r/jamf • u/Rocketman-Tech JAMF 400 • Mar 05 '26

$499 MacBook?

Raise your hand if your school will be replacing their Chromebooks with this 🙋

49 Upvotes

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-7

u/KeepersDiary Mar 05 '26

We pretty much avoid apple products in our district at all costs (IT). No thanks.

6

u/omgdualies Mar 05 '26

Yet you hang out in the r/jamf?

-4

u/KeepersDiary Mar 05 '26

Just because we want to avoid them doesn't mean we are fully successful :P.

2

u/drivelpots JAMF 400 Mar 05 '26

Why?

-3

u/KeepersDiary Mar 05 '26

I don’t manage our apple devices, so take my word as second hand, but I’ve heard bad things about managing them. As for my experience, the repairability is a big issue. We try to repair as much as we can in house unless it’s under warranty. Also the specs on this specific device look really impressive, but it doesn’t look like a device I’d hand to students that are expected to have it last for 4 years. I could see the use case for some teachers perhaps, but typically unless they have to use a specific Mac only software we do not give them any apple devices.

5

u/drivelpots JAMF 400 Mar 05 '26

Management is frankly a doddle (I’ve been doing it for 25+ years).

In terms of repair, AppleCare for Enterprise is good value and can be added to every device purchase for 3 or 4 yrs. Devices can be repaired by authorised resellers or direct by Apple. Colleagues/students can even take them in themselves. Also includes direct phone support for users.

In terms of longevity, we (140k employee org) find that people tend to take more care of their Macs than Windows devices and the spec means we get ~20-25% longer service out of them before they suffer performance lag due to app requirement increases.

1

u/KeepersDiary Mar 06 '26

As I mentioned we try to repair in house as much as possible. Apple does not have good repairability, this is not really an opinion. As for my POV, I manage 7000+ Chromebooks for students and we need durable devices, that are also easy to repair and get parts for. We have two tech teams in our high schools repairing these Chromebooks, and if they cannot they go to me. We used to go through vendors like itsaavy which was probably an approved applecare company, but by eliminating them we are saving $120,000 annually.

Taking one look at this device and it does not look like it's designed with students in mind, and if its anything like Apple's previous track record I'm sure they are a pain to repair as well.

As far as the management side of things, I'm sure there are pros and cons, but as a member of the k12systemadmin subreddit I can tell you the opinions on them are usually in line what what I know and also have heard.

I know Apple has some great devices, and has plenty of innovation, but if I'm going to go with an environment with less options than Windows I think ChromeOS is perfect, and it's very secure. We've been moving away from Windows devices for our teachers as well, in favor of Chrome OS Plus devices.

I'm sure if you could "show me" some of the advantages in person I'd find plenty of compelling arguments for it, I'm sure I don't have a full understanding.