Will a supervised device allow user-initiated iOS updates?

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Created Nov ’15

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Hello, we are making an iPad-mini-based medical device app for a client, to be sold to hospitals. The iPads will be managed by the hospital, but our client will need to help them get set up, so we are helping our client figure out the plan.

We are learning about supervised mode using the Apple configurator, and see that this allows a device to be configured as "Supervised." The documentation and presentations state that "several restrictions are available" for a supervised device. My question is specifically, what is the behavior w.r.t. iOS updates of a supervised device? Can it be so that a supervised device will not allow iOS updates except as initiated by the administrator using Apple Configurator? Or will the user of a supervised device continue to see "iOS 9.3 is available" popups, and be able to update the iOS version?

Thanks for any thoughts.

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c l i f f OP

Nov ’15

Apple does not offer any means of blocking iOS updates, despite numerous requests over the years. Your best bet is use MDM to push a Global HTTP Proxy setting to a Supervised device, and have your proxy server block the hosts mesu.apple.com and appldnld.apple.com. However, these hostnames are undocumented and subject to change.

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