May 3, 2002 Posted: 7:18 AM HKT (2318 GMT)
Apple this week unveiled the eMac, the first computer made just for the education market. It looks like Apple's iMac, but it has a bigger screen, a faster processor, and it costs just under $1,000.
James Hattori went to Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, and talked with Apple CEO Steve Jobs to get the lowdown on this high-tech educational tool.
JAMES HATTORI: This is the new eMac. Tell me how significant it is for Apple and why.
STEVE JOBS: Apple's been in the education market for 25 years and really pioneered it. We had a lot of schools come to us and say we love your products, but we want one just for us. And we love the original iMac… But we want a bigger screen on it. We want a 17" screen instead of a 15". We want a G4 processor in it so that it runs a lot of your applications even faster. But we love the all-in-one enclosure of the iMac. And we don't want it to be deeper than the iMac because our classrooms are set up, you know, the desks aren't that deep. We worked really hard and came up with the eMac, which is exactly the product that they asked us to build… So it's a product just for education—for kindergarten all the way up through universities.
HATTORI: Is it a bit of a risky strategy producing a product just for a specific market segment?
JOBS: Education is a pretty big market segment, so we think they're going to be thrilled with it. And hopefully they're going to buy a lot and it'll be just fine.
HATTORI: Apples have been long ensconced in classrooms across the country, and I know you've acknowledged you sort of lost your way a little bit and you've sort of said that you want to get back on track. Is this part of your strategy? How important is education for Apple?
JOBS: Oh, it's very important. About half the computers used in education are Apples, so we have a legacy there and we have a great business there. So, it's very, very important… Education is very, very budget conscious and wants to buy the most computers they can for the dollar so the most kids can get exposure to them. So, this was our attempt to take all the great things of that new iMac, except for the flat display, and be able to bring them into the classroom a little cheaper… We want to provide amazing tools for these kids to learn. That's why on every eMac we bundle in all these incredible digital lifestyle apps like iMovie, so the kids can literally take their digital camcorder and plug it in and then edit digital movies. I mean, we see kids doing that all over the country now in classrooms. And teachers have integrated that into the curriculums. Kids give video reports instead of written reports. iPhoto is another app that comes with this. Kids can take their digital cameras and easily manage their collection of photographs and share them and send them over the internet. As well as things like iTunes, so they can have digital music libraries on these things.
HATTORI: That's an interesting point because a lot of studies have indicated that computer use among kids is sort of limited because either the applications aren't there or the teachers don't necessarily know how to use it and integrate it properly into their lessons.
JOBS: I'll give you an example, the medium that we grew up with—the primary medium—was the written word so we could consume it, we could read novels but we could also write it, right? You and I can author if we have to. Today's kids, their primary medium is video. They know how to consume it, movies, television—but none of them know how to author it. And so our society is moving into, is really already in, this phase now where no one knows how to author in the primary medium that we communicate in.
HATTORI: Products like this that are more, as you say, affordable so that there isn't an issue of this district can afford it, this district can't, this student gets the benefit and this student doesn't.
JOBS: Yes, again, you know when you buy computers for a classroom they don't get to replace them every year or every two years. They have to live with them for five years. That's their funding cycle. And so they said, "Look, we have to get this thing under a thousand dollars. But we can afford to pay up to that because we have to live with these things for five years. We don't want to buy something that's going to be obsolete in nine months."
HATTORI: So it doesn't bother you when some people say Macs have a reputation of being a little pricier than other machines?
JOBS: Well, you know, so do Sony products. And you get what you pay for.
HATTORI: This will be available shortly?
JOBS: This will be available, end of May.
HATTORI: Do you expect a lot of volume initially or is this going to be a slow rollout?
JOBS: Well, we're in the heart of the education buying season; it's just started. The starting guns fired in April. It goes on for the next six months. So we think the timing's pretty perfect, and if we're lucky we'll get a lot of orders
Du bist ein Schatz