Apple has unveiled a new 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support at its education event. Prior to today, Apple Pencil support has been limited to Pro models of the iPad. Details below:
It’s Apple Event day here at Lane Tech in Chicago. 9to5Mac is onsite, and we’ll be live blogging the event as soon as it kicks off at 10 am local. The Apple Store is currently down ahead of expected product announcements and there will be no live stream of the keynote so stay tuned for up-to-the-second coverage and much more!
Tomorrow’s education event is strongly rumored to include the announcement of a new iPad aimed at the education market.
There have been two main strands to the speculation about that iPad. First, that it would be offered at an even lower price than the $329 model launched almost exactly a year ago …
Announced via a tweet, Tim Cook will be interviewed by Vox Media’s Recode. The special segment will air on MSNBC on Friday, April 6 at 8PM ET.
Apple is sending out invitations to an education event on March 27. Using the tagline ‘Let’s take a field trip,’ Apple says that the event will focus on ‘creative new ideas for teachers and students’ …
Making The Grade is a new weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
An e-mail account is one of the first things you get when you are hired at a school as a faculty member. It’s your identity. It’s how you contact people. It’s how they contact you. For all the other excellent communication services in 2018, e-mail is still essential.
It’s also an area that Apple continues to ignore for anything outside of personal use.
If you aren’t in the education world, I’m going to tell you something you may not know: G-Suite (Google’s enterprise server for Gmail-type services) is free for schools. It’s been free since at least 2009 (as far back as I’ve been working in education). On top of this, they include unlimited storage.
Why does this matter to Apple? For every iPad that is deployed to a staff member, that person also has an email account. The two most common providers in education today are Google and Microsoft.
Apple products can provide amazing learning opportunities for students, but those living in poverty often don’t get the chance to use such devices. Now education software firm Jamf is looking to make a difference in the education of underprivileged children with a new iPad focused initiative.
Ohio State University teamed up with Apple to build a new app aimed at new college students. As reported by local news outlet 10TV, the app’s goal is to make the transition to college easier for students by connecting to them to services available on campus…
When Singapore schools confiscate a phone for using it during school hours, it seems they don’t mess around. The penalty handed out by the school was to confiscate the iPhone 7 for a full three months.
Apple has launched a featured page on its website this week to commemorate and celebrate JFK’s centennial year. The new webpage features JFK history on a variety of topics and values, along with an app and resources for teachers to help students explore and learn more.
Apple is releasing a big update to its Apple School Manager service this week that allows administrators to quickly and easily setup, deploy and manage iOS devices and Macs being used in the classroom (and with Apple’s own Classroom app).
Apple’s iOS and macOS platforms both lost share to Chrome OS in the US K-12 education market last year, according to new data from Futuresource Consulting (via The New York Times).
Apple is introducing a new education bundle for its professional creative apps that significantly discounts the entire collection. Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, and their companion apps can be purchased together through the bundle for $199…
[UPDATE: Apple’s Back To School program has now launched in China, as well.]
Apple’s 2016 Back to School Beats kicked off in the United States at the beginning of the month and has today expanded internationally across Europe. Students in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands and more can now take advantage of the summer promotion at Apple Stores in their country as well as online.
Like the US, eligible purchases of certain Macs come with free Beats Solo2 wireless headphones worth $299 at retail. For iPad and iPhone, select iOS device purchases come with free Beats Powerbeats2 wireless headphones, worth $199 at retail.
The best-known Unified School District program to provide an iPad to every student may have ended disastrously, but a similar program elsewhere appears to have been rather more successful.
In LA, Apple ended up repaying $4.2M to settle a claim by the LAUSD following a failed program that led to a federal review concluding it had been doomed from the start – and corruption investigations by both the FBI and SEC.
But a $42M program to supply iPads to all 20,000 students in Coachella Valley Unified School District has been declared a success …
Apple’s new Classroom app for iPad is now available in the App Store. The educational app enables shared iPad experiences, task/group assignment, and much more on iOS 9.3 and beyond. Here’s the full description:
Apple has acquired education technology startup LearnSprout for an undisclosed sum, via Bloomberg. LearnSprout’s software lets teachers track student progress and test scores, organize class achievement targets and more school-oriented features. The acquisition follows Apple’s announcement of iOS 9.3, which includes several major new features for iPads in education, including multi-user account switching.
LearnSprout’s features were mainly marketed at PC and Mac users. With an Apple acquisition, it is likely the technology will be ported to iOS as Apple continues to push iPad into education sectors.
