Cool Mac Gear

Maine Governor Angus King is known to be a big Mac supporter, and the $multi-million deal he engineered with Apple to supply devices and software, including Apple iBook portable computers, is under fire from state media and opposition politicians.

The Lewiston, Me. Sun Journal 's Liz Chapman reports that:

"Gov. Angus King vowed Tuesday to fight as hard as he could to save the $25-million laptop computer program, warning legislators that killing the plan would be 'a historic mistake.'"

"It would be incredibly short-sighted" King is quoted commenting to eliminate the plan "because this would be an initiative that would give us an opportunity to finally break the bonds of being 37th in the country in income.

"To undo it at this time, when it’s almost there, in order to put the money into one year’s worth of programs scattered throughout the budget would just be tragic in terms of its long-term effects on the prospects for our kids."

King noted that Apple is willing to supply the equipment $10 million to $15 million less than market value because Maine was the first state to approve such an initiative

However, Ruth-Ellen Cohen, Of Bangor News cites conservative activist Mary Adams whose Web site, Adams Report.com, reporting that that the Virginia school system has recalled all 11,000 of its iBooks this month to install security devices to stop student abuse, quoting opinion piece by Ray Wallace from the Richmond Times-Dispatch complaining that students are using their iBooks to cheat and that teaching time is being wasted, that machines have to be repaired continually and technical support is inadequate.

However Maine Department of Education spokesman Yellow Light Breen is quoted saying that Maine’s team of businesspeople and educators were aware of some of the technical problems involving the computers, but that the other issues, such as pornography use, didn’t surface there until after their visit.

As for Mary Adams' Website article, "Governor Laptop ….or Lapflop?" it has all the earmarks of a typical PC-centric anti-Apple smear job. Have any of these self-appointed watchdogs ever investigated the problems and tech-support costs associated with Windows PCs used in schools? I smell the old "Macs are the liberals' computer" innuendo underlying a lot of this opposition, as well as plain old politics, not to mention a good measure of Luddite tech-phobia.

In an interview with Ruth-Ellen Cohen, Adams also mused about whether going with Apple was the right decision, noting that "some businesspeople are worried that Macs “don’t dovetail with the PC format."

Uh-huh.

Angus King is an independent, so he is up against both the Republican and Democrat political machines trying to score political points on an issue where many voters don't have an informed frame of reference, and arguing that the laptop money would be better spent on "motherhood" programs like social services like domestic violence treatment, prescription drugs for seniors, and funding for nursing homes.

The fundamental error here is in the zero-sum thinking behind it. Educating students in high-tech is an investment in the future, that will facilitate paying for all those programs down the road.

Here are some of Ray Wallace's allegations cited by Adams:
• The graphing calculator is a joke. Its functions are inferior, and even if they weren’t, you can’t even use it on the SATS or AP tests. Some librarians report their school libraries have turned into ghost towns.
• iBooks are not nearly so reliable as Henrico taxpayers were led to believe - many have to be repaired (some multiple times), making instruction haphazard.
• Tech support is inadequate. IBooks remain broken, sometimes for days, so users are always behind and trying to borrow notes from another classmate.
• Students, instructed to take class notes and do homework on the iBooks, quickly learned as the computer fails that the iBook has no backup system. [presumably a reference to there being no floppy drive, the antiquated floppy being the PC-user's security blanket and abiding obsession] Backup techniques have become available, but they remain inconvenient or complicated.
• Security issues such as cheating abound.
• and so on

Some of these points are fair comment, while others are based in ignorance and/or political nuancing.

However, it looks like the Maine iBook program, which has drawn favorable comment from as far away as the U.K., is in serious jeopardy from short-sighted opposition legislators.

Charles W. Moore