Bradley has worked at K-12 independent schools for much of the last 20 years, serving as the head of the information technology department and leading classroom technology integration. He’s well-versed in enterprise Wi-Fi, macOS and iOS system management, school technology, and SaaS tools.
Ubiquiti is a popular networking choice for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers extremely low costs with a useful feature set for many organization’s needs. There are a lot of plusses and minuses to using Ubiquiti products, but I am not getting into that aspect today. What I do want to look at are Ubiquiti management options.
When 2020 started, I didn’t have a single camera in my HomeKit setup, but as the year as gone on, I’ve been picking up cameras left and right. After deploying multiple eufyCameras around the exterior of my house, I turned my attention to covering parts of the interior of my house. While HomeKit Secure Video is essential for outside of the house, it’s required for the inside of my house. It’s one thing for a company to have views on the outside of my house, but only I want to be able to see what’s going on inside my house. End to end encryption is required for any indoor cameras that I use in my house. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing out the Netatmo Indoor Camera with HomeKit Secure Video.
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Jamf Protect was the first macOS endpoint security solution to use Apple’s new Endpoint Security Framework to enforce malware prevention in a way that ensures a great macOS experience. Many of the other solutions use non-Apple advised methods thus impacting the overall experience for the end-user.
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JumpCloud, the makers of the popular cloud directory service, is expanding its product portfolio to offer a new mobile device management solution for Apple enterprises. JumpCloud has been a popular ‘directory-as-a-service’ vendor for Apple enterprises looking to move away from Microsoft’s Active Directory. The JumpCloud MDM solution will work directly with Apple’s MDM APIs.
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It feels like every email I receive mentions COVID–19. Every podcast I listen to mentions COVID–19. On Twitter or LinkedIn, you can’t avoid mentions of COVID–19. Our current pandemic is everywhere, and that is probably as it should be. It’s dominating our lives. As I was headed to the grocery store to pick up an online order, I realized how essential the app economy is right now and how much worse off we’d be if this pandemic would have happened even a decade ago. Here are a few ways that the ‘‘app economy’’ that Apple helped pioneer has allowed us to adjust to a ‘‘new normal’’ while we are all stuck at home.
Slate has been releasing great podcasts for many years, and I recently discovered one of their existing shows that have added a new format. Hi-Phi Nation, while already in season four, has a new structure. This season they are focusing on a single theme: crime and punishment. Crime and punishment podcasts have become extremely popular, so this makes a lot of sense for Slate to use their unique skills to bring a fresh look to the show. Hi-Phi Nation is hosted by Barry Lam.
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Backing up corporate data isn’t a luxury. It’s not only essential, if you lose data, you could possibly open yourself up to legal matters. In a world of mobile devices, remote working, and cloud services, how do IT departments build a system for Mac backups in the enterprise?
A few months ago, I wrote about the VOCOlinc power adaptor. It’s my favorite low-cost HomeKit outlet adapter. I recently needed a surge protector with each individual to be able to be a HomeKit switch. I again turned to the VOCO branded of products with their HomeKit surge protector.
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In this episode of the Apple @ Work podcast, Bradley is joined by Perry Correll from Extreme Networks to talk about what the FCC’s proposal for the 6GHz band to become unlicensed will mean for Wi-Fi in the enterprise.
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I love iCloud Drive, and I’ve been using it as my primary file storage method for a couple of years at this point. It took off for me once Apple debuted the Files app in iOS 11. Once Apple added the ability to sync the desktop and documents folder in macOS Sierra, I had true files happiness. Even without folder sharing (which is finally available), I had been using iCloud Drive for 99% of my file sync needs. The only thing I am not using is the legacy shared folders I have in Dropbox. My biggest complaint about iCloud Drive is that the deleted file restoration pales in comparison to Dropbox.
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This week’s podcast of the week is one of the podcasts on the 9to5 network. Over the past few years, I’ve been learning a lot about electric vehicles, and I have a Tesla Cybertruck on preorder. I told my wife recently that I’ve made my last non-EV car purchase, and we’re going all-electric for all future cars. One of the ways I’ve been learning about the industry is the Electrek Podcast.
