Apple @ Work is brought to you exclusively by Mosyle, Apple’s only unified platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates all the solutions needed to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage and protect Apple devices at work into a single enterprise-grade platform. More than 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices ready to work effortlessly and affordably. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is all you need to work with Apple.
Apple Business and Apple School Manager are essential to modern Apple device deployments. If you deploy Macs, iPads, or iPhones in your business, you spend a lot of time on these portals. The problem is that the web interface can be incredibly tedious when you’re using thousands of devices. As we’ve mentioned several times, Apple released an official API for these services last year, opening the door to automation and new tools. A new native macOS app called ASBMUtil is one example.
About Apple @Work: Bradley Chambers managed an enterprise IT network from 2009 to 2021. With his experience deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a mobile device management system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, thousands of Macs and thousands of iPads, Bradley will highlight how Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, stories of IT management and ways Apple could improve its products for IT services.
Bring the API to the desktop
Rod Christiansen recently released ASBMUtil, a native SwiftUI front-end designed to interact with your Apple business tools. Instead of struggling with JSON and terminal commands, Mac administrators can now interact directly with the Apple Business API through a native app on their Mac.
The main view is a single native table with every device managed in your Apple Business and School Manager account. Macs, iPads, iPhones and Apple TVs are all displayed next to each other. If you click on a row, a sidebar appears with all the device details, including serial number, order status, device management assignment, AppleCare coverage, and MAC address. You can easily select a handful of devices, right-click, and reassign them.
- Device browser: You can view all managed devices in a single paginated, sortable table with a details sidebar.
- Powerful filters: You can filter by device status, order number, model family, or device management server. You can also stack filters to narrow the view to the exact devices you need.
- List of MDM servers and assignments: This allows you to see each server and which devices are currently assigned to it.
- Bulk allocation and deattribution: You can select multiple devices in the table, choose a destination server and apply the change. You can also import a CSV if that’s how the desired state arrives.
- Export to CSV or JSON format: You can share your selection or filtered results via the macOS Share Sheet.
- Multi-profile switching: If you manage multiple Apple environments, you can easily switch between different Apple Business and Apple School Manager instances from the sidebar and manage your credentials in Settings.
Christiansen also kept the app perfectly in sync with Apple’s recent API additions. The app supports AppleCare coverage lookups (API 1.3) and can extract built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet MAC addresses for macOS (API 1.4), as well as iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and visionOS (API 1.2). Most recently, the app added support for API 1.5, which includes a table format for MAC addresses on devices with multiple network interfaces.
9to5Mac’s point of view
I love this app! I switch in and out of Apple School Manager daily, and having it right on my dock saves me a ton of time. If you manage an Apple fleet, ASBMUtil is a utility you should definitely add to your toolbox. You can grab the latest version directly from GitHub.
Apple @ Work is brought to you exclusively by Mosyle, Apple’s only unified platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates all the solutions needed to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage and protect Apple devices at work into a single enterprise-grade platform. More than 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices ready to work effortlessly and affordably. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is all you need to work with Apple.
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