This is part 2 of a series of posts documenting a visit to Apple headquarters in February, 2005. For the full series, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. and part 6.
Holy cow.
My brain is melting.
We just had an eleven-hour marathon day of executive briefings on the Apple campus. And amazingly, it was all useful content. Lots and lots and lots of good stuff. I’m way too tired to blog about it right now, though, and it’s clearly going to take me a few posts to get at even a significant percentage of it. And some of it won’t come out at all, because we signed non-disclosure agreements. To be clear, the Apple people were very mellow about the whole issue, and the information they seemed concerned about protecting was all stuff about collaborations with other organizations where they don’t have permission to publicize those partnerships (yet). Maybe .1% of the content falls into that category. Nevertheless, I have asked our local Apple relationship manager to review my coverage of the day before I post it to make sure that I’m clear on what the boundaries are. So all in all, it will probably take me a few days to get this all out.
In the meantime, here are a few general observations about Apple:
- iTunes U is not what you think it is–especially if you think it’s evil: I was looking for the much-rumored proprietary lock-in, but I didn’t see it. And once you understand Apple’s business model for higher education, the fears of some dark DRM or proprietary format conspiracy evaporate pretty quickly.
- If you’re a believer in all the Learning 2.0 stuff, then you should be studying Apple closely: Apple is all about “democratization of digital expression.” Really and truly, they get it. And the way they define a “learning environment” (as distinct from an LMS) is very expansive and progressive.
- iLife ’06 is mega wicked cool: We had quite a few Mac skeptics in our contingent when we arrived. Not so when we left. I asked the group how many of them would be more likely to buy a Mac now, and almost every single person said they would. In fact, several said unoquivically that they would go out and buy Macs right away–people who had never used a Mac before and had never been attracted to one before. I attribute that conversion almost entirely to the iLife demo. It was so cool, so powerful, and so easy that people were literally giggling with delight. Un-freakin’-believable.
OK, that’s it. I’m going to collapse now. More soon.
Michael Feldstein is the founder of e-Literate who currently works as the Senior Program Manager for MindTap at Cengage Learning. For more information, see his profile page.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Apple's Stake in Higher Education This is part 3 of a series of posts documenting...
- Four Key Questions for the Apple Education Announcement There is growing buzz online about Apple’s planned media event...
- Apple Visit, Day 1 This is part 1 of a series of posts documenting...
- Why Apple May Beat Microsoft to Workflow Learning The evolution of workflow learning follows the evolution of workflow...
- More on Apple's Workflow Taxonomy More good stuff: The prerelease version of Automator currently comes...
