 Hey, everyone, I want to welcome you all to this debate and thank you for coming out. A big thank you to my opponent for putting together some arguments to answer me today. Obviously, thanks to the audience for coming out and watching this round and thanks to our judges for coming here to evaluate this debate. Before we get into it, I just want to take a moment to read our resolution. And so the topic that we've been given today is that Chromebooks are better college laptops than MacBooks. All right, with that being stated, is anyone not ready? All right, great. I'll go ahead and start my timer and here we go. All right, observation one is the resolution analysis. So the first thing that we're going to say today is that this is a resolution of value because it asks us to compare two things, Chromebooks and MacBooks and determine which of the two are indeed better. So let's look at some key terms briefly. We're going to define pretty much everything contextually, but I think it's important to define college laptops. And so for the sake of this debate, we're going to say that a college laptop is a laptop to be used by a college student. Great. Let's take a look at a little bit of framework. So we'd say today is that through my argumentation, I can prove to you all that Chromebooks are indeed better than MacBooks. You should go ahead and vote for the affirmative team. If my opponent can prove that MacBooks should be preferred or that there isn't a better choice between the two of them, then you would go ahead and vote for the negative. Great. Let's just provide a little bit of background before we dive into our first of two contentions. So when we look at the college experience, we realize that this is something that has become more and more technological over time, where it may have been possible at one point to just have some compads and some pencils and dive into college. That isn't really the case anymore. These days you need a laptop to be able to access learning management software, to attend meetings through things like Zoom, as well as to do the higher burden of research that you need in college classes. So a laptop really is a required component to be able to be successful in college. So it's important for us to decide which one is better. And so with that, let's go ahead and take a look at our two contentions today. So contention one is going to be affordability. So our first argument here is super simple. Chromebooks are way cheaper than MacBooks. In our research that we did before the debate started, I found a 2017 article that was published by CNET. And in this article, they said the average cost range of a Chromebook was between $200 and $500, whereas the Verge reported in July of 2020 that MacBooks start at $1,800 and can go as high. Wait for this as $6,700 if you want the one that's got all the fancy bells and whistles and so I know it's pretty expensive. And hence the reason we think that the Chromebook is the better option. So my tieback here today is that, frankly, the Chromebook is the laptop that a college student can afford that's not going to break the bank, not going to require them to max out their credit cards. And those types of things ultimately lead to a better college experience not being broke right when you're starting. Starting out, so that's one reason why they are indeed better. Let's go ahead and look at my second contention then, which you can go ahead and tagline as usability. So my main claim here is that when it comes down to use that Chromebooks provide a far simpler design and layout that is just simply far above and beyond when it comes to usable for a new user. Let's look at some data to support this. So according to an article, which was published by Laptop Magazine in August of 2019, when you buy a Chromebook, it's going to come with all the basic software that a college student would need. This includes things like Google's Office Suite, which has a word processor, spreadsheets, the ability to do presentations for your speech glass, which could be could be a good thing. But also the Chrome web browser is there. It's set up and they have all your entertainment apps, things like music and Spotify are pre-installed and ready to go. In addition, and this is really a big selling point in terms of usability, is they all are self updating. There's no having to like log on to Windows updates or install things through the Apple updates app. It just happens and it happens smoothly without even having to worry about it. And frankly, in college, there's way too much stuff to deal with anyways. So it's nice to have something like this that just takes care of itself. So let's go ahead and get to our warrant today. Ultimately, through this evidence, Chromebooks are better because everything works right out of the box, right? Take that thing out, boot it up, you're good to go, keeps itself updated. No intervention, easy to use apps, makes life life easy. So let's just do a brief summary before we wrap up my first speech. I think today we've done a pretty good job at providing you with two key arguments why you're going to prefer Chromebooks over MacBooks. They're frankly just far more affordable. I don't know about you. I don't got an extra 1,800 bucks lying around and they're just easy to use, which makes life a lot better. So for all of those reasons, we would urge a strong affirmative ballot in this debate and I stand open to cross examination. All right, great. Let's go ahead and get into some cross examination. All right. So again, thanks for that. You did a nice job making your arguments, but I have some questions for you. All right. So on the framework, can you clarify me what my burden is in this debate? Yeah, sure. No, no problem. You can either prove that MacBooks are better or at least equally good to Chromebooks. Okay, cool. Got it. And then my second question is, do you mind restating what your definition was of a college laptop? Yeah, for