• Uncategorized

    Where is Apple’s VPP Supported?

    With the recent addition of 16 new countries to the Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) from Apple, the following countries can now leverage the Volume Purchase Program (VPP) for bulk licensing of items from the App Store: Learn Which Countries That Have The Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) Here…

  • Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  MobileMe,  Network Infrastructure

    Network Port Testing With Netcat

    You can do some pretty simple testing of ports and network communications using strategies I’ve outlined in the past with tcpdump, trace route, telnet, curl, stroke and of course ping. 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. In this first example, we’re going to just check that Apple’s web server is accessible (adding -v for verbose output): /usr/bin/nc -v www.apple.com 80 The result would be pretty verbose…

  • Uncategorized

    Important Apple TCP Ports

    Hopefully you don’t need to know a thing about this stuff. But in case you do, here’s some information about the important ports that we use to communicate with Apple. Apple Push Notification Servers (APNs) are how devices communicate with Bushel. Apple provides a special platform for us to communicate with devices through their servers, known as a Mobile Device Management (MDM) Application Prog Read More About Important Ports To Know About For MDM…

  • Bushel

    Creating Apple IDs Without Extra Email Addresses

    Creating a lot of Apple IDs with a script means you need a good pattern as an input and output. If you take an email address, like bushel@bushel.com then the username is what’s in front of the @ symbol and the domain is what’s behind it. If you then take the username and add a + at the end, you can then type some characters and put it all in front of the @ and domain name then the mail will still come to me. So, let’s say I use it to create an AppleID for an APNS certificate. That might be +apps added to bushel@bushel.com: bushel+apps@bushel.com Read More About…

  • Uncategorized

    Manually Upgrade iOS Devices Using An IPSW In iTunes

    Recently, I needed to test the behavior of some really awesome code (for Bushel) during a major iOS upgrade process (after all, you want to know your stuff works with every version of OS X!). The device was running the latest version of iOS and we needed to use an ipsw to load a specific version of the OS. This task isn’t as obvious as it might seem to be. Learn To Upgrade iOS Manually Using iTunes Via An ripsaw Here…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  public speaking

    MacAdmins 2015

    I was super-bummed that I missed the MacAdmins conference at Penn State University. But, all is not lost as MacAdmins will be held July 8-10 in 2015 at the Penn Stater Conference Center and I’ll be able to see all those awesome people there next year! In the meantime, something fun and new is the 2014 MacAdmins Playlist to maybe get exposed to some new stuff: http://spoti.fi/VTdxLX. As an aside, here’s a fun pic of @derflounder and I (and others) doing a round table from a few years ago on the Penn State site:  

  • Bushel

    Troubleshoot MDM Enrollments

    One of the most useful things when it comes to troubleshooting just about anything on an iOS device (or any computer for that matter) is logs. You can capture iOS logs from an iOS device using the iPhone Configuration Utility or an app called Xcode, both from Apple and both free. The iPhone Configuration Utility is the lightest of the two, although Xcode is available on the App Store. To download the iPhone Configuration Utility, first click Download at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1465. Once downloaded, install the package and you’ll have a new app called iPhone Configuration Utility in /Applications/Utilities (Command-Shift-U from the Finder to quickly go to that folder). Learn To Capture…

  • Bushel

    What Bushel Means

    Some fun facts about the etymology of the word bushel: A bushel is a unit of measurement. A bushel is equal to 64 pints or 35.2 liters when whatever you’re measuring is dry or 8 gallons/36.4 liters when it’s mixed dry goods/liquids. Learn About The Etymology Of The Word Bushel Here…