Apple Configurator + Supervised iPads + iTunes

[Sean-OC04]

The only thing I'd say in defense of Apple is that they never designed the iPad to be used in an enterprise environment...and they developed the Apple Configurator product as an attempt at making enterprise deployment easier.

 

You can understand why Apple restrict certain functionality (in terms of enterprise deployment). It's to safeguard their profits. Simples

 

The problem is that in the mean time, CEOs / Headteachers are buying these devices, handing them over to their IT departments and telling them to "make them work!". The reality is that the iPads do not work when used as a shared device. The sooner people realise this, the better.

 

Apple Configurator was never designed and is in no way shape or form for use with the Enterprise environment, every large enterprise deployment have used a proper MDM solution to manage these devices. Apple configurator does work well in a shared device senario, the Garageband Import/Export features you want use are really at the edge of what is currently possible on the iPad.

 

No enterprise deployment has used the institutional model and apps are considered a consumable item

 

Why don't you just unsupervise the devices and use the personal model ? Yes the apps can not be moved back to configurator once installed but this would immediately solve your problem?

Edited March 20, 2013 by Sean-OC04

[Driftingashore]

Apple Configurator was never designed and is in no way shape or form for use with the Enterprise environment, every large enterprise deployment have used a proper MDM solution to manage these devices. Apple configurator does work well in a shared device senario, the Garageband Import/Export features you want use are really at the edge of what is currently possible on the iPad.

 

No enterprise deployment has used the institutional model and apps are considered a consumable item

 

Why don't you just unsupervise the devices and use the personal model ? Yes the apps can not be moved back to configurator once installed but this would immediately solve your problem?

 

 

Personally, I don't see what's wrong with the shared ownership model, and we're running a somewhat in-between model ourselves: a supervised model with mostly local restrictions, so that teachers can override them using a restrictions passcode. If a student is allowed to install an app by a teacher, or a teacher installs one they own to use in a lesson, it'll be wiped by Configurator on return. The institution's applications provide baseline functionality, which can be expanded upon, if required. Granted, we only have a small number of iPads, and sadly this method doesn't scale for one reason: you can't enforce a restrictions passcode through a profile, and the restrictions passcode doesn't restore from a backup of one iPad to a different iPad, but the restrictions themselves do. Therefore we have to set one up, back it up and restore to the other iPads, then go through the other iPads to add the restrictions passcode and back each of them up individually, having them restore to their own backup in the future.

 

If the restrictions passcode could be enforced, this would make this model perfect (for us), and it very nearly is. It's just a bit of a pain to set up, and a shame that it's such a small thing (profile enforced passcode) that makes it difficult.

Edited March 21, 2013 by Driftingashore