The Apple-branded campus

Fortune CNN ^ | September 13, 2010 10:45 AM | Posts by Philip Elmer-DeWitt

[Swordmaker]

College PC purchases are down for the 4th year in a row, but the Mac's share is growing.

Click to enlarge.

Apple (AAPL) products play an oversized role in the small survey of college campuses (seven schools, 212 students) released Monday by Hudson Square Research's Daniel Ernst.

Although spending patterns were mixed -- fewer PCs and MP3 players, more TVs, mobile phones and digital cameras -- "Apple's share of student spending," writes Ernst, "increased materially."

Specifically, he writes:

• Apple's share of computers purchased in the last three months rose to 38% from the 32% recorded in 2009, 29% in 2009, and 14% in 2007. Moreover, among all the computers owned by respondents in our survey, Apple's share rose to 51% from 33% in 2009.
• iPhones accounted for 42% of mobile handsets purchased in the last three months, up from 35% in 2009. Among all phones owned by our respondents, Apple held a 21% share.
• Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle each held a 48% share among those that brought an e- reader / tablet to school, Sony's e-reader held a 4% share.
• While few students recently bought a new MP3 player, 92% brought one to school, of which 95% were iPods. 74% of our respondents cited iTunes as his/her primary music source.

Below: More graphs from Ernst's report.

[Swordmaker]

Apple products are making big inroads on campuses this year... both in computers and in phones—PING!

Please!
No Flame Wars!
Discuss technical issues, software, and hardware.
Don't attack people!
Please! Don't reply to the Trolls. Ignore them!

Apple Surging on Colleges Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[jacquej]

Thanks for keeping us informed, Swordmaker...

[tubebender]

A family member works in a Cal state university bookstore and they had their best month for Apple sales is August as new students checked in...

[Chipper]

Should I make a pre-emptive brain washed comment, or not;-) The Ipod stat shocked me the most in this. That's a hefty percentage when you consider the options available.

Anxiously awaiting any update on the timing of Facetime coming to OSx.

[Boogieman]

Great. Colleges continue to train students to use software they likely will never use on the job.

[Terpfen]

FaceTime on OS X will be very welcome. Alternatively, after Apple releases the standard, Skype would be well advised to put it in all of their clients, including the iPhone version. Imagine making a visual call from Skype on your iPhone to Skype on a PC.

Though the WiFi-only restriction is pretty rough.

[RayChuang88]

I agree. In fact, people should be right now learning to master Windows 7, because at the large corporations, all the desktop and laptop machines are being switched to Windows 7 to run internal corporate apps. MacOS X is primarily used by people in graphic design work and movie production work.

[leapfrog0202]

Apple products are making big inroads on campuses this year... both in computers and in phones—PING!
__________________________________________________

I’ve had 4 nieces / nephews go to small, private colleges in the last 2 years. Without fail every single one of those colleges ‘strongly recommended’ and provided DISCOUNTS on purchases of Apple products.

The students HAD to come with new computer equipment according to the standards given - if you could find a Windows laptop that met the standards it was very pricey. Apple helpfully made a sweetheart deal with these colleges and the prices for the Apple products were less than the Windows laptops.

These are very expensive, very small colleges costing in excess of $60,000 per year. I think that’s ridiculous, but that’s just me. I think almost mandating a computer is ridiculous too, but the schools know what they want and set about getting it.

[Dr. Sivana]

Great. Colleges continue to train students to use software they likely will never use on the job.

Software used on the job is a moving target. The serious students will get the concepts of the devices and pick up new skills as necessary.

I taught mainstream "job oriented applications" in a small college in the late 80's. I taught them the most common apps/OS in use at the time: DOS 6/WordPerfect 5.1/dBase IV/Lotus 1-2-3. While they had XT clones, I also brought in a Mac Plus, arning them that this was where it was all going. I also did a little demonstration of Windows 2.1 (also known as Windows 286, which actually ran on an 8088-10 despite the name).

Despite my best efforts, most of that knowledge would become hopelessly obsolete in just a few years. The folks who were diddling with MacWrite Pro, Excel for Mac or Word for the Mac would be able to apply 80% of it to Windows 3.1 and even moreso to Windows 95.

This cycle repeats itself with the Palm OS, ANYthing from DEC (e.g. VAX), highly promoted flops (OS/2). Anything the students are using right now, will likely be radically different ten years from now. Cloud Computing, Virtualization, programmable IP appliances, merging of media and PCs, all are changing the face very quickly, and no one knows what it will look like at that point. HTML5 may wind up being the next Quickdraw GX for all we know.

[stripes1776]

MacOS X is primarily used by people in graphic design work and movie production work.

