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<blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 5072096" data-attributes="member: 8158">I think schools would be receptive to tablets, but if we're talking about them being in the position to issue them, a question arises: how willing is Apple to open up the tablet so that another party (be it the IT guy on staff or a contracted local vendor) can configure and manage the tablets to suit an organization's needs once they exceed the baked-in limitations of iBooks and iWork (and once we see them, we'll know what they are)?What you're describing is part and parcel of the direction IT has been going for a while using concepts like &quot;cloud services&quot; and &quot;virtual infrastructure&quot;. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see tablets dominant in all manner of organizations, not just educational. But it can't follow Apple's current model of unilateral authority. With my iPhone, if I want it to do something I take Apple at their word that there's an app for it. If I find out there is in fact no app for it, my option is to just sit and wait for someone to build one and then for Apple to approve it. If I want to reconfigure the UI, forget it. If I want to use a different data carrier, forget it. If I don't like getting capped at 10 MB downloads, too bad. Now, a lot of folks just shrug at this point and figure &quot;well, iBooks and iWork let me do what I need to do and the UI is at least easy to use&quot;. But an organization tend to rankle at incoveniences that individuals blithely suck up. And Apple isn't the only company capapble of making a tablet. In fact, if they can't figure out a way around the Flash limitation, they're pretty vulnerable to getting upstaged in terms of utility.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Felon, post: 5072096, member: 8158"] I think schools would be receptive to tablets, but if we're talking about them being in the position to issue them, a question arises: how willing is Apple to open up the tablet so that another party (be it the IT guy on staff or a contracted local vendor) can configure and manage the tablets to suit an organization's needs once they exceed the baked-in limitations of iBooks and iWork (and once we see them, we'll know what they are)? What you're describing is part and parcel of the direction IT has been going for a while using concepts like "cloud services" and "virtual infrastructure". I wouldn't be surprised at all to see tablets dominant in all manner of organizations, not just educational. But it can't follow Apple's current model of unilateral authority. With my iPhone, if I want it to do something I take Apple at their word that there's an app for it. If I find out there is in fact no app for it, my option is to just sit and wait for someone to build one and then for Apple to approve it. If I want to reconfigure the UI, forget it. If I want to use a different data carrier, forget it. If I don't like getting capped at 10 MB downloads, too bad. Now, a lot of folks just shrug at this point and figure "well, iBooks and iWork let me do what I need to do and the UI is at least easy to use". But an organization tend to rankle at incoveniences that individuals blithely suck up. And Apple isn't the only company capapble of making a tablet. In fact, if they can't figure out a way around the Flash limitation, they're pretty vulnerable to getting upstaged in terms of utility. [/QUOTE]

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