I volunteer in an after-school supplemental program for kiddos in public housing. Three years ago we scared up a grant to buy four iPads to help the kids do their homework.
Then a local teacher intervened and said, no, no, no, get Chromebooks. We did. We got six for the same money. They're compatible with the local school IT systems. They reset themselves when somebody logs off, so we don't have to worry about what the kids install on them.
THEY HAVE KEYBOARDS! Kids can use them to for written-word assignments without futzing around with the onscreen keyboards.
They aren't quite as game-focused as the iPads. That means we get less squabbling over who gets to use them and for what. (I've taken to leaving my iPad at home because it's an attractive nuisance.)
They're cheap enough that it's not the end of the world if one gets damaged.
The chromebooks are a big win for us and the kids we serve.
Can be used on recycled laptops. Provides Chromeos. Free for personal (no support). I have no connection with neverware other than being impressed with their work when I tried it on a 9 year old Thinkpad.
As far as I can tell, that article doesn't actually name Google Keep as being shut down, and was in fact written shortly after Keep was released. Which is a relief, since Keep is exactly what I want from a notes app.
Yes, as far as I could tell then in 2013 (or now), Keep was alive. Given that it had just been released (and a sarcastic article on it was actually part of my impetus for that analysis), the survival model only gave it a 61% chance of surviving until 2018. As it's almost 2018 now and Keep is alive, that suggests (on purely statistical grounds) it has a better chance of sticking around for a while.
It's reasonable not to trust Google to keep any particular product or service alive once it's no longer politically fashionable inside the company. Their record speaks for itself, loudly.
Picasa was a pretty great app... as was desktop search widget thingy... I wish that Picasa/Photos were better integrated, and the interface were cleaned up like other MD apps from google... that said, Picasa was a great app for managing photos.
Google canceled a whole bunch of things, some of which a lot of people used. Now a lot of people are perhaps rightfully sceptical about all their products, if that product is not part of their core.
Yeah, the pixel line of devices seems in part to be about weening Google off their Apple product addiction. Never mind dogfooding their own software products.
FWIW Friend of mine at Google could not get a CB Pixel. Are they supply constrained? Anyway, he was mad at Apple for such a long wait for MBP updates (6 months ago), so he purchased a Razer Blade Stealth and loves it.
Can't the same be said for Apple or Microsoft? If either company changes its mind, say Apple release an iPhone XL and discontinues tablets, then the older devices will become less supported in the same way.
> I volunteer in an after-school supplemental program for kiddos in public housing. Three years ago we scared up a grant to buy four iPads to help the kids do their homework.
> Then a local teacher intervened and said, no, no, no, get Chromebooks. We did. We got six for the same money. They're compatible with the local school IT systems. They reset themselves when somebody logs off, so we don't have to worry about what the kids install on them.
> THEY HAVE KEYBOARDS! Kids can use them to for written-word assignments without futzing around with the onscreen keyboards.
> They aren't quite as game-focused as the iPads. That means we get less squabbling over who gets to use them and for what. (I've taken to leaving my iPad at home because it's an attractive nuisance.)
> They're cheap enough that it's not the end of the world if one gets damaged.
> The chromebooks are a big win for us and the kids we serve.
How did you only get six Chromebooks for the price of four iPads?
The C302 definitely looks interesting... have any experience with "corporate" vpn connections? When my last mbp was stolen, I used an earlier atom chromebook for nearly a year, but without VPN access (at the time) that worked, it wasn't great.
When I needed more, I could RDP, or SSH to something bigger... was nice light/small machine to have with me to stay connected. As it is, my current (2014 rmbp) sits mostly in the bag and rarely goes with me. My work issued one is tethered to the desk. Wouldn't mind a machine I care a little less about losing to have with me, or keep in the car even.
Also, how is the feel of the touchpad? I'm guessing newer builds/kernels should support docker now.
My kids' school has had them for a number of years now. They are all Dell and don't cost much more than $200/unit w/ coverage. Sure, kids break them occasionally, but most of the drops and slams that break a $200 unit will also break a $450 one.
I work in EdTech. I never thought the ipad ever made sense in the classroom and I'm not surprised that a netbook is beating back the tablet.
Input onto a tablet is clumsy at best. It is essentially a passive device. Yes, you can add an aftermarket keyboard and and an after market stand, but now you have a three part hacked together netbook instead of one that's designed with a keyboard and hinge from the get-go.
Further, tablets are a magnet for damage. A laptop screen can take localized damage and still mostly work. A tabket screen shatters. Plus the laptop screen is set back within the monitor component and the overall center of gravity means that a netbook is more likely to land on the keyboard side.
Finally, the software story is best for windows (web and native plus great management features), decent for chromebook, and worst for ipads.
Even outside of education, I don't think the iPad is useful for anything other than consumption.
I've seen some creative types using drawing applications on it, which is cool I guess, but for the most part I don't see it replacing a laptop/desktop just yet.
School's online systems tend to be woefully behind the times. Usually online portals and e-textbooks are little more than patronizing nods to the students that have come to accept tech in their lives as a necessity rather than any meaningful attempt at bettering education.
How would any book "not work on the iPad"? It seems like whatever math is taught in the book can be done on the iPad (either writing out the problems in a drawing app or using a special purpose one).
My iPad mini is a great little synthesizer. That's not a very big market, though.
For about $400 (total - iPad + Casio, some wires and software), you can use one to build a portable rig that actually sounds decent (if only I knew how to play better...). Use a "camera kit" (USB hub) to run MIDI in through USB, and an aux cable to run the sound back through something like a Casio keyboard (disabling the Casio's internal noise maker). Start up one of the inexpensive but pretty good synth programs on the iPad and go to it. (A cheap Casio lacks controller knobs, but you can use the tablet touch screen for expression)
Audio latency on Android is generally too sluggish. Have not tried ChromeOS, but I expect it's similar.
Plus, the guys that make the synth programs expect to get paid $5, $10 or $20 (depending), so I don't see this stuff moving over to one of Google's environments, where everybody expects vendors to provide free apps.
Substitute "USB class compliant MIDI keyboard with Aux in" for "Casio", which I said way too many times :-)
The trick is to get/make a patch that makes no sound (e.g. - sample of silence) to abuse the keyboard's "play along with MP3 player" feature. The built-in speakers on these type of $100 to $200 battery operated keyboards aren't very loud, but they work for practice or sidewalk playing.
They're pretty good for carrying around a bunch of custom "controller" interfaces (in the sense of a MIDI "controller") without needing to pack around hundreds of pounds of hardware covered in knobs and keys. DJs like them.
Also see Bret Victor's talk (https://vimeo.com/64895205) where he does digital puppetry using two tablets: one using direct motion input, the other with a knobs-and-sliders UI for a set of behavior controls.
I really want to disagree with you, but I can't. I primarily use my iPad Pro for note-taking for school, and for carrying around all my textbooks electronically. It's really great for these applications.
Outside of school, I've done a little bit of artwork on it, and it's nice. But that's about it. My daughter draws prolifically, has a Surface and, after trying my iPad for awhile, decided she didn't want me to buy her one of her own.
For myself, the most useful device I can imagine is the MacBook Pro that, by the way, you can remove the screen and draw on it. But I don't want iOS and a cobbled on Bluetooth keyboard. And I'm not holding my breath.
I seriously tried to make an iPad Pro (9.7") work for writing my book (ETA sometime before I die). All the tools I need are there. I fly a lot so the form factor is perfect. I just couldn't stomach the keyboard.
