Tailscale vs Apple Configurator

Securely connect people, workloads, and even AI agents to anything on the internet with Tailscale, the secure connectivity platform built on WireGuard®. Tailscale brings identity to the network layer so you can control access based on users, groups, tags, and devices instead of IP addresses, applying Zero Trust principles end-to-end across every environment. Tailscale transforms your existing network from a legacy hub and spoke model to a modern, lightweight, and responsive mesh networking architecture that eliminates single points of failure and delivers better performance, scalability, and security for your end users, devices, and remote resources. Tailscale can be used for your Homelab VPN and connectivity, Business VPN, Workload Connectivity across clouds, Kubernetes clusters, regions, and environments, Privileged Access Management (PAM), Edge & IoT, CI/CD, and Securing AI – all on the same platform. Replace legacy VPNs, connect workloads across on-prem and cloud infrastructure providers, power Zero Trust initiatives, and make remote access secure by simplifying software-defined networking and security operations. Modernize your home, your organization, and your enterprise networking at scale with Tailscale. Tailscale is hardware-agnostic, so you can make decisions about your hardware independently from decisions about your network. Tailscale creates an overlay network, using your existing network, so you can incrementally deploy Tailscale without needing new network switches or to change your network architecture. Tailscale integrates with 100+ technologies and dozens of identity providers, and is available on a wide range of platforms — including Apple’s macOS, iOS, and tvOS — so you can securely connect from wherever you work.

Apple Configurator for iPhone makes it easy to add any iOS device running iOS 16 or later or any Mac with the T2 Security Chip or Apple silicon running macOS Monterey or later to your organization in Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager, or Apple Business Essentials so that you can take advantage of Automated Device Enrollment. Once signed into Apple Configurator with your organization Managed Apple ID with the Device Enrollment Manager role, you can provide a network configuration to the device being added by sharing the iPhone’s network configuration or by choosing a configuration profile to install on the device. To add a device to your organization, bring the iPhone running Apple Configurator near an iPhone or iPad showing the Wi-Fi pane in Setup Assistant or near a Mac showing the Country or Region pane in Setup Assistant and scan the image or manually enter the six-digit PIN. After the device is added to the organization, it appears in an ‘Added by Apple Configurator’ MDM server placeholder in Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager, or Apple Business Essentials; the Administrator or Device Enrollment Manager can then assign it to an MDM server for Automated Device Enrollment. The status button in Apple Configurator provides a report of devices which have already been added to your organization. When a device has been assigned and enrolled in this way, it behaves like any other device enrolled using Automated Device Enrollment, including mandatory supervision and MDM enrollment. The only difference is that the user has a 30-day provisional period to remove the device from the organization, supervision, and MDM.