> Not just durability, but ergonomics.

Somehow while spending the most per capita of any nation on the planet, American schools are in a perpetual budget crunch. It's about getting internet access not whether the trackpad is good. You think a chromepad is crappy - have you ever tried to do something in Blackboard?

> If schools are found to be neglecting a minimum standard of care

They won't be. Pizza sauce is considered a vegetable.

An aside: Why do school board super-intendants and administration make more money than teachers themselves? I believe they shouldn't.

I think my school solves this by telling the parents to buy ‘something’ for the kids, as long as it has a webbrowser and keyboard.

Actually metal's pretty bendy when compared to plastic (most anyway...mmv based upon formula).

The metal construction is what prompted me to switch over to macbook pro's back in the day. The plastic dell laptops i used to use couldn't handle the abuse that it took during all of the travel i was doing at the time (cases kept cracking). I switched to a pro and was rewarded later with it surviving a 5 foot fall from a car rental counter. It bent part of the corner, but the screen was still in tact and it continued to work well enough to get me through the trip. I suspect the plastic alternative would have been toast.

Having kids today and seeing how rough they are with their toys, I'm not confident that a plastic laptop would survive them long.

My kids have (insanely shitty) chromebooks from school and we are absolutely responsible for the cost if they break. We have to sign a release at the beginning of the year. Whether or not they’d be able to collect from the vast majority of families is a different question, granted. But the responsibility is there.

> Kids are given those for free, so there's no responsibility for them to keep them in good condition.

Very often they aren't (the school devices are in-school resources that aren't given to the kids any more than their desks are) and anything the kids have out of school is bought by the parents (and even if they are given the computers by the school, usually the replacement costs is on the parents if there is damage). But, either way, grade school kids are, on average, irresponsible as a matter of cognitive development (its a big part of why children are treated differently than adults legally.)

> school districts with a dysfunctional penal system.

A school district that can be described as having a “penal system” is, ipso facto, dysfunctional.

Who pays for the laptop when the school bully pours water on a kid's backpack? Or a kid has their bag in a seat and someone sits on it accidentally?

What happens when a kid's laptop is broken, regardless of the reason, and the family is unable to afford to repair it? Are we going to run into a similar situation that we had when kids couldn't pay for school lunch? Do teachers write "pay for a new laptop" in sharpie on the kid's arm for the parent?

A child's educational environment is a lot more chaotic, violent, and uncontrolled compared to an office environment. If you're issuing my child a $600 laptop and making me responsible for any damages, guess what's going to be kept at home in a secure location?

Making a child responsible for securing a laptop in an insecure environment isn't accountability, it's just a form of imprisonment.

No, we really care about durability. The amount of damage is crazy. So many units are damaged that it would be cost-prohibitive to dispose and replace them.

The screenshot in that Reddit post more or less looks like ours. Schools generally repair these, if they have the technicians. And everyone is cannibalizing parts out of last generation models. It's like a Jawa shop.

> Apple can only compete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks.

I've never seen, nor heard of Apple providing competitive prices, even in quantities of ~10,000 units. They haven't even gotten close and they've largely given up on the idea of Macs as a standard K12 school device. ~$250 iPads are still strong in low primary grades and special education, though.

> I could see the Neo as a viable option for teenage students.

100% agreed. My statements weren't meant to indicate the Neo wasn't viable. They were meant to state that the Neo isn't going to replace Chromebooks in schools (as far as being District-purchased).

> The high school I attended distributed a Chromebook to each student and hardware faults were far more common than student inflicted damage. Low build quality in everything from the hinges to the logic boards.

Build quality has been steadily improving over the years. It's all still budget (target ~$290), but is more and more durable with each new generation.

> If you buy Android flagships after 2022, they also last 4-6 years.

The hardware lasts but they usually stop getting software updates after a few years, especially if they're not high-end models.

Last month, Apple released an update for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X [1]. The iPhone 8 was released September 2017. I seriously doubt 9-year old Android phones, even flagship models, are still getting software updates.

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/02/apple-releases-ios-16-7...

Framework might be appealing as well. Being able to have parts on hand that can easily be swapped out sounds a lot better/easier than dealing Apple repair practices. The Framework Laptop 12[0] starts at $549 and has touchscreen/pen options. But that price goes up to $799 to have it pre-built with an OS on it, which schools would want, unless building your laptop and installing the OS is part of the curriculum. I wonder if having the kids do this would make them take better care of it, because they had a hand it making it?

[0] https://frame.work/laptop12

Similar to how MS helps their local schools, I think Apple does for schools in California.