I tried to make the iPad my primary 'travel' device. My problem was the lack of multi-tasking (I was surprised how often I reference the web, or a document when writing an email) and no mouse support. I get that that the iPad is a "Post-PC device", but if you're using a keyboard (by the way, keyboard shortcuts on iPad were terrible) anyway, the mouse is actually a really good, productive peripheral - but Apple ideology doesn't believe in using mice with tablets.
> if you're using a keyboard (by the way, keyboard shortcuts on iPad were terrible) anyway, the mouse is actually a really good, productive peripheral - but Apple ideology doesn't believe in using mice with tablets.
I'm not going to try to make a argument for Android tablets in general (on my third, not buying a fourth), but they actually support all this.
Run up a chroot with Debian and X11 and you can even have yourself a semi-normal Linux desktop inside your Android. With a mouse and keyboard.
It's not great, but when cornered I've actually managed to pull through on a device like this.
I have an irrational hatred of chroots on Android, mainly because it's made Googling for info on running mainline Linux on these devices impossible.
At the point you're using X11 on Android, wouldn't you be better off with a Chromebook?
I'm also interested in Samsung's DeX. We're well past the point where I should be able to carry one device in my pocket and dock into extra peripherals as needed.
Sidenote: of course we couldn't have a standard for dockable devices. So we've got Microsoft's Continuum, Samsung's DeX and whatever MaruOS is doing these days.
> I'm not going to try to make a argument for Android tablets in general (on my third, not buying a fourth), but they actually support all this.
> Run up a chroot with Debian and X11 and you can even have yourself a semi-normal Linux desktop inside your Android. With a mouse and keyboard.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge a Linux fan, but calling this "supported" seems like a stretch. Maybe better phrasing would be "this is possible on an Android tablet".
The mouse is a first class supported element on Android (as is wired networking). You can use it anywhere you'd otherwise use touch (in regular Android apps).
Similarly with keyboards: ctrl-c, x and v work just as you expect. As does alt-tab.
This is very different from the iOS story, so just to play on the differences, I was just showing to what extent a Android-tablet can be taken if the need arises. I didn't mean to hint X11 and chroots were officially supported by Google or any vendor.
To take it even further, if you plug a USB keyboard into a Android-device, the settings menu will even uncover the ability to select a separate keyboard layout for the physical keyboard.
Deep down Android was clearly built to be a general purposey OS.
Yeah I've tried to make do with just a tablet when traveling but just can't make it work. Even with a keyboard it's just too clumsy to select things, move the cursor around, etc. And, as you say, multi-tasking.
So I almost always travel with a laptop-like thing (whether a Mac or a Chromebook) and a tablet-like thing (whether an iPad or a Kindle). Frankly, devices are small and light enough today that there just isn't a huge win to paring down to one device that doesn't do some tasks well.
Okay, now this is more of a stretch. :O) BUT, with a Lighting to USB adapter you can (technically) use both USB mice, and wireless mice that use USB dongles.
Agreed. I use my girlfriend's iPad for watching stuff in bed/couch. It is way comfier than a laptop, but I can't really use it for writing anything longer than a Google search.
To explain why I am so uncomfortable with "I can't use it for more than X" anecdotes:
My grandma couldn't do more than automatically playing DVD on her windows desktop.
My wife can't do more than opening and closing the door on any random semi-truck.
I can't do more than make horrible sounds on a violin.
All of these are only half of the story, and the receiver of the message is supposed to guess the other half perhaps ? But of course, which is the other half ? Is there a point to be made about any of these or is it just a random observation ?
Basically it brings more questions that it answers.
I think it depends on the person and the requirements. I've written tens of thousands of words on an iPad, used it to do programming exercises for job interviews using Pythonista as well as prototyping bits of work projects and hobby programming, created character sheets for a homegrown tabletop RPG, filled out PDF forms, my kids draw and paint on their minis as well as write fan fiction in Wattpad.
There certainly are limitations due to the form factor and Apple's lockdown of the platform. Pythonista and other dev environments would be a lot more useful with less strict code sharing options. Still, you can do a lot with these things.
Maybe it's because I don't own a laptop, carry the iPad frequently and use it on my daily commute.
You're wrong about it not being useful for other than consumption. I have a 12.9 inch Pro and a good bluetooth keyboard. I can mostly replace my mac book pro as a server side dev. I have great ssh clients, Coda is a very good editor, a good git client, all the communication tools I need, etc... Mostly it's just making small changes to your workflow to fit the new environment. Lot's of artists and musicians also create on iPads, so it may not be useful to you but others find it useful.
I agree it's not likely to replace laptops in the next couple of years for everyone but plenty of people make it work now.
i dunno..I thought the same until I watched my wife use the iPad Pro. I thought it was a toy (its just not for me) but I was downright shocked when she just walked into a meeting with her Pro and..for the lack of a better term owned it. She brought up her Pro on the big screen and just made it all work. Its not my world, but watching her work it made me realize how little I understand how the world actually uses a product. She makes that thing sing. If I bumped into her in a meeting I'd immediately defer. Its crazy how much work she got with that Pro+Pencil and a display.
Could you go into more details as to what apps she uses on it, and what kind of work she does? What do you mean by "she made it all work"? (very curious about this)
I tried iPad Pro 12.9" for a primary portable device ... but like many others it was just too clumsy (software was clumsy) for getting stuff done, in particular if one is also dealing with a desktop or laptop with a shared file system.
Interactive textbooks have pretty much always been garbage. Education companies want to pretend they are some Bret Victoresque interactive VR learning experience but instead they are basically just regular textbooks with videos and maybe computer graded homework problems.
I'm sure that's true. However, I'd observe that interactive multimedia books aren't something that have become a big thing outside of schools either. People obviously consume multimedia but there doesn't seem to be a huge appetite for packaging them up as books in any systematic way.
A lot of educational software is games as opposed to office software etc where the keyboard is the main / best input device. The iPad has done a lot in schools, especially the K-5 market, for example, see edtech like Osmo. You might not think it makes sense but students especially younger ones are benefiting from it every day.
(My mom is a teacher and I've helped her research and adopt a lot of this into her classroom including several iterations of iPads and augmented reality based learning games.)
The k-5 point is a good one. The company I work for and my thinking is focused on older students, in the 7-12 range mostly. But I'd think the fragility of the ipad would be an even bigger downside in that age group.
It's definitely a concern. So far they have just bought very heavy duty cases and I don't think the young students are allowed to transport them. Somewhat surprisingly, I don't believe they've had any broken screens either out of hundreds of iPads (one per child).
What's even crazier is that many of these kids have learned how to use an iPad, gestures, games, etc before they can even read or write.
My daughter has been typing a lot on a chromebook since beginning of second grade. Hand her an ipad and the only thing she knows (and isn't too interested in) is minecraft.
Netbooks are also much more serviceable than tablets. At $20 a pop screens can basically be thought of as a wear item if you've got a large enough fleet deployed.
Let's be honest, most of the best studying time is still spent using pen & paper and exercise sheets. Even in 2017. Let's not fool ourselves, apps don't make you understand things quicker. The exception are very few select educational videos and some Wikipedia pages. Or programming on the PC, since that is much harder to learn without actual tools to run code.
Let's be honest, this comment is full of emotionally loaded language. Let's not fool ourselves, it contains not one iota of evidence to support the core claim.
I hear some schools used to send students home with backpacks full of hundreds of dollars worth of textbooks even though they knew every book wasn't going to come back. It's called acceptable loss and is a cost of doing business. You can't deny all students access to resources just because there are a few bad apples.