sure. I think my key argument here is that a college laptop is a portable computer that is used by college students. That was a big part of this computer used by college students. Okay, cool. That makes that makes sense. So let's go then to your first contention of affordability. If we cruise on down to your second point, you stated that the average cost of a Chromebook was, I think you said, between $200 and $500, correct? Correct. Okay, great. And that came from a CNET article. Did you have a date for that article? I did have a date for that. That was May of 2017. Perfect. Last question. In your evidence, you state that a MacBook starts at $1,800. Was that a specific MacBook that you're referring to? Yeah, let me look here. The $1,800 was, yes, for the MacBook Pro. Oh, the MacBook Pro, got it. Did you have any numbers on the MacBook Air? Ah, shoots. You know what, the MacBook Air stuff did not come up in my research. Okay, no worries. Let's cruise down to contention to about usability. So on contention to about usability, you make the argument that all Chromebooks basically come with all programs that a college student would need. So my little brother has talked about studying engineering when he gets to college, which would require him to learn the AutoCAD software. Chromebook comes with that? Uh, no. Oh, I see. Would he be able to install it? I don't think so. Okay, thanks. I have no other questions. All right, then. Cool. All right, let's go ahead and get to it. Again, I want to thank everyone for coming out here today. This has been a really good debate so far and I'm looking forward to getting into some of my own arguments. So with that, let's go ahead and just give you a little bit of a preview of where I'm going to go in this speech. So I think to keep things simple here, we'll start off with their top of case. Their contention one, which was affordability, condition two, which was usability. And then I've got one counter contention of limitations that we'll talk about today. Timer set. Competitor ready? Audience ready? Judges ready? All right, three, two, one, let's get to it. All right, we stand strongly opposed to the resolution that Chromebooks are the better college laptop when compared to MacBooks. And we're going to prove that today through some refutation and some arguments of our own. So on the top of case, we're going to go ahead and accept all of their definitions and framework. This seems like a fair debate and we've got some good reasons in terms of why they're not better. And in fact, why they may be worse in a couple of ways. So I think we have a chance at getting your ballot. Let's go ahead and see if we can get to it. All right, let's go ahead and go to contention one. So contention one was their argument about affordability. Now, the key argument that they make in this contention is that you should prefer a Chromebook because it's more affordable than a Mac. And I think we're going to take issue with that for a couple of reasons. So first off, we want to argue that Mac books have actually become significantly more affordable in the modern era. There's kind of two things that contribute to this. One, they have two models now. There's the MacBook Air, which is their kind of basic line aimed at college students and the MacBook Pro. But even on those models, we've seen that there is a kind of entry tier that people can get on. So a brand new, awesome MacBook Air only costs about a thousand bucks. And so that in itself is pretty affordable. But also we were looking at Apple's on that on Apple's website and noticed that they also sell refurbished, remanufactured last year's models of MacBook Pros. And that's pretty good MacBook Pros with five processes in them that were selling less than 500 bucks. And so my kind of point here is that they aren't necessarily cheaper and it kind of fits into the range that they were talking about. My second argument on this contention is that Chromebooks have also gotten more expensive as time has gone on. I did a search on Amazon during my prep time, and I was taking a look at the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, which came out just a lot back in 2019 and found that that thing retails for over a thousand dollars. And so I think that their 2017 data on 200 to 500 is a bit outdated and they're not necessarily cheaper anymore. Let's go on to contention two, which is usability. So the main argument here is that a Chromebook is easier to use. Like I think crazy issue with this here because the whole idea of Macs when they came out was to provide a computer that was simpler and easy for folks to use. Like remember those ads from back in the early 2000s? Like buy a Mac, they're better. And like the whole premise of that campaign is that they're simpler and that continues to be true today, which is why they've been so popular amongst college students. So I got a couple of points that I'll make in response here. First, that Macs, unlike other computers, were always designed to be easy and include all the software that you need right out of the box. You don't have to install anything. You can use the base software. If you want to install stuff, though, you can. And I'm going to get that in a second. But I also want to point out that Macs make complicated tasks like creating videos or editing photos significantly easy. It's meant to be a computer that can be used by anyone in the things like editing video or not something that's only left to fancy video editing folks out there. And that's just not something that Chromebook can do because Chromebooks can't run those programs. The other thing that I want to kind of mention on on this is that on their second contention about usability is having to do with the updates. And like they pointed out that they're easy to do, but like Chromebook still gets major version issues that come out. And that has to be updated. Plus, like the vast majority of software on Macs also have