We might be going with Macs :(

[paulkerton]

... we do

You're still ignoring the "industry standard" point.

 

After all, if you have a child who wants to become a Formula One racer, you don't stick them straight in an F1 car, you start them in a go-kart.

[Norphy]

It'll be Logic Pro, I've had a similar battle recently and lost because the teacher only knows how to use Logic pro and isn't willing to learn Ableton/Reaper/FLStudio

 

Industry standard is a weak and lazy excuse pushed by teachers who ironically aren't willing to learn. All that does is enforce monopolies and denies innovation.

 

It's worth bearing in mind that it might not be an unwillingness to learn. Quite often, a teacher or a department has a curriculum or their teaching materials built around a specific piece of software. Substituting it for another piece of software takes time and resources which the teacher or department may not have.

 

If someone told me to rip out my AD and Exchange* servers and replace them with OpenLDAP and Zimbra because they're cheaper, I'd be pretty peeved. Yes, they're both perfectly good products but I don't have experience or training in them and putting them in and migrating everything over to them would not be a trivial process.

 

*I've not touched on-prem Exchange in over six years, I'm just using that as an example

 

/edit

 

Also, at the end of the day, the teachers are there to do a job and if they're going to do that job and do it well, they're going to need tools that they're happy with and familiar with. Forcing them over to another product is going to do nothing but harm the people getting their education. Chances are that these teachers have a lot of experience with teaching with their favourite product and know it back to front. Forcing them onto something else is going to be an adjustment and it will reduce their effectiveness. Why should they have to do that? It's not laziness, that's just the way it is.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Norphy

[the_quick]

I think Logic Pro not necessary is now industry standard, we had this conversation before with Music dept and did some research - Ableton was being voice as software of choice for many musicians. I'm not in that industry, so only can rely on what I read.

Another matter is, we are a secondary school, not a music specialist, we are not really here to prepare for the job in a music industry. They should do that at a college.

 

Why should they have to do that? It's not laziness, that's just the way it is.

Best value for money - taxpayers money

 

No point of discussing really as I think decision has been made, I just need to find the best path forward. Thanks again for all your input.

Edited March 16, 2022 by the_quick

[psydii]

Logic is not the industry standard DAW by any stretch of the imagination. If you want to use that argument then you would teach them Pro Tools.

::looks at 3 top 10 hits that were mostly produced in our mac/logic based studio::

 

Ok, so the chap that did that now used pro tools and now has many more top 40 hits to his name, but the grassroots-to-riches path is well trodden and Logic is very much a part of that.

 

Also we are running current versions of Logic, despite not having paid *anything* for nearly a decade. If you go all in (FCX LPX), and take a multi-refresh-cycle view, macs for media and music are quite possibly better value for money.

Edited March 16, 2022 by psydii

[LeMarchand]

It's worth bearing in mind that it might not be an unwillingness to learn. Quite often, a teacher or a department has a curriculum or their teaching materials built around a specific piece of software. Substituting it for another piece of software takes time and resources which the teacher or department may not have.

 

In my school the planning materials were designed for Windows, but they decided iPads were cooler .

 

I agree that that familiarity needs to be taken into account, but I'm sure we all have at least one staff member trying to use a bit of software that they learnt at school and has long since been updated/replaced by something better.

[psydii]

We have Mac's in our music department and they work very well, in fact I hardly have to do anything. We just get them on the wireless and have local logins for each one that are locked down.

 

Students just use onedrive to access their documents and sharepoint for the music department files.

 

Works very well to be fair.

 

Are you syncing live Logic Pro X projects via the OneDrive Client? (i.e. they are working on the project on the local copy that is sync'd by the OneDrive Client, and *not* on a copy of the project that they manually copy back to SharePoint each lesson). If so can you confirm they open without errors on the next machine?

[paulkerton]

Substituting it for another piece of software takes time and resources which the teacher or department may not have.

If there is money for Macs, there is money and time for training.

 

If someone told me to rip out my AD and Exchange* servers and replace them with OpenLDAP and Zimbra because they're cheaper, I'd be pretty peeved. Yes, they're both perfectly good products but I don't have experience or training in them and putting them in and migrating everything over to them would not be a trivial process.