If a bully smashes an iPad or a Chromebook owned by the school, it's no different to breaking any other school property like a microscope. You summon the parents and bill them.
My kids are both in high school right now. My observation is that they are largely platform agnostic. Of course the browser runs on any platform. That's their "terminal" for everything. They use Google Docs on whatever computer they're sitting at, and have figured out its collaborative features.
Just a few years ago it was very important for them to have a computer with the latest version of Office installed on it -- one for every kid in case they both got assignments at the same time -- but the teachers are now largely comfortable with Google Docs or Whatever. That 3-user Office 2010 license is probably my last commercial software purchase ever.
So it seems that the choice of platform is something that the grown ups worry about, but it doesn't affect the kids at all. Their school seems to have gone with Chromebooks.
About 8 or 10 years ago, my older daughters insisted that OpenOffice wasn't a "real" word processor, since it didn't look like MS Office on XP, and we were then running Ubuntu at home (since switched to OSX, but whatever...). Then one year, the school got "Vistafied", and the whole UI they were used to got scrambled. At that point, their eyes were opened, and they stopped complaining about the system at home being "different", as well as having to pay attention to using a compatible format, since MS graciously made them painfully aware of all that, anyway.
They are now pretty used to doing stuff on the net/cloud, with whatever disposable device/UI is around that year.
Sure. But the web app UX is clunky; it wouldn't be acceptable to have a desktop word processor with Google Docs' quality. It's a little sad if this is where the bar is set for kids, all in the name of cross-platform.
Indeed, what people are willing to give up in terms of UX, in return for other benefits (including cost), is something that continues to surprise the development community.
From what I've observed, just watching what the kids do, it seems that function trumps form. What Google Docs does for them is provide access to their documents anywhere, and by anybody within their collaborative group. They don't need a lot of the typesetting features provided by MS Office -- if they can't express something in one way, they find another way to express it.
It's only been recently, that we can test whether people are willing to give up UX, because MS Office had the same UX at all of its price tiers. For the same general functionality -- typesetting -- folks weren't willing to put up with the UX of Libre Office, which was clunky in its own way. So I suspect that what Google Docs offers is based on function and not price.
And this is why I find the whole FOSS fretting about UI consistency a fool's errand. If anyone has stuck with Windows since the 9x days they will know that UI consistency matters less than rote habits and backwards compatibility.
For standard school papers and reports there's no reason the standard text editor on whatever platform (e.g. Wordpad, or its Mac equivalent) should not be acceptable.
About 6 years ago I showed my oldest son (in 8th grade at the time) basic LaTeX to write papers and he would turn in the PDF files.
Sure it's all moved to Google docs now and that's fine, but the requirement for office suites never made sense.
I think that things have gotten a lot more relaxed, even within the time period that my kids have been in school. At first, formatting requirements for paper documents were simply applied to computer documents, and word processing was considered to be a preparation for college or the workforce.
I remember grumbling: "Why are they wasting their time learning skills that will be obsolete by the time they reach college?"
Even outside of school, word processing has gotten less important. The main "word processor" today is the e-mail program. Remaining uses for word processing include documents that nobody will ever read, and documents where there is a mandatory template, such as work instructions.
Not necessarily. Most universities these days have plenty of computers on campus to use and are running the software required. I also know if I do end up requiring to install some software the school doesn't have already (which hasn't happened yet) they have virtualbox installed so I could go spin up a VM and do it through that. I've never felt like I had to own a personal computer. Granted I have never wanted to sit around on campus all day doing my assignments so I go to my apartment to work on them.
If all they are going to be using their computer for is note taking and essay writing a chromebook will be just fine. If a prof requires an assignment in the word format (which I've had one do sadly) you can still export a google doc in the word format or you can just go to one of the many computer labs and just copy paste into a word file. With a little bit of work you can even run Ubuntu on them. I've actually worked on a good number of my programming assignments from my chromebook.
If they're doing some kind of arts program then you are probably looking at getting a Mac as most prof seem to expect that's what you are using.
If you just want a safe pick go with something running Windows.
That's an interesting question. I'd like to know too. At a K-12 school, that has chosen a particular platform, there's an implicit commitment to support that platform from an IT standpoint.
At a university, where it's "bring your own," you're more likely to run into situations where somebody's technology has only been tested on a handful of mainstream platforms and browsers, and if you don't have one of those, then your problems are your fault.
You'd hate to get the call: "I need to finish an assignment by tonight at 11 PM, and the software only runs on Mac or Windows."
With that said, there are low cost Windows computers that are almost throwaway, and quite robust. My carry-around computer is an Asus Windows notebook that I got for 100 bucks refurbished.
Check if the college has preferred vendors. Mine will repair your dell, mac, or Lenovo ThinkPad for free (you still pay for new parts required) if you own one of those.
They also often have special purchasing deals. Though the savings are not great it's something.
Most colleges will have no preference for Mac, Windows, Linux but there may be some courses or majors where there is an advantage to one platform over the others.
Agreed! My wife is a 7-8 grade teacher in a private school and the people that have the most trouble with technology is, surprise, the adults. The kids pretty much get along with anything you give them access to. This means that Google Docs works fine, it even works on their home computer or the one at the library. And my wife does everything she can in Google Docs so that they even turn in their homework online. It's a win-win.
Apple seem to be in the same state of denial now that Microsoft were when Windows 8 came out. They believe touch-screen tablets are the future, and the way computing should be done, and ignore the desktop and laptop paradigm works much better for getting work done for a lot of people.
Microsoft realised their mistake and came out with Windows 10, which works well across both tablets and desktops/laptops. Apple seem to have doubled-down. The future looks prettier for the former.
Exactly. Unless and until the input of text ceases to become a primary function of computing devices, touch screens will never be as effective as a laptop with keyboard.
Sure, add on keyboards are an option, but it is a second class citizen and apps aren't primarily designed with them in mind.
In my OPINION the add-on keyboard on the Surface Pro 4 is the best attempt, but even that pales in comparison to the Surface Book, and real laptops like last year's MBP and Thinkpads.
3-in-1s might have a legitimate future (e.g. Surface Book). But they have real keyboards, not sketchy addon ones. Real laptops aren't going anywhere for people that actually need to be productive.
It does seem as if you're going to have two devices with basically the same hardware there ought to be some way to converge them.
I agree that Microsoft has probably come closest but no one seems to have fully cracked this yet.
OTOH, I often travel with an Asus Flip Chromebook and I find it sufficiently awkward as a tablet that I usually travel with my iPad as well unless I'm going very light in which case I take my Kindle Paperwhite.
My touchscreen Chromebook has been the most cost-effective and versatile computer purchase I've ever made. And with a crouton chroot I can do anything I'd do on a regular Ubuntu laptop outside of high performance and games.
There's no tie to break. They're different overlapping forms of input. They co-sign just fine on a laptop and you don't have to choose one over the other.
Actually mice/touchpad are a direct replacement that doesn't require you to hold your hand up awkwardly or get nasty fingerprints on your screen. The only things touch does better is allow gestures which could be input on your touchpad instead of directly on the screen.
Of course its useful on convertable tablets that can be used in tablet orientation.
Have you used a laptop with a touchscreen? Because I thought the same way you seem to until I did. A decade of getting used to touchscreen phones and tablets has made it feel really natural to interact directly with a screen. It's not world changing, but that extra input stream is a very pleasant addition, and sometimes it's just more natural to tap the screen directly.
