Why do Schools use MACS?

[NInety]

That's because the school's IT guys like spending government money inefficiently. I would do the same. And if you go to private school it's because tuition is outrageously overpriced and borderline fraudulent so they can do crazy stuff.

In my state, public schools get to name the amount of money they get for the media dept.

[jamese669]

Easy user interface more reliable and easier to control

[spwath]

my school doesn't... we have lenovo all in ones (nice ones in the tech room)

[harrynowl]

Because little sh*ts can't delete System32.

 

Our school used Dell Optiplex Pentium Ds

[Shadow Gamer]

Macbook Pro($1300) == Gaming PC, with $1000 on parts and $300 on peripherals. 

[Extingquish]

I have to admit, using pentiums with xp does drive me insane, same with the teachers, so any upgrade for them that's highly publicised is what they're going to choose over sticking with the provided PCs

[theelitegamer]

My hackintosh is much cheaper than the cheapest mac

but you got to pay someone to do it if you don't know how to do it your self... *or hire a guy for 25 an hour to be ready when something goes wrong*

[Guest]

but you got to pay someone to do it if you don't know how to do it your self... *or hire a guy for 25 an hour to be ready when something goes wrong*

<-- Hackintosh completely stable on a amd system no errors so far 

[Musikman]

[Citation needed]

Please don't type it MAC in all caps. Mac and MAC are two different things. Sorry for nitpicking but it's one of my pet peeves.

For the viruses argument, just lock the computers down. Don't give regular users admin access and you've already eliminated 90% of the viruses. There are a ton of other things you can do as well.

School/business support and support for regular consumers are not the same thing. Schools has their own IT department (or hires one) to service their things, they don't call the HP help center if something goes wrong.

Even if your statement was true, do you have any reliable source to back it up with? Remember, support for companies/schools and support for general customers are two different things, so no "well I bought a Mac and I got good support" anecdotes.

OS X is horrible as far as usability goes. The one that designed it had obviously never heard of Fitt's law. Just because a baby can use the iPhone doesn't mean a baby can use OS X by the way. They don't even have the same input so comparing them is ridiculous.

I could go more into details about all the annoying things OS X has in their GUI but let's just leave it at "it's not that great, if you like it it's probably because you are used to it and may suffer from Baby Duck Syndrome, not because it's objectively good".

Wait... Setting up a school-wide login and permission system is easier than Windows? Let me ask which software you used to do that. Personally I think Active Directory is really good but if OS X has something better then please tell me.

I am not a fan of Microsoft in general but one thing they did a really good job with was Active Directory. It's so powerful.

I've never heard of a special discount for Adobe products if your school uses OS X. Got a source?

There are a lot of other computers that are durable as well. Pretty much any computer will be durable if "treated properly".

The last part about "more locked down" tells me that you have very little experience as a sysadmin. Like I said before, Active Directory is very very powerful. You can lock a computer down however much you want, or you can lock a specific user down however much you want. You can make folder and file inherent the NTFS permissions from their parent in Windows as well. Hell, it's the default setting as you can see in this picture. So yeah, your example is not true at all.

NTFS permissions.png

Source is myself. I did IT work for my school district in high school. It was cheaper to purchase and maintain a cart of MacBooks over the equivalent PC's.

[ShadowCaptain]

OS X is horrible as far as usability goes. The one that designed it had obviously never heard of Fitt's law. Just because a baby can use the iPhone doesn't mean a baby can use OS X by the way. They don't even have the same input so comparing them is ridiculous.

I could go more into details about all the annoying things OS X has in their GUI but let's just leave it at "it's not that great, if you like it it's probably because you are used to it and may suffer from Baby Duck Syndrome, not because it's objectively good".

 

 

Subjective. I love the design and interface of OSX I love launchpad, I love expose, I really love mission control. I like the top tool bar.  I prefer it to Windows by  a long shot. If I was not a gamer I would never touch windows again. 

[LAwLz]

Source is myself. I did IT work for my school district in high school. It was cheaper to purchase and maintain a cart of MacBooks over the equivalent PC's.

