The big news this week is of course the announcement of The New iPad and Apple TV. Both received a physical update along with several new features such as a high resolution Retina Display and 4G LTE wireless. In the midst of all the excitement, there were a few other gems that escaped the spotlight.  Apple delivered iOS 5.1 and a brand new Apple TV interface, but one thing in particular that caught my eye is that Apple has also been hard at work developing a utility to aid in the administration of multiple iOS devices called Apple Configurator.

According to Apple, Apple Configurator is a utility that makes it easy for anyone to mass configure and deploy iOS devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch in a school, business, or institutional setting. Configurator provides three simple workflows for managing up to 30 devices at a time — update device software, create and restore devices, and much more.

The first of the three workflows is called Prepare. As you can see by the figure below, the Prepare pane allows you to manage your iOS devices. From this window you can change the name, iOS version, restore from a backup, and create profiles.

From the Supervise pane, you can manage Apps and settings of the devices that you administer.

Finally, the Assign pane provides the ability to manage users and data. Though I haven’t yet put the app to use, it’s easy to see that Apple Configurator is a powerful tool in a simple and clean app.

This is a fantastic utility and one I hope Apple continues to improve. For more information, head on over to the Mac App Store and have a look.