I have for about 18 months and I never use the touch screen functionality. In fact the only time it ever gets used is when someone else tries to point at something on my screen and of course that causes a click and they awkwardly say, "Sorry, I didn't know it was a touch screen."
> The only things touch does better is allow gestures
That's not true at all. There are plenty of Apps that work better with touch than using a mouse or touchpad. When you don't have a 9 Key, such as on a laptop, then touch becomes the preferred method of input for calculator apps or dialers. Media player applications work much better with touch than mouse. There are many apps that don't have keyboard shortcuts and custom UIs that are difficult to navigate with keyboard or mouse.
When using a laptop I use to naturally keep my left hand next to the keyboard with thumb on CTRL, index on TAB, and middle finger on ESC. After using a touchscreen laptop for 3+ years I now keep my hand rested next to the screen with for fingers behind the screen and my thumb hovering over it. I can use my thumb to flick the screen or slam the ESC key and change screens with a gesture.
It's actually a more natural placement than the one required to type on a keyboard either in my lap or on a desk. My wrist is kept straight on both axis and there's no strain as both my forearm and hand are resting on and supported by a surface (e.g. my thigh or the desk). It's roughly equivalent to having my thumb on the CTRL key position which is also fully supported but in the case of a desk, thumb on screen offers more wrist support.
Having my hand on home row is awful by comparison because my hand is completely unsupported and angled on both axis so there's a lot more strain.
How has Microsoft realised their Windows 8 mistake? Win10 and WinPhone10 are more of the same (Win8), just even more buggy. Guess how many control panel dialog styles has Win10, oh right more than 5, dating all the way back to Win95. In what universe asked consumers to be spied by Microsoft, the "telemetry features" that cannot be turned off (just Basic or Full) and forced automatic updates that basically reinstall the full Windows and reset many settings - must be a dystopian 1984 universe where consumers are mindless slaves. No Microsoft has NOT learned from their mistake. They make more and more as the go the wrong direction. Will they (be forced to) make to do a 180 degree U-turn?
Problem is MS business model. They cannot remove stuff because of compatibility and cannot build new OS because they already have competition.
Most sensible would be to remove cruft in Windows and move to ARM hardware. Because Bill was not in power, new windows API(UWP) and Edge were too late. Now MS stuck with Win10 that have backward compatibility with win98 and IE11.... and dead WP.
But net profit is down [0]. Problem is losing competitive edge. They cannot do vertical integration like Apple because they lost mobile. Traditional enterprise is moving to cloud and Azure is only propped temporary[1]. Edge is bleeding users and Internet is already belong to Facebook and Google. Chrome and Mac slowly eat desktop market[3].
MS already already lost all chances to do a comeback. Current CEO lack product vision. Buying LinkedIn is silly where for the same price they could have ARM.
Apple stellar sales and profits with the first generation of iPads caused that state of denial from one side. Gaming profit going away from PCs (to consoles and tables) was the other side. Even apple neglected their laptops in favor of the profitable divisions.
Everyone wanted to have one 'App' store to profit as much as Google and Apple. Even Amazon has one nowadays. Steam filled a void.
What Microsoft realized is that they could add good hardware and a store to the Windows experience and get some of that profit.
MS has been trying to get tablets to work since the days of Gates. His last act before handing the chair over to Ballmer was to launch UMPCs and convertible laptops, with a variant of XP to complement them.
Yep, this goes all the way back to "Windows for Pen Computing"[0], a version of Windows 3.1 for very early tablets. Here's a video of Bill Gates showing it off: https://youtu.be/eenDjMXfVBQ?t=2m22s
Well the Android tablet market got hung out to dry by Google during late 4.x Android, while at the same time Intel was trying to get their foot in by selling Atoms at a loss. Thus everything just kinda got stuck in a doldrums. I hope Android 7 and a renewed attention to tablets by Google will help some.
> Microsoft realised their mistake and came out with Windows 10, which works well across both tablets and desktops/laptops. Apple seem to have doubled-down. The future looks prettier for the former.
Do you use Windows 10 on tablets? Because compared to iOS I find it very touch unfriendly and fidgety. I use it because I develop for the 3 eco systems, but Windows I for one cannot really use it without for anything useful without a mouse. I do not have that issue with iOS or Android.
Yes. I use Windows 10 on three different devices, one of which is a tablet.
It's not quite as nice as iOS is, but it's also more flexible, which makes up for it. For instance, I can run “desktop” Windows applications on my tablet, which means I can use actual Firefox.
I'm not a kid in school, but a highly paid software engineer and I have gone with a Chromebook. It does what I do, surf the internet and for 10+ hours on a single charge. When I want to do some programming, I just ssh into my several-year-old Linux desktop and use tmux + vim.
If ChromeOS opened up its Linux internals without using the crouton hack, it would destroy every other platform out there.
Yes, you can, but my question would be why would you want to? I don't know anyone personally who uses Office or Adobe for anything but work. Even then, the vast majority of professional use of Office is handled perfectly well by their online offering or Google's Docs.
Image manipulation and video editing are the only reasons I can think of someone would want something other than the hardware of a Chromebook. If Google opened up the Linux internals or made it dead simple to dual boot they would have a perfectly good development environment for web developers as well.
>"Yes, you can, but my question would be why would you want to? I don't know anyone personally who uses Office or Adobe for anything but work."
Perhaps not people you know, but a lot of us enjoy drawing for fun. For me, at least, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator and a Wacom tablet is the best way to go if I want to do anything digital. Corel Painter is pretty good, too. Linux isn't a good option for any of these things.
Even then, the vast majority of professional use of Office is handled perfectly well by their online offering or Google's Docs.
In a lot of professional environments it is not. First of all, many employers do not like uploading documents into a cloud.
Secondly, in an organization that uses Microsoft Office (which is probably still the vast majority of organizations), it is often not a replacement. A lot of Office files (especially with macros, etc.) do not work properly. Colleagues expect you return a document with updates with Office's 'track changes' functionality ("here, you have a Google Docs link with my changes to your Word document" will not fly).
I think Microsoft still has a large advantage in big organizations, due to their traditional dominance. And Office 365/Exchange has added collaboration features as well (that work with Office on Mac and Windows).
This is my experience of tooling up for a new job, I'm building a fast developer desktop which will be running Linux but we still had to sort out a license for Windows and Office (which will be virtualised) because while I can do my job completely on Linux the rest of the company is stuck emailing spreadsheets and stuff around.
I can't see that changing for a long time, I think people continue underestimate how hard it is for average adults in the workplace to jump around platforms, we are programmers (mostly) we are comfortable picking up new software and platforms as and when we need them but it's a classic case of "what applies to me applies to everyone".
That 50yo who is awesome at his job but 'useless' (by our metrics) with computers is still awesome at his job.
Emailing documents around seems like a recipe for errors, conflicts, and confusion around which version is the correct one. Does that really work well?
> I think Microsoft still has a large advantage in big organizations, due to their traditional dominance
I agree, and in fact would extend it to dominance in entire industries where compatibility is key. I can imagine if a lawyer returned a 100 page M&A agreement via Google Docs they would be laughed out of the room and told to try again. Or an accountant sharing a company's entire set of financial statements in Google Sheets rather than Excel - same result.
Cloud collaboration offerings are fantastic tools in my opinion, particularly for lightweight idea sharing. I know Google has grand plans for its productivity suite, but I think it will be an uphill battle to de-throne Microsoft anytime soon due to its widespread acceptance in a lot of industries as the "standard".
You also get worse battery life, constant updates at the most inopportune times (that you can't even control anymore), advertisements in your OS, and very sketchy security/privacy.
