Apple Configurator App Reviews

I cant get configuration screen to work (last screenshot). Even if Im add a existing profile I am not able to edit it. Also I can not create a new profile since it forces me to open an existing. Furthermore I am missing a button to unsupervise a device. and the AppleConfigurator support webpage shows only the outdated version 1.7.2

[MCInstallationErrorDomain – 0xFA1 (4001)] Problems uploading mobilconfig-files including 802.1X payloads to Apple TV (3rd gen). Worked before with Apple Configurator 1.

This is by far the best effort I have seen from Apple to create a device configuration tool. Great job!

This app took a nose-dive. There are features that, if *added* to Configurator 1, would have been a nice upgrade. Instead, the re-write of the app is now a very very flat application, confused with an outside working environment of Automator (not even integrated into the app interface). Get your scripting hats on if you want to do anything with it. The removal of automated sync as well as removing the database was detrimental to the function. A device is essentially new to AC2 when connected as it has no database…..this is a bigger issue than you’d guess when assigning asset numbers, apps and profiles. It requires full babysitting which is increasing workload to schools/teachers and therefore techs. Nice adds are the integration of VPP direct (in theory) and app updates within the app rather than iTunes. DEP is a good add too. Changing the license assignment to device rather than appleID was also a good move for larger institutions where device accounts would be impossible to manage, and creating spreadsheets of codes was getting tedious. All in all, Configurator 1 should’ve been enhanced, not re-written. Not impressed.

I cannot use version 2.1 because it takes forever to download and install apps. I check with Apple and it’s a known bug without workaround. I must wait for next update.

Hands down the most frustrating, buggy, and unreliable means of administering multiple iDevices out there ( refering to the latest version 2.1 ). Sometimes it works, most times it does not. Apple should be ashamed this was sent out into the wild. Often if you attempt to update more than a couple devices it simply fails, or worse…fails part of the way leaving your users to experience the joy of an incomplete Blueprint. Want to use this on a cart of iPads at a school? Good luck. It took nearly a week to do 30 iPad’s becasue this poor excuse for code couldn’t complete a task without barfing half the time. If you have to do each machine one at a time, I fail to see what good this is besides contributing to hair loss. If you administer iDevices in any form, do yourself a favior and avoid this like the plague it is.

I would expect supervising a batch of 10 iPads to be pretty straightfoward, and reasonable to do on a Macbook Pro. It worked fine with the original Apple Configurator in 10.10 but that’s not the case here. When you go to supervise 10 devices and it only works on 8 then you attempt to supervise the 2 it missed and still end up with 1 device unsupervised it’s time to downgrade back to 10.10 and the original Configurator. I’m also not keen on having to quit and relaunch Configurator when I rename a device or want to get accurate updated information on it. Additionally the removal of auto-sync (seriously Apple?) and the amount of additional intervention required to get this to work is pretty unbelievable. If you are working in a technical capacity and maintain iPads I can’t think of a single reason to recommend this in its current state. Feels like a big step backwards and that they are intentionally pushing you towards a full MDM solution.

This is the absolute worst mass deployment utility I have ever seen. Possibly the worst bit of writing Apple has ever produced. A waste of time and complete crap! Bring back the old apple configurator, it too was horrible but it worked.

While there are some decent features in this program, in my opinion it’s failings are on three main points. One, the lack of documentation makes this program difficult to use. My experience mirrors that of many others, that days have been wasted on trial and error trying to accomplish something that is possible, but is unclear. Two, the program is buggy. Frequently I would go back to the drawing board due to my trial and error failing, only to find later that some of the iPads did work correctly. I just thought I had done something wrong because some of the devices were not working. Instead of a problem with method it was only a problem with the program (or possibly the iPads themselves) not uniformly accepting the same changes. Regardless of the time invested trying to get everything set up, the greatest problem is just that it does not do what we needed the program for: saving time in deploying a large volume of devices. Even if it wasted all our time getting it to work right, it would still probably be worthwhile if it saved our time on the back end, which is what we are all hoping for. Instead, my installations require small batches, constant supervision for error pop-ups that hang the installation, and then re-do’s for the units that failed. This leaves me with the program only saving a small amount of time and fails to compensate for the large investment of time up front.

Completely useless. Apple has taken an app that was an absolute pain to use in the first place and has somehow managed to make it even less intuitive in the update. Profiles that were imported no longer work, new profiles are getting errors stating they are “Invalid”, and every step is met with constant errors regarding connectivity and incompatibility. Considering that you can’t import previous configurations or create a new one without encountering these errors, I’m unsure how this app ever passed the QA phase.

We use Configurator to manage over 41 iOS devices (5 iPads and 36 iPod touches) on a daily basis. The iOS devices are used to record data of engagments with our patients throughout the day (three shifts of employees during a 24 hour period). While the app is not the most intuitive, it has worked extremely well for us since day one. We are able to simply plug in our iOS devices, charge them, monitor that charge, re-configure when necessary and or add new devices on the fly with our standard template configuration.

What in the world is Apple thinking with this app? It fails at its most basic goal - creating an iPad profile and enforcing it. - Can’t store apps locally on the Mac. Restore the device? Have to load (all 6GB) of apps each and every time! - Cannot enforce simple tasks like preventing iOS upgrades or user changing the home screen - Users can still change backgrounds even though it’s supposed to be locked The kicker - Upgrading the app deletes all of your devices! Unbelievable. Incomprehensible how Apple can so utterly fail to grasp the needs of its customers.

