Apple to Discontinue Fleetsmith Enterprise Device Management Service on October 21

[genovelle]

That's exactly what Apple did with Dark Sky - bought it, shut it down, kept the back-end in place. Which is a shame, because while they've added Dark Sky features to the Weather app it's still not nearly as good as the Dark Sky app was. (That and Dark Sky had, you know, an actual iPad app).

I still use Dark Sky and yes it has some features that are better. Some are still popping up periodically

 

[genovelle]

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…)

The Android version sucked as it was hobbled and required a subscription to function even near the buy once apple version.

 

[Lammers]

A half year, Enterprise usually really don't like such short notices.

Doubt many actual enterprises are using it though. They’ll be using Jamf, Intune or Workspace One.

 

[RedTomato]

Hey people,

I informally advise a small non-profit (that I used to work for) on IT issues. They're really struggling with managing & tracking their various Macs, iPhones, iPads - the staff logins, iCloud accounts, App Store accounts, iDevice unlock passwords etc. None of them are in any way technical.

What do you suggest? I think JAMF etc would be way over their heads.

I thought ABM could be good for them, but the multidevice cost at $7 per month per user seems expensive for what it is.

 

[peter2]

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.

My learned wisdom is: never use Apple products for anything business critical. Sooner or later they will screw the functionality or drop the product altogether, without even announcing that planned fate (on time).

 

[TriBruin]

Hey people,

I informally advise a small non-profit (that I used to work for) on IT issues. They're really struggling with managing & tracking their various Macs, iPhones, iPads - the staff logins, iCloud accounts, App Store accounts, iDevice unlock passwords etc. None of them are in any way technical.

What do you suggest? I think JAMF etc would be way over their heads.

I thought ABM could be good for them, but the multidevice cost at $7 per month per user seems expensive for what it is.

You could look at Jamf Now. it is a different product than Jamf Pro (it used to be ZuluDesk). It is much closer to Apple Business Essentials (ABE) than Jamf Pro. I agree that Jamf Pro is probably more than a small non-profit needs. Also, Jamf Now starts as low as $2/mo. They may even offer a discount for a non-profit.

There are other MDMs, Kandji & Addigy are two that i am familiar with. (I have tested Addigy, but never used Kandji.).

 

[guzhogi]

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.

Maybe, maybe not. The school district I work for has changed MDMs and Student Information Systems (SISes) a few times in the last 10 years. Plus, we currently use 3-4 MDMs to manage our devices. JAMF for Macs, Airwatch/Workspace 1 for iPads/iPhones, Mosyle for AppleTVs, and then Google's for our Chromebooks. Note: I'm not the one who makes the decisions, nor do I have much input on this. Obviously, YMMV, but I'd love a single MDM, SIS and other management systems that work for everyone.