I've been looking at both the Macbook Pro and iPad Air and have fallen in love with both devices but I feel like I can only get one. I currently have a 2015 Macbook Air and it is running fine. I don't do any intensive work on my computers, just school and web browsing, youtube, etc. I have a gaming desktop also for gaming and everything else. Baseball Radar is the essential radar gun app. Best of all, it is a free app. The app will feature ads in future releases and currently has a placeholder spot.
The power and flexibility of iPad gives students the freedom to explore and express new ideas whenever and wherever inspiration strikes. Mac has the power to bring their biggest ideas to life. And built-in apps and intuitive software create an incredibly personal learning experience for each student — one that can be as unique as they are.
Read about the impact schools are reporting with iPad.
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Learn about SRI Education’s research on the Apple and ConnectED Initiative
iPad is designed for complete freedom of expression and freedom of movement. With amazing apps and advanced built-in technologies, iPad can be anything students want it to be, and has the power to create anything students dream up. Yet it’s so intuitive, they can immediately take an idea and run with it.
Built on the same foundation as iOS, iPad has become a truly distinct experience. With powerful apps designed for the large Multi-Touch display. A redesigned Home Screen for information at a glance. New multitasking tools that let educators and students work exactly how they want with intuitive gestures. A desktop class browsing experience in Safari on iPad, so web apps work exactly as you're used to. And an updated Files app for powerful new ways to view, work on, and share files.
From the moment students pick up an iPad, they’re ready to make things happen by tapping, swiping, dragging, and dropping. Right away, they know how to move text, photos, and documents around like experts, whether they’re just learning how to spell or plotting trig functions. Multi-Touch is a profoundly immersive and responsive experience that gets students of all learning styles fully engaged in what they’re doing. And in what you’re teaching.
Like all our products, iPad is designed with a wide range of features to empower students of all abilities. Including Speak Screen, which reads content aloud to those who can’t see it, or who learn better with audio reinforcement. VoiceOver, which can walk students through actions such as opening a document or selecting a menu item. Guided Access and Safari Reader help students stay focused. And now Voice Control opens up an intuitive new way to navigate iPadOS — using only your voice.
As soon as you hand out an iPad, you’re putting incredible power in your students’ hands. They can edit a 4K video between classes. Build a 3D model of a steam engine. Or conduct a virtual orchestra to create the soundtrack for a presentation on classical music. And the new iPad with iPadOS makes all that work even faster than before.
Learning doesn’t always happen one app at a time. iPad OS expands the versatility of iPad with new ways to multitask and work with apps in multiple windows. Students can write a book report in Pages while referencing the novel in Books, keeping both apps active in Split View. Or they can research the life cycle of butterflies in Safari while sketching the larval stage in Keynote. Slide Over keeps all the apps they need at the ready. They can use the Dock to pull up favorite and recently used apps and projects, and switch between them on the fly. Drag and Drop lets students easily move content from one app to another. And new intuitive gestures make easy work of editing your work — with just your fingers.
Browsing the internet on iPad is so immersive it’s like holding the web in your hands. And now, powerful new features make Safari on iPadOS a desktop-class browsing experience. Enjoy the desktop version of websites like Google Docs and WordPress on your iPad exactly as you’re used to. And the new Download Manager lets you see and manage your downloaded files.
Augmented reality on iPad can transform how students learn about and connect with the world around them. Turn your classroom into the cosmos. Make a history lesson as vivid as the present by restoring ancient artifacts. Or even peer inside everyday objects to understand how they’re put together. iPad is built to move, packed with advanced technologies like accelerometers, powerful cameras, and an operating system designed with AR specifically in mind. All together, it creates an experience that’s simply not possible on other platforms.
Though it feels familiar, Apple Pencil opens up an entirely new way to use iPad1. It puts an incredible selection of tools and effects in a single instrument. And with iPadOS, Apple Pencil feels even more like writing on paper. So it’s perfect for taking notes, capturing observations on a field trip, shading detailed illustrations, marking up documents and web pages, and anything else students or teachers need to do.
Apple Pencil can be a pen, a paintbrush, a pastel stick, and more. And its sophisticated pressure and tilt sensors can achieve all the same subtle effects. Lightning-fast responsiveness creates a smooth and natural experience. So students can do everything from calligraphy to technical drawing, smudging to erasing, watercolor to oil painting — as if they were doing them all on real paper, but with capabilities that go far beyond the real thing.
Now it’s easy for students to write or draw right in any Pages, Numbers, or Keynote document. And teachers can instantly add their own notes to those documents, along with PDFs, photos, web pages, and more.
On a single device, students can capture a moment, an inspiration, or a scene, and immediately start working with it. Whether that’s filming the science fair for the school website, or editing a documentary for a history project. How to edit images on macbook. And the FaceTime camera makes it easy to communicate and collaborate with others.
The onscreen keyboard is always there for responding to email or taking a quick note. You can also use a physical keyboard1 if you want one. And with iPadOS, there are more ways to use both however you want.
iPad is incredibly thin and weighs just a pound, so it’s light enough to move about the classroom or take on any adventure outside school. And it’s as durable as it is portable, with an aluminum unibody construction to withstand true hands-on learning.
With up to 10 hours of battery life2, iPad lets kids be productive and creative throughout the school day. So they can go from doing their own field research, to drafting their final project, to handing it in — without having to stop to recharge.
