Background: I’m using an iPad issued to me by my school. The school set the account up and it’s mostly in Chinese, with a few nifty things in English. One “nifty” thing is that I just found out that my “account has been disabled in the App Store and iTunes”. How do I go about reenabling it?
I would say you can’t. It isn’t “your” account. It belongs to the school, and is merely in your name.
This is common for institution issued i-devices. Similar capabilities are available on Microsoft OS devices. Basically the device is locked up so that you cannot install software or access iTunes. There is a whole set of remote managing capabilities in iOS that normal users never see for this purpose.
A friend of mine is an elected member of a local council. Her iPad is similarly locked down. In the early days their iPads were not locked. Then one member of council did something remarkably stupid with her machine that caused the IT group responsible to lock down all the issued devices.
Further to @Francis_Vaughan’s post: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/apple-business-manager/axm6d9dc7acf/web
I have been able to install software for the past five years on the thing. And now I can again.
It went back to normal all of its own accord before my last post.
So now do something remarkably stupid to test @Francis_Vaughan’s explanation.
Maybe the IT guys in control were messing with the settings. There are a whole raft of things they can do, and a single miss-click might disturb things.
You may find you were not the only one affected and someone else complained.
And what do you know? It’s back on the glitch again. Of course it’s during the two weeks of finals so there’s no way I can hie off to the school IT section and get it taken care of. Time and place, people; time and place!
But, seriously, is Apple’s customer service plan “Let’s see how badly we can fuck up everything and still have people throw money at us”?
Apple has a “shoot somebody in Times Square and they’ll still buy the products” user base.
Did you ever tell your IT people the first time it happened? What did they say?
This can happen if you enter the wrong password a few times in a row. Did that happen? If not, it’s possible someone else was trying to log in under your account and guessing the pass. Like last time, the lockout should end after a couple of hours or a day.
You mention your account is in Chinese. Are you in China using the Chinese App Store?
It isn’t Apple. It is your institution. Apple sold the iPad to them, and their IT department provide the customer service to you. Apple provide the additional controls to institutional buyers, and in this case, Apple’s customer service stops at your institution. It isn’t exactly a happy answer, but Apple learned this from Microsoft, and are basically forced to add this functionality into their OS’es if they want institutional customers. Apple traditionally had a huge presence in education, but lost a lot of it over the years - partly because they didn’t provide remote management capabilities.
Institutional IT support groups seem to relish the control they get over the devices, and devote huge amounts of time justifying their jobs by messing about with the control.
Thanks for all the answers. The last time, it basically resolved itself. I really don’t have time to muck around with it now, what with thise being finals week, the week we have to move offices, and right before I take a trip with the wife to Korea. I’ll have to handle it with the IT department when I return in August.
And another update!
It seems that one particular app, a VPN I’ve been using for years, is the spanner in the works. When I tell the iPad to update all, it encounters that app, stops updating, and displays the account disabled message. The workaround the new IT tech showed me is to select the other apps for update individually from the update available list. That worked beautifully. He also suggested uninstalling and then re-installing that VPN. As I’ll be in Korea tomorrow, I figure I’ll see if it will update while I’m there. If not, I’ll continue with the non-updated version of that one app and continue to employ the workaround.
Ah, these first world problems are horrid, aren’t they. 