architecture that Apple used for their old operating systems. So Mac OSX is more stable and more secure.

BSD is also more secure and stable than Linux

Mac OS X is actually less secure than Linux. It is not the fault of BSD because Mac OS X's security flaws have to do with the changes Apple made to BSD in the process of making Mac OS X.

[magmon]

My schools, elementary as well as middle and high school, have all used macs. The only PCs in the building where in the tech class that was discontinued this year.

[kaldor]

Wow. That's amazing... we had Windows 98 and Windows 2000 until 2007 here.

[Dustin2128]

my highschool has macs, ironically, not for the IT classes but AP literature. Don't ask me.

[Riffer]

In our school district when I started teaching was almost exclusively Macs (16 years ago). Now its mostly Windows (mostly XP with a few Vista thrown in). Recently the district has banned any further purchases of Macs, citing maintenance costs, they found that the replacement of parts and the cost of servicing (putting the parts in) to be quite a bit more expensive. One cost that stood out for me was the replacement cost of MB's. For a Mac it was over a $1000, while around $250 for a PC.

[quirkification]

To me it seems the ONLY reason that schools would use a MAC is because they come computer and monitor in one. And it is easier for the staff to plug in a mac then a computer and a monitor. Not like the majority of the staff and life use PC. why would they want kids knowing more than the staff?

What do I remember from HS macs...I cannot drag and copy. And Mac's suck.

[Giant Speck]

My school system was mainly Mac-centric, with the exception of the high school, which had a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux computers.

[phibxr]

At my high-school we had lots of iMacs, mixed with a bunch of Windows-computers too.

At college, I didn't see a mac at all.

At university, we had dualbooting Windows/SuSe-computers.

[xc1024]

Macs, ewww. I had those for the last year of my primary school. They were better than the win 98 pcs in the other IT room. On of those oldest w98's had even a Turbo button on the keyboard so you can see how old they were. So those Macs didn't really need to do much to be better. Also the IT teacher who was admin at the same time told me they picked Macs "to give students opportunity to learn something different" when I asked why. I'm actually quite angry on him, he could easily equip the old computers with Linux or something and give it to students to learn, because the only thing I actually did on the Macs was FTP -_-. Or more properly, could do ;P. Ehh, some people really need to use Google more.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Crotched Mountain has PCs for the majority.

And I could not recall any AMD processors. They appeared to use exclusively Pentium processors, mostly Pentium I, Pentium II and Pentium III in 2002.

There were some Macs, but only in some classrooms and a buddy I had.

In 2002, the majority of the PCs had Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98 SE.

The Pentium IIIs usually had Windows 98 SE. And the fastest I could confirm was a Pentium III 866 Mhz.

And thus my PC was the fastest! And the only Athlon T-Bird! I used Windows 98 SE and sometimes Windows XP.

And Tech Ed. had Pentium IIs for the majority. IIRC, most of them were 350 Mhz. Tech Ed. also had 1 Pentium III 550 or 600 Mhz, with a Soyo motherboard, which was likely one of the last slot versions.

[Xianath]

We had a Color Classic, about a dozen LC II, an LC III and a Quadra. Students worked on the LC IIs, the teacher got the LC III and the Quadra was reserved for the school newspaper (PhotoShop and Quark XPress, before that Claris Works).

Oh, and the Color Classic was a paperweight for all I know :)

[Keen101]

The computers at my high school ran Mac OS X 10.3 and they still sucked. I wouldn't call crashing so regular that everyone, even the computer know-nothings, knew how to hard reboot them, "stable"...

The Macs at my university seem solid (although I've only used them twice) and so are the university computers that run Vista and Fedora Linux.

He said BSD was more stable than linux. He did not say OSX had the same stability. I'm pretty sure they are very different.

I've never tried BSD myself, but from the very brief probing on a mac in my old graphics class, i can tell you that OSX had many security vulnerabilities, and probably all are from the proprietary crap apple added onto the unix/bsd core.

I like macs, but when you have physical access, it's just as insecure as a windows machine. Linux is my choice now. Maybe i'll try BSD someday.

[CraigPaleo]

I'm feeling really old. I remember when there were ONLY Apple computers & Macs used in K-12 schools.

