Apple Silicon, new Macs and the new Vision Pro were the hardware stars at this week’s WWDC 2023, but IT professionals should know what’s new to make their lives easier and help them manage devices more effectively. Here’s a brief survey of the important changes identified so far.
But first, consider this. With rapidly the advancing use of its products across the enterprise, Cupertino understands the biggest concerns for mass Apple device deployments, such as administration, management, and security.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise to find at WWDC the company is following its market. Even the introduction of MDM for Apple Watch reflects a trend across some firms to use those devices in interesting new ways, such as how that’s done at Volvo.
Managed Apple IDs
These become more versatile this year with updates to Continuity, Apple Wallet, and iCloud Keychain. Administrators also gain additional control to encourage users to sign into the apps and services they need. Managed Apple IDs can also be used in more situations, such as when enrolling a device in order to keep personal and work data separated.
Federated Identity
Apple School Manager (ASM) and Apple Business Manager (ABM) already support federated identity systems such as Okta, Azure, OAuth, and Workspace. This year, OpenID Connect support is added to the mix, which will make life a lot easier for companies seeking to coalesce multiple platforms around one identity authorization service.
iCloud Keychain
Another useful improvement in Managed IDs is the addition of iCloud Keychain support. This lets IT deploy passcodes and passkeys automatically to managed devices and should be a good step forward toward a password-free enterprise. This builds on the ability, also announced at WWDC 2023, for groups of users to add and edit passwords and passkeys, so everyone in the group can keep up to date.
Declarative device management
Apple put a lot of work into Declarative device management this year. Improvements it discussed at the show include new ways to deploy apps, certificates, and on macOS even manage common service configuration files.
Software Update
In a move that will be welcomed in many quarters, IT administrators can now enforce software updates to specific deadlines with improved user transparency.
Another improvement means administrators can use MDM to manage and install multiple versions of an application on Macs.
Automated Device Enrolment on Macs
Many organizations want to ensure certain security configurations are in place even before the Mac is enrolled and the user logs in for the first time. They may want FileVault enabled and for the Mac to be running a specific OS version. Apple at WWDC announced the following improvements:
macOS 14 allows MDM to require FileVault enablement during Setup Assistant. The recovery key can then be shared with the end user during setup or managed by the MDM system.
MDM can require the device to be on a specific…
2023-06-15 19:30:02
Link from www.computerworld.com rnrn