[TUHS] Re: AIX moved into maintainance mode

[Liam Proven <lproven@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 19:25, Doug McIntyre <merlyn@geeks.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 04:02:18PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
> > ChromeBooks outsold Mac in the USA in 2017, and worldwide by 2020.
> > (Sales have fallen off a cliff since the pandemic, but that's because
> > so many people have one and are happy with it, I think.)
>
> I think you need to s/people/schools/ on that statement.

OK, so many _owners_ have one.

I do not know much about the education market. My only child is just 3
so is not in one yet. I went to 9 different schools in 3 countries on
2 continents so I am not a good example myself. And I currently live
in a country where I'm not fluent in the local language (I am trying
but it's my 6th and I'm old) so I don't know much about its
educational system, even though I have taught in it.

But my vague impression is that the high penetration of Chromebooks in
education is something of a North American or maybe USA peculiarity,
and I don't think this can be generalised worldwide.

My _impression_ is that European schools do not routinely provide
students with computers, and mostly that students are not allowed to
use computers in class, except possibly in computer classes. Wealthier
families may of course buy them for their children but this is not a
given or a universal or even all that common.

Americans have a disproportionately high standard of living and are
often unaware of this. For instance, in other retrocomputing groups, I
find that many collectors and hobbyisyts from the USA are almost
totally unaware of _the_ single most widespread, most successful, most
widely-cloned family of 8-bit home computers: the Sinclair Research ZX
Spectrum. In Western Europe, Apple/Commodore/Atari were too expensive
for most private owners in the early 1980s, and while Apple made the
first sub-$1000 home computer, that was still the price of a family
car. Sinclair made the first sub-£100 one which ordinary families
could buy for their children. In the late 1980s, as the West moved to
16-bit machines, instead Eastern Europe adopted hundreds of clones of
the ZX Spectrum, which before the fall of Communism were affordable to
build at hobbyist scale. (There were many others, including PDP-11
home computers and things, but the Spectrum dominated by far.) I never
saw a single Apple II in private ownership in the 20th century. Not
one, not even among wealthy friends or acquaintances.

> Education really ramped
> in that time frame to get every student a chromebook.

I think that is a local observation and is false for the world in
general. I don't _know_ this but let me put it this way: in the last
decade in the computer industry, living in 3 different cities in 2
countries, and new citizenship of a third, including _making_ several
Chromebooks with Cloudready or Flex and giving them away, I have seen
*one* (1) in private ownership. ONE person I know personally owns one
of the things.

They still cost as much as a cheap used motorcycle over here, and
times are hard at present. People are more likely to be limping along
on old Win XP computers.

They are selling well but they are very much not one-per-student or
one-per-family in ROTW, no.

> I'd really like to see chromebook sales broken apart into consumer and education segments.

Also, regionally.

I think you would be shocked by the difference between North America,
Europe, the rest of the Anglosphere, and Asia.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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