[djyoung4]

At my school its a mix of macs and windows xp's that are currently getting slowly upgraded to 7

[Trougedoor122]

There are two high schools in my district, they both use all Dell computers running win XP, and HP laptops running win XP. One classroom at the second high school has ~30 macs for the photography class.

[lisati]

I'm beginning to feel old. Back in my last year at school/college back in the 1970s, Macs, Linux and even MS-DOS weren't an option. They had a Wang 2200 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200) which had a built-in cassette drive.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I'm beginning to feel old. Back in my last year at school/college back in the 1970s, Macs, Linux and even MS-DOS weren't an option. They had a Wang 2200 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200) which had a built-in cassette drive.

Replying to a three month old thread...

High Schools use Macs. See this article http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370622,00.asp :)

I remember the Wang. The company where I worked used them for word processing. My wife was also an accountant at a company that used the Wang. When the company my wife worked for decided to replace them with PCs, I offered to contact a friend that had a machine-gun. I offered to pay for the ammunition so she could enjoy blasting the thing into little bits. Use your imagination. Flying parts as the bullets penetrate the case. :)

[Cam42]

My school's probably 75% mac.

[doorknob60]

My high school is mostly Macs (there are some left over Dells with XP, but mostly iMacs). The funny thing, they've been very short on money recently, and last year they bought even more new ones :P

[aysiu]

I like macs, but when you have physical access, it's just as insecure as a windows machine. Linux is my choice now. Maybe i'll try BSD someday. When you have physical access, they're all equally insecure. Physical access is root access.

[kaldor]

My high school is mostly Macs (there are some left over Dells with XP, but mostly iMacs). The funny thing, they've been very short on money recently, and last year they bought even more new ones :P

At least they're headed in the right direction technology wise.

[Spr0k3t]

In my high school the computer department was dominated by Apple IIe computers. When I entered into my junior year the latest greatest 8MHz 286 computers hit the desks. Didn't even have a "Turbo" button.

[doorknob60]

At least they're headed in the right direction technology wise.

Yeah, for the most part I'm satisfied. They always keep the software up to date. (they upgraded them all to 10.6 over the summer), and also they have a nice selection of software, in particular Firefox and VLC :) The XP ones also have Firefox (thank god, no way I want to use IE). And for the most part they all run fast, except sometimes the server our user accounts are on is slow and it takes forever to log in :/

EDIT: For a short time some of the computers had Neooffice (OOO for Native Mac before 3.x) on them, but that was a few years ago, and is no longer the case. Oh well, MS Office isn't that bad, except for its ODF support (or lack thereof).

[NCLI]

Nope, all my schools have used Windows, everything from 3.1 to XP.

[MisterGaribaldi]

There are still a few Macs floating around in my local school district, and like others have said, they're used generally for more visually creative purposes. Almost all of the computers in the school district are PCs of various different brands and models running WinXP. They'll eventually migrate to 7, I suppose, but my guess is there's still some hashing out that their central IT department needs to go through.

A friend of mine works in the local district, and it's their knowledge I have to go from.

It's a crap school board we've got, and I hope we kick all of the board members off over this and the next election cycles. (Not that that will have any bearing whatsoever on what software they run, what education-related specialized devices they use, or what OS they base everything on.

If it were me, I'd be running a Debian or RedHat-based infrastructure, and I'd have computers running XP, Vista, 7, various Linux distros, Mac OS X, etc., available to teachers and students so all could benefit from a cross-platform existence.

Fortunately, the college I'm going to at least tries to use some open-source software where they can, and there's no campus-wide mandate for any specific file format, though most teachers use and accept Office 2003 and Office 2007 documents, as well as PDFs.

[Cam42]

Oh well, MS Office isn't that bad, except for its ODF support (or lack thereof).
it exists, quite well in Office 2010, actually.

[renkinjutsu]

My high school had iMacs in the art classrooms and it had some (cheaper) iMacs in the computer room.. My physics teacher has one of those old Macs with the swiveling monitors that is attached to an arm. He also used a black macbook to aid him in his lectures. I think both machines belonged to him personally.