 

That isn't what is happening though.

 

Also, at the end of the day, the teachers are there to do a job and if they're going to do that job and do it well, they're going to need tools that they're happy with and familiar with. Forcing them over to another product is going to do nothing but harm the people getting their education. Chances are that these teachers have a lot of experience with teaching with their favourite product and know it back to front. Forcing them onto something else is going to be an adjustment and it will reduce their effectiveness. Why should they have to do that? It's not laziness, that's just the way it is.

 

So by that reasoning I'm guessing we should just leave teachers who are teaching Visual Basic to it?

Imagine changing music teachers every two years, and having to swap between Microsoft Windows with Pro Tools and Mac with Logic Pro every 24 months based on the whim of the teacher. Swapping out SMART and Promethean at will and having a mix between them both. What a complete and utter disaster of a strategy that would be.

[KK20]

I was a solid Windows person, MCSD qualified and been administering networks since NT4 citrix days. I was told to get a suite of ipads a few years ago now and didnt like the sound of it, we also have a few macs. They are easy to sort out, you simply need a good MDM and all will fall into place. Nowadays you even get office 365 SSO with the microsoft authenticator app.

 

So by that reasoning I'm guessing we should just leave teachers who are teaching Visual Basic to it?

 

Visual basic is a fine language! Very forgiving to beginners and codes nicely as VB.NET. In fact we teach our younger students "small basic" as it is very easy to get into, can get results quickly and has a lot of resources. The concepts are easily transferable and still relevant to industry.

 

Imagine changing music teachers every two years, and having to swap between Microsoft Windows with Pro Tools and Mac with Logic Pro every 24 months based on the whim of the teacher.

IT is a tool, if the tool does not fit the curriculum and is not fit for purpose then it needs to be changed. Not on a whim but certainly for wahtever course/qualification/board requirement is needed. If the budget is there then why not? It isnt an onerous task to set up a room of Macs - not much more than setting up a new room of PCs. Intune and JAMF arent a million miles away from each other and once you get the strategy correct it is not hard to get working.

Edited March 16, 2022 by KK20

[2097]

We have macs in both Media and Music , Limited apps - I just installed them manually ( we do have SCCM )

 

I actually used Centrify for logins , and works great . AD credentials and map's shares to their desktop also controls restrictions on the device . The version i have actually have GP extensions , so you can edit settings that way

 

I actually created a Music share and created a server based script to create a folder for each user and assign appropriate permissions for that pupil only and their teacher ( they are also sorted into year groups ) , also picks up any new user added to the system ( it runs daily )

 

Really simple stuff i suppose, but then again they are pretty simple machines compare to windows 10.

 

One thing to note ! if using "Final Cut Pro" don't allow it to save to a network , its too intense for more than a few machines and will cause issues. I believe in the end i created a script for saving locally with some security rights.

[Brimstone]

"Almost faints at the Apple love in this thread"

 

If you want starting point to understand how Jamf MDM works, try the Jamf 100 course it's completely free of charge..

 

https://www.jamf.com/training/online-training/100/

[Guest Guest]

Thought it was worth me contributing to this as I'm someone that used to manage Macs as a SysAdmin; but also now work as a creative professional in the Media & Music industries.

 

For me, Macs are great. I used to manage them back in the days when Sierra was the newest OS (so understand things have changed slightly since then). Combine them w/ a decent enough MDM & you'll have little to no issues.

 

In terms of wider industry practice, all (bar about 1 or 2) studios I've visited/worked within use Macs. Logic Pro isn't commonplace at all in bigger studios (that have consoles etc in) as Pro Tools is still the industry standard & what I was expected to learn (and still to this day keep up-to-date with the training of).

 

Logic is great & definitely has it's place in Education. Avid is several years behind w/ it's feature-set of Pro Tools. It's still not native on Apple Silicon & runs under Rosetta 2. However, the performance is still incredible.

