Some time ago, I had the good fortune of reading Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment (thanks to MacTech for hooking me up with it!). It was a book filled with many of the things that are good in the business world today and how to make them better by adopting them in your own organization. Since reading that book, I’ve looked for enchantment. I’ve searched in the technology coming out of new products, in social causes that I’ve become involved with, in trips out of town and within myself. Today (now yesterday), I was truly enchanted. At my new employer, there is a charitable foundation publicly released at the JNUC last year.…
-
-
How Mobile Device Management works with Apple Push Notification Services
At first glance, Apple Push Notification services seem pretty darn complicated. Luckily, we’re all about demystifying technical things here at Bushel. So let’s take a moment to look at what happens when an Apple Push Notification transaction occurs. In this example, we’re going to look at using our tool to send some command to a device, like enforce a passcode policy. Now, you send this passcode enforcement in what is known as a profile. That’s just a way of saying some code that tells the device to enforce a passcode policy. That transaction of sending the profile might seem like it’s as simple as just send the code from the…
-
Chapter 5 of Take Control of OS X Server Now Available
Chapter 5 of my next book is now available from TidBits.com for members at http://tidbits.com/article/14840. While much of the chapter ended up on the cutting room floor, it’s worth mentioning that it is tailored to the audience. I think I learned a valuable lesson here, in reviewing too much vs. too little vs. just enough. Thanks again to Adam and Tanya for their infinite patience and wisdom!
-
Test Connectivity to Apple Push Notification Services
You can do some pretty simple testing to Apple’s APNS of ports and network communications using strategies I’ve outlined in the past with tcpdump, trace route, telnet, curl, stroke and of course ping. These are classic ways to test connectivity to servers. However, netcat has a few interesting things you can do with it; namely actually run a port super-quickly to test traffic between subnets, forcing scans of ipv6 traffic, debugging sockets, keeping connections alive, parodying through SOCKS 4 and 5 and just checking for daemons that are listening rather than actually sending data to them. Learn To Test Connectivity to Apple Push Notification Services Here…
-
Interviewing Duncan for AFP548.com
Totally fun doing these interviews. If you’ve got a good story to tell, let’s do an episode!
-
Come One, Come All: To The JAMF Nation User Conference
If you do deployments of Apple products, there are a few conferences to look at. Based on where you are and what industry you are in, some of these are better than others. But if you use the Casper Suite or are considering doing so, it would be really hard to beat JNUC, the JAMF Nation User Conference. And yes, I’d of said all this and posted this even if I hadn’t of come to work here a week and a half ago! So come one, come all to Minneapolis. And if you’re really nice, we’ll hook you up with some good old fashioned Minnesota lutefisk!
-
What is DEP?
Apple’s Device Enrollment Program (DEP) allows organizations to automatically setup large numbers of devices without lifting a finger. Well, per device at least. What we mean by this is that if you use a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution, such as Bushel, you will be able to configure that solution to configure your devices automatically once they’re on a wireless network. Each of your coworkers, students or employees can take the wrapper of their own device, log into the wireless network and have the device setup mail, apps and apply security settings! Cool, right?!?! Learn More About DEP Here…
-
Chapter 4 of Take Control of OS X Server Now Available
The chapters from my upcoming Take Control book keep rolling into the TidBits website. The next installment is Chapter 4: Directory Services, which can accessed at http://tidbits.com/article/14821. Hope you enjoy!
-
New AWS OmniGraffle Stencil
Before I post the new stencil, let me just show you how it came to be (I needed to do something, which required me to do something else, which in turn caused me to need to create this): Anyway, here’s the stencil. It’s version .1 so don’t make fun: AWS.gstencil. To install the stencil, download, extract from the zip and then open. When prompted, click on Move to move it to the Stencils directory. Reopen OmniGraffle and create a new object. Under the list of stencils, select AWS and you’ll see the objects on the right to drag into your doc. Good luck writing/documenting/flowcharting!
-
Chapter 3 Of My Next Book Available
The next chapter of my next book is again available free for TidBits readers at http://tidbits.com/article/14799: This article is a pre-release chapter in the upcoming “Take Control of OS X Server,” by Charles Edge, scheduled for public release later in 2014. Apart from “Chapter 1: Introducing OS X Server,” and “Chapter 2: Choosing Server Hardware,” these chapters are available only to TidBITS members; see “‘Take Control of OS X Server’ Streaming in TidBITS” for details. Hope you enjoy! And thanks again to Adam and Tanya for their awesome editorial!