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Apple to Discontinue Fleetsmith Enterprise Device Management Service on October 21
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I'm fairly certain that Apple wants to get off JAMF for their internal usage and either use what is the underlying technology of fleetsmith or ABE as it grows up.
Linux and Windows. Jamf also has a cloud based solutions (running in AWS). Jamf just elminated the macOS version.
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Intune does not use Jamf for Mac Management. Intune has the ability to the be a complete MDM and management both iOS and macOS devices. (But, they do Mac management so poorly, they recommend companies consider Jamf instead.)
What you might be thinking of is that Jamf can work with the Conditional Access feature of Intune. Computers and iOS devices get enrolled into Jamf as the MDM. They get registered in Intune for compliance. When Intune needs to verify that a device meets certain security requirements, it queries Jamf.
And it still wouldn't be used by a significant number of enterprise IT shops with a major footprint, it would fill the same niche markets the products they just discontinued did.
Any new product in this category needs to be looking at cross-platform, not Apple specific, unless they only want to reach 100% Apple shops.
Now, a 100% web based MDM for home consumers, that would let me manage my kids and parents devices for them, included in my iCloud account and drop-dead simple to use... THAT is a product Apple could excel at.
Awhile back — even before Apple acquired Fleetsmith — I was hoping Apple would create an iCloud-based enterprise solution. Google's Workspace device management tools are pretty easy & it's all in one place. If you had ever used Apple's DEP solution & its iterations, the whole way Apple set it up was clumsy as was the integrations into 3rd party MDMs. Apple Business & Apple School are kind of cheesy. Apple needs something completely robust & bulletproof if it intends to make huge in roads into enterprise & (back) into education.
I wish there was a free Apple family MDM I could use to manage my families apple products. Trying to talk through something on the phone can take an hour but I could do in 5 minutes with the device, it just frustrates everyone.
Enterprise and AAAgaming are two segments that Apple seem adverse to any actual long term investment in. It’s bizarre. Especially enterprise. If they managed to bring proper support and services for business, it could bring in so much money.
I'd be curious to see Apple develop a true MDM that rivals JAMF. Also an Identity Provider like Google (you've probably seen how many websites have a "Sign in with Google" button).
As an IT guy in a K-8 school district, I'd also like to see a student information system (SIS) and learning management system (LMS). Have it all integrated, so when a new student or staff member starts school, the SIS automatically creates a managed AppleID for them, and puts them into the appropriate classes, get their appropriate apps & books, etc.
What in "Enterprise" are you looking for? Also, what's the profit margin for such features? If it's a low margin thing, that's probably why they're not in Enterprise.
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Since when. The last event they held that I attended about it they were saying the opposite.
With their current "commitment" to the Enterprise, I don't see this happening. But I could be wrong.
If you are an IT guy in a school district, I assume you already know that Apple School Manager can integrate in several SIS's directly. ASM can pull all the student information from the SIS and create Managed AppleIDs. ASM can also pass class rosters to MDMs that support it (which is nearly all major MDMs). The MDM can then use classes to assign VPP books and apps.
Here, I have one for you. How about a way to effectively and forcefully update macOS computers? For many years, we were able to rely on the softwareupdate binary and various scripts to get users to upgrade. But, Apple is neutering softwareupdate. They introduced some new MDM commands, but they are inconsistent.
For at least the last 5 years that I have worked with Apple and MDMs. It was never meant to be a large scale solution. The database was fragile and would get corrupted, causing organizations to have to re-enroll all their devices. I can tell you I have NEVER heard and Apple badged System Engineer recommend Profile Manager for anything other than very simple testing. Usually it was to test new MDM commands that were in beta software as the regular MDM vendors could not roll out support until the OS's came out of beta.
I've attended several Apple meetings and presentations over the years where Profile Manager was referred to as a "proof of concept."
Profile Manager's lack of redundancy and general instability made trying to use it at anything other than the smallest of scales a risky proposition.
The counter to that is then it NEVER should have been a paid app on the public App Store.
If that was really Apple’s public position it should have been a developer only download.
I agree 100%. It seems like a product that suffered from a lack of clear vision as to what it was supposed to be, and upper management having little to no interest in enterprise didn't help the matter.
I've deployed it at some pretty good size operations in the past with no issues. Apple "badged" people have never told me that and I heard the opposite. Profile Manager is in use at a LOT of companies. So I don't know where you got that.
And it's absolutely insane.
I don't deal with medium sized businesses, my clients are entirely small businesses. We're talking about under 50 employees, usually under 10 employees, frequently 5 or fewer.
Apple's server app was business critical. Apple abandoned small business, left everybody in the lurch.
Oh my god... Shake.
Kinda tells you how much Apple has dropped the ball with stuff like this.
I don’t think it makes sense at this point - at least not for an enterprise or education of any reasonable size as those institutions already have identity providers for their cloud services (Azure AD for example for Office 365) and device management solutions for other platforms.
Businesses typically don’t want an Apple-only MDM and identity solution. They just want Apple’s products to integrate easily and well with their existing infrastructure for those things.
For what it’s worth, Apple has already killed off the Android version, and the iOS version and Dark Sky API, which many other weather apps use, will be shut down at the end of 2022. (I wonder if we’ll actually have an iPad weather app by then…)
