Hacker News Reader

Comment by angulardragon03 | Hacker News Reader

Check out Jamf Now, it has a free tier that you can use for stuff just like this.

This is very interesting! I need to manage my daughters phones as well as my ex-MiL who I still do tech support for. The Verizon Smart Family stuff barely works and I'm continually having to "fix" it. Can Jamf Now also do Android?

You are a nice ex-SiL for your ex-MiL. I'd love to be able to manage my family's devices in the same way my corporate devices are managed. The built-in OS solutions aren't great (at least on iOS).

Anyelse confused by these acronyms? See https://community.babycenter.com/post/a63163060/meanings-for...

I just wish I could dive into my mother's iPad and see the screen.

Even a share screen button inside of FaceTime would be enough. But no... we've got to install some other app and open control center and face east and repeat the ancient incantation of "Holy one, give me the power bestowed upon only Apple Support employees..."

In iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, you can screen share inside of FaceTime.

Oh wow. This is something like 10 years late.

Thanks!

I finally got to try this... it's not very good. Voice quality takes a noticeable dive when screen sharing starts, the frame rate is very poor, and the image gets stuck a lot.

Better than nothing, but still pretty bad.

If on iOS 14 or earlier, jailbreaking allows VNC to work. Ofc a non tech person using a jailbroken device likely wouldn’t work so well since they are all only semi-tethered.

Fortunately, if on iOS 15.1 or later, FT allows screen sharing as sibling has also said.

> I just wish I could dive into my mother's iPad and see the screen.

Check out Splashtop SOS for remote viewing iOS and iPad OS devices:

https://www.splashtop.com/remote-access-view-iphone-ipad-ios...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/splashtop-sos/id1230853703

Jamf Now is iOS-only, I’m afraid.

It is not, currently using it to manage a fleet of ~75 macOS devices.

Ah, true. But regarding the question I was responding to: it doesn't support Android. I've used it for macOS too :)

They recently made a Jamf-like called Apple Business Essentials:

https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/

Which might have been from the Fleetsmith acquisition.

No "might" about it. On a related note, Apple sent out a notice today that they're shutting down Fleetsmith 6 months from now.

Not surprised, we dropped them the week after apple acquired them and destroyed our processes and controls overnight.

Fleetsmith pre apple was fantastic. I'm concerned that with Apple you're forced into only using App Store apps which simply doesn't work for in-house binaries and or third party tools you don't acquire through the App Store.

Apple likes to do a half in half out dance without consulting with teams that use the tech. Hopefully this doesn't impact too many people.

ABE isn't free, sadly (and iirc you need a DUNS number). Two month trial, but then $2.99 per device. Jamf Now is at least free for the first 3 devices, then $2.00 per month per device after that.

Another idea is perhaps Mosyle Business, which gives you the first 30 devices for free [1].

[1] https://business.mosyle.com/pricing

I'd second Mosyle Business. We pay for about 40 licences. It costs us very little and they provide quick support.

We were really exited by the Apple Business Essentials plan… until we saw you still needed an MDM. I thought it was an MDM run by Apple.

Looking back and forth between the Profile Manager / MDM capabilities and the new Business Essentials, I have a hard time understanding what the benefit is beyond automatic setup.

Does anyone else understand the business case?

Not sure where you saw this. ABE is an MDM in its own right, and can manage device configuration and push apps from VPP. It is otherwise fairly limited, but you don’t need an MDM for ABE.

At least for VPNs, I’ve used tools that autogenerate profiles. In fact, doesn’t Apple have a separate tool to generate profiles IIRC? I guess you’re looking for the remote wipe ability? What would you do for a family member that requires a commercial service?

You could also write your own profile file. It’s really just a policy file written in xml(-ish?) with a poorly documented schema. Or at least it was poorly documented several years ago.

They're PLISTs and there is documentation somewhere but it's been a year or two since I've done iOS things and I don't remember where.

The tool for making profiles is Apple Configurator.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com