Genuine question: how can the privacy of e.g. Windows (that sends back _some_ data, supposedly mostly telemetry to MS) than an environment that runs fully inside Google?
There are Windows Laptops with good 10+ hour battery life (e.g. Thinkpads). But they aren't a "little more" they're $1K+. Chromebooks are around $250-400.
You haven't looked at Windows laptops in a long time. You can get a 15" 1080p laptop with 8gb of ram and a 256gb SSD that gets 10+ hours of battery life for just north of $500 now.
As counterpoint, that same $500 will get you a Chromebook that's exceptionally thin and light (0.5" thick, 2.3 lbs), has a high resolution retina display (12", 2400x1600 pixels), 10+ hours battery life, and touchscreen with pen input and Android app compatibility: http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/12-14/xe513c... Compared to a giant 15" clunky, hot, loud, low resolution display Windows laptop it's a night and day difference.
Yes, but with a drastically slower CPU, half the RAM and 1/8 of the disk space that Chromebook is not a usable developer machine without an additional server on which to run compilers, database systems, etc.
You're essentially buying a very high resolution ssh terminal + documentation viewer for your $500.
And you also still have to connect to remote servers to collaborate with other developers, run your SCM, CI/CD, servers, etc...
If you can do your editing locally, and connect to something more beefy when needed, whoopty do. It depends on what your needs are. Personally, a really nice screen and touchpad are huge features for me... at home/work a physical switch keyboard (buckling spring or cherry-mx browns)... who cares?
I want more, you want more, but there's no need to poopoo on someone else for not aligning with your own sensibilities.
Not including RAM, CPU and disk space in a cost comparison because your work doesn't require much RAM, CPU or disk space is fine. I don't poopoo anyone for not having these requirements in the first place.
But not including RAM, CPU and disk space because they're on a server somewhere makes absolutely no sense.
SCM and CI/CD are irrelevant for the comparison because they cost exactly the same whether you use a Chromebook, a Windows laptop or a Mac.
I am in the Mac camp (as mentioned upthread), but I think there is a serious risk here for Apple. That $550 Acer has the same amount of memory and an as large SSD as my new 2016 MacBook Pro that is Euro 1699 new. Plus a dedicated graphics card. Of course, the MacBook will have a better quality, but the price gaps between MacBooks and similarly spec'ed laptops are getting quite large.
Currently, a Mac or not is not a question for me. I prefer macOS with such a wide margin over Windows and Linux (for the desktop) that I am willing to pay the premium. Moreover, macOS has many applications that I like and are not available on other platforms (OmniGraffle, OmniFocus, Alfred, Tweetbot, Pastebot, etc.). However, after trying WSL I for the first time had the feeling that Windows could become an alternative to consider.
It's a direct response to this incorrect claim: "There are Windows Laptops with good 10+ hour battery life (e.g. Thinkpads). But they aren't a "little more" they're $1K+"
They aren't $1k+. They're literally a little more than the $400 Chromebook.
With a low resolution 720p screen and only 2GB of RAM and less than 10 hours of battery life. You can buy a similarly equipped Windows laptop for $199 or less, or with a more usable 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for 30 bucks more. Of course there are both lower end Chromebooks and Windows laptops, but they're really beside the point to what's being discussed.
Even low end devices are shipping with SSDs now. The last time Windows 10 was slow for me it was either because it was still on a 5400RPM drive (brand new $900AUD PC from a retailer...) or because Intel had tricked a whole lot of ODMs into thinking the Z series Atoms were desktop processors rather than for mid-range smartphones.
In fairness, the low-end $200 laptops have emmc storage, which isn't what consumers think of as SSD. Yes it is solid state and faster than a hard drive. But it's not typical SSD performance like you get on the $400+ laptops.
eMMC 5.1 (introduced in Jan 2015) has read speeds up to 250 MB/s and write speeds up to 125 MB/s. They're much faster than the earlier eMMC chips, as well as laptop hard drives. Sadly, the early slow chips kind of gave them a bad reputation. They're perfectly workable now for a low-end machine.
> a full Ubuntu environment per Windows Subsystem for Linux
The Windows Subsystem for Linux was so much slower than just running Ubuntu the last time I tries, the only reason I have for booting into windows is to update the skill queues for my eve characters once every few months.
I am actually sad how schools are going to locked down, consumption based hardware. How many people here got their start in computers by messing with school computers to make them do new things? Now, the computer is just a "magic" locked black box to do homework on.
A Chromebook isn't a locked-down computer, it's a really smart terminal. That might seem like a pedantic distinction, but it's vital if you want to use a Chromebook effectively. Once you start thinking about a Chromebook as a VT100 with bells on, it makes perfect sense. It's a very Unixy way of working. The computer is somewhere, but you don't necessarily care where. It might be a server in Google's DC, it might be an EC2 instance, it might be a Raspberry Pi hooked up to your domestic router. The device on your desk is just a gateway.
Nothing makes teenagers want to do something so badly as being told they can't. Attempting to bypass school computer security was one of my earliest forays into understanding computers.
Nothing makes teenagers want to do something so badly as being told they can't.
Not only teenagers. I was 7 or 8 (~1990) when my dad told me not to use our home PC without his supervision and under no circumstances should I start Norton Commander. The next day when he was at work, I booted the PC, started Norton Commander (I observed that he typed 'nc'), and tried every possible function that I could find ;).
same. we had a lot of content restrictions on my home network growing up, so i learned about tor and isolinux to get past them. tor was actually overkill in this case, but it was still fun.
As a teenager can confirm many hours are spent bypassing school security, but not on chromebooks. They are far to easily locked down with secure boot, and the only way to get past that are hardware changes, which very few people are willing to do.
The environments that iPads/Chromebooks replace, computer labs full of Windows towers, are among the most locked down in existence. We didn't even get Start menus, just the Novell ZENWorks launcher. Trying to make the computer do something new (like change your desktop background, even to a completely unoffensive image) was a great way to get expelled.
Ah the memories of a Novell NetWare high school. I still remember gleaning the librarians password over his shoulder. Low and behold, his regular login had been granted full permission to the tree! It took them four years, but I almost got expelled, weeks from graduation.
Isn't it the case that back then (not sure how far back that is) a school was about the only place you'd be able to use a computer, and even then it was sort of a novelty, and didn't play the more central role in the classroom that computers do today. i.e. if you 'messed with it' to the point where you broke something it wasn't a big deal. If I was a teacher today, I'm not sure I would want my kids messing with one of our tools.
Also, today many more kids have computers at home they can mess with if so inclined. That wasn't the case back then.
Why not both? For a computer class it seems better to give kids a Raspberry Pi or similar for messing around, without risking breaking the computer they rely on for homework. Plus they can use their other computer for looking up things on the Internet.
These days it seems like anyone messing with hardware should have more than one computer.
In some ways having the built in F12 dev tools makes them easier to explore than ever. Almost every child knows how to change things in a webpage using it. It's half way towards Smalltalk almost
For me it was the other way around. The expensive school computer was locked down (this was the mid-1980s) but I learned stuff there that I then explored at home on a home computer. People tried to get into the school computer to capture other people's passwords, so it wasn't a "messing with school computers to make them do new things" as much as a "messing with school computers to prevent other kids from learning anything". I'm glad they were locked down. But I'm also glad my home computer was completely open (Commodore 64, TRS-80, IBM PC) and relatively simple to experiment with. Maybe a Raspberry Pi serves that purpose today but it's so much harder to spend the time to learn that when there's a shiny ipad next to it.
