The Volume Purchasing Program is a program from Apple that allows you to buy gift codes en masse for distribution to users, either by mail merging them and sending them out or using a special tool for distribution, such as Apple Configurator or an MDM solution. If you’re in the United States and work with iOS, you’ve likely been using the Volume Purchasing Program for awhile. But for users in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom, the Volume Purchasing Program is new and probably being well received. The Volume Purchasing Program allows users to receive the codes and install/purchase software without being gifted money…
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- iPhone, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mac Security, Mass Deployment, Microsoft Exchange Server, Network Infrastructure
Configuring & Using Profile Manager 2 in OS X Mountain Lion Server
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. In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has added a number of new features to Profile Manager, most notably the ability to push certain types of apps to mobile devices. In this article, we’re going to look at setting up Profile Manager from scratch. If you’re upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion Server (10.8 Server) from OS X…
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Backing Up And Restoring iOS Devices in iTunes
For many iOS deployment projects, iTunes is used as the primary deployment vehicle for the devices. iTunes can be used to “Backup” and “Restore” an iPad, similar to how you image desktop and laptop computers. The actual deployment process is straight forward. First we’ll create a backup in iTunes. Then we can deploy the backup using the Restore option within iTunes. Provided the backup is encrypted, the Restore option will maintain the maximum amount of data available. For example, if a device has been activated then the fact that it has been activated is maintained across a restore. As are the applications that are installed on the device. Create iTunes…
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MacTech Conference Sessions Posted
Not sure if I mentioned awhile back that I’ll be doing a talk at MacTech Conference in Los Angeles. This session is on Regression Testing. The official description is: We have images, packages, scripts, file drops, managed preferences, profiles and countless other means to create change on client systems. This means a practically infinite number of combinations of change on client systems. In order to qualify whether an “image”, which is in reality a combination of all of these things, passes our test of whether or not we can roll it out to users, we must first test it. Otherwise, we end up flooding our help desk, touching systems by…
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Free Hosted Mobile Device Management for iOS
SimpleMDM is a newish Mobile Device Management service that is free, from MJVLabs, the makers of Presense. Now, it’s newish and currently completely free, so there are specific cases where it’s appropriate. Currently, SimpleMDM can be used to: Setup very specific mail Setup SSIDs and passwords (those are the only two options) Disable the App Store or require a password to access the app store Configure Basic, Strong or Very Secure password requirements Restrict content Disable Camera &/or FaceTime Disable Safari Disable iCloud Disable YouTube Disable Multiplayer Gaming The solution is simple to use. Just visit the website at simplemdm.com, click on Create New Account, enter your information and click…
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Encrypting Volumes in OS X Mountain Lion
Encrypting a volume in OS X Mountain Lion couldn’t be easier. In this article, we will look at three ways to encrypt OS X Lion volumes. The reason there are three ways is that booted volumes and non-booted volumes have different methods for enabling encryption. The third way to enable encryption on a volume is to do so through Encrypting Attached Storage For non-boot volumes, just control-click or right-click on them and then click on Encrypt “VOLUMENAME” where the name of the volume is in quotes. When prompted, provide an encryption password for the volume, verify that password and if you so choose, provide a hint. Once the encryption process…
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JAMF Nation User Conference 2012
JAMF has announced the 2012 rendition of their National User Conference. Having been to two of these, I can say that if you use any JAMF products that it is a great event to attend. It is a lot of very specific information about integrating, mass deploying, mass managing, mass document distributing and mass 3rd partying for Apple products. The National User Conference will be held October 23-25 2012, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm in beautiful Minneapolis, Minnesota (where all the cool kids live). The venue is one of the best conference spots I’ve seen in the Guthrie theater, overlooking the stone arch bridge. In previous years, there have been announcements,…
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Removing A Credit Card From An AppleID
Sometimes you deploy iOS based devices with iTunes. There are a number of factors that can still force you into iTunes based deployments, such as needing the icons to appear a certain way in iOS. It’s not optimal but it happens. And sometimes you need to give an iPad or iPhone to a user leveraging an existing AppleID that will have a password known by multiple users. Again, not the right way, but there are design requirements that cause you to do it from time to time. And if you’re using a shared account, one of the last things you want is for users to actually buy stuff with that…
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Video on Setting Up Profile Manager in Lion Server
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Apple Configurator 1.0.1 Released
Apple has released version 1.0.1 of the Apple Configurator tool. To install the first update to Apple’s new tool, go to the App Store on a computer that has Apple Configurator installed, click on Updates and then click on the Update button for Apple Configurator. The update has a number of new features and fixes. The first is that Enterprise Apps can be installed. Previously, when you went to install internally developed applications, you would get an error that the installation could not proceed. Another great fix is that commas are now escaped when importing application codes from the VPP spreadsheets (a comma in a CSV/comma separated value would kill…