Apple

While I’d like to think I speak for others, I don’t. Everything written is based on current experience with the, issues I’ve read about in various articles, other technology people I’ve spoken to, and what I’ve seen via our Rockies thread.

iOS 7.0.4 has been consistently causing issues it seems across the board. I’m not sure why we’d switch to that. I’ve seen the update completely erase iPads in addition to the iOS problem that’s causing iPads to lose supervision. On top of this, I haven’t seen ANYTHING released from Apple about the fact that there’s a “fix” of sorts for the iPads that have lost their supervision state upon upgrading to iOS 7 or doing iOS 7 updates. I would think that with so many schools using iPads, that Apple would put out this information for us to know, rather than having to call enterprise support after the fact, and only then (hopefully), they tell you there’s a fix.

Communication on Apple’s part needs to improve A LOT and it seems like more bug testing needs to be done on the engineer end BEFORE an update is released, OR, if an update is released with limited bug testing having been done, educational institutes need to know if it will cause problems, vs. being the test subjects who have to report the bugs AFTER so much has been lost (and often on multiple devices).

It seems if Apple really wants to have a device for education institutions to use (more successfully), it needs to be designed/engineered so that it CAN be managed on a LARGE scale by institutions that have easily, hundreds of devices. Currently the devices are made for individual consumers where they don’t need to managed (other than a parent telling their kids they can/cannot use it, etc.).

I know there will always be glitches and bugs (it’s technology!), but it shouldn’t be the case that more often than not, updates cause more problems than they resolve. This needs to be more seriously addressed by Apple. Simply updating your device because an update came out, or wiping it and starting all over to fix a problem is NOT a solution when you have hundreds of devices to manage. Educators only have so much time to deal with these issues, and when it’s such a large scale issue with so many devices, it’s not always a simple and fast fix for the tech support people (I’ve been a technology teacher for 5 years, so I know what it’s like on the teacher end).

Jonathan "Cairo" Ender
Technology Support Specialist

From: rockies-edu-bounces+jonathan.ender=email@hidden [mailto:rockies-edu-bounces+jonathan.ender=email@hidden] On Behalf Of Michael T. Scott
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 10:11 AM
To: email@hidden
Subject: Re: [Rockies-Edu] Configurator Issue

Sorry to hear about the struggles and thanks for staying with us.

I recommend everyone make sure they are running Configurator 1.4.2 and iOS 7.0.4.

Enterprise support is the best way to get assistance with Configurator, and they are able to file bugs and escalate issues to engineering.

Enterprise support: 1-866-752-7753

-Mike



Michael Scott, Systems Engineer

Apple Education

Apple Inc.

(720) 346-3871

www.apple.com/education

References:
	>[Rockies-Edu] FOR EVERYONE; Apple: problems & communication (From: Jonathan Ender <email@hidden>)