Of the options available, Chromebooks are a lot less draconian about their DRM and lockdown than most Windows and Apple products.
Trying to get kids to Crouton on a Linux distro isn't necessarily practical, but the hardware is so cheap they can often get their own to tinker with at home. Apple and Microsoft products work to get you dependent and then strangle money out of you for as long as possible.
But from a software development perspective it's never been easier to write/run code in a web browser and doing something to your local computer isn't as important as making your computer do something.
iPads are definitely consumption oriented devices, and while I don't love Chromebooks, I don't think it's as dire as it seems.
I agree. The computers that I learned on by taking them apart, reassembling and programming them were not school property. Tinkering with those computers, reinstalling the OS when I overreached and trashed the system, and troubleshooting unresponsive hardware taught me more than any textbook ever could. Schools probably can't afford to let students learn like that because they'd need people to restore everything for the fraction of students who wouldn't be able to recover.
> fraction of students who wouldn't be able to recover.
You got the proportions backwards. It would be a few guys doing something weird that confuses the technically illiterate teacher and disrupts the whole class.
I'm all for hackable computers in schools but it has to be something that can be quickly restored to a known state and used as a dead tree replacement with zero fuss. This is why Chromebooks are owning this market.
Something like that, in 1996, which the IT teacher mostly tolerated. All we did was change the colour scheme and get to the programming tool the older students used. (I was 10.)
I have 2 iPads that I inherited. They are used 99% for watching videos. Expensive portable streaming TVs. My daughter practices typing and coding on her Chromebook. Paid $180 >2 years ago and it works perfectly.
It also defeats the very purpose of a Chromebook, which is practically bulletproof, worry-free security.
If you really need a full-fledged Unix system (as I do), IMO it's best to run that on dedicated hardware and SSH in from a secure Chromebook. But I'm not sure what a student like the parent's daughter would gain from putting their Chromebook into developer mode, aside from a newfound susceptibility to malware.
Apple had an amazing product for schools and was dominating one-to-one laptop programs with their highly-repairable white plastic macbooks. And then they discontinued them to push iPads and the far-pricier macbook pros. Apple willingly jettisoned the school market to focus on consumers
Well, that was what we saw from outside. I'm partial to the notion that they actually believed they were going to have a broader appeal with iPads.
However, as a parent and as a long-time Apple user, I think they are completely incompetent at multi-user scenarios in general - Classroom 2.0 is "cute" but impractical in the few times I tried to help teachers to use it, iPad multi-user is nowhere to be seen in practice, and the price points are completely outrageous (my kids' school uses iPads).
To add insult to injury, parental control is also MIA (tangent, I know, but relevant in the overall picture).
Chromebooks walk all over that - they're cheaper, have pretty decent unified management (not really business-grade, but straightforward and effective enough for K12, for instance), and they have real keyboards.
Things start flaking out a bit upmarket (when you're in college, a Chromebook and Google services might not be the best computer/environment to use depending on your major, for a lot of reasons), but in general, and from what I picked up during a deep dive into the education segment a couple of months ago, I'm not surprised they're popular.
What I _am_ surprised (and then again, not much, really) is that Google and their hardware partners don't seem to tackle European markets in earnest. I had to buy a Chromebook in the US for my own use, and if I were to replace it today I would probably have to have something shipped from the US again - they are nowhere to be found in retail in my neck of the woods, and European online retailers only seem to stock a few outdated models.
So I guess the scenario the article describes is going to remain US-only for a long while.
they are nowhere to be found in retail in my neck of the woods
For a brief timeframe, our local Saturn in Germany had quite some models. But now they seem to have all but disappeared. They used to sell them on the German Google Store as well, but now they are not offer there either.
I have only been in Germany a couple of years, but there seems to be a quite strong anti-cloud/Google sentiment. (For good reasons.)
Well, I'm in Portugal. I've actually just bought some accessories off Amazon DE and they do stock a few Acer models, but they're not the newest fare (and I couldn't use one with a German keyboard).
Localisation and market size are factors, obviously...
I can buy Chromebooks for 20+ EUR from several brands and several stores here in Sweden. From what I gather it's newer models. (http://prisjakt.nu being a good site to get a good idea about the current state)
Yeah, given that you don't mean the Pixel. I can't back up my claims since I'm sitting on mobile on vacation, however a quick search I found http://www.omgchrome.com/samsung-axes-chromebook-sales-germa... so the market in Germany is different. I scouraged the laptop market two months ago and it seemed that many shops have really outdated variants or lack the whole scope of laptop types. I could imagine it being tougher now since we have a lot of different formats. I would love some input from store employee on that.
Just follow the link I gave and go to the Chromebook category. Or type in the product name in the search bar. Dustinhome.se is my go to shop mostly because of fair pricing and nice support.
It's also possible the Chromebook paradigm conflicts with European law, given that it basically forces you to use cloud services from a single provider with mandatory privacy waiving.
> Apple willingly jettisoned the school market to focus on consumers
Which is foolish; they have the resources to devote to both, but they don't know how to do more than 1 thing at a time. The lack of bulk iPad management tools until recently (and I don't even know how good they are now) makes them almost unusable in a lot of school situations.
I've been in the trenches with iPad management systems, from both Apple and a 3rd party, and they suck. Big time. The Apple systems (iPad Configurator and Profile Manager) both are hard to use and not suitable for large rollouts. Configurator requires you to physically plug in each iPad in order to manage it, which is untenable for 300 iPads. Profile Manager is a Rails 2.x piece of software that has only seen small updates and works sporadically. When the Apple products didn't work in our situation we choose a 3rd party vendor. The results were much the same; sometimes it would work and push apps out, sometimes it would completely ignore your requests or only push out apps to some of the iPads. We even thought the Apple Classroom would save the day, only to be told that it's still in beta (after a year!) and we could only get access in August of last year. It's still not GA as far as I know.
tl;dr We are switching to Chromebooks next year and will be able to outfit 3 entire grade levels for almost the same price as purchasing iPads for 1 grade level. Apple has lost it's way and I'm not sure it can come back. It used to chase ideals, now it chases money.
Apple would very likely _love_ to have a second or third profit generator. If you examine the profits taken on iPads, MacBooks, and everything else Apple does (see http://www.asymco.com) relative to the iPhone, it is a one trick pony.
Hard to peel apart your "focus" when 85% of your business relies on it.
Absolutely, and I have loved Apple's focus. But I think that as their product line has expanded, they've devoted the same amount of focus to more things, rather than increasing the "overall focus", if that even means anything. So they're doing more things, more poorly, instead of when they had a smaller list of things they were doing.
And I don't think they can really get by these days doing fewer things; I think they're right that an integrated ecosystem is the right answer, but part of that is, ecosystems are large. So they do need to do the more things, but they just don't seem to be doing the more things that well.
> What happens if they have a big recall like Samsung had?
They have enough cash reserves to keep going for a long time, as well as other product lines that were successful enough to get them to where they are.
This is an unpopular opinion here, but I'll voice it anyway. There are serious privacy implications of using Chromebooks, particularly in schools where young students may not understand the degree and extent of online tracking going on in ChromeOS.
Since you cannot use a Chromebook fully without signing in, everything you do in the operating system is tracked and recorded by Google and tied to your identity. Why is this even considered remotely acceptable?
The amount of data that Google captures about students must simply be staggering.
It's simply not enough to say that the data is "anonymised" (a meaningless term when you have so much data about a user's online habits), or only viewed in aggregated form. This still means the data can be interrogated and mined for information in ways we can't begin to imagine.
