Had potential, this is awful
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.
KenterIT about Apple Configurator
