Proposal

Name:

Virtual Apple & iPad Development Lab

FiscalYear:

2013

Audience:

Engineering and Computer Science, College of

Submitter:

Heithoff, Jason

Budget Manager:

Asseff, Lynn G.

Project Manager:

Heithoff, Jason Todd

Proposal Approvers

Dept. Chair:

Erdol, Nurgun

Local IT:

Neelakanta, Mahesh

Dean:

Ilyas, Mohammad

Facilities:

N/A

OIT:

Bagdonas, Joseph A.

Proposal Funding

Year 1:

$ 11,127.99

Year 2:

$ 0.00

Year 3:

$ 0.00

Total:

$ 11,127.99

Proposal Funding versus Average

Questionnaire

Narrative

The College of Engineering & Computer Science wants to create a Virtual Apple & iPad Development Lab. This virtual lab will be made available to students taking COT 4930 (iOS Programming) and others on an as needed basis. Students will be able to connect to an Apple computer from on campus or off, from a PC or a Mac, as long as they have a high speed internet connection. This lab will enable students to work on Apple computers, the platform needed to develop any applications for the Mac, iPad, iPhone, or iPod, without the high cost of purchasing one themselves. Apples, traditionally more expensive then PCs, run the OS X operating system and is required for application development.

In addition, we would like to purchase additional hardware for the lab which will be available for checkout to students. This would include four iPads (two iPad Minis with Retina & two iPad Minis) and five iPod Touches. We have chosen iPod Touches because they are less expensive compared to iPhones and they will give students the iPhone interface without the College needing to purchase a cellular contract. Students will be able to take advantage of the built-in WiFi to get internet. Aside from cellular data they are nearly identical to iPhones in dimensions, screen resolution, OS, and sensors (camera, accelerometer, GPS over WiFi, LED Flash).

We choose iPad Mini's over standard iPads because they are less expensive and support the same resolution as their full size iPad counterparts. They also contain similar features as the iPod (however applications for the iPad are designed differently than those written for the iPod or iPhone). We want to have a mix of both Retina and standard resolution iPad Minis because apps will have to adapt to both types of hardware in the real world. This will teach students how to design their software in ways that take advantage of all models. 

These devices will be used by students for their final project. We will have a virtual iPad & iPhone simulator available on the virtual Apple machines; however there are some requirements, in some projects, which require a psychical device. For example if you were designing a race car game, you may want to use the in-device accelerometer to detect movement. This would allow you to mimic the turning of the steering wheel of a real car by twisting and turning the device.  A physical device would be required to do this because the simulator does not support this sort of emulation. 

Facilities

The College of Engineering & Computer Science will host the Mac Pro in our server room (Building 96 Room 108). There is ample power, cooling, networking and monitoring systems to ensure 24x7 availability to the server.

The Technical Services Group (TSG) will store the iPods & iPads (Building 96 Room 307) and sign them out to students as needed for projects. TSG already loans projectors, laptops and other devices to faculty, staff and students for the College, this will be no added burden.

Hardware Requirements
  • Mac Pro $4,888.00
    • Processor: 3.7 GHz quad-core with 10 MB of L3 cache
    • Memory: 64 GB of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
    • Storage: 1TB PCIe-based flash storage
    • Graphics: Dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
    • AppleCare Protection Plan
  • iPads: $1,792.00
    • 2x iPad Mini Wi-Fi 16GB
    • 2x iPad Mini with Retina Display Wi-Fi 16GB
    • 4x AppleCare+ for iPad
Software Requirements
  • OS X Server: $19
  • Aqua Connect RDP Services: $249.00 each (total 2,490.00 for 10 licenses)
    • License is perpetual
  • Maintenance: $49 each (total 498 for 10 licenses)
    • Techfee will pay for the first year of maintenance
    • College of Engineering will pay each additional year
Personnel Costs
The College of Engineering & Computer Science will use its existing personnel in TSG to install and maintain the hardware and software. 
Other Costs
The College of Engineering & Computer Science will pay the renewal costs for maintenance and annual licenses costs year to year to ensure continued availability. The cost of the software license to virtualize the Mac is perpetual.  
Timeline
There is currently a delay in receiving new Mac Pros. If you order now they will be delivered in March. With this in mind we plan to setup and test these systems in the summer and hope to have them in production by Fall 2014. 
Sustainability
The College of Engineering & Computer Science will pay the renewal costs for maintenance and annual licenses costs year to year to ensure continued availability. The cost of the software license to virtualize the Mac is perpetual.  
Resource Matching
The College of Engineering & Computer Science will pay the renewal costs for maintenance and annual licenses costs year to year to ensure continued availability. The cost of the software license to virtualize the Mac is perpetual.  
Implementing Organization
The College of Engineering & Computer Science IT group will ensure the system is built and maintained. No additional costs is needed for personnel or support for the project. 

Proposal Budget

Fiscal Year 1 Fiscal Year 2 Fiscal Year 3 Total
Hardware One-Time $ 8,120.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 8,120.00
Hardware Recurring $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Software One-time $ 3,007.99 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 3,007.99
Software Recurring $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Personnel One-time $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Personnel Recurring $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Other One-time $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Other Recurring $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Totals $ 11,127.99 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 11,127.99

Supporting Documentation

Filename Size Description
Apple Lab Upgrades Techfee Resource.xlsx 9,679b
iPad Mini N iPad Mini Retina.pdf 230,346b
Mac Pro 64 GB Quadcore 1TB SSD PCIe.pdf 545,054b