Meetup notes – March 23, 2015

The Foundation hosted our March meetup in its brand new office in downtown Minneapolis across the street from Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins.

Thanks go to Matt Woestehoff and the rest of the office for not only hosting but serving the group delicious craft beers from nearby brewpub The Freehouse.

Notes

RSVPs and turnout were down this month with 17 folks attending. Maybe it’s just a case of the Mondays—our last two meetups were on Mondays. We’re working to get venues that can host us other days too.

Introduction

Brad was master of ceremonies for the evening.

• How many Mac admins does it take to AirPlay?
• Aaron Freimark was our first speaker. He was with Tekserve in New York City for 12-1/2 years. He’s now “doing the startup thing”.
• Dan Keller was our featured presenter for the evening. He works for Anoka Middle School for the Arts.

Round-table

We allot time to discuss current issues in the Mac admin community. Bill and Brian spearheaded the talks.

MacRumors: Apple Overhauling iPad in Education Program to Simplify Sharing Devices and Apps

• No one attending the meetup could offer details about the March 6 MacRumors blog post claiming Apple may be allowing schools to assign and distribute apps to devices without an Apple ID and offering the option to prevent students from making personal purchases without approval.
• Aaron shared a post from EnterpriseiOS.com: The End of Generating Apple IDs.
• 9to5Mac claims to have acquired a second Apple letter with more detail.
• Apple encourages each student to have his own Apple ID to receive apps from his school. Apple discourages sharing Apple IDs.
• Education has banged loudly on Apple’s door to make the Apple ID and app distribution process easier to manage.
• If these letters prove legitimate, will the changes carry over to enterprise?
• Enterprise is apathetic to this news. If it’s all true, nothing will happen ’til fall for education and then nothing will happen in the enterprise for at least another year or so.
• Making this work will probably need a change to the MDM environment.
• iOS 9 will probably be the enabler of any new changes. Keep an eye on WWDC, which is the most likely event where Apple will announce any details.
• The only thing Mac admins can do now is “philosophize” on the topic.

Microsoft releases Office 2016 for Mac Preview

• Since the last meetup Microsoft has released the Office 2016 Mac Preview.
• Office 2011 for Mac’s lifecycle end date is still January 12, 2016.
• Some folks are trying the preview. Excel still needs work with large spreadsheets.
• Office 2016 for Mac is still 32-bit.
• Outlook users have rolled back to 15.6 from 15.8 due to crashing issues. Outlook 15.8.1 is out now.
• Why are the new Office 2016 apps so big? Each app is now self-contained. Each has its own set of fonts, AutoUpdate and other files that use to be shared.
• What other apps are self-contained and sandboxed? Is Microsoft positioning for the Mac App Store?
• Microsoft already has OneNote and Remote Desktop for Mac in the Mac App Store.
• Very impressed with Microsoft’s turn-around in the past six months. Microsoft is doing very well to follow Apple’s development guidelines.
• Package receipts are no longer per version of application but are instead per app and getting versioned.
• Mac and Windows Office names are now unifying with “2016”.
• Microsoft seems to be working toward better parity between platforms.
• Envisioning the Mac apps being free in the Mac App Store with in-app purchases for Office 365.
• As of late last year, iOS apps are free. They’re read-only without any sign-in. Most features are available with a free Microsoft login (Outlook.com, Live.com, Hotmail.com, etc.). Advanced features are only available with Office 365 logins.
• Microsoft does offer a OneDrive for Business Mac sync client Preview.

 Apple announces new MacBook

• This could be a “single port of failure”.
• Do we know if the new plug is MagSafe?
• Seems like Apple is saying this new device isn’t meant to plug in to anything.
• We need to plug in to Ethernet and monitors at the same time.
• We’ll need a USB-C dock similar to existing Thunderbolt docks such as Elgato or Belkin. Belkin is already announcing USB-C cables.
• The new MacBook may be the new MacBook Air. Apple has killed floppies and opticals in its products. The new MacBook may be showing us Apple’s roadmap for its products.
• No one really misses optical drives. We have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
• Will there be something like target mode with this new version of USB? Apple designed the specification.
• The form-factor for USB-C can be implemented separately from USB 3.1 per the specification. ExtremeTech: USB-C vs. USB 3.1: What’s the difference?
• Could Apple allow our network caching servers to serve Internet Recovery images for local wireless NetBoot?
• Looking forward to someone bringing a new MacBook to next month’s meetup!

Apple adds iOS to free Apple Beta Software Program

• Anyone can now sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program and download prerelease OS X and iOS software for testing.
• This is not the Apple Developer Program, but so far the builds between the beta program and the developer program have been identical.
• Unlike the Developer Program, which is $99 per year, the beta program is free.
• This is worrisome. Can we restrict iOS betas in the environment?
• Possible to work around users installing unwanted updates such as a Global Proxy.
• JAMF Nation users have actively discussed using Global proxies.
• Mac admins would like profiles to block specific updates and betas.
• Apple offers profiles to block pre-release beta software on OS X and iOS.

Mac admin conference season starts soon!

