Apple is rolling out a lot of new features with iOS 9.3, which just hit beta. Most notably, for students a single iPad can now be shared amongst multiple people. This means that each student can log in and access their own personal data. Multi-user support has been a big request for iPad owners for some time, and it seems Apple is finally answering the call … at least for the education market.
Apple is also launching a new Classroom app. This is a digital teaching assistant app, which can present quizzes, load AirPlay content onto an Apple TV and much more.
There is also the addition of bulk Apple ID creation, which should help schools get up and running faster with iPad deployments.
Apple is also adding a new Apple School Manager service. This centralized location enables school administrators to do a complete end-to-end deployment. This collates existing Apple Education features as well as adding some new functionality.
All of this launches with iOS 9.3. Apple is providing an early preview today to get education market ready for the new capabilities.
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Night Shift looks good – http://www.apple.com/ios/preview/
Interesting but I gotta say Multi-User support is not something I need. YMMV but I have my iPad that I use. Same goes for my wife and her iPad. I can see though, how in a school setting this could be very useful.
On the other hand it might suggest that Apple is putting more higher level functions into iOS for iPad which would be welcome..
On the other hand, I’ve been longing for multi-user support since the first iPad was release. In a family where you can’t afford an iPad for every kid (or even a separate iPad for the kids) it would be a really useful feature.
When my kids started using my iPad and my 1 year old son managed to exit the child app and accidentally tweet in my name I realized I had to delete all my personal apps and settings (Twitter, Facebook, Mail, iMessage etc) from the iPad just because it didn’t support multi-user environment.
Totally agree. It’s not fun dealing with kid spats when younger brother messes up older brother’s game progress. :)
Managed? He can just press the home button! Unless of course you had guided access on, Go Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access and turn it on. It makes sure that you can’t exit the app without triple clicking the home button; and then putting in a passcode (possibly different to the iPad’s one).
Pity they waited until ChromeBooks completely eclipsed them before being the least bit responsive to k-12.
As a person who works in the K-12 education setting for the technology & instructional departments, I agree they waited too long to get these tools out. However, knowing Apple, they likely didn’t wait this long without having a good reason, i.e. it’s a lot more complicated to get it right than it would appear, at least on the back end. Plus, Apple has had Configurator since March 2012 in order to deploy iPads to enterprise or education on a large scale. They also added the Device Enrollment Plan in March 2014 to streamline the setup of iPads, iPhones, and Macs when purchased from Apple so the devices could come ready to use out of the box with correct profiles & permissions.
Remember, the iPad was designed as a consumer-focused device first. Educational institutions latched on immediately & started using them by setting up generic Apple IDs for individual & group use for staff & students. Google already had a leg up on Apple by using a more desktop-like OS with Chrome OS, which requires a sign-in to access individual information, and is almost entirely web-based.
I have to disagree– unless you can explain why it’s “a lot more complicated to get it right than it would appear, at least on the back end,” I don’t see why the most fiscally valuable company in the world, that has plenty of cloud and multi-user back-end experience already, would have beyond-normal complications with this. Also, I wouldn’t call Chrome OS a desktop-like OS at all — it is essentially a browser-based OS. And I don’t see how Google had a leg up on Apple, since the first chromebook was released more than a year AFTER the first ipad. To be honest, I don’t understand at all why Apple, which has traditionally owned the edu market, essentially let Google eat their lunch (or at least most of it) on this one..
What would you consider “plenty of … multi-user back-end experience” for iOS? Family Sharing is the most similar I can think of, and that’s only been around since iOS 8.
As for whether Chrome OS is more desktop or mobile-like, I think it’s safe to say for all intents and purposes, it certainly functions more like a desktop OS in terms of having to sign in to access its controls.
Google’s leg up is in reference to their access to a browser-based OS that is more fiscally viable for public education, not to mention the ubiquity of Google Apps for Education, essentially replacing Microsoft’s Office services, and making it difficult for school boards to justify paying Apple for hardware that’s twice as expensive despite it being much more of an effective educational device. At a time when schools are being asked to cut their budgets even further, it’s a no-brainer for schools who don’t understand that kids don’t learn solely by typing on a keyboard.
iOS already has multi-user support. It’s running a special version of darwin and by default has the ‘mobile’ and ‘root’ users. The amount of code to add multi user support to SpringBoard and the lock screen would be in the tens of lines. There is already some decent apps in the cydia store that do this.
Maybe this will signal an increased initiative on getting more schools to use iPads. iPads have been underused as text book replacements also. Load up each grade level with the 5-6 text books they use and will save the school and government a lot of money.
I hope this will open the way for remote viewing and controlling applications on iOS devices. Even though there are workarounds, being able to safely view and control iOS devices using OS X remote system, as well as third party applications like TeamViewer would be a welcome feature. Currently, it is very hard to assist iOS users remotely, due to the lack of such mechanism, this would be a boon in a the classroom, but in the corporate world too.
So, can I use multiuser for like say, the family?
Let this go through first round of beta first…
no. it’s only for education :/
My gf and I both sold our iPads to buy an iPad pro that we share for sketching.
but neither of us can use it for anything else since there’s no multi users.
As an It/tech guy I am still not sure about this in schools. Yes it is very good for learning. For the children with spelling difficulties it is a wonder. Also there are really great apps for learning certain things. But in my eyes it is still a tool for education not the prime thing. Teachers need to know how this works. I am pro tech / IT learning on schools. They know how to use firefox, can copy something on an usb but that’s about it. Turning off the screen instead of the computer etc.
Id love to know if the classroom app with work with any apple ID and not just school managed ones…
Some may not want multi-user but my wife and I would love it. Everytime she needs to use my iPad it makes too many changes so when I get it back everything has changed. We want to keep the same photos and other base information common to both of us but have our own e-mail and other personal data.
So Apple make this available to everyone not just the schools.
Nope.. It requires iOS 10.3 or later.