I DON'T WANT A MAC.

[ShadowSoldier]

I say buy a cheaper laptop. Why spend 2000$ on a mac when you can get any other laptop for like 500$ and have all the same parts and pretty much all the same features. I don't see the reason why the school should force students to have to buy such an expensive brand in the first place. Hell I would protect and tell them if they are going to force me to buy an overpriced laptop, they better help pay at least part of the price for it.

This. It's not like the school is even selling them, so they're making no profit or funds from kids buying Mac's, so what the hell. Honestly, this is the first time I've heard of a school forcing people to buy Mac's.

 

[YayMii]

-snip-
This. It's not like the school is even selling them, so they're making no profit or funds from kids buying Mac's, so what the hell. Honestly, this is the first time I've heard of a school forcing people to buy Mac's.

Actually, they're renting them out for $300/year, and they have a rent-to-buy system in place. But once again, they're the really overpriced low-tier Macbooks that have Core 2 Duos in them.

 

[Slyakin]

Wait. They are enforcing you to use a Mac and use Microsoft software on it?

...I don't even understand anymore.

 

[Foxi4]

-snip-
This. It's not like the school is even selling them, so they're making no profit or funds from kids buying Mac's, so what the hell. Honestly, this is the first time I've heard of a school forcing people to buy Mac's.

Actually, they're renting them out for $300/year, and they have a rent-to-buy system in place. But once again, they're the really overpriced low-tier Macbooks that have Core 2 Duos in them.

Aaah, that makes everything clear. Either buy expensive hardware OR pay the school to rent it to you for a much lower, acceptable fee.

They're making money of you, sonny. They're not "gifted" as you claim, they're simply theving bastards. It's hard NOT to see past an obvious scheme like this.

 

[Ziggy Zigzagoon]

5. The requirement is part of some new "technology immersion" program my school is starting. Why they didn't allow Windows PCs though is beyond me.

Just about everybody knows about PCs and maybe Windows. Not many are actually familiar with Mac (not even I!) or Linux.

 

[FireGrey]

My school we all got free macs.
We all hate them.
Everyone gets too distracted with them in class aswell.

 

[ChrisRX]

So if your school is getting macs why does that mean you have to too?
If whatever software you're using exists on both Windows and MacOS (like MS Office or whatever) you should have no problem copying files over either way.

 

[chris888222]

My present day middle school also REQUIRES you to get a Mac (since 2009 I think)

Now, in my uni, we just need a laptop of any brand. No restrictions.

But trust me, laptop use in schools regardless of any brand can be extremely distracting. One moment asking you to go to an e-learning portal the other moment you feel like opening a new tab going to gbatemp.

 

[YayMii]

gifted school=school for gifted students. But since 'gifted' is sometimes interpreted as 'mentally handicapped' or 'retarded', people at my school use it sometimes as a insult (no offense to the mentally handicapped 'Tempers here).

@Foxi4: Even if they are (trying to) thieve us, it's somewhat understandable if they're desperate for money. The school will be in a nicer building next year (since the building currently sucks), so I guess they'll need money to make up for it. But there are already tons of people with Macbooks, so it's not too bad.

@Ziggy: I think that's the point. Since the school is for smart(er) people, there's a bunch of people who really know what they're doing with Windows. My Com Tech teacher had to tell us one day to stop developing viruses because apparently the network antivirus detected a piece of malware that some student was coding on their Windows laptop (they knew this because the guy confessed to it).

 

[Hakoda]

So one guy was coding malware and the whole school pays for his stupidity by having to purchase a Mac?

Wait wth, the school's network did a remote scan of his computer WHILE he was coding a virus. Injecting a virus I understand but I'm not buying the fact that the firewall caught him in the act. That's an invasion of privacy, they're watching you do things locally then.

I call bull. Watch someone do the same on a Mac and then they'll require Ubuntu.

 

[Nathan Drake]

Being able to make a virus doesn't mean much. I know tons of people who aren't even that computer smart that can make an okay virus. It won't be the next one to take the internet by storm, but they can certainly make one that can do some damage.

 

[stinkoman]

1. Get average laptop
2. Install Xubuntu
3. Slap an apple sticker on it
4. Theme xfce with a Mac theme.
5. ????
6. Profit.

 

[ishdeepsingh]

If you do decide to get the mac, your in hell.

 

[Lucifer666]

And this is why textbooks and pens beat.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

So one guy was coding malware and the whole school pays for his stupidity by having to purchase a Mac?

Wait wth, the school's network did a remote scan of his computer WHILE he was coding a virus. Injecting a virus I understand but I'm not buying the fact that the firewall caught him in the act. That's an invasion of privacy, they're watching you do things locally then.

I call bull. Watch someone do the same on a Mac and then they'll require Ubuntu.

It's not an invasion of privacy. If you hook up to their network especially. A lot of schools do that where all the schools either hook their own computer up to the network, or you go on one of the school's computers in a classroom, and the teacher can monitor what you're doing on your screen. We had that for our computer class in High school. It was pretty cool, he had like 15 tabs open and some windows of our screens, and you could see the mouse going across and everything.

 

[david432111]

So one guy was coding malware and the whole school pays for his stupidity by having to purchase a Mac?

Wait wth, the school's network did a remote scan of his computer WHILE he was coding a virus. Injecting a virus I understand but I'm not buying the fact that the firewall caught him in the act. That's an invasion of privacy, they're watching you do things locally then.

I call bull. Watch someone do the same on a Mac and then they'll require Ubuntu.

It's not an invasion of privacy. If you hook up to their network especially. A lot of schools do that where all the schools either hook their own computer up to the network, or you go on one of the school's computers in a classroom, and the teacher can monitor what you're doing on your screen. We had that for our computer class in High school. It was pretty cool, he had like 15 tabs open and some windows of our screens, and you could see the mouse going across and everything.

The only possible way they could do that is if the computer in question had the schools monitoring software on it.

 

[cwstjdenobs]

I'm pretty certain making everyone in the school run the same OS would actually make the machines and network more vulnerable to a targeted attack.

 

[Sausage Head]

just bring a box of shit; they won't see a difference

 

[gumgod]

Aside from price, I don't see why you're so opposed to Apple? Just dual boot the thing and get yourself a wireless mouse so you don't have to deal with that damn Apple track pad and you'll be fine.

So one guy was coding malware and the whole school pays for his stupidity by having to purchase a Mac?

Wait wth, the school's network did a remote scan of his computer WHILE he was coding a virus. Injecting a virus I understand but I'm not buying the fact that the firewall caught him in the act. That's an invasion of privacy, they're watching you do things locally then.

I call bull. Watch someone do the same on a Mac and then they'll require Ubuntu.

It's not an invasion of privacy. If you hook up to their network especially. A lot of schools do that where all the schools either hook their own computer up to the network, or you go on one of the school's computers in a classroom, and the teacher can monitor what you're doing on your screen. We had that for our computer class in High school. It was pretty cool, he had like 15 tabs open and some windows of our screens, and you could see the mouse going across and everything.

If you're on the schools network they could use something like Vision to do that. It would require a small piece of software to be installed on the machine that was being monitored, but it can be installed remotely if you have admin privileges. As far as I know it doesn't work on mac os though. And dual boot macs (where it's installed on a Windows partition) sometimes show up twice

.

 

[NiGHtS]

My thoughts?

Macs are epic! I'd love it if I could've gone to a school like yours