That depends...Officially, no. However, if you know what to type into the URL bar, then you can get HE discount...Just cross your fingers that Apple doesn't get in touch with the uni...

Yes but as a student wouldn't you already have a computer and an iPod Touch or even iPhone?

Considering most universities dont teach objective C or use Macs for education on computing courses where is the advantage of owning one, the only students I knew who had a mac and did a computing related course did Multimedia

You can't develop for iDevice without a legit Mac, it's probably THE most expensive barrier of entry for creating/submitting an app (short of buying a 3g iPad for test)

I was thinking of students in general. The students with my daughters (music) course all have computers and mobile phones, I even know of students with iPhones (spoilt by their mum). So it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they might have a mac and iPhone (doubling up for testing).

Most of the computing students I know have Android based phones or Blackberries...Even the ones with Macs.

And how many of those would then have any programming knowledge short of making a basic web site?

Practically none

Most of the computing students aren't bothered by macs and go for windows or Linux as it's standard on uni machines and it's a LOT cheaper to get a device, also unlike Apple, Microsoft give a LOT of the development tools (full versions of Visual Studio, SDKs and tutorial kits, access to submit on the WM Marketplace/develop on the 360 with XNA) to any student for free, it's also common in workplaces which makes it common to teach with to get students used to it.

Strangely enough given my job I see a lot of computing students. Of the ones I've seen I'd say Dell is probably top, with Sony and Apple running close behind. Lot more of the Asian students seem to have macs for some reason.


I really shouldn't laugh but the very idea that Universities are organised enough within themselves to have 'standard' machines does amuse me. We have five faculties at our place. Each faculty can't even agree on a standard specification between the schools within it, let alone agree between the five of them as to what it could be. In fact getting Academics to agree on anything is akin to trying to herd monkeys.


Apple give their development environment away free to anyone who has hardware that can run it and the documentation is all on the web, along with a huge range of tutorials and examples. Any college or University can get a 'institution developer licence' from Apple that means they get the £99 fee waived for all students, with the restriction they can't actually sell the apps they make for money - I haven't checked the terms of the deal on MS's academic licensing but I'd be extremely surprised if they let you make money off the stuff they give away free and once you leave the institution the select scheme licence is invalid and you must buy it all again at full price if you wish to continue anyway. Plus of course nobody in academia pays anywhere near high street price for Apple kit. Right now I can buy a mac laptop for 500 quid and they will throw an ipod touch in for free. Assuming I have to buy the ipod or an xbox 360 if I want to develop for them, do I really want to be running visual studio on a 300 quid PC laptop?

If you're actually looking at the 'startup cost' of developing for iPhone versus 360/PC indie and you have access to the academic marketplace there's not a heck of a lot of difference either way. I suspect both companies work very hard to try to ensure the other doesn't get any significant advantage in this regard.

What MS do is good (and they actually do more things as well, they sponsor academic games development competitions for example) but Apple do provide pretty much the same foundations and the bare fact is you stand about the same chance of making a living as an iPhone developer or a PC indie developer. At the end of the day if you're looking for a job as a games coder later on nobody is going to care which platform you developed your portfolio app on, they're just looking for a level of competence and some evidence of creative thought. If you're looking to start up a business of your own it's a pretty arguable point whether the PC indie scene is any easier to make money in than the iApp development scene either.

Any way you do it it's going to be fairly hard, IMO, and unless you're unfathomably lucky you're going to spend the early part of it living off beans if you're lucky (or doing a 'proper job' while you get it off the ground). What minor differences exist in the dev environments and platforms isn't going to be anywhere near the top of your list of problems.

Jon

Maybe they are a lot cheaper in Asia or the Asian language support is superior? It's the only thing I can think of but I did see it at uni too

I guess that university is different then, at mine all standard machines running XP have a set spec, in communal work areas as well as a lot of the labs the machines all dual boot XP/Ubuntu (XP from a very badly implemented image) with the standard kit, only in individual labs does software differ depending on use (and multimedia computers having an external sound card, second monitor and tablet each)



A mac laptop for £500? New starts over £800 including the discount for a student assuming the 6% standard discount

£800 buys a lot of normal machine laptop

Although anyone who devs on a laptop unless rich needs to reassess their priorities. Windows Mobile allows you to register, submit and sell apps from what I can tell (mine was free but if my app was charged for I needed to provide tax details). XNA gives you the option to develop but not submit on the 360, however you get full PC engine access for free which can implement a lot of the same features.

Nobody in academia might pay retail..... but it's rarely a student that buys their expensive hardware, it's usually a parent involved for most of it.

Saying you don't want to run VS on a £300 notebook is moot, you just said yourself the Macbook is at least £200 more so £500 gets you quite a capable machine. I used my £550 notebook that is over a year old now to dev during my final year with both 64 bit applications and XNA development for a group project and 32bit with my final year project.

Your assumption is incorrect. If you work/study at the right higher ed institution, you can get minimum 20% off Apple hardware and some truly lunatic discounts on software. There's essentially a group of UK universities that have a collective negotiation agreement that allows them a much stronger bargaining position with suppliers - it's called The North West Universities Purchasing Consortium.

And you neglected to consider the 'free iPod when you buy a mac' deal they run every summer. if you're planning on doing garage iApp development, that effectively knocks ~£150 off the price of the mac option compared to the PC option.

Jon

So a limited offer, to limited students at limited institutions...... My assumption is still correct considering how limited that offer is

Your laptop argument of developing on a £300 laptop is still £200+ off though, even then £400 gets an i3 laptop with 4gb RAM which will be plenty for most university programming tasks

The problem is that many businesses will need far more capital to get started especially if they need premises. Even a marketing business run from home will require some out lays in terms of reaching people especially customers. That will still add more debt to a students education.

Yes, 'limited' to roughly half a million students and for ever, as oppose to MS's wonderful free offer which they take back the second you get your graduation certificate. Which is more 'limited'? And I really don't see how 6% compared to 20% is 'correct' in any universe.


We're not talking about 'university' programming tasks, because if you're on the University programme, you can't use either of them to make any money. What we're talking about is then transferring those resources into a means of putting a roof over your head. In that case, the price of Visual Studio alone puts PC development out of the budget we're talking about.

Jon