Super-fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi means students can stay connected to their assignments and projects, no matter which classroom they’re in. They can browse websites as soon as teachers share them, stream a video lecture uninterrupted, collaborate on documents, and hand in even the most media-rich projects instantly.
iCloud safely stores all of a student’s documents and projects, keeping them up to date, secure, and accessible from any device. And any teacher or student with a Managed Apple ID gets 200GB of free iCloud storage.
iPadOS gives you powerful new ways to view and work on files. The Files app keeps all your work organized and easy to find in one place, whether its stored in the Cloud, on your iPad, or even a USB drive, so students can grab their files from anywhere. iPadOS lets you take quick actions like markup, and rotate files, and compress and uncompress ZIP archives.
With apps, iPad can be a laboratory, a movie studio, a time machine, even a spaceship. From free Apple-designed apps for doing and creating to the thousands of apps in the App Store designed specifically for learning, no matter the topic or the task at hand, there’s an app to make it even more engaging.
iPad comes packed with a collection of apps designed by Apple to take full advantage of advanced technologies like the Multi-Touch display, Camera, and accelerometer. iMovie brings the power of moving images to storytelling. GarageBand lets any student be in a band, even if they’ve never played an instrument. And Pages can transform written reports into interactive, digital books complete with photos and illustrations.
The App Store has thousands more iPad apps from education software developers. Students can discover how their world is made by touching, stretching, and twisting molecules or make a digital virtual creation and add it to the real world environment with Augmented Reality. Apps and services like Google Docs, Google Drive, Microsoft Office, and Dropbox work great on iPad too.
We’ve developed tools to make it easy for you to guide how your students use devices and apps in the classroom, and provide valuable insight into each student's progress. So you can focus on what’s most important: teaching.
We’ve designed programs to help teachers learn from one another, professional learning resources to build skills and confidence with iPad and Mac, and initiatives to recognize pioneers in education. All to empower you to be the best teacher you can be.
iPad and Mac are approved devices for administering secure exams. Both work with state online exams, including tests from the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and ACT Aspire. With Assessment Mode, assessment apps can automatically lock and configure iPad and Mac for testing, to prevent students from accessing other apps or features. There are also a range of formative learning apps that let you evaluate students’ long-term progress as they move toward statewide testing.
Mac has been empowering the world’s leading engineers, artists, scientists, designers, and musicians for decades. And it’s been doing the same for students too. Because it’s packed with power for their most ambitious ideas. High-performance graphics and processors, advanced storage and memory, and a breathtaking Retina display all come together to run pro-level apps for any passion.
The high resolution Retina Display on Mac is great for students who need the extra screen space for big projects, and the clarity to fine tune even the smallest detail. That’s essential if they demonstrate an interest in things like graphic design, engineering, or video editing.
With high-performance processors, cutting-edge graphics, and super fast Flash storage, Mac has the power to create and move massive project files and simultaneously run multiple pro-level apps. And all that power is encased in an incredibly thin and light design, so students and teachers can get work done almost anywhere.
Mac puts unprecedented performance into an impossibly thin design, yet still provides all-day battery life — up to 10 hours. So teachers and students are free to keep building, designing, developing, or composing, without being tethered to the closest outlet.
The full-size backlit keyboard is incredibly comfortable and precise for writing and coding. Unlike other notebooks, the spacious Force Touch trackpad on a Mac lets you click anywhere. And it knows what you want it to do based on intuitive gestures like pinch-to-zoom and subtle differences in pressure.
Every Mac comes with powerful apps for productivity and creativity built right in. The Mac App Store has thousands of additional apps designed specifically for education. And professional apps for everything from video editing to CAD illustration work beautifully on Mac.
Mac gives students more opportunities to grow professional skill sets. Apple-designed apps like Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X are great for video editors and musicians. And qualifying institutions can get them at a special price. For coders, there’s Xcode for building their very own apps. And third-party apps like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and AutoCAD work beautifully on Mac too.
Every Mac comes ready to create with Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, GarageBand, and Photos. Book reports and term papers look stunning. Spreadsheets become canvasses for visualizing data. Students have a creative studio to explore and present any idea. And teachers have everything they need to craft creative assignments and beautiful materials.
The Mac App Store makes it simple to browse and discover thousands more apps from education software developers, so students and teachers can dive deeper into almost any subject.
Mac does a lot. And when students use it with other Apple devices, it does even more. They can snap a photo on their iPhone or start an idea on an iPad, and pick it up on a Mac to make it even richer. iCloud safely stores all their documents, apps, and projects, keeping them up to date, secure, and accessible from any authorized Apple device.
When you connect Apple TV to your HDTV or projector, you introduce a new way of working together with your students. Take them through a lesson while freely moving about the classroom to provide individual support. Or encourage a student to share their work, which they can do instantly from their own iPad or Mac.
Apple Teacher is a free, self-paced professional learning program. Build skills on iPad and Mac that directly apply to activities with your students, and earn recognition for what you learn.
Get tutorials, lesson ideas, and join conversations with fellow teachers about how to use iPad and Mac to inspire creativity and enhance learning.
Our business doesn’t rely on invading anyone’s privacy or monetizing their data. And we’re especially protective of the privacy of students using our products. Where they take iPad, the websites they visit, and the apps they use — that’s personal information. And we don’t want it. That’s why our education products, like Apple School Manager, Schoolwork, and Managed Apple IDs, have privacy features and controls built in. We don’t sell student information and we never share it with third parties. And we never track students or build profiles based on their email or web browsing.
Learn more about Data and Privacy for Schools