Education, Technology “Journalism,” and the Apple PR Machine
I wasn't planning to write anything about Apple's media event yesterday. I tuned in to the livestream, but when all the announcements were made, it seemed clear to me that nothing that was revealed on stage in San Jose was that significant to education.
Context & Ripple Effects
The piece lands one year after the New York Times documented Apple wooing educators with trips to Silicon Valley, part of a sustained courtship of the education market. The October 2012 San Jose event gave that courtship a new centerpiece: an iPad mini at $329, with Phil Schiller publicly defending the price against cheaper devices from Google and Amazon.
Audrey Watters' argument is that the event contained nothing significant for schools and that much of the tech press covered it anyway on Apple's terms — a critique of the PR-driven coverage cycle itself. Its pickup by DVICE, Inside Higher Ed, and TechPinons shows the argument traveling beyond the edtech niche into both consumer-tech and higher-education audiences.
First-order effects
- School technology buyers weighing tablets now have Apple's entry point fixed at $329, with Schiller explicitly framing the premium against Google's and Amazon's cheaper devices rather than letting the price stand unexplained.
- Edtech commentators gain a concrete case study for their standing complaint: coverage that relays Apple's announcements without testing them against classroom needs.
Second-order effects
- Google and Amazon's lower-priced tablets become the explicit reference point in education procurement debates, pushing Apple onto defensive value arguments instead of default authority.
- Inside Higher Ed's pickup signals an education readership for skeptical coverage, giving outlets a reason to staff edtech criticism rather than syndicate the event-cycle consensus.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's education strategy remains reliant on relationship-building of the kind the Times described in 2011, while an independent edtech press consolidates as a permanent counterweight to its event-driven publicity — two parallel narratives about the same products.
The trend: Apple's education push is running into a maturing independent edtech press that judges its events by classroom impact rather than announcement volume.