 

As a TL;DR: Mac's are great, if you've just got a classroom full of them - Logic will be fine. If you have a recording studio space, perhaps look at getting one that can run Pro Tools so Students benefit from having some industry standard knowledge when it comes to progressing to University. The most important point tho is that nobody really cares what DAW anyone uses in the wider industry. Once you learn to be a "producer" or creative - the skills you learn will translate well into any piece of software you turn your hand to.

 

Happy to take any further questions.

Edited March 17, 2022 by Guest

[Davit2005]

Only ever got into MACs as the Media teacher at my first Edu role was struggling to use them but we had the job of re-imaging them but that was 10 years back. We had a lot MACs at a previous place which was a college. They never seemed to give us much issue but the teaching staff were very good with them and as a result we never really had much to do with them or support them even apart form provisioning the network connectivity. They did have JAMF and I did a very small bit of work with it, seemed OK to use.

 

In my experience it comes down to the teaching staff, how MAC savvy they are and that they are buying them for the right reason. Make sure you raise the question of support/training and the software tools to manage them.

Edited March 17, 2022 by Davit2005

[dmj]

The only real problem I had with macs ( University - so over 1000 of them) was that the upgrade cycle comes JUST after summer so there's a mad scramble to get the latest macos out (That and the keychain manager getting corrupted occasionally). As other said it's not a massive PITA to support them. Think of it as your first step into the world of Unix-like systems - after all *nix does power the backend to pretty much every large corp you care to mention. It's a good skill to have.

 

I'm not really convinced by the costs argument, historically macs tend to last a lot longer than PC's, especially lower end or used ones, largely because they are lower power ARM . The TCO comes mainly from the overhead of managing a different O/S, which can be an issue with few people around to do it.

 

Anyway the point I wanted to make was that there are other considerations that a head teacher has to give; supporting the teachers (who want macs) is one of them - and so is the perceived marketing benefit for potential students. I'm thinking retaining students for A level, but also to show parents around and look at the shiny shiny!! I know it sounds stupid to techs, but HT's face real pressure getting student intake up as it translates directly to money. 90% of the parents aren't going to refuse to send their students to a school because it's got a shiny mac suite, but maybe some are tempted to send them (further) if the school has. With each student 'worth' £4-5k per year for 5 years, it's going to pay for itself fairly quickly.

Edited March 17, 2022 by dmj

[Davit2005]

I actually created a Music share and created a server based script to create a folder for each user and assign appropriate permissions for that pupil only and their teacher ( they are also sorted into year groups ) , also picks up any new user added to the system ( it runs daily )

 

This is what we did at a previous place. Our script would check AD daily for students that were members of specific AD groups and then create a folder for each of the students with relevant permissions and the staff to have read access. But the students used local storage as scratch disks for video work.

[Sonic007]

Whatever you decide, make sure you replace the shiny lovely keyboards and mice with standard ones as they'll either get stolen or keys ripped off, damaged etc.

[the_quick]

Thanks everyone.

 

We are a secondary school, o A levels at all. This is for GCSE Music. I don't know enough about music subject to argue if they needed or not. The only argument from my side is initial cost, replacement cycle and possible new knowledge (but it looks easy enough)

[Face-Man]

As a mac user and having to support them in schools my tips would be

 

1) Any budget to buy hardware needs to include the cost of MDM and training for you don't accept "we don't have the money" no money no macs

2) DEP and ASM are really good for M1 hardware

3) Check out https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/ https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/ for reimaging quickly

4) MacOSX does not apply NTFS permissions on folders if a mac can see a share a mac user can browse it's contents

5) If badly setup the local hard drives can get full of student work which is not saved anywhere else

6) Mac mini and PC monitor + mac compatible wired keyboard and mouse can save money on iMac's

7) Never use iMac wireless mice and keyboards in schools classrooms

 

We have bought from Toucan (now part of academia) they always seem to have provided good value and importantly after sales support.

[kidpressingbuttons]

Go through a proper Apple reseller to get education pricing. No need to spend thousands on base level macs!