I would suggest you go to a conference of computer programmers and see how many are using Macs these days.

[RayChuang88]

However, given that corporate or government agency buyers can get a large number of Dell or HP desktop/laptop machines preloaded with Windows 7 at HUGE discounts, small wonder why Windows still dominate in the corporate world.

[Boogieman]

“Software used on the job is a moving target.”

To an extent, maybe. The domination of PC/Windows architecture in business is not really changing very quickly though.

“The serious students will get the concepts of the devices and pick up new skills as necessary.”

This is a fantasy and counterproductive to the goal of education. Say, for example, a mechanic’s school only taught kids to work of Volvo’s. They might be great cars, and “the serious students” could probably apply what they learned to more common American and Japanese cars if they worked at it, but it’s not the most effective way to train them for the job.

[Boogieman]

“MacOS X is primarily used by people in graphic design work and movie production work.”

Nah, I’d say it’s primarily used to pick up chicks at Starbucks :D

[Mr. Jeeves]

Well, an Apple-branded campus is a big improvement over the Marx-branded campuses we have today. :)

[zeugma]

Should I make a pre-emptive brain washed comment, or not;-) The Ipod stat shocked me the most in this. That's a hefty percentage when you consider the options available.

That kind of jumped out at me too.  I'd be interested in what overall market share stats are by comparison. I'd be one of those 1%ers. I have a couple of Sansa players because I listen to a lot of podcasts on them, and I like the way they work with them.

I'm hoping that the mindshare will start moving more into the business world as well. I'd like to see a lot more OSX systems in corporate environments than is common today.

[Dr. Sivana]

Say, for example, a mechanic’s school only taught kids to work of Volvo’s.

Cars don't change as quickly as software, but a mechanic taught on Volvos in the '70s could understand a Chevy in the 70's more easily than he could a Volvo in the '90s. In either event, if he's any good, it wouldn't take him long to get up to speed. End users could certainly transfer the skills in driving a Volvo to most other cars.

The domination of PC/Windows architecture in business is not really changing very quickly though.

Some things appear to be here to stay. the world has settled on TCP/IP, and IP v6 is a given. I would aintain that someone learning, say, Microsoft Word as recently as 2004 would be more comfortable with alternative Word Processors on Mac or PC (WordPerfect, OpenOffice) than with the redone, mandatory, piece of crap "ribbon interface." The iPad and Netbooks also change how people use their computers. Autodesk is porting to Mac, no doubt because of the iPad.

Macs have been a major presence in classrooms since the Apple II days. Students learning on them had no problems switching over to PCs. There was more difference between competing WP apps in the DOS days of the 1980s (Multimate, WordPerfect, Word 2.0, DisplayWrite) than there is among all of the drop down menu Word Processing apps of today. And of course, the most popular student apps are cross platform (Microsoft Office (sans Outlook and Access), Adobe Creative Suite, Intuit Quicken). The folks who want to really make a living at it, will use more discretion in the tools they use, and ought to be exposed to all of it.

Behind the scenes, programming tools change more than the apps, and there are many, and they are almost all cross-platform. Various iterations of C, Javascript, Java, Python, PHP, XML, SQL, Python can be used with any major platform, as could the old BASICs, FORTRANs, COBOLs, APLs, LISPs and PASCALs (which still have life in various capacities).

[stripes1776]

However, given that corporate or government agency buyers can get a large number of Dell or HP desktop/laptop machines preloaded with Windows 7 at HUGE discounts, small wonder why Windows still dominate in the corporate world.

One of the things I am seeing in the corporate world is people dual booting Windows on a Mac. They run Windows for proprietary applications for work. And then they run OS X at home for their computing pleasure.

[PreciousLiberty]

You both seem to be forgetting that one may easily install Windows on Macs using either a VM or Bootcamp. If one uses a VM all the Windows malware is even firewalled from the rest of the system.

If something goes wrong with a Windows OS image, just restore an old copy - good stuff!

Also don't forget that native ports of many Windows applications including MS Office are available for the Mac.

So, with the Mac you can have access to MacOS, Windows and POSIX software all running seamlessly in one environment. Most POSIX (Linux/Unix) open source software compiles and runs fine on MacOS, due to its BSD Unix OS foundation.

Clearly Macs are the most flexible computers available.

[RayChuang88]

Macs are very flexible, but the cost--even after large-volume discounts--are still quite steep. Meanwhile, if you're a large corporate or government agency buyer, Dell and HP could work out a deal to to sell Dell or HP laptops at very steep discounts including the Windows 7 license! Such buyers could buy machines at a per-machine cost far below what you can get for the same machine at the retail level.