It remains baffling why the tech industry is so silent on this important subject.
I used to work in edtech and had to undergo COPPA audits every year. I asked some Google classroom engineers about those audits last year at ISTE and none knew about it. Found that really strange. Dunno if they are certified now.
Why would Google be a reliable source on whether Google does(n't) violate privacy laws and parents' privacy concerns? It has been shown in the past that they violated the 'Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act':
They were also tracking students once they used Google services that were not covered by Google Apps for Education (which is kind of hard to avoid, since you have to sign in on a Chromebook):
Someone needs an Apple ID. It doesn't necessarily have to be the student. In fact, most educational deployments probably have the device locked down to keep students from downloading apps.
Even then -- creating an Apple ID is quite a different matter from (potential) ongoing tracking of a user's online activity.
You could say the same for Chromebooks. It does not need to be the ID from student, the school can create a throwaway account and give the password for the student.
If the problem is privacy, the only acceptable option would be a Linux distro properly optimized for school kids. The problem is, it needs to have a nice dashboard for administration since Chromebooks are popular in schools thanks to the ease of administration (most schools can't afford to maintain seasoned SysOps). AFAIK, nobody is working in this kind of product right now, so Linux distros are not the answer either.
I seem to recall Google severely limits the tracking in their education products? I don't have time to research it right now but maybe someone else knows?
I had two chromebooks and I loved them. I could get done everything I need on daily basis except for printing. Printing is a bitch on chromebooks. I tried all Google cloud print, wifi print and all other things but printing was inconvenient so when my business picked up and I had to print shipping labels and packing slips I went ahead and purchased a Surface Book. Now the business grew and we have a separate warehouse with a windows pc there for printing purposes im stuck with this 1400 dollar Surface book, its great hardware but I hate Microsoft Software, honestly, I just dont think Microsoft is good with software. Other than their office suite everything else MS makes is subprime at best. I had to use the media player than comes preinstalled on windows 10 yesterday and once again I told mysel, MS software sucks. I cant wait for Google to work out the bugs in Android apps running on Chromebooks. Hoping to switch back to chromebook soon.
Chromebooks plus google classroom are all I see in my kids elementary school. Reminds me of the early days of Apple. Kind of funny that you can get a $200 chromebook and it has a touch screen. My $2,500 macbook pro only has a touchbar.
Having a touch screen now also enables the Chromebooks to run Android apps. My inexpensive $250 Chromebook from last year became 3x more useful when they added that functionality - there are just so many Android apps and a lot of them are less cloud-reliant.
Why would you want a touch screen on your Macbook? Touching the display will leave grease stains on the glossy display, you will move the angle of the display, and you have to raise and extend your whole arm instead of just moving your hand. It doesn't make sense to have a touch screen on a Macbook because the form factor is totally different from tablets.
People don't seem to have a problem touching the screen on their phone why is touching a laptop screen any different? I suggest you try out a touchscreen laptop for an extended period if you haven't already.
Steve also told us no one wanted 5-inch(!) "Hummer" phones. To test our faith, he also said 7-inch tablets were too small and would require users to file down their fingers to use them.
> It doesn't make sense to have a touch screen on a Macbook because the form factor is totally different from tablets.
I suspect this is like the iPhone screen size issue. Apple had some very good reasons for keeping the screen size small, but ultimately consumers found large phones to be more valuable, and in the end, Apple's commitment to small screen size held them back. You listed a bunch of really good arguments against touch screen laptops—and I agree with them—but tons of people who use touch screen laptops nevertheless find the value in it outweighs those negatives. Eventually, Apple will have to concede to the marketplace's wishes.
I dunno. I guess my kids find it natural to touch things they see on the screen and they expect the screen to work this way. Different generation I guess. I personally like it because the trackpads on cheap chromebooks aren't as sensitive as the screen so some things like scrolling are easier by screen touching.
What I've heard from a school library: they have iPads and Chromebooks, and the kids all want the Chromebooks because keyboard. Now consider that the iPads cost twice as much.
I observed a similar pattern in my kids, who gave the impression that using laptops make someone look smarter or more capable (less limited) than someone who uses tablets or iPads. In other words, someone "graduates" from using tablets to using laptops.
I had thought that the convenient form factor of lighter, less frills tablets would make them continually more appealing to kids or less technical adults regardless of where the device is used. But that does not seem to be the preferred case in a school setting, especially as a student gets older. I think it reflects a desire to be taken more seriously, and the appearance of the tools being used matters a lot, even if the same type or quality of work could be done using a Chromebook or iPad.
So, some of this is about mode, input. But, a big factor in Chromebook adoption in schools has to do with the ease of enterprise deployment and management. Apple is far behind the curve here, and the amount of work to manage a school/class deployment (esp in the early days) was huge.
I work in a school where we have a bunch of iPads that get passed around from classroom to classroom. They are terrible. I wish they'd purchased Chromebooks instead but iPads are more impressive on a list of school features.
I am yet to see any Chromebook on sale besides a few discounters trying to get rid of them. Some of which already returned by customers, being sold with heavy discounts.
The article mentions poor wifi infrastructure, but I'm surprised (or not? This is TechCrunch?) they didn't mention privacy. At parent-teacher meetings, reps from my local school board have said that they can't use google apps because of privacy concerns, what with student data being stored on servers in the US.
Is google addressing this? I'd love to see chromebooks used here but the privacy issue is real and if kids' personal or school data is being harvested on a US server, it's tough to advocate for them.
UK: Larger Tesco supermarkets usually have a few of the cheaper Acer Chromebooks on display along with lower spec Windows laptops. Comet/PC World usually have a few. Chromebooks not evident that much in education, still mostly Windows.
That is the same in Germany, and other countries I regularly visit, but on the shop I regularly go to, when they show up at some corner in the computer section, they tend to be part of discount actions for several weeks until someone finally buys them.
Outside of schools, I'm not sure it's all that different in the US. You can find Chromebooks in stores but they're pretty few and far between. (My impression is that Google was pushing them in retail for a time but may have ramped down those efforts.)
And, in spite of the fact that I hardly know anyone who uses Windows as their primary machine--and they're almost certainly in the minority at events I attend--Windows marketshare is still dominant.
The really scary part, to me, is the way a Google account is now effectively mandatory for a large section of US children. Sure, it's a "school account", but that doesn't stop them from being data mined or advertised to. I do not think such practises should be normalised at an early age, or sanctioned in an official capacity.
> that doesn't stop them from being data mined or advertised to
you are misinformed. as per Google's G Suite for Education FAQs:
> For all EDU domains, ads are turned off in G Suite for Education services and K–12 G Suite for Education users don't see ads when they use Google Search and are signed in to their G Suite for Education accounts.
and
> G Suite for Education services don't collect or use student data for advertising purposes or to create ad profiles.
and
> Like many email providers, we do scanning in Gmail to keep our customers secure and to improve their product experience. In Gmail for G Suite for Education, this includes virus and spam protection, spell check, relevant search results and features like Priority Inbox and auto-detection of calendar events. Scanning to provide product features is done on all incoming emails and is 100% automated. We do NOT scan G Suite for Education emails for advertising purposes.
A big problem with Google's reliance on ads for revenue is the automatic lack of trust when it comes to privacy issues. Even though the GSuite for Education privacy policies are strict, it's hard for people to trust the company. Perhaps a third party auditor to verify all public claims would increase trust. Or we might have to wait until Google's revenues are more diversified. (Disclosure: I work at Google.)
