DepEd Bites the Apple: Rolls Out 172K MacBooks for Teachers

Apple calls it its biggest education deal ever for Mac, yet roughly three in four public school teachers would still have no government-issued laptop.

For many public school teachers, the laptop used for lesson plans and grades came out of their own pockets. The Department of Education says a large share of them will now get one from the government, and it will have an Apple logo on the lid. DepEd said it has bought 172,654 MacBook Neo laptops for public school personnel nationwide, with deliveries running from November 2026 to March 2027.

Of that total, 169,008 units go to teachers and 3,646 to administrative officers. DepEd said the purchase went through competitive bidding and works out to about ₱43,000 per unit, which it put at ₱6,900 below the suggested retail price of the base model. The department did not disclose the exact contract amount, though that unit price points to a total of around ₱7.4 billion. The price includes delivery and recipient training. The deal also carries a five-year warranty, a first for a DepEd laptop purchase. Retail buyers get one year.

Apple confirmed the order from its side. CEO John Ternus told investors on the company's latest earnings call, "We recently secured our biggest education deal ever for Mac," naming DepEd and citing about 170,000 units. "For the longest time, our teachers have carried the heavy personal burden of buying their own laptops," Education Secretary Sonny Angara said.

The MacBook Neo is Apple's budget laptop, built around the A18 Pro chip first used in iPhones. It has a 13-inch display and weighs about 1.23 kilos, and Apple rates its battery at up to 11 hours of wireless web browsing. Base units come with 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. It went on sale here at ₱39,990, then rose by ₱10,000 to ₱49,990 in June as a global memory shortage pushed up prices. DepEd compared its price against the base model, but the details released so far do not spell out the exact configuration teachers will receive. That matters, because memory on this machine is fixed at purchase, and 8GB has to last the full five years of that warranty.

What this means for Filipinos

Public school teachers should know the odds are still long. Counting earlier contracts, DepEd has awarded 231,725 teacher laptops, including 62,717 Windows units. Against nearly 900,000 public school teachers, that reaches about one in four, while President Marcos has pledged a laptop for every teacher before his term ends in 2028. Ruby Bernardo, chairperson of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, called the order "grossly insufficient" and said schools should not have to raffle off limited units.

Her group also asked for reliable technical support, and that is the question worth pressing hardest. A five-year warranty is only as useful as the nearest place that can honor it, and the details out so far do not say how repairs will reach schools far from a city service center. Teachers who rely on Windows-only school software should also ask how it will run on a Mac before their unit arrives.

The ₱43,000 price applies only to this government order. A private buyer still pays ₱49,990 for the base model with the standard one-year warranty, so compare it against Windows laptops at the same budget, paying particular attention to memory.

In 2021 the government's procurement service bought 39,583 laptops for teachers at ₱58,300 each, a deal the Commission on Audit flagged as overpriced because the machines ran outdated processors. DepEd's new unit price is about ₱15,300 lower, and the department says this round had to pass standards for performance, durability, battery life, and warranty.

Delivery is the next test. Apple said Mac supply would stay constrained through the October to December quarter, the same window in which DepEd's first units are due. DepEd also plans unboxing sessions across Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao, along with a training framework called GuroXL, developed with Apple and the National Educators Academy of the Philippines. The more telling number will come with the next procurement round, since well over 600,000 teachers are still waiting.