New enhanced OS update command options for Apple devices

[MattMorg]

We are happy to share news that there has been improvements to the way Meraki Systems Manager now deploys OS updates. These new options will greatly enhance the ways to update managed Apple devices within Meraki Systems Manager. The announcement details can be found here and the updated documentation can be found here. 

Thanks and enjoy! 

[vassallon]

Oooh, I hope this works. Anything that takes away from relying on students to update their iPads will be awesome.

[BlakeRichardson]

@MattMorg  Awesome, will this work for all devices or just supervised devices? 

Not being able to force updates on devices that are not supervised is a sore point as it means with zero day threats we need to manually ask everyone to update their devices and then confirm that they do so. 

[PaulF]

@BlakeRichardson 

The update command is limited to supervised devices by Apple, not us, sadly....

However, there is an alternative.... Using Systems Manager > Command Line allows you to do the same thing to multiple devices at the same time.

 I don't have any of my Macs online currently, so can't show you exactly, but so long as they have the SM client installed, allows you to do a whole host of software update activities:

https://ss64.com/osx/softwareupdate.html

Furthermore, using the new (Under Organisation > Early Adopter) scripting capability, you can do this systematically as well.

In summary, there's several options available for you using SM beyond the MDM commands

[BlakeRichardson]

I feel this feature has a few bugs, for me 16.6.1 wasn't showing in the iPadOS options and I had to refresh my page. Under MacOS I was also getting a list of random applications and not OS updates.

When trying to update iPadOS 15 devices to 16.6.1 I get the following error. 

[EncinitasMatt]

We have supervised iPads.  We do not want to update to IOS 17 yet.  We do need to update devices on IOS 15 to 16.6.   When I use the new update feature I only see IOS 17.3 as an option.

[PaulF]

Apple will only allow you to update to the latest OS. As iOS 17 came out, they would have stopped signing iOS 16 releases