
Chromebooks destroy Apple in back to school sales - SQL2219
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chromebooks-destroyed-apple-in-back-to-school-shopping-2016-10-11
======
joezydeco
The key is Google Docs.

In my district, Google has really gone all-out to get Docs integrated into the
teacher's repertoire and support it as much as possible. Every teacher,
administrator, and student has a permanent account maintained by one IT person
at HQ.

The collaboration is the primary driver. gDocs is way ahead of iWork and even
my youngest kids are now comfortable working in Documents and Slides (1st
graders making slide presentations! The mind boggles).

Being able to log in from anywhere (school _and_ home) is the secondary driver
and, again, this is a place where Apple is too little and too late.

The iPads in our elementary school are being used less and less. It's all on
Chromebooks now and, yeah, they're cheap/disposable and all the other things
people are saying in this thread.

But the software is the killer.

~~~
OliverJones
This is exactly right. I volunteer in an after-school dropin center in a
public housing project. Our big drama crises these days come when our kiddos
can't remember their Google for Education (Google Docs) passwords.

We had a little grant to buy three ipads. We repurposed it to buy six
chromebooks, and things are going very well.

It's really sweet, actually, with the managed chromebooks. The kiddos know
what they're getting and we don't have so much of the "hey, do your homework
before you play games" hassles.

~~~
joezydeco
Repurposing is something I forgot to mention as well.

There are a _lot_ of schools sitting on PCs from the last decade that aren't
doing much other than running educational programs written for WindowsXP.

gDocs at least lets schools repurpose those machines and make them usable with
the current curriculum. And then you have a foot in the door when it comes to
the next round of equipment purchases.

Yeah, there's iWork on browser now but again, too little too late.

------
Spooky23
You need to be pretty dumb to buy a Mac now. They're clearly the company's
red-headed stepchild. WTF would I buy a 4 year old computer at premium price?

My business unit had gone Mac, we literally were faced with refreshing 3 year
old devices with nearly identical devices. That's insanity. Our existing Macs
were getting long in the tooth, getting pretty beat up and needed replacement.

We took a long hard look at our options, and decided that if Apple doesn't
really care about Macs anymore, we can't either. We can't run our business
waiting on some mysterious event to happen and sending staff to the mall at
5AM to pickup MacBooks when they finally refresh them.

So, we went with some of the newer, nicer HP laptops with Windows 10 and
Linux. It was a hard choice, as we really liked the Apple platform. But we had
to retain most of the Microsoft licensing (Core CAL, etc) for access to
exchange, file infrastructure and it didn't really cost us more.

It pains me to say this, but Apple just can't execute.

~~~
joeberon
>You need to be pretty dumb to buy a Mac now.

My retina macbook 13" is three years old, still as snappy as I first got it,
no issues at all. Everything still works completely fine and it feels solid.
The battery still holds 90% of its original charge. That's why I'll get a
macbook again, because if I hadn't I'd have gone through at least 2 Windows
laptops between then and now. These are just built way better. Other examples
of laptops that compete on build quality, weight, and size are just as
expensive.

But I do agree that they need to pull a miracle to get the mac lineup out of
the sorry state it is in right now. I guess they're good enough for most
people, and looking around at my university library I'm sitting in right now I
can see many people with new macbooks and macbook pros. The hard part is for
Apple to do something _interesting_ without making it _worse_...

~~~
LyndsySimon
I recently picked up a very inexpensive Windows 10 convertible laptop, and
have been VERY impressed with it. IMO in the future the Microsoft Surface Pro
line is going to have a nice little niche, and I hope Apple jumps on it before
Microsoft completely owns it.

~~~
detaro
> _a very inexpensive Windows 10 convertible laptop_

which one?

~~~
LyndsySimon
A Lenovo Flex 3; I found it on Best Buy's "open box" table and paid ~$150 for
it.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018WE7IBE/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018WE7IBE/)

------
cableshaft
I almost got a Chromebook a while back, but ended up getting an HP Stream
instead. Still got the benefits of a Windows environment and flash storage
(with an SD card slot) while only costing $200. And I've been surprised with
how much it can handle. I've got Photoshop and Illustrator CS6 working on it,
as well as Visual Studio Code. And I can install and run interpreters on the
machine, which you can't do on Chromebook without turning it installing Linux.
And the battery lasts several hours, easy.