• PSU MacAdmins Conference – State College, Pennsylvania, July 7-10, 2015.
• MacIT – Santa Clara, California, July 14-16, 2015. Running independent of Macworld/iWorld Expo, which is on hiatus this year.
• Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) – currently unannounced but expected in June 2015.

Guest Presentation

Aaron Freimark is the CTO for GroundControl and demonstrated his new service to the group. It was born out of the need to rapidly deploy large numbers of iOS devices while working at Tekserve and the Enterprise iOS community’s expression of the pain around deploying iOS devices.

GroundControl is a new cloud-based service for preparing iOS devices. It combines the speed of Apple Configurator with the benefits of centralized cloud management. This solution is not intended for just 50 devices but rather hundreds or thousands of devices.

• GroundControl is a spin-off from Tekserve.
• The service works with standalone devices or devices enrolled in Apple’s Device Enrollment Program (DEP) for business and education.
• Before developing GroundControl, Tekserve used Apple Configurator.
• Aaron reduced his checklist of 73 steps to prepare iPads to two using GroundControl.
• iOS devices still need to plug in to a Mac. Configuration is not over-the-air.
• Like Configurator, GroundControl can install payloads via configuration profiles.
• All assets get cached from the cloud to the preparation Mac as needed.
• Deployment is touch-free apart from having to plug in devices to the preparation Mac and clicking the Start button.
• Devices are supervised as part of preparation.
• GroundControl is an alternative to Configurator and a complement to DEP.
• Unlike Configurator, GroundControl can supervise devices without having to upgrade the iOS version.
• Development is working on entering Apple IDs (without passwords) as part of preparation.
• Preparation Mac only requires the launchpad application.
• Devices are supervised using cloud credentials not the Mac’s credentials.
• Releasing API integration in a couple of weeks (around mid-April).
• Re-deployment in the field is possible and anyone who can plug in a device to a Mac can prepare a device.
• By default, iOS updates are not applied, but a policy can define something like “Update only if less than iOS 8”.
• One Mac can prepare up to 30 devices at a time.
• GroundControl is not a replacement for Mobile Device Management (MDM).
• GroundControl does not install apps. The MDM must install apps.
• June 15 – GroundControl will run on Windows.
• Pricing is based on an annual subscription. Education receives a 50% discount.
• Still requires an understanding of MDMs and deployment methods.
• Demos and trials are available at the GroundControl website.
• Use case: An Arizona hospital used GroundControl to quickly erase and re-provision devices from patient to patient. With some custom development, a patient discharge automatically triggered a device wipe command sent via USB over IP connection. iPads were re-provisioned up to 200 times in a day.

Featured Presentation

After an iOS-focussed presentation, Dan Keller (very soon to be father of two) followed with an iOS-free session on AutoPkg.

Website: http://dankeller.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dankeller
GitHub: https://github.com/dankeller

• There are always updates! Where do we get them? When do they come out?
• Downloading and repackaging updates for your package distribution system is repetitive and time-consuming.
• AutoPkg helps manage getting updates from various sources and preparing them for testing and distribution.
• It works with Casper, munki, DeployStudio and other deployment systems.
• Originally developed by Per Olofsson and continued by Greg Neagle, Tim Sutton and other contributors.
• Currently, over 1400 recipes available for downloading, repackaging, installing and importing into deployment systems.
• Default AutoPkg download includes 115 recipes.
• Use any Git repository as a recipe repository.
• AutoPkg runs plist XML files.
• Recipes can call other recipes and processors.
• One of the best resources for AutoPkg is the wiki.
• The AutoPkg wiki contains a FAQ, documentation and recipe creation instructions.
• Requires Git for Mac (already installed in OS X 10.9 and higher).
• Built-in help for AutoPkg: autopkg --help.
• The recipe for Firefox is actually one of the more complicated recipes because Mozilla has so many release channels to different versions.
• Find recipes for applications using search: autopkg search .
• A make-override is a small local file that references a parent recipe but contains your own customizations.
• Automate running AutoPkg using Jenkins, a launchd daemon or other automation software.
• AutoPkgr is a GUI version of AutoPkg.

Give-aways

One lucky winner, chosen by Bryson‘s Python script for generating random days of the year, received Learning iOS Security, a new book by Allister Banks and Charles S. Edge. Thanks go to Neil Tickten with MacTech Magazine for providing copies of the first 2015 issue with an AutoPkg article by Allister Banks to further tie into Dan’s presentation. And thanks to The Foundation for the beer glasses, bottle openers and Freehouse brews!

Next meeting

We’re finalizing the day and place of our next meetup. Look for announcements on JAMF Nation, the MacEnterprise mailing list, the MN-EDU mailing list and Twitter. (Tell us if we should announce elsewhere too!)

Let us know in the comments below what you’re interested in seeing. Do you like the format of the events? Should we add or remove something? Make something a little longer or little shorter?

Dates and times are based on the venue. If you can suggest a venue that can accommodate about 25-30 Mac admins we’d appreciate that feedback too.

We’ve had more requests to stream the meetups online and are looking for solutions to do that. Stay tuned.

Call for presenters

We’re looking for presenters! If you’ve had to solve a problem and think someone else could learn from it then contact us and we’ll help you put a short or long presentation together for the group.