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Mac Lab Report

The iTools Bait and Switch

- 2002.07.25

Apple continues to put blinders on to the reality of the world its customers face, especially education customers.

The recent demise of iTools and free mac.com email will have the effect of driving some of the last holdouts to the Wintel side. Not only was Apple's ridiculously feebleminded HomePage totally eclipsed by the popular Web building site Homestead, for example, but Apple has again mistimed the announcement, displaying a fundamental disregard for its education customers needs and financial status.

We don't get to decide as much as we used to, Mr. Jobs.

Suppose you're a teacher with an iDisk based Web page. The following things will be true for you:

  1. You cannot afford the $100 per year required to keep your external-to-school email working.
  2. All the Web pages you carefully crafted will now have to be rebuilt with new links, and new links will need to be added to the school's page.
  3. School is about to start, so you don't have time for #2.
  4. Your iDisk, which never worked at school anyway, now is not going to be used at home, either.
  5. The thing you told the district about not needing floppy drives because you could just use iDisk is no longer true.
  6. Your students will not use paid services to store work for you to retrieve outside the school network.

Thanks, Apple. Smooooooth.

I can't wait to see the next bait you have to offer - and the switch you pull later.

Jeff Adkins is a science teacher who isn't afraid to state his preferences in computing platforms. In his classroom he has everything from a beige All-in-One to a a G4 XServe, and they all work together nicely. He calls himself the "poster child for technology integration" in the classroom. He was the 2006 Outstanding Educator of the Year for the California Computer Using Educators (CUE) organization. He also maintains a site for astronomy teachers at www.AstronomyTeacher.com.

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