So I can write, do graphic design, and program on it, the main three things I
bought it for, where the latter two would have been much more difficult with a
Chromebook.

This is just supposed to be a backup computer, one I take with me to
coffeeshops and when I travel, but it's doing an awesome job at it that I use
it a lot more often than I expected.

~~~
eliben
Yes, but these are kids... A windows machine will be virus and trojan-ridden
within hours in their hands, and maintaining a fleet of Windows machines up to
date is notoriously hard.

~~~
blub
And a Chromebook will be Google-ridden from hour zero. :)

Still, I suppose it's useful to get kids used to the idea of all their digital
lives being owned by Google. Prepares them for their future adulthood.

~~~
Oletros
> And a Chromebook will be Google-ridden from hour zero. :)

Does Google Apps for Education mine anything?

~~~
vetinari
No, and neither for Business.

However, after the kids finish the school, they won't have their education
accounts and so they will open the free ones, because they are used to the
Google ecosystem. You know, the first shot is for free.

~~~
jrnichols
This.

I think that it's genius and at the same time frightening at just how well
Google has done in the education market, especially how well they've done at
getting children to equate the internet with all things Google. Kids (at least
the ones at the daughter's school) have no idea what email is. They only know
Gmail. They don't know that there is any other search engine besides Google.
They don't know that there are any other office suites besides Google Docs.
They go to Youtube for everything. Which is easy when Google searches for
things will show you a Google property before anything else.

The kids are living in a totally Google world at school since the school
district went Google. They barely know anything else. And Google loves it that
way.

------
jbob2000
I think this article is looking for a story where there isn't one.

For one, Mac sales slowed this quarter because people are anticipating the new
lineup. Why would I buy yesterday's computer for the same price as tomorrow's
computer? Just wait until tomorrow and get something better for the same
price.

Secondly, the Windows laptop market is full of garbage, especially at the low
end. Plastic, overheating, underpowered, bloatware-laden garbage. The market
was ripe for a disruption like the Chromebook.

Many colleges and universities have made the jump to Google services for email
and storage. It makes sense to a lot of people to use a device that integrates
with these services out of the box.

So if the Chromebook is gaining steam, it's not at the expense of Apple, it's
at the expense of Windows.

~~~
ghaff
It's possibly also worth noting (although the article explicitly doesn't
address it) that Chromebooks seem to be winning out over the idea of tablets
in schools. Which, for the most part, is as it should be even given the
availability of low cost mini tablets from at least Amazon. Chromebooks are a
lot more versatile, in part as you observe because of the increasing ubiquity
of online services.

Personally, over the past year or two I've found it increasingly easy to
travel with just my Chromebook whereas I didn't and don't find travelling with
just a tablet works very well.

~~~
jhoechtl
> Personally, over the past year or two I've found it increasingly easy to
> travel with just my Chromebook whereas I didn't and don't find travelling
> with just a tablet works very well.

Back to sanity. Clicking here and there and forwarding mails so others do the
job is not working. Nor is "networking" which might work well on a tablet. The
key is creation which still requires a decent keyboard.

