I think there is more here than Apple missing the mark with the new iPad education program. First let me say that I primarily use an iPad for anything outside of my office. I don’t love it but I don’t love any of these things anymore as I’ve been in the industry for too many years. I once loved Apple but then discovered there was more to life than a narrow proprietary approach to information processing.
Apple is losing it and that has something to do with being a trillion dollar company. Having spent the last five years back in the academy as a campus CIO I’m amazed on the hold that Apple has. That being said the only hold it has is beautiful hardware design on MacBooks. It should have a hold with iPads but doesn’t.
Since I approve all campus IT purchases I have a reputation for not liking Apple. I don’t really care but will only supply a Apple producers for laptops if they are justified and the person can’t use anything else. The MacBook still has prestige in higher education as the laptop you should have. The people that buy them also have very little idea what laptops now do and how awkward it is without a touch screen. I’ll ignore coders who have their own world if it is not Linux.
The iPad is the only real Apple product now excluding ancillaries. I don’t usually use ear pods but probably would go with Apple because that is the kind of design that they do better than anyone. But their game is narrowing and part of it is they don’t really need to try anymore. And that is my point.
The MacOS was a mostly a lost cause at the enterprise level due to the insistence on being completely proprietary. It use to be easiest to use for marketing and design people (the other niche) but with Adobe in the Cloud that niche is gone. For heavy business sues Microsoft with Office 365 and, nearly, full (messy) cloud integration beats everyone still. The other loss was full VDI, again, ruined by licensing and hardware rules.
As a campus CIO my goal is to eliminate most desktops as they can be replaced by virtual desktops with tablets. There are a growing range of ways a to provide services with security and low cost in hardware. The lose is the pure hardware design company that refuses to see that iOS is their ultimate winner.
Apples niche was heavily education and they did it by seeding schools to grow Apple users. It worked but times have change as you note. What is needed in schools is information processing for all students. Google has stepped up to provide that without trying to build a universe of users. Google is, after all, Google. No one loves Google but everyone knows when to use Google. For power Microsoft is there with optional hardware, too. Apple has lost that.
