Just joined this group and I ask for your forbearance - I'm new to all this.

I work for an agency that serves people with developmental disabilities and we have about 55 locations in Westchester County, NY. Some generous peopel gave us a donation of 50 iPads and I'm trying to rationally deploy them! I'd like to be able to synch them remotley for iOS and app updates to avoid a lot of travel. The devices would be shared at the remote locations amongst several clients and the slection of apps would be limited to about 20 or so. Of course, since we're a non-proift, funds are limited, so whatever solutions are available, they must be affordable.

Thanks for your input.

Jordan

P.S. Any suggestions for iPad cases without covers that would be durable?

A department bought iPads outside of our registered Apple Education purchase account and now they can't be enrolled in DEP.

If I can't manage the iTunes account for this shared-use lab, what's my best course of action.

On another note, Apple Configurator 1.6 is dead slow updating new iPads to 8.0.2 even though the ipsw file is downloaded. It's taking over an hour. Any thoughts?

Thanks all!

There are a number of apps out there, and new ones popping up all the time, that students are downloading for one reason or another. Mostly VPN apps to try and bypass our web filters. GBA4iOS is a little more innocuous, but does make the user change the time on their iPads to a date in the past.

We are blocking the install of Configuration Profiles which helps with VPNs. I also lock and disable features on the iPad if it is seen in inventory. It installs a Web Clip they click on that brings them to a page and explains why their iPad is disabled and how to get rid of it.

A new app I found yesterday is vShare. This is an app that allows you to pirate other apps, wants you to change the time on your iPad to a time in the past and installs a Provisioning Profile called "Anyone".

I would like to create this and start a list of apps that students use to bypass rules. A wiki of things that are Forbidden or otherwise screw up your configs. If this has already been done in another post please let me know, but I did not find anything. Here is my list so far:

VPN
GBA4iOS
vShare
Anyone - Provisioning profile

We are getting ready to deploy ipads in a shared environment. We are using Maas360 as our MDM. The only issue left is that there seems to be no way to prevent users from enabling a passcode on the device. A student could potentially configure a passcode and prevent the next person from picking up the ipad and using it.

Any way to lock them out of this? How are others dealing with this?

Everyone,

Just a heads up that it looks like Apple may be using a different service now to load the App Store. I ran into the issue today where the App Store was blocked for all of our students' iPads. I ran a trace on the HTTPS traffic coming from the device when it said it couldn't connect and I found it trying to hit this IP: 69.192.18.217

That IP also resolves to the domain name of:

http://a69-192-18-217.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com/

I hope this helps anyone that may be having issues connecting to the App Store or maybe some can provide us with info on why the App Store seems to want to connect to that IP now.

Thanks!
Jesse

I just thought i would insert a quick note, as this isn't really documented anywhere on the internet yet that i can see...

The issue with Third party apps is that you can grant them full system access, which is great for those who want third party keyboards.

However, with that setting comes big consequences, as a result of this a keyboard can now interact with applications on a much deeper level, it can also now report home to the internet. This gives genuine applications visibility of what is being typed, most give privacy agreements around credit card and password fields which is fine.
But for those of us in the enterprise who are using these "secure containers" this is a serious breach of security, you could be unaware of the fact you are leaking sensitive information out to a third party.

Its important to know in order to prevent this all you need to do is make sure you have your corporate applications set as "Managed". Luckily our applications are already managed, so providing we never chose to manage third party keyboards.

There is an important extract in the latest Apple Security document detailing this;

For devices enrolled in mobile device management, document and keyboard extensions obey Managed Open In rules. For example, the MDM server can prevent a user from exporting a document from a managed app to an unmanaged Document Provider, or using an unmanaged keyboard with a managed app. Additionally, app developers can prevent the use of third-party keyboard extensions within their app.


Ensure that in your policy "Allow opening managed app documents in unmanaged apps" is unchecked to prevent third party keyboards. Resulting in the restriction named "Opening documents from managed to unmanaged apps not allowed" being set on the device under General > Profiles > Restrictions.
The setting of "Allow opening unmanaged app documents in managed apps" has no impact on third party keyboard, so this can stay set to suit your current corporate policy.

Hope this helps someone.

I created an AppleScript to automate clicking the verification link and signing in. The script is messy...I just wrote it and used it today and haven't cleaned it up or commented at all.

The workflow I'm using it with is like this:

Use the Apple ID creator script, using the same password for all of the accounts.
Setup an Outlook rule to move verification emails to a folder named "AppleVerify".
Create another folder named "AppleVerifyDone".
Then I run this script.

The script will scan through AppleVerify to grab the verification link and the apple id, opens safari to that link, input the Apple ID, and inputs the password. Then it closes the safari window and moves the email to AppleVerifyDone.

Again, it's really messy and it will probably break for you since I wrote it specifically for my workflow. But I figure it might help someone out.

Rename .txt to .scpt
Edit the idpassword and emaildomain variables

So there's this: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/releasenotes/Interapp...

Now who wants to port the Apple ID creator?