~~~
wlesieutre
That all depends on what your job is, doesn't it?

~~~
jhoechtl
Absolutely. But what I wanted to say is that we are not all Startups and
foundes,

[https://medium.com/@shemag8/fuck-you-startup-world-
ab6cc72fa...](https://medium.com/@shemag8/fuck-you-startup-world-
ab6cc72fad0e#.v5km9ooav)

but need to get stuff done. And having a tablet doesn't make you to a CxO
either. You can be creative in tying things together where the rather limiting
ui and interface capabilities of a tablet are sufficient or creative by
creating, where you need a decent keyboard, screen size etc.

I think we should return more to the create part than the shim shiny
pretending layer.

------
taftster
Chromebooks are cheap and simple little machines that you can safely give to
children. With the available options on the market, parents are not going to
buy an expensive Apple laptop for their middle or high school students.
Instead, they want to give them something that can be replaced, if needed, by
simply repurchasing.

In general, Apple's products are way too complex to give to a young student.
Parents are "afraid" of their kids messing with the computer or bricking it,
so they constrain their use and don't allow kids to experiment. Gone are the
days where you can open a computer, play with the hardware, create a game, or
write your own device drivers. Parents have to play the role of "IT Support"
for their students/children, and if they don't know how to fix it, the
computer is useless or constrained to just a few simple scripted uses.

The Chromebook fixes this by making computers disposable. The operating
system, being limited in functionality to begin with, can't easily be broken.
And Chromebooks are cheap enough that if they get dropped, hacked, bricked or
otherwise rendered useless, you throw it away and get a new one. Chromebook
reduces and removes the need for parents to mess with hardware or operating
system configuration options. It also removes the concern over account
sharing, itunes purchases, warez, etc.

~~~
ghaff
>Gone are the days where you can open a computer, play with the hardware,
create a game, or write your own device drivers.

Not really. Give them a $30 Raspberry Pi. (OK. Plus monitor and keyboard.)
Even better give them a kit with a bunch of sensors.

And they can play with it to their heart's content while the Chromebook still
is working for their schoolwork.

~~~
whamlastxmas
I laughed out loud at this.

"Mommy why doesn't my music work?"

"Oh sweety you need to go download the source for the audio drivers and
recompile them after making a few changes so it works on the attached audio
board. If that doesn't work then here's a few kernel tweaks you can try out".

~~~
ghaff
I'm certainly not suggesting a Raspberry Pi is the best answer for a kid's
general use computer :-) I was responding to the comment that people couldn't
open up their computers any longer.

~~~
whamlastxmas
My mistake! Would be cool to see something like Novena laptops in high
schools.

------
mattbgates
I am a former Mac user and bought a Chromebook 2 years ago and never looked
back. The Macbook had served its purpose for so long, and I had it since 2009,
but no matter what I did, it was still running slow. Chromebooks were insanely
faster. In the beginning, I enabled Developer Mode, installed Linux, and was
relying heavily on a lot of the features that Linux had to offer, but
Chromebooks pretty much have everything they need, in the form of extensions
or websites that exist to perform a specific functionality, so there's a
workaround for everyone. I got the T-Mobile-enabled one so I can travel
anywhere with it. Love it and don't think I'll be switching to any other
computer again anytime soon.

~~~
wastedhours
I just went the other way and replaced my Chromebook with a MBP - the
Chromebook is perfect for the vast majority of computer based tasks and a good
percentage of what I do outside of work can be accomplished on it.

Mainly just the lack of local development support for self learning and side
projects was why I dropped it, but it's still my goto machine for holidays and
throwing onto the sofa.

~~~
BooneJS
Agreed. Chromebook does a few common things _very_ well and at a good value.

------
0xcde4c3db
Apart from getting rich districts and private schools to shell out for iPads,
does Apple even have an actual K-12 story anymore? It seems like we've come a
long way from the labs full of Apple IIs running The Oregon Trail and Math
Blaster.

~~~
bulldawgj
1\. my mom was teaching computer in one of those labs, I got to spend every
day after school ruling Oregon Trail and Paperboy on an Apple IIe. 2\. Apple
is providing free products to underserved schools, but not enough to make a
difference IMO. [https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/apple-stays-in-school-
with...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/apple-stays-in-school-with-coding-
curriculum-and-a-revamped-iwork/) [https://9to5mac.com/2015/08/23/tim-cook-
apple-education-gma-...](https://9to5mac.com/2015/08/23/tim-cook-apple-
education-gma-interview/)

------
jamroom
Of course they do - this is like Android phones "destroying" the iPhone when
it comes to sales volume. For a very large percent of students the Chromebook
will work just fine - no need to drop a grand on an entry level Macbook.

------
qwrusz
Bit of a click-bait headline. Article lacks data. e.g. Apple #'s don't appear
to include iPads sales which do compete with chromebooks. Apple is likely
shipping fewer macs, but "destroy" feels like an expensive word choice.