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If you’re working from home like me at the moment, your calendar has gone from a list of places to be to a list of virtual meetings to join. I found a new app that is going to be perfect for this time period. Meeter is a new macOS app that, once installed, will live in your Menu bar. It allows you to quickly join your scheduled calls for services like Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc.
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Back in 2010, Apple surprised us all when it killed the Xserve. Although it wasn’t near as popular as Linux and Window Servers, it still had its place among macOS heavy enterprises. OS X Server (now macOS Server) provided several useful features that don’t really exist in today’s enterprise market. Why did Apple kill the Xserve and begin stripping features from macOS Server?
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In my time watching the HomeKit market, the most strange thing about it is how few HomeKit enabled doorbells there are on the market. It seems like every few months a new doorbell with HomeKit support is announced that never seems to be released. We also continually see products that claim HomeKit support is coming, but the software update never arrives. Where are all the HomeKit doorbells, and is it worth waiting on before making a purchase? This week, I want to look at the Eufy doorbell.
HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.
I talked about Edison Mail a few weeks back when they had announced their new OnMail email service. Today, Edison Mail is back in the news as they have debuted on the Mac App Store. Like I mentioned when CleanMyMac X debuted on the Mac App Store last week, apps joining the store seem to be a growing trend whereas a few years ago, it was quite the opposite as apps were leaving the Mac App Store over revenue and sandboxing concerns.
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During COVID–19, I’ve still been working hard to support the teachers at my school during our distance-learning efforts. I’ve always been the type person who was willing to try a new app to improve my workflows and provide a better result. One of the tasks I found myself doing a lot more than before is a screen recording and screen annotations. After spending some time with them, it’s clear that macOS screen annotation tools is an area Apple should invest more in.
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I’ve been using the Starling Home Hub since January to enable HomeKit support on my Nest thermostat. Since then, I’ve continued to rely on it daily for using my Nest through the Home app. Today, version 6.0 of the Starling Home Hub firmware is now available to download.
Fiction podcasts are taking up more and more of my podcast listening time. Thanks to shows like Blackout and Carrier, I’ve been opened up to an entirely new world of podcasts. I recently discovered a podcast called Dust that just started its second season called Flight 008.
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The past few weeks have been wild at my school. Over just a few days, we went from thinking there would be a 20% chance we’d shut down to making serious plans due to the COVID–19 outbreak. This scenario meant that we had to launch a distance learning platform virtually overnight. This week, for Making The Grade, I want to explain how I built a low-cost, distance learning solution for our school.
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One of the things that Amazon has done well with Alexa is cloud-enabled skills that are directly connected to its Echo products. In my smart home setup, we have a couple of Echo Dots in my kid’s rooms they use for ‘story time’ at night. I love my HomePod, but it can’t replace this functionality at this time. Is it time for Apple to build a HomeKit skills section that runs directly off iCloud?
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Maple Media has purchased popular podcast app Player FM. Player FM was one of the top 10 download podcast apps on the App Store and Google Play store during March. Acquisitions of podcast apps seem to be a coming trend after both Pocket Casts and Castro were purchased. Pocket Casts was purchased by WNYC, NPR, WBEZ, and This American Life. Castro was purchased by the owners of Dribble.
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In this episode of the Apple @ Work podcast, Bradley is joined by Shane Moore from Bitglass to talk about the security risks of the move to cloud applications. Even if you are securing the authentication process, there is still more to consider for IT managers when it comes to creating a security environment in cloud services.
Camtasia is my favorite app for screen recording on macOS. It’s easy to use, extremely powerful, and produces a quality end product that doesn’t require you to be a trained video editor. During the time I’ve been working from home over the past five weeks, I’ve used it daily to share tutorials with the staff at my school on various distance learning processes. Today, Camtasia is launching its new version for 2020, and I can’t wait to start using it.
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There’s a lot to like about the Mac App Store for consumers and developers, but there’s also a lot to dislike as well. Due to sandboxing rules and limited options for upgrade pricing, some popular applications are still not available for purchase. Over time, Apple has been working to tweak the rules to allow popular apps to enter the App Store, though. In early 2019, we saw Microsoft Office come to the App Store with the option to purchase a subscription using in-app purchase. It’s clear Apple hasn’t given up on the Mac App Store, and today, another popular app is making its first appearance. MacPaw’s CleanMyMac X, one of the best macOS maintenance applications, is finally on the Mac App Store.