Ios Reconnect the Cord

iOS Reconnect the cord

Hello, I’m William Smith and a Solutions Architect for 318, Inc., a technology consultancy based in Santa Monica, Calif.

Let’s talk about what we can do when we forego wireless on our iOS devices and reconnect the cord.

1 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 The nature of this presentation isn’t so much as “lessons learned” from the project I’ll be referencing—this isn’t a case study—but rather “nifty things I learned” while working on this project. I’ll also suggest some items for you to add to your toolkit.

2 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 1:1 iPad Initiative

• PreK-12 • 40,000 students • 5,000 faculty

This past year I’ve been on hiatus from my normal duties as a consultant to assist with an iPad rollout project for a large school district. During this past school year, we deployed about 30,000 iPads to students and teachers. By the time the project is complete at the end of calendar year 2015, the district will have distributed nearly 45,000 iPads.

3 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Deployment • Wi-Fi + DEP + MDM • Symmetric multi-processing = Users

With this number of devices, the school district planned on using Apple’s Device Enrollment Program (DEP) and what I like to call the power of symmetric multi-processing to wirelessly enroll and manage its devices with its MDM. In other words, dozens or hundreds of users can set up their devices more eﬃciently and economically using DEP than someone doing it for them.

4 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 iOS 8 • Automatically downloading on devices • Not caching on our servers

We deployed iPads to teachers before school started last September and then iOS 8 dropped two weeks before we were to deploy our ﬁrst student iPads. We’d planned for this. However, we noticed two things:

1) The 1.2 GB update was automatically downloading to iPads. That was OK. 2) Our OS X caching servers installed in each school weren’t caching the update.

This meant many devices were simultaneously downloading the update over the district’s Internet connection. Looking ahead, one school’s deployment could bog down the network.

5 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Manual Upgrade • Apple Configurator • 16 Macs • 20 devices per Mac • 25,000 devices • 7 business days

We had to control the iOS 8 upgrade. The only way to do that was use Apple Configurator, which cached the 1.2 GB upgrade file to the Mac. The only way to use Apple Configurator was physically connect each device to a workstation and update each one.

Device by device, box by box and palette by palette (10 devices per box and 27 boxes per palette), we upgraded about 25,000 devices in 7 business days.

6 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 iPad Finger • iPads power on automatically • Configurator doesn’t power them off • Saved 13 days

We hired professionals to upgrade our 25,000 iPads, which was the primary reason this sub-project took as little time as it did. They had developed a little in-house Mac application that did something simple but extraordinary. It watched Configurator and as it finished updating a device the app made a few simple quality control checks and then shut down the iPad—powered it off.

That little step shaved oﬀ 15 seconds per iPad due to less handling (they never had to remove the iPad from the cardboard sleeve) and the time it takes to press and hold the power button and swipe the screen.

That’s more than 13 business days of time.

7 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 There was something to be said about what you can do when you bypass Wi-Fi and connect the cord. And some things you simply can’t do over Wi-Fi. More and more as I participated in this project, I learned some really cool things you can only do when you connect the cord to an iOS device.

8 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 ☐ Text Input ☐ Networking ☐ Screen Recording ☐ Console and logs ☐ Command line tools

We’ll spend a little bit of time talking about the ﬁrst few items here.

I’ll cover a few ways of entering text on your iPad apart from using the on-screen keyboard and how you can use that to speed up preparing multiple iPads with the same information.

When MDM can’t talk to your iPad wirelessly, we’ll see how you can still connect it to your network and how it can save you a lot of headaches. Then we’ll cover a Yosemite and iOS 8 feature for viewing your iPad’s screen on your Mac and how you can use that for a documentation and support.

But I’ll spend more of our time talking about troubleshooting information we can get out of a device and ways of sending commands via command line, which we can use for scripting.

9 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

Apple ID: [email protected] Password: sY}ezi[pp6gS

If you’re preparing a half dozen or more iPads, let alone dozens, hundreds or thousands, just entering Apple ID information is time-consuming, burdensome and a painful.

How would you like to have to type Apple IDs and passwords like this on the on-screen keyboard?