Winning sentences: > _" Gartner, which does not count Chromebook sales with
its PC numbers, recorded a more drastic 5.7% decline [in PC sales]...'While
our PC shipment report does not include Chromebooks, our early indicator shows
that Chromebooks exceeded PC shipment growth,' Mikako Kitagawa, principal
analyst at Gartner said"_

Is the analyst using a 5.7% decline for their "shipment growth" number? Also
curious about use of "sales" vs "shipments"?

 _Marketing Watch_ now worse than Barron's for accuracy among Dow Jones
publications.

~~~
Spooky23
Sales data is hard to get for PCs in a timely manner, as most of the computers
are sold through intermediaries. So the HP all-in-one desktop sitting on a
shelf at Best Buy is "shipped" not sold.

Destroy is a fair term, as Mac/PCs are a mature market, and devices get
refreshed on a regular cadence. Substantial downward shifts in shipments,
particularly late in the year before the holidays, are indicative that back to
school sales sucked and lots of inventory is still on the shelves.

Chromebook are in a growth phase. In the spring, my local Wal-Mart had zero
Chromebooks. Now it has 3 models. Those three models represent more shipments
plus finite shelf space permanently lost to cheapo PCs.

~~~
qwrusz
I agree on the chromebooks are at a different point in the product cycle vs
macs. (I am also writing this from a PC).

And it makes total sense for chromebooks to be destroying Apple this quarter!

But if one is going to write an article saying that happened then have data.
There is no chromebook or iPad sales data in this article.

My comment was more a complaint about finance journalism and analyst
panderings.

------
ghaff
Chromebooks are obviously best at being web browsers. You can start adding
extensions and using remote servers for other tasks etc. but, in my
experience, if you're trying to use it as a regular laptop a regular laptop is
probably better.

That said, given reasonable connectivity, Chromebooks are pretty much ideal
for a lot of things. They're cheap, easy to keep up-to-date, and generally
great for most things a student would want to do. Thin clients have been
talked up for schools forever and Chromebooks are, in many respects, the first
take on that to succeed broadly. IMO, they make a huge amount of sense for
many students.

Personally, as I increasingly use online apps like Google Docs I increasingly
find myself travelling with a Chromebook vs. a regular laptop.

------
Eridrus
Despite Chromebooks not being real computers IMO, I'm heartened by the fact
that these computers are cheap enough to provide access to students who could
otherwise not afford anything, and now that we have even complex software such
as IDEs and image editing software available through a web browser, hopefully
the limitations of these won't even be real constraints for even advanced
users.

------
robinduckett
My kid's class has maybe 20 chromebooks and 5 ipads. It's about price.

~~~
BooneJS
My 5th grade daughter thinks iPads are for movies and games and her Chromebook
is for homework.

------
porps
In other news, Macbooks destroy Chromebooks in being real computers.

~~~
jostmey
I own a chromebook and macbook.

I do all my coding on a chromebook. I use the ChromeOS as my GUI, dropbox as
my filesystem, and crouton to run the ubuntu terminal underneath it all.

~~~
notacoward
> I do all my coding on a chromebook. > crouton to run the ubuntu terminal
> underneath it all.

Ditto. I can alt-tab and share clipboard between the ChromeOS environment
where everything Just Works and the Crouton environment where I do my coding.
Quite nice, especially considering that a Chromebook costs anywhere from
20-60% as much as an Apple laptop. I'm on a Pixel 2 (non-LS version), which
replaced an MBA. Despite being one of the most expensive Chromebooks ever, it
was still several hundred dollars cheaper than what it replaced - with a
higher-resolution screen and better battery life.

With some of the newer Chromebooks that are out there, some slightly better
and significantly cheaper than what I have now (the Acer Chromebook 14 for
Work is a particular standout), a Mac starts to seem like the idiot's choice
even for developers.

------
BooneJS
We "splurged" and bought our kids a 4 GB Celeron Chromebook (as opposed to 2
GB + ARM) last year. They have user profiles for their school account and a
personal account. I don't have to worry about random things showing up in
/Applications. So many nice things about a box that does a few things really
well that's hard to screw up.

When my 2009 MBP died 6 months later, I realized that I never go anywhere with
it anymore (iPad) so I replaced it with an ASUS Chromebox. I've tinkered with
upgrading storage and DRAM for using Ubuntu/Crouton, but that hasn't prevented
me from relying on my wife's iMac for many things.

------
hellofunk
How is this even newsworthy? Chromebooks on average sell for 1/5 the price of
a Macbook, why are the two products even being compared?

One could equally argue, "More Honda civics were sold this quarter. Bad news
for Lamborghini?"

