Bradley started his career in telecommunications, working for the original IP TV provider in the US, and also was part of their fiber-to-the-home rollout. From 2009-2021, Bradley worked for a private school, running the information technology department and technology integration in the classroom. He manages a network of 15 switches, 100+ access points, hundreds of Macs and iPads, and multiple phone systems across four separate campuses across the city. He’s well-versed in enterprise Wi-Fi, macOS and iOS system management, school technology, and SaaS tools. Currently, he works at Cribl, where he runs content marketing, helping companies understand how to manage observability data best. At 9to5Mac, Bradley covers HomeKit technology, enterprise software, enterprise hardware, and how Apple fits into the enterprise environment.
If you have any tips, feedback, corrections, or questions, they can be sent to Bradley@9to5mac.com.
Philips makes some of the absolute best HomeKit products on the market. The Philips Hue Bloom is yet another entry into that lineup. When paired with the Hue hub, you end up with a light that looks great, shines bright, and works perfectly with HomeKit’s Adaptive Lighting.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with Jason Dettbarn from Addigy about the recent chaos around software updates as well as the pulled Rapid Security Response patch.
Is Matter going to be a great thing for smart home users? Yes. Is it going to replace Homebridge as a usable solution? Not anytime soon. I’ve been extremely impressed with the Homebridge platform over the years, and it’s done a lot of good for expanding compatibility for products that either don’t support Matter or ever will in terms of onboarding them into HomeKit. It’s now available on the fast-growing Umbrel home server as well.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
When Apple unveiled Touch ID on the iPhone 5s nearly ten years ago, it wasn’t the first time devices had included biometric unlock options. Many business PC has included it prior, but this was the first time it came to a device meant for the masses. At the time, we were in the midst of moving to a world where the cloud became the center of our. computing world, so a lot of people questioned why Apple made such a big deal about Touch ID staying on device in a secure method rather than “syncing” to other devices. Apple had previously purchased a company known as AuthenTec in 2012 that became the foundation of Touch ID. Today, I want to consider how Apple’s early decisions with Touch ID led to a world where passwords are on the way out… for good.
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Door and window sensors aren’t new to HomeKit. They’re one of the original device types, and depending on the use case, it unlocks some super interesting automations. Today, I am taking a look at Aqara’s brand-new Matter-enabled contact sensor that can be used on windows, doors, blinds, or really anywhere you want to track the opening of something.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with Kamal Srinivasan from Parallels about the state of virtualization in the age of Apple Silicon.
We’re heating up on the beta period for Apple’s fall releases as macOS Sonoma, iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and tvOS 17 start on the journey of bug squashing and UI refinements. For IT professionals, this period isn’t a lull period – it’s a time when you should be working through your normal zero-touch deployment workflows to ensure nothing is broken that will stay broken by launch.
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Continuing with the summer of Matter announcements, TP-Link’s Tapo has just released the industry’s first Matter-enabled smart switches. The Tapo S505 and Tapo S505D are now both available for purchase. Tapo is TP-Link’s smart home brand. TP-Link makes a wide variety of home Wi-Fi routers, business grade networking equipment, and much more.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
I’ve often said that the Apple IT community is a tight-knit one. To be honest, most of us old-timers are still shocked at how quickly Apple has become one of the dominant endpoints in the enterprise. I can still remember back when Apple didn’t even support Microsoft Exchange. We’ve come a long way as an industry and as a community. Recently, Addigy released a new WatchDog utility aimed at resolving a lingering macOS bug, and instead of releasing it for its customers only – the company released a version that fixed the bug for everyone. It highlights the close-knit vibes of the Apple community and the benefits of Apple’s standardization of device management APIs.
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When the news broke in April that WiZ products were coming to Matter, this was a huge benefit to Apple, the HomeKit ecosystem, and to HomeKit users. In fact, I believe no one is benefiting from the Matter rollout to the smart home world than Apple, as they were the ones often left out of the lower-cost products. Matter is an open smart home standard that is supported by Amazon, Google, and Apple, allowing accessory makers to be compatible with a single standard rather than three separate ones.
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As Apple continues its march towards the Mac becoming the dominant endpoint in the enterprise, the ecosystem around it designed to streamline management, compliance, and security continues to expand. Today, Kandji announces an expanded partnership with Okta.