So no evidence? Got it.

Anecdotal evidence (especially really really vague ones like yours) is basically the same as no evidence at all. If OP is going to do it for a school project he needs real evidence.

 

Subjective. I love the design and interface of OSX I love launchpad, I love expose, I really love mission control. I like the top tool bar.  I prefer it to Windows by  a long shot. If I was not a gamer I would never touch windows again. 

Certain things of UI design are not subjective though. For example not having important buttons in the corner (yes I am looking at you, close button in OS X) is objectively worse because it has an infinitely smaller area you have to hit.

Having 1 unified toolbar is also less productive since you can only have access to the controls of 1 program at once. A lot of things are subjective when it comes to GUI, but there are rules and laws you should follow when designing it, and OS X breaks quite a of them.

If you're going to argue for or against something, leave subjective stuff out of it.

[ShadowCaptain]

So no evidence? Got it.

 

Certain things of UI design are not subjective though. For example not having important buttons in the corner (yes I am looking at you, close button in OS X) is objectively worse because it has an infinitely smaller area you have to hit.

Having 1 unified toolbar is also less productive since you can only have access to the controls of 1 program at once. A lot of things are subjective when it comes to GUI, but there are rules and laws you should follow when designing it, and OS X breaks quite a of them.

If you're going to argue for or against something, leave subjective stuff out of it.

 

I dont mind the small close minimise buttons I like the colour coding and find it simple to use. I dont mind the unified top tool bar. A lot of programs these days are trying to hide it, like changing settings in chrome  for example, lots of programs putting settings in strange places or omitting them altogether. I like being able to alt-tab in OSX and pressing Q to quite an application, its very fast. I also like the dock and how programs minimise to one side. I find it much easier to use than the task bar in windows 8 (although its not bad).

 

Apple were the first to make a GUI for the personal computer. Who writes the rules more than the first people to do it?. Again, you said leave subjective out but you are giving your opinion on GUI elements. I dont think what you said is anything objectivity wrong with OSX just things you do not like

[GzeroD]

That's because the school's IT guys like spending government money inefficiently. I would do the same. And if you go to private school it's because tuition is outrageously overpriced and borderline fraudulent so they can do crazy stuff.

Or they where given a budget to spend on x number of computers and decided to get the best computers they could in that budget because the stability of school funding is not great (at least in public schools) and they may end up needing to be deployed for longer (possibly much longer than originally intended)

<Sarcasm!> But sure, we can just assume that everyone is wasting tax money with no insight in to the situations that caused the decisions to be made. </Sarcasm!>

[Sauron]

The simple answer is that while it costs more up front, in the long term, it's cheaper and more efficient to deploy Macs as they tend to have a longer life cycle.

I have a 10 year old pentium 4 pc. still works more than fine. we could make the same test on a mac, but OH RIGHT, 10-year-old macs are not supported anymore by apple due to the different architecture and, for the same reason, you can't even install windows (to get a more modern os). don't believe the life cycle nonsense, it's just plain not true. also you can upgrade a pc, whereas you can't upgrade a mac (save maybe the ram on some models). trust me, macs are ALWAYS more expensive than their pc counterpart unless you get them from alienware which suffers the same issue. if you want a pc to last, you just need to take good care of it.

[Anthony10]

Macs are actually very high performance

I said price:performance, not performance...

[Guest]

But sure, we can just assume that everyone is wasting tax money with no insight in to the situations that caused the decisions to be made. 

Not sure if you're being sarcastic... but yeah we can assume that a lot of the time.

[Sauron]

Or they where given a budget to spend on x number of computers and decided to get the best computers they could in that budget because the stability of school funding is not great (at least in public schools) and they may end up needing to be deployed for longer (possibly much longer than originally intended)

But sure, we can just assume that everyone is wasting tax money with no insight in to the situations that caused the decisions to be made. 

but macs are almost never the best you can get for the price. a basic mac mini is about 600 bucks and includes a dual core cpu, 4gb of ram and no dedicated gpu. for that price I can get an intel quad core or an amd hexa core paired with a gtx 750ti and 8gb of ram. even in an itx for factor.

