Students at eight Victorian Government schools including those battling illness at the Royal Children’s Hospital won’t have to wait long to get their hands on Apple’s latest gadget – the iPad – thanks to a groundbreaking trial. Visiting the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School in Southbank today, Premier John Brumby announced an Australian-first trial of iPads in Victorian schools.
Mr Brumby said the Victorian Government would distribute more than 500 iPads, each worth $629, to eight schools so students can continue to learn with the latest technology.
“Education is the top priority of this Government and our Australian-first trial of iPads in schools will ensure our students remain one step ahead when it comes to emerging technology,” Mr Brumby said.
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Guess I will need to hook up with these folks too for my ipaod pilot in my class at Kansas State University.
Apple (Re)paves the Street By Don Mayer Small Dog Electronics
Apple sold a record 3,470,000 Macs during the three months ending in June. This helped to generate $3,250,000,000 in profits (I like seeing all those zeros!). This represents a 77% year over year growth in Mac sales! I guess all those prophets of doom saying that the Mac was neglected for iOS4 and the iPad just don’t get it.
Add in the 8,400,000 iPhones, 9,410,000 iPods and an astounding 3,270,000 iPads and you have $15,700,000,000 of sales! The biggest increase in sales came from the Asia/Pacific region with 71% overall growth but the big news is that Mac sales saw double digit growth in each geographic area.
Apple hoarded another $4 billion in cash, swelling their war chest to over $45.8 billion of nickels and dimes hanging out. I guess giving away a few iPhone cases is not going to make much of a dent in that cache. When asked about “antennagate” and the impact on sales of the iPhone, Tim Cook simply answered, “Let me be very clear: We are selling every unit we can make.”
The Mac Business
Apple smashed the old 3-month sales record by 100,000 Macs by posting a 33% year-over-year increase. There is a move towards mobility with increases in laptops sold versus desktops, a trend that Apple has recognized very early on and has planned well for with significant offerings in the portable market.
The iPhone Business
Over 60 percent of the Fortune 500 are deploying the iPhone and 400 higher education institutions have approved it. With over 8.4 million sold in the three months, this is a healthy business for Apple. Over 5 billion apps were downloaded from the Apple App store.
With the transition to the iPhone 4, there were greatly reduced shipments in June; however, Apple still ended the quarter with a 61% growth in sales and it was over 90% if you factor in the model change.
Returns for the iPhone 4 are running below that for the iPhone 3GS and there has been no impact on sales due to all the publicity about the antenna.
The iPad Business
I can speak first hand about this one. We are selling every single iPad we can get our hands on with a high degree of customer satisfaction. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: with these numbers, Apple doesn’t need computer business market share if they can continue to simply create new markets.
Apple sold over $2 billion in iPads and would have sold even more had they had more to sell. One thing that Tim Cook is really good at is supply chain logistics and planning. He said that Apple is still “quoting longer lead times than we’d like, and we’re working around the clock to get supply and demand in balance… in the scheme of things, it’s a good problem to have.” He said sales have been positive in every country they’ve released it in thus far. Anecdotally, he believes it’s already beyond an “early adopter” phase. “I think it’s extremely unique and extremely successful.”
The iPod Business
The iPod touch is the hero here with some declines in the overall iPod business but a very strong 48% increase in iPod touch sales year-over-year. The iPod maintains a 70% market share and is the top selling MP3 player internationally.
The Retail Side
I don’t like to talk too much about the Apple retail side of the business because, they are, after all, our competition, but Apple retail had a good quarter, too. Sales were up 73% and Apple opened seven new stores in the quarter, making a total of 280 stores with average revenue per store around $9 million (per quarter!).
During the summer construction season, in preparation for the holidays, Small Dog Electronics will open one store (by contrast, Apple will open 24 stores internationally this quarter).
The greatest story in American business lore continues as Apple continues its streak of posting record earnings, but more importantly, continues its streak of producing a steady stream of products that are in the vanguard of design and functionality.
Congratulations to the entire Apple team—what an awesome quarter of success!
I was an early adopter of the Macintosh, in fact, I bought one in the fall of 1984, it was a 128k machine. Imagine that and now 360 gig hard drive with 4 gigs of RAM is not big enough…….All the software was used from floppy disks, MacWrite & MacPaint, yup that was all I had, MacWrite and MacPaint. Remember them? MacWrite was a basic word processor by today’s terms, but MacPaint had a huge impact on my interest in using the computer as a creative and artistic tool. My journalism staff completely produced the sshool newspaper and yearbook using them that school year. And, I went on to get an MFA in Graphic Design and have no doubt the Macintosh and MacPaint were an early influence in that process.
It was the predecessor to pretty much all the imaging software we use now, MacPaint introduced the lasso tool and the paint bucket which I still use all the time. The marching ants selection is used in most Adobe software and began with MacPaint.
Apple’s drawing software was the first to let us create images rather than using code to make them. If I had to use code, I would be up a creek without a paddle. I am not a code person, and I don’t want to be! Apple has always understood what regular people (like me) needed in computers, even if at that point most people didn’t even realize they needed a computer. It didn’t take me very long to get hooked. I have have one version or another of Macintosh since 1984. I have never spend my own personal hard earned money on any computer but a Macintosh and still would not purchase anything but a Mac. How about you? Sorry, Windows folks, but in my opinion, Mac is just easier and more stable ant JUST WORKS!!
Recently, Apple donated the original source code for MacPaint to the Computer History Museum (http://www.computerhistory.org/). Apple realized the historical as well as the technical significance of MacPaint. The Computer History Museum has it available for downloaded. They say it is 5,822 lines of Apple Pascal and 3,583 lines of 68000 assembly, which means absolutely nothing to me, but, I am sure all those numbers and lines of code mean something to programmers. I can just accept the MAGIC that it just makes it work!!
If you are interested in the history of MacPaint CLICK HERE to access the Computer History Museum page about MacPaint. To my surprise, it is pretty interesting.
There are plans to create a National Learning Registry to collect digital educational materials and help teachers and students find the resources they need, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Such a registry could be available within 18 months. In his speech to the National Rural Education Technology Summit, Duncan offered the example of digital footage of the first moon landing, saying those archives can be found across several websites and that the National Learning Registry would make the data easier to find. Read the full story at Education Week/Digital Education blog
OK, I hate to be sarcastic, but is this a surprise to anybody? Gee whiz, staff development does work!! Ok, I know it has to be the right professional development and it has to be QUALITY, but come on , really!!
In Birmingham, Ala., teachers are participating in workshops to help prepare them to teach using laptops. Teachers begin by learning about the low-cost computers provided through the One Laptop Per Child initiative. Workshop organizers say the success of such programs is dependent on how comfortable and familiar teachers are with the technology. “Some participants weren’t even using them in class because they didn’t know what to do with them,” said the University of Alabama at Birmingham associate professor who developed the training. Read the full story at T.H.E. Journal
