[ipad] iPad Air b-grade stock

[nicholab]

Hi I have a couple of questions about the iPad Air a supplier has said that the iPad Air software is still current and will be for some time. These are B grade iPad stock that we are looking at getting. I remember somewhere that you can have issue managing iPad and apps if they don't come an approved route. Please can anyone comment on this thanks?

 

Or should I at least be getting the iPad Air 2? This is to run tapestry on. I want to manage this with Zulu desk MDM.

[Jamman960]

In the past you wouldn't have been able to fully manage these via DEP however now you can after a 30 day grace period via Apple Configurator 2 I believe.

 

The Air will run iOS 11 and by the looks of it iOS 12, with a few features dropped but nothing that'll interfere with Tapestry use. We currently use a mixture of Air 1's and 2's with Tapestry, we get a few complaints about the 1's as they "only" have 32gb of storage which goes far too quickly with photos but once you're using Apple School and the managed ID's you'll get 200gb icloud storage per user anyway.

 

I would expect the Air's to be supported throughout the next year but wouldn't be surprised if they weren't iOS 13 compatible. We're retiring our Air 1's in September.

 

James

[hallb15]

We're about to buy Tapestry so have been testing it on various mobile devices. Tapestry runs fine on iPad Mini 2, which has the same A7 CPU as the iPad Air (slightly slower clock speed) so I wouldn't worry about whether it can cope with Tapestry, but it is getting pretty old in Apple terms. 5 years old in October.

The Air 2 has the triple-core A8 CPU and double the RAM at 2GB DDR3, plus is a year younger so should be supported longer, but for running Tapestry, you won't notice any discernible difference in performance.

We've opted to run it on the Amazon Kindle Fire 7 as it works really well on them, and they are cheap! There's no MDM but as these are exclusively for staff, that shouldn't be an issue for us.

[DBazeley95]

We have iPad Minis stuck on iOS 9.3.5 which are still working with our MDM so you should be okay when they stop receiving updates.

 

Apple recently announced that iOS 12 will be coming to the iPad Air, I know people will say that running the latest iOS on a device which was released nearly 5 years ago is a bad idea. However with changes being made to the way the processor runs in iOS 12 means it should be usable. Worst case scenario is the iPad Air will only receive iOS 12 and not iOS 13.

 

Tapestry will run on any iOS device running version 8.0 or above.

 

Depending on the price of the iPad Air, I would also consider getting a quote for the 2018 iPad, this device is being aimed at education so you may find it turns out being a decent price.

[nicholab]

Someone did suggest the Amazon Kindle Fire 7 but it another platform to manage and it has no MDM which I am not very keen on.

[DBazeley95]

The reason why people suggest Amazon Fire 7 tablets is only due to price. They do not have an MDM (to my knowledge) and they do not perform particularly well.

They do run Tapestry from the Amazon App Store, however I would not recommend it.

 

On a side note, someone saw our quote for Sophos AV for 3 years and asked us why we don't use AVG Free? Because its not designed for Business/Education (and also isn't free for Education).

 

Sometimes a little more money up front can save money in the long run. We bought 2018 iPads recently and they will last us a long time.

[RLR]

Just an FYI and not really related to the question. We've got some iPad airs still floating around but our main bulk of iPads are the pros. The Airs a defiantly a lot slow and less responsive than they use to be. I guess this is due to the IOS updates.

[2ilent8cho]

Depends what price you are getting them at. They should actually get faster under iOS 12 when released as Apple are focusing on performance and giving the older devices some love. Considering you can get the latest iPad with education pricing (without VAT) for under £250 each i would have to be paying not much over the £100 mark for these iPad Airs for it to be worth it.