The iPad Project: Day Three - End of an Era, and DRM Hell
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 12:12PM Today was a preparation day. The plan calls for the breakup of the iMac lab, so that's what I did this morning. It was a simple enough job to shuffle the computers into the various classes and hook them up.
Definitely gave me a moment's pause though. Where are all my beloved "computers" now? How will I teach "computing" without "computers"?
It's the end of an era, but the beginning of a new one. A new era in which computers serve the needs of children and teachers. An era in which computers are not special artifacts sequestered in a purpose-built chamber into which children are ushered in hushed tones to have their weekly audience with The Computers.
I'm optimistic but, still, .... my computers. snif
Let me explain what's happening: each class will have one iMac, to which they sync their iPads. The primary classes will all sync their iPads to one user account on the class iMac, so that they have as consistent an application set as possible.
The secondary pupils will all sync their iPad to their own user account on the iMac in their guidance classroom. This is because I want the device backups to be under the user's own control and not accessible to other users.
Now, let's talk about the App Store and app distribution. This is capital-H Hard and what I'm writing here isn't close to fully-formed yet.
The fundamental problem is that App Store purchases are tied to App Store accounts. Further, App Store purchases can only live on five Macs. This is a huge issue.
Here's the question: how do I make purchases from the App Store and get them onto 100+ iPads?
Here are the solutions I came up with. Bear in mind that a critical requirement is that pupils do not know the App Store account password. We don't want them spending our money!
Solution #1: every pupil has their own App Store account on their own device
This is fraught with problems. For a start, every pupil needs a method of payment. Then you're paying for one license per iOS device, instead of once per iTunes account. Then there's the problem of making sure that everyone buys the correct application. Too much coordination effort.
Solution #2: every class has their own App Store account
This might work OK for the primary classes, where everyone's syncing to one iTunes library. Won't work so well for secondary classes where everyone's syncing to their own iTunes library. When an app is purchased, everyone in the class would have to "fake-purchase" it for themselves to get it into their library. This will require a lot of running around typing in the App Store password to individual devices.
This solution leads to us buying one copy of the app per class. It's also annoying for secondary teachers who couldn't be sure that all their pupils all had access to some basic set of apps.
Solution #3: one App Store account for the entire school
This might work, except that we would only be able to sync iPads to five computers in the whole school. This will probably be too much of a bottleneck. Having an iMac in the classroom that pupils can sync to is so much more convenient than having to get a time slot on the "sync computer".
Solution #4: one App Store account for Primary, another for Secondary
This is the solution I'm going with at the moment. It, too, is rather fraught with hassle but is about the best that I could design. I have a Mac mini that will be the "canonical" computer for App Store purchases. Once bought on this machine, iTunes Home Sharing will make sure it appears on all the other machines.
This is agonising in many ways:
- Every computer has to be authorised for one of two iTunes accounts.
- For the secondary kids, every user account has to be individually authorised for the same iTunes account (i.e. telling the user's iTunes library that it's authorised for that App Store account).
- Every user will have to check for updates individually, which requires a teacher entering the iTunes password.
- This also costs bandwidth and storage. One update is downloaded and stored for each pupil.
Non-Solution #5: iPhone Enterprise Program
I only mention this here because many people are sure to suggest it. It's not a solution to this problem, it's a solution to a different problem. My problem is "How to install 3rd party applications purchased from the App Store on a large number of iOS devices". The Enterprise Program solves the "How to install 1st party applications that we wrote in-house to all our employees' iOS devices".
The Enterprise Program says "You must be a company or organization with 500 or more employees and a DUNS number to apply". We don't have 500 employees (even counting the kids) and I have no idea what a DUNS number is. The only way the Enterprise Program helps me is if I can get an unsigned binary of every version of every application I want to deploy from the developer, sign it myself and deploy it to the devices. I can't see how that saves me any effort.
The Ideal Solution
What I would really like to see is something a little like Mac OS X Server's Software Update Server.
Imagine that, instead of looking directly at the App Store, I could point (via a Configuration Profile) my iPads at an iTunes library on the local network containing authorised apps. The App Store app on the device would then only show apps that are available in that library and everything would appear to be "free" and could be installed directly on the device. Updates would appear on the device when the version in the master iTunes library was later than the version on the device.
Pain
There is no way I can look at this that doesn't suggest to me that this is going to be the most agonising part of the entire project. I just hope we can keep it tractable.
This is a hole in Apple's App Store infrastructure that the massive interest in iPads for education is exposing, in a way that the iPhone and iPod touch never did. One can hope that someone at Apple is looking at ways to solve it. If you're that person and are reading this, I would love to help you in any way I can.
[Update" Here's a radar for the 'ideal solution' - rdar://problem/8288347]
Reader Comments (20)
Interesting series, Fraser, and you raise a few critical questions that I'm not sure anybody has a good answer for.
