Growing Up Mac: Taking Apple To The Enterprise

By Author: Mike Jones
Total Articles: 256

Stop at any Penn State coffee shop, and you’ll find free CompTIA exams hordes of students plugging away on laptops — writing papers, doing research or simply updating their Facebook profiles. But what’s perhaps most striking about this scene is the sea of illuminated Apple icons undoubtedly dancing before your eyes. To date, about 4,500 Penn State undergraduates use personal Apple laptops on campus, and like at many other universities, that number is growing.
According to data from market researcher SurveyU, one in five U.S. college students uses an Apple laptop. Perhaps most important, the use of Macs by college students has implications for their eventual workplace preferences.
“[At Penn State], we get lots of anecdotes that suggest that the software the students are exposed to in the curriculum and in the lab environment, that they become comfortable with and productive with, they do ask for in the workplace,” said Kevin Morooney, vice provost for information technology and CIO at Penn State.
According to a recent survey by Accenture, 20 percent of Millennial workers found employer-provided technology to be below their expectations, and one-third said they believe they should be able to use the machine of their choice at work. More than half noted that the presence of state-of-the-art technology at an employer’s site is a key factor in choosing a job.
“The Millennial generation [has] a high sense of entitlement,” explained Dan Coates, co-founder of SurveyU. “This entitlement generation is going to expect their employers to supply computing capabilities to their preferences.”
There are several reasons for Apple’s popularity at the Free Network+ study guides college level. The first is its inherent “cool factor,” Coates said.
“This generation very much is conformist,” he said. “They like to buy the same things; they find great comfort in co-purchasing. They also see the advertising in heavy rotation while they’re watching ‘Heroes’ and ‘House’ and all their other favorite TV programs.”
Another reason for the increased use of Macs among college students is the oft-cited “halo effect” from the iPod and iPhone.
“Their penetration [in the market] has caused more people to look at Mac,” said Peter Frankl, founder and COO of LANrev, a provider of PC and Mac life-cycle management solutions.
Further, it can be argued that Apple fundamentally understands the student lifestyle and reaches out specifically to students. For example, the Apple Education Discount initiative offers reduced prices on software, hardware and third-party vendor products.
“There’s no one more attuned to college students than Apple,” Coates said. “Many of the other PC manufacturers don’t have any educational discount programs that they aggressively market.”
Apple has even supported education through iTunes, providing free content such as lectures and language lessons. Its products also allow the younger crowd to participate and collaborate in the multimedia ccna exam download space with software such as iLife, Coates said.