So how are you locking it down? Are you going to sit there and put the iPad in supervised mode by hand? Maybe sideload your specialised kiosk software onto it by hand? Periodically check in on it to make sure it’s up to date and all of its configuration is as you left it?

This is a solution that doesn’t scale, and any IT admin supporting more than a handful of Apple devices in their network should look at MDM.

> Maybe sideload your specialised kiosk software onto it by hand?

In this case I was suggesting that you have a vendor upstream of you doing this, where you then take receipt of a system (e.g. a POS system) of which an "embedded" iPad is a one component, and is a black box, perhaps even epoxied into an enclosure.

In such a case, you literally cannot do anything to the iPad. It's locked down into its kiosk application, and getting admin access to it would require taking the system it's a part of apart to a degree that would void your warranty with the vendor.

Instead, the only thing you can alter, is the network the iPad connects to.