Apple pricing, the iPad, and the battle for student mindshare

Lots has been written about yesterday’s Apple Event. One core thread concerns Apple pricing. One prominent school of thought is that yesterday’s event was a swing and a miss by Apple. That Apple did not price the new iPad aggressively enough to make a dent in the Android/ChromeBook dominated education market.

While the facts on which those arguments are based are certainly true, they miss the point. The new iPad, even at $299, is certainly more expensive than the cheaper alternatives. No question of that.

But two things are lost by those arguments:

  1. The new iPad, though more expensive, is a head and shoulders better product than the cheaply produced alternatives. To me, there’s no comparison. If you want cheap, buy cheap. But in the long run, cheap will out. Cheap will cost you more in support time and effort, cheap will cost you more in terms of product life.

  2. Yesterday’s event was about so much more than a new iPad. Apple rolled out an entire system of device and curriculum management, new software for collaboration (Pages, most specifically), and a phenomenal computer science curriculum that will help many schools that want one but can’t afford to pay the talent to come in and create one. And all that stuff I just mentioned? It’s free.

Google has a significant lead here. And the Android tablets and ChromeBooks are clearly cheaper. Google has a set of tools that are also free, and they work. So this is no easy get for Apple.

But that said, the experience of using an iPad with a Logitech Crayon or Apple Pencil is creatively freeing. There’s just no comparison between the products when you consider the potential it unleashes in students.

Take a look at the video embedded below, which Apple ran at the end of yesterday’s event. To me, what Apple has delivered is worthy of consideration.