Apple’s iOS 9.3 preview describes features for educattion, some of which have long been requested by users, especially multi-user support. Unfortunately, it seems the highly-sought-after feature is only for education at this time.
Features for education include:
• Shared iPad for students: Students can log in to any iPad in any classroom and make it their own.
• New Classroom app: Teachers can guide students through a lesson, see their progress, and keep them on track.
• Apple School Manager: Now admins have one portal where they can do everything from create Apple IDs to purchase apps to prepare devices for MDM.
• Managed Apple IDs: A new kind of ID for education, Managed Apple IDs are created and assigned by the school.
As soon as students log in to an iPad, they have access to all their apps, books, and documents. So when class is ready to start, they are, too. For students who use the same assigned iPad in a class each day, starting a lesson is hassle-free. Thanks to intelligent caching, when students log in they don’t have to wait for everything to download — it’s already there.
More info via Apple here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, multi-user support would certainly be useful for families, too. You know, like we have on our Macs with OS X.
So, how ’bout it, Apple?
What’s more important to Apple: User satisfaction or intentionally limiting iOS in order to try to maximize iPad unit sales?
As we wrote over three and a half years ago in May 2012:
It would be relatively trivial to bring at least Fast User Switching over to iOS from OS X. That Apple hasn’t done so long ago suggests to us that they’d rather sell an iPad to every family member than a single iPad per family.
If we’re right about why iOS still doesn’t have multi-user support, then Apple’s wrong.
Not only are they failing to “delight customers,” but they are failing to realize that it won’t impinge iPad sales, but enhance them. Enabling multi-user support, makes the iPad even more attractive to families and, once families get their first iPad, they quickly realize that they need more than one. One iPad, even between only two people, just isn’t enough.
Enabling multi-user support will actually end up selling more iPads. So, get on the ball, Apple. Enable multi-user support in iOS already!
(If it’s a storage space issue, make the feature available as “dual-user” on 32 GB iPads and “up to four users” on 64GB models. That’d give more incentive to buy more spacious and higher priced models and, since Apple already sells a 16GB model, they tacitly endorse 16GB as the base requirement for an iPad user.)
SEE ALSO:
Apple ‘currently investigating’ iOS multi-user support – May 7, 2012