Speakers: Tobias Morrison
Level: All Levels, Lecture
Excerpt: A year after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple began hinting at their vision of the future of device management: mobile profiles. Eleven years later, Mac management with profiles is still a world of unfulfilled promises, mysteries, misdirections, and strange disappearances. But the promise of simplicity and consistency that MDM _could_ bring is so compelling, I want to believe. And the MacAdmin community of geniuses, skeptics, crackpots, and believers are the people making that future possible today through hard work, guess work, reverse work, tears, and lots and lots of coffee.
Description: Join me for a trip down memory lane as we dive into the fraught history of managing Macs with Configuration Profiles. From their inception as a concession to Enterprise IT Administrators trying to placate CEOs with gadget-envy to our current APNs-driven MDM reality. We will visit long-forgotten beginnings with iPhone Configuration Utility through Apple Configurator and Server.app, explore a wide-range of tools both past and present for reading, editing, creating and deploying our XML foes, and discuss the ups and downs, the good and bad, and try to dry the tears so that we may see the bright future that is Mac Management with Mobile Profiles. I Want To Believe that Apple will deliver our management utopia!
About the speaker
Tobias Morrison (Twitter: @apns5223) – Technology Alignment Manager – GlobalMac IT
Tobias Morrison is an aging hipster from an age before fixy bikes and steampunk hats. His favorite computer is his first, an Apple ][+ on which he learned to type BASIC from the pages of COMPUTE! magazine. He likes his music heavy and loud. He has strong opinions that he keeps to himself, at least until you have gone too far. Then you will know exactly what he thinks. He loves winter even when seasonal affective disorder kicks in. His Welsh-Irish skin is not suited to exposure to the sun. He has 4 children, a saintly wife, and is chronically tired.