[ZacDaMan72]

My school uses bad windows machines for the library, semi good ones (haswell i5) in the computer rooms and in the video editing suite there are 3 editing (haswell i7, 770) and 2 iMac 21.5s. I am the only person allowed to use any...

[GzeroD]

but macs are almost never the best you can get for the price. a basic mac mini is about 600 bucks and includes a dual core cpu, 4gb of ram and no dedicated gpu. for that price I can get an intel quad core or an amd hexa core paired with a gtx 750ti and 8gb of ram. even in an itx for factor.

If you looked at the post this was a response too he was commenting on a school that got PCs with I7's  my comment had nothing to do with macs or pc just school spending in general. 

[ShadowCaptain]

I said price:performance, not performance...

 

Yeah I know

 

this was my previous Post

 

iMac $1299 with education discount = $1100 (roughly)

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?afid=p219%7CGOUK&cid=AOS-UK-KWG-GO_UK_CPU

 

PC with 21.5" ips monitor, similar spec, including OS $1026,

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3ORt8

 

still does not include speakers, wireless keyboard and mouse (all included)

Also comes with photo ediitng software, video editing software, music software, etc etc etc

(also nowhere near the build quality, no warranty (obviously each item does), no support from manufacturer  etc etc

[Heisenbleurgh]

Because the great majority of people grow up on Windows almost exclusively. It's good to let kids play around with different OSs, they can then decide what they like not because it looks pretty.

[GzeroD]

<Sarcasm!> But sure, we can just assume that everyone is wasting tax money with no insight in to the situations that caused the decisions to be made. </Sarcasm!>

 

 

Not sure if you're being sarcastic... but yeah we can assume that a lot of the time.

I have edited my post for clarity. It was heavy sarcasm.

[GzeroD]

Yeah I know

 

this was my previous Post

 

iMac $1299 with education discount = $1100 (roughly)

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?afid=p219%7CGOUK&cid=AOS-UK-KWG-GO_UK_CPU

 

PC with 21.5" ips monitor, similar spec, including OS $1026,

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3ORt8

 

still does not include speakers, wireless keyboard and mouse (all included)

Also comes with photo ediitng software, video editing software, music software, etc etc etc

(also nowhere near the build quality, no warranty (obviously each item does), no support from manufacturer  etc etc

you do understand that schools can buy bulk computers from companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo Etc and get them for quite a bit cheaper than we would be able to build them.

 

Edit: So much PSU for that build ... a 350w would be more than enough.

[Anthony10]

Yeah I know

 

this was my previous Post

 

iMac $1299 with education discount = $1100 (roughly)

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?afid=p219|GOUK&cid=AOS-UK-KWG-GO_UK_CPU

 

PC with 21.5" ips monitor, similar spec, including OS $1026,

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3ORt8

 

still does not include speakers, wireless keyboard and mouse (all included)

Also comes with photo ediitng software, video editing software, music software, etc etc etc

(also nowhere near the build quality, no warranty (obviously each item does), no support from manufacturer  etc etc

LOLOLOLOL give me one minute to build a $1100 build, yours sucks ass so much omg

[mr.skyrim_pc]

iMac $1299 with education discount = $1100 (roughly)

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?afid=p219%7CGOUK&cid=AOS-UK-KWG-GO_UK_CPU

 

PC with 21.5" ips monitor, similar spec, including OS $1026, still does not include speakers, wireless keyboard and mouse (all included)

Also comes with photo ediitng software, video editing software, music software, etc etc etc

(also nowhere near the build quality, no warranty (obviously each item does), no support from manufacturer  etc etc

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3ORt8

I would choose the acer h236 hl bid as the monitor, (which is $50 cheaper on amazon) and then upgrade the video card to a 750 ti. You beat the mac, but the mac is still fairly competitive with the education discount.