auto updates these days, and you don't have to worry about it. So I think it's a wash on that one. Let's go ahead and get to our counter contention then. So our counter contention today is that of limitations. This is going to be the main reason why Macbooks are indeed a better choice for a college student than a Chromebook. My first argument here is that Chromebooks are limited by the need for Internet. My data to support this is according to the tech website version daily in that was published in 2018. Chromebooks depend heavily on access to a fast Internet connection. In fact, they reported that most of its core apps don't work well if you don't have good Wi-Fi and all of its entertainment apps do not work at all if you're not on the Internet. My second argument that I want to make under this contention is that Chromebooks have major software limitations. Again, according to a 2020 digital trends article, Chromebooks biggest flaw is that users can't install powerful software like Adobe Photoshop and other similar programs that you might need in college. So keeping in mind that different students go in different directions. If you decide that you want to get into photography, you're not going to be able to use Photoshop or Lightroom. If you decide you want to be an engineer, you're not going to be able to use AutoCAD, which is critical to your being able to do your stuff. And that's true with a lot of things. My last argument on this contention is that when we look at the Chromebooks, even the best Chromebooks also have really limited hardware abilities. And so the data to support that is according to a July 2019 article from the tech blog, The Tech Junkie, Chromebooks have significantly less powerful hardware compared to other laptops. This is true for processors, memory, graphics card. And this can cause issues when you're trying to do graphic intensive things like being on a Zoom conference. And so that ultimately is going to be really limiting for for college students. So my tie back here is when it comes to Chromebooks, because of their dependence upon a fast internet connection, not being able to use most fancy software as well as hardware limitations. Your average college student is basically going to find them really frustrating to use. And even the most entry level MacBook does not have these issues. So for these reasons, we'd say Boat and Egg. All right, great. Let's do some cross-examination if you are ready. All right. Cool. So thanks for your case. I do have a couple of questions. So I'd like to start on your counter contingent, which was about limitations in your first argument. You mentioned that most Chromebook apps basically don't work well without internet. Was that your argument? Yeah, that's that's correct. This is because most of these apps are like web based and, you know, basically things like Google Docs that were really always meant to be used just online. OK, cool. And your data came from a 2018 article. Yeah, so that came from a 2018 version daily article, which is a reputable tech blog. Gotcha. So did that did that blog post say anything about Android apps? Or did it really only talk about the like core Chromium apps? It's my recollection that that article was just about like the core Chrome apps. OK, great. Let's skip down to your third sub point about hardware limitations. Can you summarize what your argument was there? I didn't think I got the whole thing. Yeah, sure. Basically, in their attempt to be cost effective, pretty much every Chromebook has subpar processors and hardware. Got it. Got it. Do you know what processor the baseline MacBook Pro has? I believe if memory serves that the MacBook Pro line gives users a choice. It's all Intel, so they can choose an I3, an I5 or an I7 processor. Oh, so the same choices as the Galaxy Galaxy gives. Got it. Got it. Apparently. OK, thanks. That is all the questions that I have. All right. Thanks for that. That was a great, great speech. Let me just give our folks here a little bit of a roadmap and we'll get started. I think to keep things simple in this debate, I'm just going to do case and order and then your counter contingent. So top of case, contingent one and affordability, contingent two usability, and then I'll respond to your arguments under the limitations. This is a quick speech. So I'm going to probably move through this stuff pretty, pretty quickly. But I think we'll be able to make it make it work. All right. Is anyone not ready? All right. Cool. Then without further ado, let's go ahead and get to it. All right. There wasn't a lot of argumentation on top of case. So you can extend all of that over. Let's go ahead and go to contention one. So on my first contention, they make a couple of arguments that I want to respond to. The first argument they make is that like MacBooks have become more affordable. But they point out that like it's like a refurbished MacBook that really gets into the Chrome range and that even their low end air model is over a thousand bucks. So I still think we're winning the argument that the average Chromebook is more affordable. Yeah, like I guess the top of line fanciest Chromebook there is is about a thousand bucks. But if you remember before, like if you look at Apple's website, the fastest and fanciest MacBook is six thousand seven hundred dollars. So when you were looking at top of line, still going to be preferable there. So I think we're still winning on affordability. Let's go to usability real quick. And so they made a couple arguments here. They pointed out that Macs are really easy to use. That may be true in some regards, but there's still like the need to get set up. Install software like most people need a full featured office suite like Microsoft Office. That has to be installed if you need all these fancy apps. They were talking about you have to do them. And we just think that like on the updates thing, what I'm trying to get at here is that Chromebooks