WWDC
Let’s begin with the one everybody is aware of about, which is Apple’s Worldwide Builders Convention (WWDC) held each June. The occasion has change into an Apple keynote occasion in its personal proper, and whereas many of the content material is meant for Apple builders, it all the time contains at the least just a few periods for IT professionals; the precise quantity varies every year, however the “What’s New in Managing Apple Gadgets” is a perennial possibility. Some years there are a number of others, similar to when Apple unveiled declarative machine administration or register with Apple at work, or when the corporate opened up about the right way to use Managed Apple accounts in your group.
The subjects range, however they’re nearly all the time essential choice to discover yearly.
- Apple Developer Sources. Apple makes a great deal of further data obtainable to its developer neighborhood. Once more, a lot of it isn’t strictly IT-focused, however there are a shocking variety of helpful references — if you happen to’re keen to do some digging. These embody:
- System Administration — That is the useful resource on the right way to handle Apple gadgets. There are overviews and detailed descriptions of cell machine administration (MDM) payloads and every thing in between.
- What’s new in Apple platform deployment — Because the identify suggests, that is additionally a must-know useful resource, as a result of it covers the essential details about the right way to deploy Apple gadgets at scale throughout all the firm’s machine lineup.
- ManagedAppDistribution — That is used for managing apps when you’ve enrolled and begun to deploy apps throughout your fleet.
- AppleSeed for IT — That is the place you arrange and handle the testing of Apple’s beta packages inside your group. I’ve greater than as soon as famous how partnering with adventurous workers may also help you extra successfully take a look at and plan for upcoming releases; that is the place to get began.
- Apple Enterprise Important person information — For small or medium-size companies (SMBs), Apple presents an in-house machine administration answer known as Apple Enterprise Necessities. For IT professionals new to Apple gadgets, this can be a nice beginning place, whatever the measurement of your group and it serves as a stepping stone to Apple Enterprise Supervisor, which all bigger organizations and MDM options would require.
- Apple Coaching — Apple doesn’t provide the breadth of IT coaching and certification it as soon as did (and that different enterprise gamers proceed to supply). Regardless, the corporate does provide vital coaching assets. These break down into developer coaching (as a category with no certification and meant for budding builders, enterprise or not) and IT coaching. For IT coaching there are 4 classes, solely two of which provide certifications. The primary two — machine assist and deployment coaching — are those for which Apple supplies examine supplies and associated workouts in addition to a certification examination that may be proctored on-line. The opposite two — Mac Safety Compliance and Apple Enterprise Necessities — are extremely helpful programs (the latter is very necessary for SMBs) however don’t include a certification examination or credential connected.
- Apple developer documentation and assist — Once more, Apple’s developer documentation is nicely value learning, however its developer assist boards (and assist boards) targeted on the enterprise neighborhood are additionally necessary assets.
MDM and cloud vendor assets
Though Apple supplies unbelievable machine and person administration capabilities throughout its platforms, implementing them largely requires working with a number of MDM distributors — together with JAMF, Kandji, Microsoft, VMWare, Fleet, JumpCloud and SimpleMDM, to call just a few.
