Apples for the Teachers

Apples for the Teachers

From almost the beginning of the company, apple helped bring computers into schools.

When Mike Markkula’s daughter was in grade school in 1978, he began to believe a computer could help her learn maths. Inspired by the belief, the Apple Education Foundation was formed to give the money and computers to teachers and others who wanted to write educational software.

It was a clever move; more educational software was available from the Apple II computers, more schools bought them than other brands, and many young people got their first introduction to computing on an Apple. Then, because kids were familiar with the computers at school, they asked their parents to buy them.

In early 1980s, Steve Jobs tried to convince Congress to pass a bill to allow Apple to donate one hundred thousand computers to school in exchange for a tax deduction. Jobs called it the kids can’t wait law, but it never got out of the senate. California, however, got on board and Apple ended up donating about ten thousand computers to the state’s schools.

The company tried to build the same kind of brand loyalty between Macintosh and college students, using universities to commit millions of dollars to bring personal computing to their programs. Again, as a result, Apple’s computers were the top choice on campus.

Even today, Apple gives a discount to college students who but its computers. And in 2011, it arranged for the nine thousand college graduates who are part of tech for America to each receive a refurbished iPad.