There definitely needs to be some kind of bulk licensing and deployment solution for iOS apps. As an iDeveloper (hey, I just made that up ! :-) ) I'm not sure how I feel about a single £0.59 purchase of my App potentially being installed on several hundred iDevices - surely I should be entitled to see a bit more income from that scenario ?
sounds complex...I'm just impressed that each child is getting their own hardware. my 6 yr old daughter goes to school 200 yards away from your school and the notion that this sort of shift in teaching dynamic is available or indeed achievable .... I just don't see it ever being considered. Not sure if you're responsible for this or if it's the mgmt team overall but it needs championing - well done!
@Andy I agree (I'm a developer too). Right now, at a couple of licenses for the entire school, it's a steal for the school budget. I think developers should get more but I'm mainly concerned with keeping the management workload tractable right now.
Your should file a radar for the idea of your ideal solution.
@jeremy Definitely a team effort. I can bang on the door all I like but management have to buy into it or nothing happens.
I have had no problems syncing apps between macs. Provided both macs are authorized I can sync my updates across machines instead of updating on each machine?
How many students simultaneously using an app that was purchased one time do you consider to be fair use? 15, 150, 15000? I think the issue here is figuring out how to allow limited purchases to be made from each iTunes account and not how something can be purchased once and given to a multitude of users. Is it any more fair to buy a single copy of iWork or Office and install that across all of the computers you had in a lab? I am not trying to throw stones but putting a different view on your approach.
Could iTunes store credits or gifting of apps could be part of the ultimate solution? Each student could have their own iTunes store account so they could make personal purchases but you could also gift them apps that are covered by the school budget.
Another thing to consider is that you can use restrictions on the ipad to remove the app store application from the iPad, thus restricting what they can download without knowing the restriction password.
Looks like Apple has answered your prayers (sort of). They just announced the ability to bulk purchase apps.
Announcing the App Store Volume Purchase Program
US only.
Fraser, this is really helpful,
I'm trialling with 5 ipads at the moment. It's in a medical school environment, so the cost of the apps is not so much of a problem (the apps we've bought run out at about £70-80/iPad at the moment).
@andy and @jt - you certainly should see the results of your efforts and I don't have a problem with equipping each iPad with the full complement of apps at full cost-but if we're talking volume discounts, then that's good too.
I totally agree that the distribution out of apps and keeping them in sync is the hardest job. I've given the iTunes store username/password out to my colleagues, and for the most part, it's worked out ok (well someone bought a "House" episode by mistake, but I can justify that I guess-"how not to give bad news"! :)
I'll look into the bulk purchase link above-I've thought about iTunes gift cards, but I really want something "zeroconf" :)
Here's a link to our experiences of using ipads (also includes some general articles on innovation)
Cheers and please keep us updated?
Tone
Am enjoying following your progress. I have a couple of questions regarding charging and also if they will be going home with the students... Looking forward to more posts as you move forward...
This seems like an excellent example of why jailbreaking was pronounced legal [1]. If it's too difficult to play within Apple's restrictions, have you considered getting out of them?
The jailbroken experience on an iPod Touch is certainly well-formed. I suspect it would be similar for the iPad. Surely this is worth looking into?
[1] http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-20011824-85.html
dude. Dude!
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/08/10/apple-debuts-app-store-volume-purchase-program-for-educational-institutions/
http://www.apple.com/itunes/education/
@Matthew writes, "This seems like an excellent example of why jailbreaking was pronounced legal [1]. If it's too difficult to play within Apple's restrictions, have you considered getting out of them?"
Jailbreaking is widely used for stealing software, but I don't think these school kids need non-standard and unstable machines, and developers need income to survive. The way the market is set up right now if we want a solution where software gets paid for we need Apple to be involved.
I think the best possible solution takes iTunes out of the equation completely. The iPhone Configuration Utility works with the iPad, and it's available independently from Apple. (Download: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL851)
Even if you don't use the Configuration Utility to deploy applications, it's still useful for creating Configuration Profiles - the mobileconfig files that work like managed preferences on Mac OS X. With a configuration profile, you can disable access to the iTunes Music or App Stores, YouTube, and even disable "on the device" application installation (http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iPhone_Security.pdf). The mobileconfig can be pushed to the iPad via USB cable, or you can host the profile on a web server and access/download it from Mobile Safari on the iOS device itself.
I agree with some of the posters above. The 5 installs per purchase was intended for a family, not a large computer teaching lab. I think the ethical solution is to but _at least_ (number of students)/5 licenses.
As another developer, I don't care if you use my apps and I do not get any money, in an educational environment. I am just not that greedy. Milking schools and school students is not how i want to get paid.
Great to see you doing this, hope it works out.
Not to harp on the obvious, but isn't this the kind of thing you figure out in a pilot program before you jump in head-first with an oprah-like "Everyone gets an iPad!" concept?
And have you looked at the Enterprise licensing. I thought they did something to allow enterprises to control the content on their devices.