Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 11:24 pm
Friday was a bad day. It’s a good thing that I only had to work a half day thanks to Good Friday. I won’t get into details, but suffice to say that it was one of those days that makes you want to go live on a farm and spend your days talking to corn rather than people. And to top it all off, my district’s new Apple sales rep had scheduled a meeting with me for 10:00 Friday in a moment of weakness when he called a few weeks ago. Just what I needed – An Apple sales rep in my office the day before the iPad launched. Ugh.
I rolled in late to the meeting, ushered him into my office that has most recently become a graveyard for a bunch of ancient colored iMacs (of course) and tossed my own aging Macbook covered with Ubuntu stickers on my desk. He was very well-dressed. I was in no mood for an impeccably dressed, Gen-Y, cheerful Mac lover. Besides, knowing that my already barebones budget was probably going to be cut by at least 50% within 2 weeks (major cuts from the state will do that to you), I wasn’t sure how I was going to afford replacement parts and a few SMART boards, let alone overpriced consumer toys and fancy ebook readers.
This was basically how I opened our conversation. Along with, “Sure, I know Apple makes nice products, but with no entry-level products, how am I going to inch any closer to 1:1 and maximize the number of computers in my students’ hands? How am I going to reach the next level of technology integration in the curriculum with Macs? And by the way, the DRM and regional content control on the iPad doesn’t sit well with me either.”
I was on a roll, utterly unconcerned that I wasn’t being fair to this guy. He was, after all, just doing his job. He just happened to set up a meeting with the wrong guy on the wrong day.
Read the original post:
Damn you, Apple Salesperson!