~~~
Oletros
Honda Civic and Lamborghini comparisons when talking about Chromebooks and
Macbooks? Really?

~~~
jhoechtl
Yes for good. It's the insight that still the content matters and not so much
if it was created on a pricy MB/iPad or a ChromeBook

------
hourislate
It's hard to compete with a nice refurbished chromebook at Newegg for a $126
as opposed to a $1200+ MBP. If it breaks, gets lost or stolen it's no big
deal. I understand the MBP can do a lot more but for the average kid or
college student a chromebook is enough.

As an alternative if you really need a laptop there is always an old T420/T430
Thinkpad running Linux. It's a beast of a system and can be had for under
$200.

------
JohnTHaller
The thing to keep in mind is that Chromebooks haven't even reached their final
form. Android apps are being added actively to the top end models with touch
screens and will be coming to others. Sure, some touch-based apps won't work
but most apps will. Eventually, we'll have Chromebooks that are either
convertible or detachable and they'll be both tablet and laptop for each use
case.

------
mark-r
If Apple were to come up with their own version of a stripped-down laptop that
boots to a browser, would it be successful? They're certainly capable of it.
Naturally it would be twice the price of a Chromebook, but it would be worlds
apart in quality.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
But Apple are hopeless at services, which is what the Chromebooks rely on
entirely. Last time I looked I couldn't even listen to Apple Music in a
browser. What year is this?

As it is i've been waiting for a new Macbook to drop as it's the one bit of
Apple kit I still like. But if it's disappointing i'll simply buy a reasonable
Chromebook and use the SSH extension to do work elsewhere, which with the
browser covers 95% of what I do with a laptop.

------
jostmey
We own both a macbook ($1000 >) and a chromebook ($180). The macbook is
bloated with software, popups keep sliding down the right side, and it
occasionally freezes. The chromebook "just works".

Love the iPhone but we are otherwise ditching apple.

------
initram
Do people really not care about some large corporation tracking everything
your children do for ears at a time? There's no way in hell I'd let my child
use a Google notebook that's tied to all that tracking crap.

~~~
kyrra
Google tracks a lot less with apps for Education. Though they were under some
heat from the EFF for it back in December.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2015/12/28...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2015/12/28/google-is-tracking-students-as-it-sells-more-products-to-
schools-privacy-advocates-warn/)

It's a good read as there are state laws going into effect to curl data
collection and strict rules about how collected data can be used.

------
ebbv
Who would expect anything else? They cost less than half of even a MacBook Air
which is in need of a hardware refresh even more than the rest of Apple's
notebook lineup.

------
dingo_bat
So do chrome books have a terminal? Package manager? Can it run apps other
than chrome (sublime text or vs code)?

~~~
notacoward
Yes, there are terminal apps for ChromeOS. There's an app store - two if
you're on a model that supports Android apps - instead of a package manager.
More importantly, there's crouton. You can use that to get at the real Linux
(well OK it's Ubuntu) that lies underneath ChromeOS, with all of the terminal
apps and package managers and compilers and whatever you might want. Better
still, you can run all of that in a ChromeOS window, with full clipboard
integration etc. so you can copy and paste between them.

------
rickyc091
This is a bit misleading... the reason Chromebook sales have gone up is
because many middle / high schools are starting to provide free Chromebooks to
all students.

~~~
sathackr
How is it misleading?

Regardless of the reason, Chromebook sales are up.

