Thoughts on: “Apple shares ‘New Beginnings’ Mac ad aimed at newly admitted college students”
Without giving away some internal numbers, I can say that we have a LOT of Apple devices on campus, with the Macbook Air and baseline 13" Macbook Pro as some of the most popular computers (Surface Pros and Surface Laptops are also popular as well in my unscientific walks around campus and classrooms). We have a lot of iPads as well, but the Mac is still the primary all-purpose computer that we recommend to students every year. In my college, if I had to hazard a guess we’re about 50/50 Mac vs. Windows split. I’m looking forward to seeing what the professional version of the M1 processor performs like, particularly the GPU performance. If it matches the Intel performance and provides better battery life I think that would be a win. We do have some concerns over the lack of Windows virtualization though since we do have a number of applications that are Windows-specific, but honestly that can be mitigated with a student leaning on our Windows Virtual Desktop infrastructure.
On Virtual Desktops
Students like the virtual desktop software better than our previous solution because of the improved performance, no need for the VPN since its in the cloud (Like the VPN we have it behind 2-factor, but being cloud based you don’t have the network crunch of doing things over the VPN), and the fact that they can use an older or underpowered Mac, PC, or Chromebook, but given the choice people still prefer to have applications running locally on their computers. As good as virtual desktop technology has gotten, the fact of the matter is that GPU intensive virtual desktop infrastructure is bleeding edge. It works really well for information worker applications such as Office, Teams, and line-of-business applications, but building out a full lab environment has been a lot of work even in 2021. I still think there is something to be said about having powerful local computing power for creative applications still like video editing, audio editing, photography, CAD applications, and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite since at that level latency does become a big deal by the time they are seniors and ready to enter the workforce. Frankly I’m amazed some day all that we can do in the cloud. We’ve come so far over the last decade that I’ve been in IT now. I remember Gmail being a huge deal, just the idea of running a full desktop-class email client in a browser window when the industry state was Outlook (Aka the email operating system of the time), was mind-blowing.
Thoughts on iPadOS
I do look forward to seeing how iPadOS evolves this year. The proper pointer support with trackpads and mice was a huge deal, but I feel like Apple still is finding the sweet spot between full-on MacOS and iPhone-inspirerd iPadOS. I could see a future that workers have an iPad Pro as their primary “computer” because of its great hybrid nature as both a tablet operating system and desktop operating system with the right accessories and then leaning on cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure like Windows Virtual Desktop to run a full multi-windowed operating system when they connect to an external monitor. The Kensington StudioDock appears to be the first real product that seriously asks that question of what if the iPad was your primary computing device at work and how would that work? I’m not sure if the execution is there yet, but the space does fascinate me.
iPadOS is fantastic now at running a more focused version of a desktop operating system, meaning that it can run desktop-class applications now, but because of its mobile nature it is a unitasker by nature and I think that’s a real strength, it really lets you focus on the task at hand. The tablet hardware with support for the Apple Pencil and then being able to make it into a laptop with the Magic keyboard accessory makes it a fantastic computing device. I’m not sure if Apple would ever allow you to run MacOS from the cloud, but I’m not sure if they would ever want or need to. Windows exists for enterprise software and so far Apple has not gotten into the enterprise cloud segment of the market. I think Apple is happy selling people the endpoint hardware that they use to access stuff like Office365, Google Workspace suite, Slack, Salesforce, etc, but I do hope that we get better external monitor support in 2021, if the Magic Keyboard has proven anything, its that people are happy to use iPadOS with a pointer and keyboard when they want it to run as more of an traditional all-purpose computer.
What’s a computer?
In 2021, a computer can be a lot of things and as we emerge from COVID and start traveling more I think that hybrid and mobile operating systems like iOS and iPadOS will become more important again. I think 2020 did show us that traditional operating systems like Windows 10 and MacOS are still the workhorses that make the gears of society move. I’m glad we still have MacOS, I can’t imagine doing all of my work from home the last year on only an iPad Pro at this point, but I do look forward to seeing how iPadOS evolves and what the Mac evolves into as we move forward with Apple silicon and WWDC 2021.I think its going to be a fun year.
-Hobie
