Get ready for iOS 13 and MacOS 10.15 Catalina

[AmelieS]

To start off the week just right, take a look at our latest blog post (posted today) about the planned changes coming to Systems Manager to support iOS 13 and MacOS 10.15 Catalina.

We'd love to hear your feedback, so feel free to voice them on this thread. 

[Richard_W]

So will remote management work again; in that I'll be able to control my machines, unlike the forced observe, no mouse control that Mojave SM clients have currently?

[Kevin_C]

@Richard_W This is on our radar, and we are working on a resolution. We hope to have it fixed on Mojave and Catalina soon. Stay tuned!

[BlakeRichardson]

@PhilipDAth  Good question, yes most of the devices I look after are Apple (98%) however I went to create my first Windows settings in SM today and was shocked by the lack of Windows options available..... 

[Richard_W]

@Kevin_C  any timeline on these remote access fixes, Catalina is not far from dropping…

[misterharrison]

This "Wifi power always on" restriction seems to default to ON.

Is turning wifi off and on again no longer a valid troubleshooting step?

[Richard_W]

and it dropped… ball in your court.

[PhilipDAth]

I'm starting to think Systems Manager is just for managing Apple devices.

Where is the Windows 10 AutoPilot support?  Or even just "decent" Windows 10 support?  Windows has by far a lot more market share than MacOS.

According to Google, Android has 76% market share.  We see next to zero new things being announced for Android.

Considering the market share of Windows and Android versus Apple - do you think Meraki is proportionally devoting development resources - or is Meraki railroading itself into a niche market?

I bet you look at your own deployment statistics and they show a high Apple deployment ratio and you think this is good - rather than being a reflection of the rest of the market being poorly attended to by Meraki.

[Noah_Salzman]

Hi Philip,

As you pointed out, the SM product is stronger on Apple iOS than other platforms. There are many reasons for this: years ago the SM team had early customers that needed iOS support, Apple is easier to develop for many reasons (a key one is Android OS fragmentation), the Apple/Cisco partnership, and of course the positive feedback loop of Meraki developing a strong iOS customer base and continuing to support it.

That said, we are working hard to expand our Android and Windows 10 support. There is definitely strong demand for both those OS families and we intend to improve and expand SM to meet it. It takes time, though, and "supporting" any OS family as large as those two means there will always be tough decisions on what to work on first.

AutoPilot on Windows has been an area of discussion lately; consider it in "early design phases". If you have some input there please look for a thread on that subject soon, I'll open one to solicit your and other's use cases.

Noah Salzman
Product Manager for Meraki SM

[T1]

Automated Device Enrollment Changes

Automated Device Enrollment (also known as DEP) will now enforce mandatory enrollment in Meraki Systems Manager.  Also, we have introduced a new option to skip “Dark Mode” setup on iOS and MacOS.  

Can you please elaborate on this part? I have 2000+ devices in DEP at the moment, I don't need all of them enrolled at the same time. Does it mean every Apple device I buy in future will automatically enroll in MDM?

[Kevin_C]

Hi @T1 ,

Previously, if an admin left the "Mandatory" option unchecked in their DEP settings, end users could skip enrollment into Systems Manager on a device after activation.

Beginning with iOS 13, Apple is deprecating this setting, and devices will be forced to enroll after activation if they are associated with an MDM server in Apple Business Manager (ABM). To prevent automated device enrollment into Systems Manager, you will need to disassociate the devices from your SM server by unassigning them in ABM.

[PeterJames]

Hi @AmelieS ,

Can you share any more information about the iOS13 Feature of 'Wi-Fi always on'? Does this prevent the user from turning it off?

Thank you,

Peter James

(Im back!)

[Noah_Salzman]

Hey Peter, 

This is a new feature for Supervised devices. Apple defines it this way:

[When enabled, this feature] prevents Wi-Fi from being turned off in Settings or Control Center, even by entering or leaving Airplane Mode. It does not prevent selecting which Wi-Fi network to use. Available in iOS 13.0 and later.

[PeterJames]

Hi @Noah_Salzman ,

Thank you - That is quite a game changer!

Peter James