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College official doesn't want students to use Apple Macintosh computers
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
T h e R o a d L e s s T r a v e l e d
Reading, writing and arithmetic -- and a mandatory Windows PC?
Aug. 3, 2005
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard
A few days ago I read that Apple is supplying 30,000 iBooks, the company's consumer-level laptop computer, to the Broward County public school system in Florida's Ft. Lauderdale area. A day later an upset parent showed me a note from a Central New York college official discouraging the use of Macintoshes on campus.
Apple's sales to school districts have reached legendary status. All students in Maine public schools get iBooks, and many other areas provide Apple laptops to students, too.
I have to wonder what those students from Maine or the kids in Broward County will think if they apply to that upstate university -- the one that doesn't want Macs on campus.
Here's what the college official told the parents of a prospective student who wanted to bring her iBook to college:
"The problems a student will encounter using the Apple system are the result of incompatibility.ÊSince none of the faculty in the business school (that I know of) use the Apple system, we really do not know the extent of the difficulties a student will encounter using an Apple."
There's more.
"In her freshman year class sheÕll be expected to use the classroom computer to create presentation visuals.Ê Sometime students need to e-mail papers to professors or other students and not all such work can be interpreted by the Windows system."
Macs can't send e-mail to a Windows PC? That's nonsense, of course. What can this kind of statement possibly mean? That the attachments will have some sort of foreign objects?
As most of you might already know, students who write their papers in Microsoft Word -- which is part of Office 2004 for the Mac -- probably meet any requirement for work that "can be interpreted by the Windows system."
There was a lot more in the letter. I'll spare you the rest. The point is already clear. Windows is so pervasive that many of us, institutions and individuals alike, assign some sort of vital force to it. It doesn't matter that Windows is badly designed from the standpoint of safety, and all too often the alternatives to Windows are simply dismissed.
So what should Mac users do? Grin and bear it, maybe. Apple's Mac sales are up by more than 30 percent, and many of those sales are going to former Windows users -- maybe even in the offices of college officials. We can only hope.
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