Last week, Apple finally shipped my new HomePod (and by finally, I mean exactly when they said they would). And setting it up couldn’t have been easier. Even easier than setting up my first Echos. So here’s the deal. Plug in the HomePod and then when it boots up you’ll see an overlay on an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, etc). You’ll want to use the device that has an AppleID you want to use on the HomePod (e.g. the one that your Apple Music account is using). When you see the Set Up button, tap it. You can then select a location for the HomePod. This is important mostly if…
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The Apple Toolchain
The following is a list of common tools used to manage Apple devices. Do you use something that isn’t on this list? Comment it and I’ll try and add it! In order to remain vendor agnostic I am trying to list solutions in alphabetical order by category. A brief explanation of each category, being as follows: Antivirus: Solutions for scanning Macs for viruses and other malware. Automation Tools: Scripty tools used to automate management on the Mac Backup: I highly recommend bundling or reselling some form of backup service to your customers, whether home, small business, or large enterprises. The flexibility to restore a device from a backup when needed…
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Precache Now Pulls Models From Jamf Pro
Added 3 new flags into precache tonight: –jamfserver, –jamfuser, and –jamfpassword. These are used to provide a Jamf Pro server (or cloud instance), the username to an account that can list the mobile devices on that server, and a password to that account respectively. Basically, when you provide these, the script will pull a unique set of models and then precache updates for them. It’s similar to grabbing a list of devices: curl -s -u myuser:mypassword https://myserver.jamfcloud.com/JSSResource/mobiledevices And then piping the output of a device list to: perl -lne 'BEGIN{undef $/} while (/<model_identifier>(.*?)<\/model_identifier>/sg){print $1}' And then running that array as an input to precache.py. Hope this helps make the script…
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Jamf Now, Now In German And Japanese
If you’re in need of MDM in Japanese or German, Jamf Now shipped support for those languages last week. To switch languages, click on your name once logged in, and then click on the language you would like to use. Enjoy.
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Episode 32: iOS 10.3 and Classroom 2.0 with Fraser Speirs
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DFU and Restore Modes For Haptic iPhones
After updating an iPhone, maybe it’s stuck. Doesn’t happen much, but it can happen. When it does, it’s great if you’ve got a backup of your phone. And those traditional means of restarting, resetting, and restoring don’t work any more. Or at least they do, but they’ve moved. If you need to DFU or restore your device, starts by plugging the phone into a computer running iTunes. Then press and hold the power button down for 3 seconds and press the volume down button while you’re holding that power button. Hold both down for about 10 seconds and let go of the power button, holding the volume down button for…
- Apple Configurator, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iPhone, JAMF, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mass Deployment, precache
Tethered Caching of iOS Assets from macOS 10.12.4
There is a new service in macOS, called Tetherator. Tethered-caching is a script that allows you to easily and quickly interact with the tethered-caching service, which has a few kinda’ cool options. This is on a client, and really speeds up all that crazy provisioning stuff you do. It can also check for the presence of a macOS Caching Server and use that as a source for the cache. The tethered-caching script is located at /usr/bin/tethered-caching. Before you do anything with the service, check the status. That’s done with the -s option (there’s also a -v option to get verbose): tethered-caching -s The results before activated should be as follows:…
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Script To Sign A Previously Signed .ipa With Your Provisioning Profile
Organizations frequently have another party write iOS apps for them. When doing so, the organization typically wants to sign the .ipa (how iOS apps are deployed) prior to deploying the app to users. To do so, you would sign the .ipa with your provisioning profile. To make doing so easier, here’s ipasign, a python script that does most of the work for ya’: https://github.com/krypted/ipasign/
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Setup And Manage Profile Manager On macOS Server 5.2
Profile Manager first appeared in OS X Lion Server as the Apple-provided tool for managing Apple devices, including Mobile Device Management (MDM) for iOS based devices as well as Profile management for OS X based computers, including MacBooks, MacBook Airs, Mac Minis, Mac Pros and iMacs running Mac OS X 10.7 and up. Profile Manager has seen a few more updates over the years, primarily in integrating new MDM options provided by Apple and keeping up with the rapidly changing MDM landscape. Apple has added DEP functionality, content distribution, VPP, and other features over the years. In El Capitan Server, there are plenty of new options, including the ability to deploy…
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Don’t Forget To Accept The Latest DEP License Agreement TODAY!
In case you’re using DEP and haven’t noticed this, you need to accept the latest terms of service in the Apple license agreement for DEP if you’re going to continue using the service. I don’t usually post emails I get from Apple, but I can easily see orgs using accounts that don’t have email flowing to anyone that is capable of responding, so I strongly recommend you go in and accept the latest and greatest agreements so your stuff doesn’t break! Here’s the email I got from Apple: Apple Deployment Programs Thank you for participating in the Device Enrollment Program. On September 13 Apple will release updated software license agreements.…