Moscow Schools Follow Google and Promote Usage of Apple

A short while ago the blogosphere and even traditional media were abuzz the decision of Google that from now on the employees of the internet giant may use operating systems from any developer but one – the exception being Microsoft. The reason is quite obvious: security concerns everyone seems to share about Microsoft. Of course there is also an underlying reason of the more and more visible competition between Google and Microsoft but this is not widely discussed yet so the reason claimed most frequently is still the security.

Of course in most cases choice of an operating system is a very personal decision as one needs to consider the applications to be used, the security of it all, the specific uses or even countries where you may need to use the computer with the OS. In many cases an operating system can also be determined by the IT department of the company you work in – and the decision becomes not that personal. In yet other cases your selection of the operating system may be influenced by the place you study in, like it will soon happen in the new schools in Moscow, Russia where tenders specifically demand suppliers to deliver Apple computers.

Here you need to understand that every time a new school is constructed in Russia, quite a number of tenders is involved to determine the best contractor and the best supplier for a specific job or a specific product (I won’t go into how ‘fair’ some of such tenders will be because corruption is a well-known problem for Russia and hardly the topic for this particular post). One of such tenders is the tender to select the computer equipment supplier for a school. And we have recently got to know that tender conditions for some of the newly-built schools in Moscow demand that the computers to be supplied should specifically be Macs.

Now at least a quarter of the new Moscow schools to be opened this fall for school children will be equipped with Mac computers, including MacBook laptops and Mac Mini desktops. There are also other items to be supplied, including printers, faxes or even other computers – but they all have unspecified brands so the supplier will have to come up with a suggestion that will be the most appealing to the city authorities. But one thing is certain: some Mac computers should be included in the quotation. For now Moscow government has not commented on the situation or why the authors of the tender documentation in the government have specifically decided to grant such favors to the US company.

An interesting part here is that Russian legislation demands that when a specific brand is given in a tender documentation, it should be accompanied by words “or a similar one” unless such supplied goods will simply not comply with the already existing infrastructure so it will be impossible to use the newly purchased goods in the existing environment. In this particular situation no mentions of equivalent products were made so the government definitely wants Apple to be used in the new Moscow schools. And the rumors are that in the future the number of such schools will only be growing so I would not be surprised if discarded PCs in existing schools will also be replaced by new computers manufactured by Apple as well.

The most lucrative thing for Apple is that this habit of using Apple right from the very first days with a computer at school will influence future buying decisions for the kids when they grow up and buy their first computers: unlike those people trained on Windows machines from the very beginning, they won’t have to deal with any fears or uncertainty involved in migrating to Mac OS as Mac OS will be everything they know anyway. And Apple will be winning a larger market share here so that our president willless lonely with his love to Apple.

Via (in Russian)