I'm a big fan of the EFF, but for every good thing they do they seem to follow it up with some baseless paranoia. Nowhere in that article do they actually back up their claim that google "data-mines" student's browsing history.
Chrome sync is enabled by default, which sends browsing history through google servers. Google says they don't use that data for advertising purposes. The EFF's position here seems to be that it is literally impossible for the data to exist on Google's servers without it being used for advertising purposes.
data mined != data mined "for advertising purposes". Google is always very careful to specify the latter when issuing its suspiciously specific denials. The EFF, in turn, specifically calls them out on this:
The headline sounds incredibly ominous and spooky, the reality is Chrome sync isn't disabled domain wide by default so the paranoids are flipping out. Its likely disabling chrome sync is going to lead to a lot of annoying headaches, "how come my bookmarks don't sync anymore"
Well, alright, they're not - currently - advertised to. But they certainly are data mined (hence all the qualifications about "for advertising purposes").
Quite honestly any mandatory "account" (particularly in an educational setting) gives me the willies. A mandatory account with a private company, let alone the largest advertiser and data miner in the world - well, forgive me if that starts to feel like a corporate dystopia.
"I think the iPad is still the best device, especially if you want to do real work ... While the Google apps are very powerful, you’re limited in what you can do in a web browser."
Every platform has limitations. Windows and Mac seem to have the least. But does "real work" just mean whatever device you like best?
My kids' school system starts students on Google Docs in 3rd grade (running on OS X/macOS), and almost all of the other classes that require special applications use browser-based apps. We got my daughter a $300 Acer Chromebook when she reached 8th grade and one of the best things about it is I almost never have to provide technical support.
The exception is setting up printing -- Google Cloud Print, printer companies, and wifi router manufacturers leave a lot to be desired when it comes to setting up wireless printing.
Back in the 80's we had computer labs full of Apple II's, which were used for educational (for the most part) games like Number Munchers, Carmen San Diego, and Oregon Trail. Then maybe some Print Shop, teaching typing, and using the computers to write reports for other classes.
They did the job perfectly well - why aren't today's computers being used for the same things? You don't even need books. Class, take out your device and open Wikipedia to the article on volcanoes...
Also audio and video editing, art, a lot of researching topics to write essays, working together building models in minecraft to learn about volcanos. And I consider the school all that happens in to be not that advanced in their usage.
I got an Asus flip recently and to be honest, it is a delight. Cheap enough, Crouton, fast enough and just a nice thing. Battery life is now the biggest issue on any device, at least for me, and the only device that solves that is the openpandora (and pyra as well hopefully) so they are my main travel devices, but the Flip when I have the space and after that the x220 for normal days. Which brings me to; X220 is old but long battery life (15-17 hours with the 9 cell & ubuntu with i3) and I can bring a spare battery and besides gaming it is fast for most things I do besides neural nets, but that's all cloud anyway for me. What is more worrying is that they (I have got many of them from a company throwing them away) behave far better than my 2015 macbook pro; overall faster, overall better battery, overall less slowdowns (the coloured wheel of horror on mac).
Larry Ellison didn't invent this, terminals and "thin computing" have been around for a long time, it's just that browsers are now the best way to interface rich interfaces.
The origins of VNC are an AT&T project where people would wear RFC tags, walk up to any workstation and have their session. This was long before Ellison was talking about Network Computers. There is also John Gage from Sun's motto, "the network is the computer."
I don't think it's given that he's right or wrong. Apple has chosen a very different path (powerful devices with local apps) and they're also extremely successful.
The real lesson, I think, is that most people don't want to _manage_ devices. They don't want to deal with backups, they don't want to manage disks, filesystems and drivers, and if you can take all of that away they'll be happy to store all their documents in your cloud.
>But for business and education, central management is essential.
For business, it depends.
I think my company is fairly typical in that we offer fully managed systems but don't require that people go that route. (But you're more or less on your own for support if you choose to self-manage.)
We looked at using Chromebooks (or really just browser based OSs) several years ago (7+) but couldn't do it because of one fact; the network infrastructure just wasn't good enough. However, next year we are going with Chromebooks and I'm not worried about the network at all. In the last several years our Internet access speed has increased 10 fold and we have a nice WiFi mesh that reaches every part of the campus. In the coming months|years we are going to be moving to Google Fiber and that will remove another road-block. Google is hitting all the right buttons and is where Apple once stood.
I'm also interested but a bit worried of the hardware support of different operating systems.
Do you have any model to suggest that won't complain if I wipe its OS to install Debian? Last time I checked compatibility varied from model to model: no wireless here, slow graphics there or no audio etc.
I already have a netbook that gives me huge battery life and a i5 laptop which is fast enough for everything, but whose battery life stinks badly. A chromebook would be the right in between, but what about debianizing it?
One thing that surprises/concerns me about chromebooks is the lack of ethernet ports. Surely something so internet reliant can't be expected to use wifi only.
USB-to-Ethernet adapters work — at least, ones with Linux kernel support. All you risk is ending up with the same twisty-little-maze-of-dongles-all-different as with Apple laptops. Disclaimer: I used to work on ChromeOS. Semi-claimer: we had Linksys ethernet adapters IIRC, but I'm sure many others work.
As the article itself points out more than once, the situation described in the title is strictly related to the US.
I have studied at several educational institutions in Europe, Indonesia and Australia, and I never had anything else than a Windows device (either laptop or desktop PC) (except in cases where the arrangement was BYOD).
I suspect Apple will release a low cost (iPad priced) ARM based MacBook soon. iPad sales just aren't good enough for it to continue being Apple's only mass market 'future of computing' device. There is clearly a big market for good low cost computers.
There's never any good evidence on education techniques, because it would take 40 years to see if they'd worked, assuming they were randomized and followed up
>The difference is that you passively wipe the phone screen inside your pockets or its sleeve
This is some of the worst grasping at straws I've ever seen on HN. Just admit that you are wrong here, you're being completely ridiculous. Cleaning a laptop screen isn't a big deal, and in fact you should be regularly cleaning any Macbook Pro retina display if you care about it's longevity. Oils from the keyboard are regularly transferred to the screen every time you close your macbook, and MBP retina screens are susceptible to staining when the anti-reflective coating wears off.
> Oils from the keyboard are regularly transferred to the screen every time you close your macbook
This is false. If the keyboard continuously touches the screen, it will get damaged eventually. If this happens to your MBP all the time, you should think about handling your MBP differently and protect the lid from outside pressure.
> and MBP retina screens are susceptible to staining when the anti-reflective coating wears off.
So you should touch and clean it even more? Who is the ridiculous one here?
Did you even use a touch screen laptop that does not fold in a 180° angle? I did and it sucks. It really, really sucks. Your arm gets tired after 30 minutes, the display will look like grease city in typical fluorescent office light, and due to the interface changes to make buttons clickable with your fingers, you lose like 50% of your screen space.
Then a local teacher intervened and said, no, no, no, get Chromebooks. We did. We got six for the same money. They're compatible with the local school IT systems. They reset themselves when somebody logs off, so we don't have to worry about what the kids install on them.
THEY HAVE KEYBOARDS! Kids can use them to for written-word assignments without futzing around with the onscreen keyboards.
They aren't quite as game-focused as the iPads. That means we get less squabbling over who gets to use them and for what. (I've taken to leaving my iPad at home because it's an attractive nuisance.)
They're cheap enough that it's not the end of the world if one gets damaged.
The chromebooks are a big win for us and the kids we serve.