The Iru Blog

Patrick Gallagher

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10 min read

How to Plan a Large-Scale Deployment of Apple Devices

A few months ago, we told you about how you—as an IT admin in the enterprise—can think about the mass deployment of Apple devices. Our main point then: When it comes to deploying hundreds or thousands of Apple devices at a time, enterprise admins have a lot to learn from their colleagues in education, who do it every year.

Educational November 15, 2022

Iru Team

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8 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Mercenary Spyware and Lockdown Mode

Although Apple designs security into its hardware, software, and services, Apple devices are not immune to malware and unwanted software installation. According to Malwarebytes’ 2022 Threat Review, the vast majority of malware detections on Apple platforms are—in most cases—fairly harmless; however, the growth of mercenary spyware places specific, targeted individuals within key industries at risk.

Educational September 30, 2022

Emalee Firestein

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10 min read

Mac Troubleshooting: Our Top Tips

At some point in your IT career, you’ve no doubt spent a good chunk of your time stationed on the help desk, fielding questions from users and helping them troubleshoot their Mac computers. During that Mac troubleshooting, you’ve probably compiled a list of their most common problems, along with your suggested solutions.

Educational September 23, 2022

Patrick Gallagher

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7 min read

Deploying Apple Devices: What Enterprises Can Learn from Education

When you think of mass deployments of Apple devices, you might typically think of schools. IT admins who work in education know all about deploying hundreds, if not thousands, of devices at once and what that requires because they do it every year. They know it’s no trivial task. While they might try to make the process seem simple to the outside world, the truth is that it takes an incredible amount of planning and preparation to deploy thousands of devices at once.

Thought Leadership June 3, 2022

Caleb Basinger

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6 min read

What the Mac Has Learned About Security from iPhone and iPad

Mac users have long enjoyed the platform’s open approach to computing. There was an exposed file system, no limitations on how many apps you could run at once, and scripts that took action when triggered by events. The only barrier to doing whatever you wanted was when the OS crashed or became unusable. The openness of the platform gave users and IT administrators alike plenty of flexibility. Then iOS came along. Because Apple was able to start fresh with iPhone OS (before it became iOS), because the mobile operating system was built from the ground up and didn’t have to worry about backward compatibility, the company was able to build a security model into iPhone and iPad devices that was forward-looking and designed for an environment in which connectivity was constant and security threats were pervasive.

Thought Leadership May 20, 2022

Matt Wilson

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8 min read

APIs and Apple Device Management: A Guide for Mac Admins

Application programming interfaces—better known as APIs—make it possible for one service to talk to another without needing to know how the other one works. They create a common language that disparate services can use to communicate. As such, they’re the key to automating device management workflows. If you’re an Apple IT administrator, you’re using APIs all the time (even if you don’t know it), and so you need to know how they work. Here’s a high-level overview.

Educational May 13, 2022

Alexandre Morin

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4 min read

How to Troubleshoot Apple Business Manager

Maybe a batch of new iPhone devices you just bought aren’t showing up in Apple Business Manager. Or licenses you recently purchased from Apps and Books can’t be found in your device management solution. Or even worse, perhaps your Apple fleet is no longer responding to MDM commands.

Educational May 10, 2022

Steven Vogt

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6 min read

The Great Debate: Should You Set Up Users as Admin or Standard?

What kind of accounts should you create when you provision Mac computers for your users: admin or standard? It’s an age-old question in Apple IT. It’s an argument that pulls on many threads, including user convenience, IT workloads, and organizational security. And it has no easy, one-size-fits-all solution, which is why it’s been around so long. To dig into that argument a bit and tease out some of those threads, we chatted recently with Rich Trouton. Rich has been doing Mac and server administration for over 20 years, in a variety of environments from higher ed and government to advertising and software development. He’s currently at SAP, where he supports that company’s Apple community. Rich has also written extensively about managing Apple devices for Peachpit, Apress, and MacTech Magazine; his most recent book with co-author Charles Edge is Apple Device Management: A Unified Theory of Managing Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Apple TVs. He was also instrumental in bringing the SAP Privileges app—which addresses many of the concerns discussed below—to the Mac admin community. Here’s a recap of that conversation. Check out the entire presentation here.

Thought Leadership April 29, 2022

Iru Team

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5 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Mac Patch Management

It’s one thing for a Mac admin to distribute apps to users. It’s another thing to make sure those apps stay up to date.

Educational March 25, 2022

Iru Team

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8 min read

Guide for Apple IT: App Deployment for macOS

Distributing and managing apps is one of a Mac admin’s core responsibilities. Apple makes this relatively easy for some apps, thanks to Apple Business Manager's Apps and Books feature. Unfortunately, not every business app an admin might want to make available to users is available that way. In this guide, we’ll provide an overview of how to distribute Mac software—with or without Apple Business Manager.

Educational March 17, 2022

Iru Team

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6 min read

Guide for Apple IT: macOS System and Kernel Extensions

Back in 2019, at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced some major changes to the way software developers would be able to interact with macOS. Specifically, the company said that kernel extensions (kexts) would be deprecated in favor of system extensions. That transition is still playing out, even now. Here’s what Mac admins should know about it and how they can use that knowledge to make life smoother for themselves and their users.

Educational January 7, 2022

Iru Team

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5 min read

Why IT Should Be Transparent with Users

Let’s be honest: Sometimes there’s a trust gap between IT and end-users. Admins may promulgate a policy without explaining the “why” behind it. Users may then try to circumvent or disregard that policy. And back and forth it goes, making life harder for both sides. Transparency in IT—telling users what you’re doing and why—is one way to bridge that gap. But how much should you, as an admin, tell your users about how you’re managing their devices? What’s the best way to communicate that to them?

Thought Leadership December 22, 2021

Iru Team

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7 min read

Lessons from 1,000 Migrations: How to Switch Device-Management Solutions

If you manage Apple devices, sooner or later you’ll consider the question: Should we switch from our current device-management solution to another? That question immediately leads to a host of others, and pretty soon the whole idea of migrating may begin to seem overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. With the right preparation and planning, switching from one device management solution to another is eminently doable, with big payoffs in efficiency and new capabilities at the end.

Educational December 3, 2021

Iru Team

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4 min read

Single Sign-on with SAML: How and Why to Set It Up

Weak and forgotten passwords have always been a sore spot for IT. Single sign-on (SSO) with SAML can ease that pain, by simplifying the login experience and enforcing secure authentication. In this article, we’ll provide an overview of how SSO and the SAML framework work together to keep users and administrators secure.

Educational November 19, 2021

Iru Team

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2 min read

Apple and the Hybrid Workplace: A Perfect Fit

By now, you’ve no doubt heard a lot about the “hybrid workplace”: After a year-plus when many employees worked entirely at home, many are now filtering back to the office. In some cases, “hybrid” means a given worker spends some days working remotely, others in the office. In other cases, it means that some workers are 100 percent remote, and others are in the office all the time. Regardless of the mix, this new hybrid workforce has serious ramifications for the IT admins who have to make sure everyone stays productive and secure wherever they are. To get some insight into what this brave new workplace will mean to IT departments, Iru commissioned a survey. Conducted by Dimensional Research, it asked more than 300 IT stakeholders around the world: Is the hybrid workplace temporary or here to stay? What kinds of devices are best for hybrid workers? Do Apple devices in particular offer any advantages or disadvantages when it comes to hybrid work? Here's what they told us.

Educational October 7, 2021