If you think no one uses Google Chromebooks, you don’t clearly spend a lot of time in K-12 schools.
CNBC is reporting that Chromebooks make up over half of devices used in U.S. classrooms, beating out Apple’s iPad and a wide range of Windows PCs to utterly dominate the education market. It’s particularly impressive when you consider that, just a couple of years ago, Chromebooks made up less than 1 percent of all such devices.
We’ve talked about the extent to which Google dominates education before, but the rate of growth is staggering. By some estimates 30,000 devices are deployed in U.S. classrooms every day, expanding the education market for computers and taking up most of that growth.
“It’s been amazing to us to see that growth happen just in that short amount of time,” said Google’s Rajen Sheth, head of the ChromeOS for business team. “If you look at the overall market for devices in education, it’s actually expanded a lot and Chromebooks have actually taken a lot of the expansion.”
There’s a lot of reasons Chromebooks make sense for the classroom. They’re affordable, which is important for school budgets. They’re also interchangable: students can switch from one Chromebook to another and all of their cloud-based files and settings follow them, meaning if one computer needs repairs students can switch to another.
At a time when laptop sales are falling overall, there aren’t many sectors where sales are going up. Education is one of them, and Google’s ChromeOS is dominating it.
Google’s not the only company to target education: Apple made a name for itself in this sector in the 80’s and 90’s, which is why if you went to school then there’s a good chance you have childhood memories of playing Oregon Trail on one of their computers. Maybe you even bought an Apple product later in life.
Which makes us wonder: ChromeOS might not be big in the consumer market right now, but could a generation of students getting used to the cloud-based OS change that?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.