US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

frollogaston•5 minutes ago

It does seem like Chromebook has been languishing as a product like Meet did. They have a browser-first Linux OS that can run on ARM and is easy to manage, so why did these schools need to switch to Mac? Meanwhile they aren't successfully taking Windows users while Microsoft keeps making that experience worse.

The_suffocated•about 4 hours ago

Why? Aren’t people saying that Chromebooks are easier to deploy and manage in schools?

SllX•about 3 hours ago

The article doesn’t say why, but at launch the MacBook Neo was the most inexpensive Mac Apple ever made, and it’s a full proper Mac. Despite being inexpensive, it also isn’t junk.

Chromebooks can be had for cheaper, but if a school district was on the fence before about moving to Macs, then Apple made the decision much easier for them.

throwaway89864•about 3 hours ago

It is a good idea to give children well designed and nice things, if this can be afforded. An item that is well designed and nice looking tends to receive better care. To a degree this is what you'd want to teach - to really care.

There isn't a guarantee, if you'd give a child a nice looking thing, that a child would care. But given a piece of junk, they'd surely would not, that is guaranteed.

jolmg•about 2 hours ago

> Apple's latest earnings call revealed a wave of K-12 districts abandoning Chromebooks and Windows machines in favor of the company's new MacBook Neo

It's not just Chromebooks but Windows machines. Schools really should be providing OS-agnostic computer education, and for that they really should support any machine, especially Windows machines which more easily support changing their OS.

This just changes from having them teach "click this Windows-specific icon to do this" to "click this Mac-specific icon to do this".

Schools are still being used as a tool of OS companies to lock-in users for life.

tapoxi•about 2 hours ago

You can assign a mobile device policy on the Mac, and the OS is image based (like a Chromebook). They are much more flexible than Chromebooks, you're not running Adobe Premier or Logic on ChromeOS.

The price is also close enough that its probably worth the migration.

I think Google completely failed to capitalize on its lead, and is probably making things worse by replacing the platform with Android and rebranding things.

mchesters•about 3 hours ago

At a similar time as the MacBook Neo launch, Apple unified their Device Management programmes as one 'Apple Business'. So perhaps things have improved on that front.

kotaKat•about 3 hours ago

Google can't decide what the hell they wanted a Chromebook to do and IT departments everywhere are fed up with it.

Plus I don't think schools are ready to have to deal with managing glorified Android laptops now that Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform.

pwdisswordfishs•about 2 hours ago

> Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform

When?

laughing_man•about 2 hours ago

They announced a Chromebook replacement called the Googlebook in May. It's supposed to be "AI native", whatever that means.

Bullhorn9268•about 4 hours ago

Just seem it was a question of time.

US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands

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