New complaint about the iPad
Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 07:53AM Five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. A giant screen with one button, the iPad represented possibly the purest distillation of Jobs’ tech dreams. Yet at the time it was met with derision. “I got about 800 messages in the last 24 hours,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “Most of them are complaining…. It knocks you back a bit.” iPad haters' initial complaints Cult of Mac, Jan 27, 2015
In August last year Gartner forecast that Chromebook sales would reach 5.2 million units in 2014, a 79 percent increase from 2013, and that by 2017 sales would grow to 14.4 million units. (Source: ZDnet)
Wow, five years already. My iPad is a constant companion. Was there really a time when I didn't own one?
Great-grandson Miles, age 4, teaching Great-grandfather Barney, age 80, how to use the iPad Barney had just recently bought and couldn't quite figure out. - Memorial Day weekend 2010.
According to Cult of Mac, the biggest complaints about the first iPads were:
- iPad is for old people
- iPad is for consuming, not producing
- iPad lacked multitasking
- No Flash (mediaplayer) on iPad
- No camera on iPad
- The iPad's name sounds like a feminine hygiene product
Most of the problems have proven not to be problems at all - only changes in how we use a computing device. (And a Rorschach test on how we define literacy.) Teachers and kids, especially at the elementary level, love these devices. School 1:1 programs use them. God knows there are enough apps out there that are at least labeled educational.
Yet despite the popularity of the iPad in schools, Chromebooks seem to be making huge inroads. It may well be that because there is one complaint not mentioned above that still persists about the iPad: it is a SOB to manage in an institutional environment that likes control- at least in comparison to the Chromebook. Yes, there are Configurator, Casper, and AirWatch and other MDM tools available. But there is nothing that matches the ease of having user settings created and stored in the cloud and then activated on login as with the Chromebook.
My prediction is that the Chromebook (or tablets running a manageable ChromeOS) will win the battle for educators' hearts and minds despite the iPad being the better machine for helping make transliterate, creative kids.
We in education just don't much care for things we can't control easily.
Sigh.
Reader Comments (7)
Right between the eyes - "control".
My first reaction to the iPad was "no keyboard, no creation". But I soon realized that if a student rarely used a "real" keyboard before an iPad, they would not know any difference. I now see it as an important part of a good plan, but not the only part.
I live in a place where the students rarely want for much, and so most of them have at least a Mac book and a smart phone.The middle school here is debating BYOD or school-provided right now for next year. I haven't been directly asked, but I really don't know what I would say...
you're partially correct about the reason for the upswing in Chromebooks versus iPads. Here are the major reasons.
First and foremost is iPad management. It's ridiculous in 2015 that Apple has not address this issue. Their argument before was that it was a new platform and that the tools with involve. Unfortunately that hasn't happened.
Cost is another big factor.
The keyboard is another issue. Of course, there's always an argument about content consumption versus creation. It's true that you can use the iPad for content creation. However, I would like to see someone try to type in APA format did paper using a virtual keyboard. Additionally, almost all testing software for standardized test requires a physical keyboard. Virtual keyboards take up half the screen and reduce the readability of the test questions. Therefore, every state that I'm aware of requires a physical keyboard. Amassing 100 kids in the same room with Bluetooth keyboards can be problematic. There are no elegant and cost-effective wired keyboard solutions. They're all clunky and expensive. And no one has come up with a reasonable case that has a built-in wired keyboard.
Another big issue is support. I know that Apple tends to have the reputation that things just work. However, that's simply not the case with mast appointments of iPads. Take for example the size of the iOS 8 update. We have approximately 1000 iPads deployed. Approximately one third of them could not update over the air. And in an enterprise environment we do not tether these to me specific computer for updates. It was a support nightmare.
Another major issue is how applications are purchased and distributed and an enterprise environment. Apples ecosystems built around individuals using credit cards. And while they have implemented volume license programs, it's not easy to get those applications on two devices. In fact, when we want to purchase an application for everyone and push it out to all of the devices, the end-user has to approve that installation at the time we push it out. If they deny the installation because they're in the middle of something at the time, The installation stops. Furthermore, licenses are tied to specific email addresses. And apples model Thomas the person logged in with the iTunes account is now the owner of the application. Their management system changes to allow us to retrieve those licenses is horribly ineffective.
Google federates with any common directory system, like Active Directory. This means that when a user forgets their password for locks them sold out, we can unlock their account for them. With the apple ecosystem, they have to go through Apple's password recovery system. If they have forgotten the answer to one of their security questions, the account is no longer any good. We end up having to create a new email address for them so that they can create a new iTunes account and the licenses that were assigned to the old accounts are lost.
In Google's ecosystem, we can lock the device is down so that if they are lost or stolen they have no value to the person that ends up finding or buying the stolen device. In apples ecosystem, we can only do that with devices bought directly from Apple through educational channels. While that is the most common way we purchased the devices, it's not the only way. For example, if we receive iPads through grants, they cannot be put into the enrollment program that protects our devices from being usable by someone else.
On an iPad, if you have to replace the device, you can take over an hour for the content, apps, and settings to all be delivered to the device – even though we have plenty of Internet bandwidth and apples caching service running locally. With a chrome book, the device is ready in two minutes. The remainder of content that needs to be downloaded will happen in the background with no noticeable performance degradation. We call this our same - period SLA for students.
If you use Apple's ecosystem for storing your documents, i.e. iCloud, you do not have the ability to search and discover information in your users documents and email. In most states all employee creating content may fall under public records law. Even if it doesn't, if you are served a subpoena you must put legal hold on documents and other correspondence. You simply cannot do that in the apple ecosystem. You can however and Google's ecosystem because they provide Google Vault to all educational customers at no cost.
I could go on and on.
Dwayne
Hi Kenn,
What we found was that it was difficult for some reason to get kids to bring their personal devices to school on a regular basis in a BYOD program. YMMV.
Doug
Thanks, Dwayne, for this clear and compelling explanation of the difficulties in managing iPads. I've felt for many years that Apple has lost interest in making education its primary market and this is evidence of it. iPads are great products - perhaps just not great products for managed environments.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond,
Doug
Given the history of computing, do you not think that schools who are attempting to control users via chrome books are a bit like Canute. There are tidal flows in computing where the next big innovation swamps education despite educational establishments trying to control the flow. Each flow erodes the status quo a little bit further whist schools respond with sea walls that already have breaches in them. Management after deployment is the problem, along with the monastic tradition in education that places the teacher as the source of knowledge.
Hi Steve,
I would like to think students having access to information that is personally chosen at any time will be that "wave" that changes education. But I would say that public education is a stone shore, not a sand beach, and the tech waves have their work cut out for them!
Doug
Doug and Dwayne: You have synthsized my concerns with using ipads in schools very succinctly. Enough said at Doug's comment: "the iPad: it is a SOB to manage in an institutional environment."
Hi Jo-Anne,
My question is if we need so much control? I am very divided about this!
Doug