Apple,Articles,Deployment,iOS,Management June 24, 2013 at 2:43 pm

Changes in Apple Configurator 1.3

Apple Configurator

Apple Configurator was updated to version 1.3 on June 18, 2013. With the new update, some new features were added, some old features returned, and some things have changed.

UPDATE: back ups are NOT encrypted… Sorry folks!
I had erroneously said that back ups were now encrypted. They are not. Thanks to Chris Ross and Dusty Dorey for the correction.

Update when available, Update when device is in recovery
This means you can leave Configurator running and it will run any iOS updates only when they are available, or you can make it update only when devices are put into recovery mode.

Administrators can install apps on devices configured to not allow users to install apps
This means you can install an app on a device that has the App store disabled. Big time saver, as previously you had to turn the app store back on, install apps, then turn the app store back off. However, this only works in Supervised mode. Tried it on an unsupervised device, and it still fails.

Significantly improved reliability, scalability and performance
Performance, yes. I noticed that Configurator was much faster, however it crashed at least 8 times when doing simple supervision workflows. Also there were some weird graphical bugs in the Apps tab, where the checkbox to install an app was invisible until you clicked out of the tab and back in.

Profiles in Prepare mode

Profile Wizard

You can now only install profiles to a single device at a time in Prepare mode. You select which device you want to install to, and must hit a button. This means that enrolling devices to an MDM in prepare mode just got more tedious.

Pass codes – not new, but something I just discovered
On a supervised device, if a passcode gets set, when you refresh the device it will remove the passcode.

A new status view that includes time estimates and error information with recovery suggestionsDetails
This is pretty cool. You can see what configurator is doing on each device, in a much more detailed fashion.

All in all, this is a welcome update to Apple Configurator. The new status page has much more detail and should help with troubleshooting. The one drawback is that mass enrolling devices in Prepare mode just got a lot more time consuming, as you have to click each device in Configurator. Download it here.

Derick Okihara

Mac and iOS systems integrator for a private K-12 school in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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