updates are automated. They're quick. They're easy. You don't even see them. They just happen behind the scenes. And that's what makes them so much easier. Whereas on Macs, it prompts you, do you want to install updates? Do you want to install updates? And it sucks if you've ever had your computer like restart itself when you're in the middle of doing something. All right, let's get on to their counter contention. So on their counter contention of limitations, the first argument they make here is that Chromebooks have to be on the internet to work. This is really outdated. It may have been true when they came out, but their evidence from 2018 is older than my evidence from 2019 in an article from computer world that explains that Chromebooks ability to run Android apps ultimately makes them able to work without the need for internet connection because the can be run offline mode and an airplane and an airplane mode, which makes them more usable. Their second claim here that was that Chromebooks have major software limitations. Again, this is limited as soon as they upgraded the ability of Chromebooks to run Android, all those fancy programs became available. There's an Android Photoshop program, which is I know what they mentioned here that you can install and use as well as video editing software. There's an app for Microsoft Office. If you really want Microsoft Office, you can run the app. And so they're not limited anymore because of the Android apps that you can now run, which there are literally thousands of. The last argument was that Chromebooks have limited hardware abilities. But again, this isn't the case. According to a 2020 article on Android Central, they report the major Chromebook manufacturers, including Asus, Lenovo and Acer have all been out fancy models that have I3, I5, I9 Intel processors in them, which are the same exact ones that MacBooks have. So for these reasons, you're going to see that they're not winning their counter contention. And with that, I'll go ahead and turn the ground back over to my opponent. Thanks for listening. Go Daff. All right, folks again, want to just go ahead and extend a big thank you for you all coming out and watching this debate today. Big thanks to my opponent. This has been a really fun debate. It's been had some good clash in it, and I'm looking forward to getting into this last speech. So before we do so, I just want to give you all a brief roadmap of where I'm going to head. I'm going to start with just kind of a brief overview, summarizing where we're at in the debate. And then I think I am going to actually start briefly with my counter contention of limitations. And then I'll also talk a little bit about their counter contention one affordability or excuse me their contention one affordability and their second contention usability. All right, five minutes on the clock. All right. Everyone ready? All right, here we go. It's going to be an easy negative ballot today for a couple of key reasons. First off, when it comes to our counter tension, we clearly show that the limitations make the MacBook the obvious choice. But even if you're not buying that, we're going to show that it is a wash on both the arguments of usability and affordability, meaning there's not a reason to prefer a Chromebook over a Mac. Let's go ahead and get to the line by line. So on counter contention one, they made a couple arguments here on our first claim, basically saying that like it's an outdated critique, because now Chromebooks can run Android apps. And yes, why that is true. It doesn't totally negate the point that many of the apps, including those Android apps are dependent upon an internet connection, or like you can't run Spotify, if you don't have the music to stream from. And you also can't access your documents if they're stored in the cloud. And so that's a pretty big limitation that's going to cause frustration for college students. They kind of point out that maybe that some of the Chromebooks have the same processors, but they don't respond to my arguments about graphics cards, which they don't have. They only mentioned they have the same processor model. And those graphic cards really are important when it comes to doing more high powered things, like video conferencing, like rendering photos, like rendering video. And these are just simply things that ultimately, a MacBook is going to be the superior option of a college student. And then on my last argument, they talked about, I guess the last thing that they kind of mentioned, I guess is going to tie it back before they also had talked about how like Android solves for the office thing. I just want to point out that the Android versions of things like Photoshop and Office are not full featured. Yeah, it kind of mirrors those things. But because of the software and hardware limitations, it's not going to be the same same experience. Great, let's go ahead and get back to their case and look at their two contentions one last time. So on the argument of affordability, they pointed out that Chromebooks are still cheaper. But I think that you should prefer our evidence that's a little bit newer that Chromebooks are coming up in costs. And yeah, the example that I gave was the Chromebook Galaxy, but the high end like Asus, Lenevo, and I think it was Acer was the other one I saw have all been increasing in price and kind of edging up on that $1,000 mark. And so I really think that when you kind of balance the affordability versus features, having those extra features is going to be worth even just the minuscule extra money that it's going to cost to pick up a Macbook then going with a Chromebook. But let's go ahead and go to contention two real quick and then we'll kind of summarize where we're at. So on contention two, they kind of responded to the this by saying that like Macbooks have long that Chromebooks have like a lot easier usage on them and that there are difficult things. But