[Davit2005]

As a mac user and having to support them in schools my tips would be

 

1) Any budget to buy hardware needs to include the cost of MDM and training for you don't accept "we don't have the money" no money no macs

2) DEP and ASM are really good for M1 hardware

3) Check out https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/ https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/ for reimaging quickly

4) MacOSX does not apply NTFS permissions on folders if a mac can see a share a mac user can browse it's contents

5) If badly setup the local hard drives can get full of student work which is not saved anywhere else

6) Mac mini and PC monitor + mac compatible wired keyboard and mouse can save money on iMac's

7) Never use iMac wireless mice and keyboards in schools classrooms

 

We have bought from Toucan (now part of academia) they always seem to have provided good value and importantly after sales support.

 

Good points and this is one to look out for

 

4) MacOSX does not apply NTFS permissions on folders if a mac can see a share a mac user can browse it's contents

 

You will prob have do something trick with the permissions if you have pointed their documents to a Windows Server share that is used for all users documents.

[Brimstone]

As a mac user and having to support them in schools my tips would be

 

1) Any budget to buy hardware needs to include the cost of MDM and training for you don't accept "we don't have the money" no money no macs

2) DEP and ASM are really good for M1 hardware

3) Check out https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/ https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/ for reimaging quickly

4) MacOSX does not apply NTFS permissions on folders if a mac can see a share a mac user can browse it's contents

5) If badly setup the local hard drives can get full of student work which is not saved anywhere else

6) Mac mini and PC monitor + mac compatible wired keyboard and mouse can save money on iMac's

7) Never use iMac wireless mice and keyboards in schools classrooms

 

We have bought from Toucan (now part of academia) they always seem to have provided good value and importantly after sales support.

 

8) Dont expect Macs to able to use a network based home folder for users for FCP, iMovie, Garageband or Logic Pro. These applications will give you grief if you try to do this.

[3s-gtech]

Garageband will work, at least in my testing up to 10.13 (not got any student machines on later OS!) That’s with limited tracks and complexity.

 

The others, totally agreed.

[junz]

We have a classroom full of Imacs which were deployed using DeployStudio. I am planning to enroll them into an MDM (Moysle) but am worried about how I am going to get the sound files for Logic Pro and Garageband pre-installed and indexed so that every user is not prompted to download sound files for these programs when a new user logs in.

 

Does anyone have any methods on how to download the sounds for the above software using an MDM like Moysle?

[georgeescott]

We have a classroom full of Imacs which were deployed using DeployStudio. I am planning to enroll them into an MDM (Moysle) but am worried about how I am going to get the sound files for Logic Pro and Garageband pre-installed and indexed so that every user is not prompted to download sound files for these programs when a new user logs in.

Does anyone have any methods on how to download the sounds for the above software using an MDM like Moysle?

 

Mentioned in your Mac Management thread about this, your best bet will still be https://github.com/carlashley/appleloops. You can use it as a script or a pkg.

 

You could also setup content caching on a Mac to speed up the download process on other Macs.

 

The #musicsupport channel in the macadmins slack is a good place for advice on this too!

Edited March 27, 2022 by georgeescott

[Alis_Klar]

We have Mac's in our music department and they work very well, in fact I hardly have to do anything. We just get them on the wireless and have local logins for each one that are locked down. Students just use onedrive to access their documents and SharePoint for the music department files.

 

Works very well to be fair.

 

I think the AD join is easier than years ago when I last looked into it but for serverless schools or if you are using OneDrive/GDrive it seems a no brainer to use that rather than use SMB shares.

 

Also Chromebooks rock! Maybe not for music production yet.

[junz]

We have macs in both Media and Music , Limited apps - I just installed them manually ( we do have SCCM )

 

I actually used Centrify for logins , and works great . AD credentials and map's shares to their desktop also controls restrictions on the device . The version i have actually have GP extensions , so you can edit settings that way

 

I actually created a Music share and created a server based script to create a folder for each user and assign appropriate permissions for that pupil only and their teacher ( they are also sorted into year groups ) , also picks up any new user added to the system ( it runs daily )

 

Really simple stuff i suppose, but then again they are pretty simple machines compare to windows 10.

 

One thing to note ! if using "Final Cut Pro" don't allow it to save to a network , its too intense for more than a few machines and will cause issues. I believe in the end i created a script for saving locally with some security rights.

 

 

Would you be willing to share the script you used?