Lip service? Ha! Steve said Apple was serious about retargeting the education market, and evidently he wasn't kidding. If you weren't swayed by earlier corrective moves such as the rehiring of Cheryl Vedoe, the purchase of PowerSchool, and the launch of the Apple Teacher Institutes, maybe the details of Apple's latest education success will finally convince you that the company is going for the throat. (Warning for a certain Steve wannabe who has been crowing loudly about stealing the education sales crown from Apple: "THESE PREMISES PATROLLED BY A MERCURIAL ATTACK CEO.")

As faithful viewer Jason noted, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an interesting article on the Quaker Valley School District and its $2 million state grant to become "a model for technology in education." When the district went shopping for new gear to help it realize that goal, it had reportedly "narrowed the choice of hardware supplier to Dell and Apple," thus reproducing the Grand Struggle in microcosm. Well, let's hope that it's a model of things to come on a larger scale, because in this particular battle, Apple won. We are left with a lingering mental image of Steve reproducing the touchdown dance from Jerry Maguire as Mike Dell frantically chugs his medication in a vain attempt to keep calm in the face of impending doom.

Under the terms of the agreement, the district is acquiring 1,600 iBooks (one for each student) and 70 PowerBooks (one for each teacher), all equipped with AirPort; in addition, it's picking up an undisclosed numbers of G4 Cubes to grace its school libraries, and will be using Apple's newly-acquired PowerSchool system to track grades and the like. But get this: this isn't just a story about a school district who, when faced with a choice between pure gold and a steaming pile of manure, actually chose the gold. Given that manure is still cheaper than gold, the district's limited budget was a definite factor when it came down to picking a final vendor. And that's where Apple's new aggression in matters of educational sales really came through.

According to the article, Quaker Valley is getting all seventy of those PowerBooks for free. It's also getting PowerSchool for a cool seventy-five grand, when a license can typically cost three times that amount. In addition, Apple has agreed to help set everything up "during the first weeks of the coming school year." All told, Quaker Valley is reportedly getting $5 million worth of Apple goods and services for "less than half that amount." As the guy in the food truck who used to sell us falafel would say, "Such a DEAL!!" Sounds like Steve may be perfectly willing to lose a little cash (heck, the company's got $4 billion of it) if he can get Macs back into the schools-- and that's a very hopeful sign and a solid investment in the future. Hopefully Mike Dell hasn't gotten too used to that crown just yet, because if things keep going like this, he'll be sending it back before too long.