10 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

Apple ID: [email protected] Password: sY}ezi[pp6gS

If you’re a touch typist, a more eﬃcient way to enter data on an iPad is using an external keyboard.

11 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

Logitech Wired Keyboard $59.99

Something like this Logitech Wired Keyboard that plugs directly into the 30-pin or Lightning port on the iPad work very well and it requires no additional power, cables or software. Once you plug it in, it’s immediately ready to type. Cost is about $60.

12 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

Lightning to USB Camera Adapter $29.00

If you don’t want to buy a dedicated 30-pin or Lightning keyboard then the ﬁrst item I suggest adding to your toolkit is this Lightning to USB pigtail or as Apple likes to call it, a “Lightning to USB Camera Adapter”. It retails for $29.00 in most stores.

I want you to note that this is a female USB connector not a male connector. This isn’t a short version of the Lighting cable that comes with every iOS device.

13 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

With just this connector, you can use most any wired USB keyboards you may have around the oﬃce such as the Dell extended keyboards that come with most PCs.

14 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

However, Apple USB keyboards won’t work. Why?

Every Apple keyboard is a USB hub and the Lightning port on an iPad doesn’t generate enough power to support both keyboard input and hubs, whether anything is plugged in to them or not.

15 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

So, how do we make Apple keyboards work?

The next item I suggest adding to your toolkit is a small powered USB hub. This Protonix USB 3.0 4-port hub sells on amazon.com for $10.95. The cost of it plus Apple’s Lightning to USB Camera adapter is about $20 below the cost of Logitech’s small wired keyboard.

When you add the hub, though, you now get the ability to do something really cool.

16 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input

You can eliminate the keyboard and replace it with a barcode scanner. This Esky brand scanner on amazon.com sells for about $19.99 and you can spend up to a few hundred dollars per scanner depending on any additional features you want.

17 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Text Input Code 128B Barcode font • Uppercase letters • Lowercase letters • Numbers • Symbols

If you choose to use a barcode scanner then you also need to purchase a high quality barcode font, speciﬁcally supporting something like Code 128B barcodes. Code 128B supports: • Uppercase letters • Lowercase letters • Numbers • Symbols

Scanning a barcode means you’ll have not only faster data entry but accurate data entry the ﬁrst time. If you had 50 iPads to prepare and had to enter ﬁve pieces of information on each such as username, password and Apple ID, think about what you’ll gain by pressing a button 250 times compared to typing unique usernames, passwords and Apple IDs 50 times.

Experiment where you can add a tab or return character at the end of the barcode to either move to the next field or tap the default button, which is usually “OK” or “Agree”. Depending on the quality of the scanner you purchase and monitor, you may be able to scan barcodes directly off your computer screen or you may find merging data into a Word document for printing individual cards for each iPad easier.

18 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 � Text Input ☐ Networking ☐ Screen Recording ☐ Console and logs ☐ Command line tools

That takes care of getting text into your iOS device. Next, let’s talk about networking.

19 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Networking

Here’s the scenario: A user forgets his iPad passcode. After a few failed attempts, he disables his iPad for ﬁve minutes. The user restarts his iPad thinking that’ll reset the Disabled message. It doesn’t. After disabling his iPad again for 15 minutes, he comes to you to clear his passcode from your MDM server.

The problem this causes is it turns oﬀ Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi credentials are securely stored in the iPad’s keychain, which can only be unlocked by entering the passcode. Catch 22. How do get into the iPad?

The oﬃcial solution is “you don’t—wipe the device.”

The official unofficial solution is to connect the iPad to a wired network and bypass Wi-Fi. I say “unofficial” because Apple doesn’t offer this solution as a support method but it’s been in iOS at least since version 6. And it continues to work up to the latest versions of iOS that I’ve personally tested.

20-1 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Networking

The oﬃcial solution is “you don’t—wipe the device.”

20-2 iOS - Reconnect the Cord.key - July 11, 2015 Networking

Let’s go back to a couple of tools we’ve added to our toolkit: • Apple’s Lightning to USB Camera adapter • Powered USB hub Let’s add a couple more items to our toolkit: • An Apple USB Ethernet Adapter for $29.00 • Ethernet cable