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Most people have two main apps they use every day at work: email (powered by Google Workspace or Microsoft 365) and a team chat tool (usually Slack or Microsoft Teams). What if they were combined into a single interface? That is what Spike for Teams aims to accomplish: eliminate the need for keeping these essential services separate. With its launch, the Spike Email app gets a major upgrade with a new Spike for Teams service aimed to unify your internal and external communication.
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If you love the Gmail and Google Workspace experience, but you crave a native macOS app experience, Kiwi for Gmail is an app you should check out. The newest 4.0 launch adds a host of new features that have been long requested by customers.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with Alcyr Araujo about what Apple announced at WWDC for Apple IT administrators about what they should expect this summer as macOS Sonoma and iOS 17 come through the beta testing season.
AI-enabled updates have been a hot trend in 2023, and Mosyle is now bringing it to its Apple device management platform. Today, Mosyle announced Mosyle AIScript, the industry’s first generative AI-powered macOS scripting tool that lets IT teams use natural language to generate ready-to-use scripts for their Mac fleets.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
Now that the Mac is a premier endpoint in the enterprise, it’s starting to move into the phase where it needs first-class tools for IT and security teams to gather data from the device. A newly available from Red Canary aims to make gathering endpoint data on macOS even easier.
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In the past few months of using the Level Lock+, my mind has been doing a lot of thinking about the role of hardware in the future of the smart home. Sure, software (even voice) is great for interacting with devices, but there’s something I’ve found magical about Home Key. My smartphone is hardware device that interacts with my hardware lock through software. The software is invisible. It’s been so wonderful just tapping my iPhone on the lock and having it open. It’s also led me to believe that Apple should continue pulling at that string going forward. Of course, all this will apply to the recently released Aqara smart lock with Home Key support.
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A few weeks ago, I reported that Addigy had determined that as many as 25% of managed macOS devices were in a “stuck state” due to failed Rapid Software Response installations and would stop communicating back to the MDM server. Addigy had been waiting on Apple to fix the problem, but as time went on, it became apparent that it wasn’t going to be fixed on this round of macOS updates ahead of the release of macOS Sonoma.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Kolide, the device trust solution that ensures that if a device isn’t secure, it can’t access your cloud apps. If you have Okta, Kolide can help you get your fleet to 100% compliance. They’re Zero Trust for Okta. Learn more or request a demo today.
Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference for 2023 has come and gone once again, and now we turn our attention to the summer of beta testing, preparing training, and more. I’ll be diving into many of these announcements in the coming weeks, but I want to run through the high-level updates that Apple IT administrators need to know for macOS Sonoma, tvOS 17, iOS 17, watchOS 10 (yes, Apple Watch is coming to MDM), and iPadOS 17.
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After using the Level Lock+ with Home Key support for a few months, I can honestly say that Home Key is now table stakes for all smart locks. It’s no longer enough to just support HomeKit. HomeKit is a software layer for door locks. Home Key support is a game changer in terms of day-to-day functionality. There are no apps to open or Bluetooth connections to wait on. With Home Key, it’s tap and go. I’ve spent the last week with the Aqara Door Lock U100 with Home Key support, so let’s dive into how it works, my thoughts on it compared to Level Lock+, and the installation process.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Kolide, the device trust solution that ensures that if a device isn’t secure, it can’t access your cloud apps. If you have Okta, Kolide can help you get your fleet to 100% compliance. They’re Zero Trust for Okta. Learn more or request a demo today.
In a fast-moving digital world, it can be easy to forget that behind every device, every system, and every line of code, there are people just trying to do their jobs. Security vendors have a responsibility to protect the IT environment and ensure that the machines are locked down as much as possible. On the other hand, IT professionals are constantly thinking about security and taking steps to protect their organizations from cyber threats. But where does Apple fit into this equation?
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When you strip away home automation to its essence, it’s about taking something you normally would buy manually and automating it. That might be turning lights on based on motion, time of day, etc. It might be able automatically raising or lowering blinds based on smart blinds based on when the sun sets. It’s about streamlining how you interact with your home. There’s no more mundane task that should be integrated into HomeKit than smart vacuums, and it’s time for Apple to support it as a HomeKit device. Read on to learn about a few smart vacuums I’ve been testing this year, and how I’d love to take the experience further with HomeKit.
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Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with John Bennett CEO of Dashlane about the state of Passkeys, why it dramatically improves security, and how Touch ID led to a world where users trust biometrics.
Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been testing the Aircove router with Express VPN built-in, and it has led me down a rabbit hole of wondering why more companies aren’t focusing on VPN technology at the router level – particularly with a focus on work from home.
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