I downloaded this thinking it would be useful with the assorted IOS devices in my household. Hit a brick wall immediately --- searched "Help" for adding devices There are two ways to add a device -- automatically by pointing the device to some 3-letter server -- and manually prep. Unfortunately, the "How-to" for both methods is missing or or well hidden. The resulting "Oh well" led me to uninstall it.

Rant alert. AC2 is REALLY nice, but consistency between versions is increasingly frustrating. We use AC2 in our organization to update/restore iPads right out of the box. The previous version of AC2 was working and iOS 9.3.4 was installing fine, no errors. Star to Apple! This is a vast difference in performance from the first version of AC2, which our Apple reps insisted the problem was our WiFi……though AC2 is a wired connection. At any rate, we recently updated AC2 (iOS 10.x also came out) and restoring fails often. The problem is not WiFi, nor is it our hub, as again, it worked in the previous version of AC2. As a compliment, I do appreciate that this version supports adding a supervision identity certificate from our MDM, so now both the AC2 stations and MDM can work together. Star to Apple! Summary: AC2 restore fails often (most important feature for us in AC2) MDM synchronization is really nice (however this feature is so belated we’ve learned to work around it, though that belatedness may be due to our MDM provider) For Apple, who will probably never read this: I like the idea of blueprints but I believe there’s an issue with the way blueprints are applied. For example, we want the blueprint to restore all devices, then name them (we have a set naming scheme, e.g. smith-1, smith-2), THEN apply an MDM enrollment profile. This does work; however, iPads sometimes go into the MDM named “iPad” and some go in named how we want them to. The advantage of naming them before enrollment is to avoid having thousands of devices all named iPad. I propose that a delay is added in the blueprint when a naming scheme is invoked. This would allow time for AC2, or possibly the Hub that all the iPads are plugged into, to catch up BEFORE the enrollment profile is installed. Test this with 10+ iPads instead of one, you will see what I mean. Really, a cure all would be for Apple to go ahead and become an MDM. Apple has everything they need in their arsenal to be an MDM (especially with the addition of Apple School Manager), but still Apple chooses to push the responsibility to a 3rd party. Clearly I don’t know everything as I’m not one of the most profitable companies in the world, but it seems like Apple wants to micro-manage their software but not accept the responsibility of deploying it.

.mobileconfig management seems to be gone with this version. You can import existing configs, but not modify or even view the contents.

To counter a review by Sonic8400 @ Oct 07, 2015, MobileConfig editing is available. Found my old ICU profiles in ~/Library/Mobile Device/Configuration Profiles. Used File/Open to open them. Was able to see all the data, edit, and save. Created a blueprint, added profiles to the blueprint, then applied the blueprint to a device. The blueprint applied the profile to the device. You cannot double-click on an installed profile to edit it, etc. It seems that the new application wants you to organize the *.mobileconfig files outside of the application, after which you can add them to devices and blueprints.

This is a great improvement over the original Configurator. There is still room for growth but this is a huge step.

This has made managing our college’s iPads a breeze. Profile deployment, too good. Reseting passwords, just as simple. The revive function is awesome for attempting to save the data of borked iOS devices stuck in recovery. Note: Devices must first be setup with the configurator before they can be managed, that requires restoring them.

Our main function for apple configurator is to prep devices, which it does well; however, falls short due to some errors, especially when performing document additions. For instance, we have about 5,000+ iPad Airs that we load roughly 3000+ PDF’s (10 - 40GB) every week. Every time we get to about 1000 files transfered we keep getting an Unexpected Error of [NSPOSIXErrorDomain - 0x1 (1)]. Additionally, if you overwrite any documents, the user has to keep pressing replace, rather than just remembering that action for all duplicate documents. Apple, please fix these issues soon.

I do not know where to begin. My organization manages over 100,000 pieces of edtech equipment for schools, everything you can imagine, and the iPads have been the worst addition to the IT management field since before cloning technology existed. Configurator2 had some potential to make managing apps and iPads much easier than it had been, but for over a month, we have been plagued with bugs and forced to invent workarounds for this software. There is no excuse. The world sits with jaws dropped when Apple makes new announcements, but few ever reflect on the reality of their shoddy work. Configurator2 is a disaster. I currently have a Senior Advisor working with us who admitted after several odd statements that it is first week on the job. His engineering team is asking us to do things (switch out cables, try a new computer, etc.) that would imply they are talking to first-time iPad managers. We have the same issues persisting in 3 different cities in California on completely different setups. The forums on Config2 are a joke with people giving advice that doesn’t work because they are guessing, and just as confused by the bugs as everyone else. Current bugs at the time of this review (Version 2.1): - Cannot load the restore with backup into a blueprint because it unsupervises your devices, making profiles impossible to load. - Suddenly the “Downloading Apps” step in the adding apps process fails at the end with a 403 or 404 error. It was a 404 for the longest time, and now it’s a 403 implying that the engineers put back the file that caused the 404 issue, but tested it on a system with full rights to the page, but not open to the public (403 is permission denied). There is absolutely no wonder why the iPad has lost its way in the classroom against the Chromebook. Managing Chromebooks is a breeze and a no-brainer for teachers to use. No space is used on them, so buying the 16GB Chromebook is a no brainer. Insane slip, Apple. We now tell newly contracted schools that we will not work with their iPads. We let them know right away what type of mistake they made by getting enamored by the Apple glow. If anyone in the world can tell me otherwise when it comes to the “ease” of managing iPads, I’d love to hear from you. I know you don’t exist unless iPad is the only thing you’ve ever managed OR you let the children manage it all on their own. I have yet to meet one person who enjoys their job when it comes to managing iPads for a school or organization. That lets Configurator and the iPad in general speak for itself.