I'm sorry but phrasing it as "jeopardizing students’ educations" is dishonest and manipulative. Not even Apple has support periods that long, and they sell $1000+ devices.
Plus you can easily install a Linux distro on Chromebooks and extend the life yourself.
These laptops aren't used for video editing or 3D modeling. They need to run text editors and a few Chrome tabs. The screens are still the same old terrible resolutions. There's no reason why these devices shouldn't be usable to be honest.
10 years of software support for laptops is the norm, in my experience. I've seen people be more than content with older devices. If you're right and Apple can't get that level of support on macOS, then Apple is the disappointment, not the school's expectations.
I have not tried to confirm this myself, but the petition ends by stating that some of these products are still available for purchase today.
> you can easily install a Linux distro on Chromebooks and extend the life yourself
It is entirely possible that YOU can do that. But I have worked in school technical support departments (once long ago, I led one) and I can assure you that in most cases THEY are not capable of installing a Linux distro on their Chromebooks.
Lets say they need to buy a new computer for $400, for 1,000 students. Can you spend less than $400,000 to figure this out?
Lets expand it to a school district, can you spend less than $4,000,000 to figure this out?
Feel free to expand this to a national level.
Add up the salaries of all the administrators who signed that letter and you'd be able to buy new laptops a hundred times over. Yet it's Google engineers who must volunteer their time, or they'll get publicly shamed over it.
Big Sur still receives security updates[0] and is supported on models back to 2013, so I don't know where you get that idea.
And since a Chromebook OS is Gentoo (AFAIK) Google might just de-google that laptops and return the ability for user to continue to do at least some limited set of tasks. 7 years is nothing for any laptop with replaceable battery.
100%
I imagine there is some sort of locked down linux that make it so kids can't go full anarchy.
This is just a reminder to support FOSS, seems like there is always someone willing to pick up the torch or fork it.
I wouldn't use that as a model for comparison, it's particularly despicable