again, cross apply in my argument from earlier, how would you look at Macbooks that everything you need is still there out of the box, right? And so they're at least equal to Chromebook in that stance. And honestly, like if you've ever used a Mac, installing software is significantly easier on a Mac. Half the time you just drag and drop the application on your program's folder and it's done. It's that simplicity that has been the staple of what it means to be a Mac since back when Steve Jobs unveiled the first Apple Mac and Dosh back in 1984. And that has continued throughout throughout their entire entire history. So today, when we look at this debate, it's going to be a really easy ballot for the negative team for a couple of main reasons. The first of which is that when it comes to my opponents contentions of affordability and usability, you're basically looking at a wash. Yeah, you might buy that Macs are a little bit more expensive, but they make up for it when it comes to the usability, right? The ability to have that software you need, the ability to have those programs that work great when you're in offline mode. And so at the end of the day, like it's not just a wash because of my arguments on my counter contention, you're going to find that that the Mac is going to be the better choice. You're going to be able to use them when they're offline. You're going to have significantly better software. If you decide that you want to be a programmer and you need to install those programming applications, easy to do on a Mac. If you decide you want to go into video editing and you need to install Final Cut can only do that on a Mac. If you're really interested in improving your graphic design skills, the entire Adobe suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, these are all programs that are known to work better on Mac. So for these reasons, we really urge you, please, for negative. All right, I think we are ready to get get into this one. All right, I just one last big round of thank yous. This has been a fun and clashful debate, and I really appreciate my opponent for coming out here and making these arguments. I really feel like I've met my I really feel like I've met my match. And that's good, because that's what debate is all about. Let's give you one final roadmap and then we'll get into this last speech. So I'm briefly going to start with a kind of overview why you're going to be voting for the affirmative. And then we'll briefly touch on their counter contention of limitations. And then I will wrap up with my two contensions of affordability. And then make two of usability. All right, everyone good? All right. And here we go. It's going to be an easy ballot for the affirmative today because at the end of the day, the benefits of choosing a Chromebook are going to be far superior than any potential detriment for your average college student. And that's going to be the key thing tying back to our framework today. So let's go ahead and get to it. All right, I have a couple points to make on their counter contention. And so they come back here and they're trying to argue that like, Oh, no, even like the Android apps aren't going to work offline. That's just not true. Like Android apps do work offline. They download the full program. They've got software you can access your music. Like this is old info. We're able to do these things. They mentioned that like the office version and Photoshop of Android is not the full version. And that's true. But it's good enough for a college student. It has enough for the features to get you by so that you can do your learning. And that's the key thing. And then finally on they make this big point about graphics that, you know, they got the same processor, but they don't got the graphics card. Honestly, like people run Zoom on cell phones anyways. So I think you're going to be okay. It's really going to have enough processing power for the average college student to go by. And that's again tying back to our framework here. What's better for the college student. So this is going to be an easy battle today because of our two contensions. And let's go through them one at a time. Again, you're going to be voting for the affirmative on contention one specifically because the Chromebook is going to be the more affordable options. Yep. My point pointed out there are some big fancy top in best most powerful Chromebooks available, capping out at 1000 bucks. But compared to the top Mac, which is like over $6,700. I think that it's still cross applies there and is going to be a easy choice for the Chromebook. So affordability is going to really be key. College students don't tend to have a lot of money. And frankly, if you don't want to be broke to start in college, choosing a Chromebook is going to keep you from having to take out a bunch of debt and having the problems that are associated with that. And then second, you're going to be voting for the affirmative because it's just a simpler machine. Yeah, open the thing up. You've got all your programs. You're ready to start doing your work. You're ready to log on to your canvas and do your readings and your quizzes and like all of that just works right out of the box. There's nothing to worry about. No updates that you have to need to do. So the end of the day, this usability is again going to be the key thing that's going to make it better for college students. So just to kind of wrap up where we've come today, this has been a long and fun debate. But at the end of the round, when you compare our two contentions with their one counter contention, you can see that you're not buying their arguments on the counter contention of limitations. Chromebooks have come a long way. And at the end of the day, for your average college student, because of its usability and because of its affordability, a Chromebook is always going to be the better choice. Thanks for coming out and watching this debate.