Six years ago today Steve Jobs introduced the iPad on stage in what was arguably one of the best product demos from Apple or any other tech company for that matter. The hype was tremendous but the demo was low key.
Jobs plainly explained why the iPad needed to exist and where Apple believed it fit between iPhones and Macs, then offered an almost hypnotizing demonstration of what using an iPad was like. Highlighting the intimacy of the tablet, Jobs demoed the iPad on stage while comfortably seated for a full 12 minutes. If you’ve never watched the demo or haven’t seen it lately, queue it up and see for yourself how much it stands out from nearly every other product introduction.
Six years in, the iPad has matured from a single product to a whole product line with multiple screen sizes, price points, and even accessories specific to the tablet. iPad sales peaked two years ago, though, and that peak’s clearly not temporary like many believe it is with the iPhone. Even with a whole new display size with the iPad Pro, Apple saw year-over-year declines with iPad sales last quarter.
So how exactly have iPad sales been changing over the years, what has Apple done to address the product category, and what opportunities remain for the tablet family?
Phil Schiller said in 2013 that “education is in Apple’s DNA,” and it’s no exaggeration. The company’s commitment to the education sector was there from the very beginning. Steve Jobs told the Smithsonian that he wanted to donate a computer to every school in the U.S. as long ago as 1979.
I thought if there was just one computer in every school, some of the kids would find it. It will change their life. We saw the rate at which this was happening and the rate at which the school bureaucracies were deciding to buy a computer for the school and it was real slow. We realized that a whole generation of kids was going to go through the school before they even got their first computer so we thought the kids can’t wait. We wanted to donate a computer to every school in America.
The company couldn’t afford it in those days, but Steve lobbied Congress to introduce a bill that would have created sufficient tax breaks to make it possible. That attempt failed, but Apple did succeed in brokering a tax deal in California that saw the company donate an Apple IIe to every school in California. Apple led the PC market in education for a time, and even created education-specific Mac models.
More recently, Apple appeared set to bring its educational success into the iPad era in 2013 when it announced a $30M deal (that would eventually have been worth a quarter of a billion dollars) to equip every student in the LA Unified School District with an iPad. If that program had succeeded, it would have created a template for rolling out similar ones across the whole of the USA. Instead, it failed catastrophically, and it now appears that Chromebooks are winning where iPads have failed …
Jared Harrell // BuzzFeed News
Following his RFK award acceptance speech last night, Tim Cook this evening made a surprise appearance at Apple’s new Upper East Side retail store in New York. Apple is set to kick off its Hour of Code program in all of its retail stores tomorrow, but the Upper East Side store held its first session today.
Last week we learned that Tim Cook was set to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights 2015 Ripple of Hope award, and last night the Apple CEO delivered his acceptance speech during the scheduled award ceremony. The RFK Center hasn’t yet posted video of last night’s event, but Bloomberg has shared excerpts of what it reports was a 12 minute speech across of a variety of political and social issues.
We’ve already seen the Disney and Pixar teams go hands-on with Apple’s upcoming iPad Pro and now Apple is showing the device off to people in other fields. Fraser Speirs, the head of Computing and IT at Cedars School of Excellence, says he attended a preview event in London to try out the iPad Pro and spent about an hour with it. Speirs took to Twitter to voice some of his thoughts about the usefulness of iPad Pro in education and in general…
Updated parental guidelines are needed to help make informed decisions about the use of technology by children, says the American Academy of Pediatrics, as it revealed that more than 30% of U.S. children first use a mobile device while still in diapers. The AAP says that “digital life begins at a young age, and so must parental guidance.”
The Academy says that its existing policy statement was actually drafted before the first iPad was launched. A two-day symposium held earlier this year generated twelve key messages, based not just on limiting screen time but also on distinguishing helpful from harmful use of technology …
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Apple is today launching its Back to School promotion for 2015. This year, it will give away a free pair of Beats Solo2 headphones with the purchase of an eligible Mac. Customers must either purchase an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Mac Pro with education pricing to qualify, including build-to-order configurations. The Mac mini does not participate in the deal.
Alternatively, customers can upgrade for an additional $100 to a pair of wireless Beats Solo2 headphones, rather than the usual $299 price. The announcement is not yet being advertised on Apple.com apart from a small mention on its rebates page. It is surprising that there appears to be no Back to School promotion for iPads this year, despite Apple pushing the tablet into education markets.
