Stevecee

Hi Stevecee here back after a while Just in new place that is using intune as MDM but I want to set up Apple Classroom, it seems as though classroom is not supported in intune at the moment has anyone found a workround? Steve

Soap on a rope - My brother gave it to me (I"d given it to him for his birthday) Must of gone back and forward about 6 times :-)

Ok well the problem here is likely to be Server as the latest versions have removed caching and pushed it out to the clients (I think), assuming you can update to Mojave you should be OK going to the App Store and downloading the update. Not sure I have updated our Mac mini Server yet and whether it is new enough to take an upgrade to Mojave, but the time is probably right to give it a go before they release Catalina later this month. Steve

Hi We use Zuludesk (which is now branded as JAMF education?) it does pretty much what JAMf will do, not quite as much as far as Mac OS compared to iOS but still does everything I need it to. Used JAMF Pro before but set up fees astronomical had it set up for iOS and wanted to move to Mac OS too I had already tried and managed to get several Mac OS machines onboard but still needed to pay for a days onsite engineer to set everything up again. Hth Steve

I would imagine these have DVD Drives, if you have the DVD start holding down the "C" key HTH Steve

Congratulations!!!!

Hi what is the reason for not saving on it? are they shared iPads? do you have access to a shared area / one drive / iCloud/ Steve

Yes that would be what I would look for, we also specified Apple Authorised Reseller to get the ongoing support, also Apple Authorised Training Provider but in the end I don't know how much that really mattered. Think about how much support you do need for setup - we're a special school and DEP is good but it needed us to do it, do you need time with tech to help? feel free to pm for any more info! Steve

I have been out to tender for 1-2-1 iPad before, the thing is to be very clear in the specification what exactly you want - do you just want the iPads in the boxes or are you looking at a support system around it? you will get free apple training for an order that size through an apple reseller. What about insurance, cases etc? Apple do not give a big margin to their resellers to be able to do much about competing too much with the apple kit itself the difference will be with the other stuff, the clearer you can be at the start the easier it will be to decide in the end. Hth Steve

Hmmmm - what does this mean for us Zuludesk Customers - will it mean our prices go up? Steve

Hi we have a 100% Mac client environment, we use Zuludesk to manage our Macs, I have used JAMF but the costs were prohibitive esp for setting up. I would say that JAMF has a fuller feature map and active support network of users, whilst I think that Zuludesk is catching up and I have had really good responses from their support team. HTH Steve

Hi we are a Mac school with over 600 devices that are mixed iOS and Mac OS, we are coming to the end of our managed printing contract and have been looking for the best deal moving forward. We have been looking at offers within the CCS frameworks and the best deal so far is from Canon. As much as we are happy with the prices etc, the issue that is stopping us from moving forward is UniFLOW, a quick scan of the posts on here are not very positive and I'm wondering how it works with Mac OS and iOS (in particular). We currently use Papercut and after some weeks at the beginning of us using iPads etc we have got it to be stable and reasonably seamless. There is a known issue that it does not always see the correct paper size and alignment when jobs are sent from an iPad (its on their list but there's no timeline for a fix). Our existing supplier has quoted and canon is still cheaper allowing for the £9k to buy out the remaining leases (we didn't start them all at once and want to get everything to start and finish at the same time). The current quotes are around half the price of our existing contracts and more than a little miffed that we had no contact rom them to help us out with the running costs (our printing costs are £30k+ not including paper and leases). So: Is anybody using UniFLOW with Macs and iPads? how do yo find it, how easy is it to use from an end end users point of view? How easy was it to set up - what were Canon's Tech team like to deal with. How easy is it to manage? What I the support in general like from Canon (response time, fist time fix etc.). Appreciate any responses cheers Steve

Yep, I'm in!

one route is to use configurator and add an enrolment profile for DEP there, you have to set your ASM settings there but not sure it asks for reseller ID. This only works for iPads that are new enough to have been eligible for DEP in the first place HTH Steve

Although not in the North East, we are just in the process of looking at our next contracts, did you know that there are Frameworks out there that guarantee a low price based on government criteria? I have looked at 3 so far: ESPO Crescent Purchasing Consortium Think IT The framework you are looking for is RM3781 https://ccs-agreements.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/contracts/rm3781 So far it looks like savings of around 50% on what we are paying now HTH Steve

Yes this would be the simplest and quickest way to get access, then you can find out what roles the server is running. A lot will depend on what OS you are running (on both the server and clients), older versions of Mac OS server could send settings/restrictions in parallel with AD, in recent years Mac OS server has been changed significantly, current versions come with "Profile Manager" which is in effect an in-house MDM solution which will set permissions, roll out software etc. with 10 clients this might be used in your situation? If you have access to a Mac there is a "server" app, this will allow you to manage the server remotely (last time I looked it was about £13 in the App Store) Apple Remote Desktop is an invaluable tool for not only fault finding but installing packages that can't be sent by MDM. So I would: Plug in a monitor / keyboard and see if you get access. Open the server app and see what services the Mac server is running. check what OS you are running (both server and client) take a breath (do not under any circumstances at this stage think about updating OS - as Apple have trimmed the server OS so much recently you might well break something) I don't think it will take long to find your way around one you know what you are dealing with you can ask for more help Are you anywhere the West Midlands? always happy for you to pop in and see how we run things, also feel free to PM! HTH Steve

I was speaking to one of the team at smooth wall as Mac OS Mojave broke Visigo and they rang to let me know before I migrated, but I asked again about the iPad app and was told it was in the pipeline but not anywhere close as yet. Is there anyone out there from smoothwall its a definitive answer to this? Steve

Hi We are a special school and use Mac OS and iPad clients (approx 650 client)s), exclusively with both staff and pupils. We are currently using Visigo to monitor our Mac OS internet use and to be fair it seems to work well. The problem we have is the iPads, when we adopted Visigo the iPad client was supposed to be ready for the nexts school year 2017 / 2018, sadly there seems to be no prospect of an iPad client in the near future so we are having to rethink. Its top of my list for BETT next month, and I'm wondering if people have any suggestions for stands / solutions to visit? I would rather the solution work with Safari / Chrome and not require a separate browser to be installed, although top of the list is to have a reliable working solution. Again I think it would be best if we were using one solution rather then Visigo for Mac OS and something else for iPads. Thanks is advance Steve

Hi Biggest worry about this that I would have is who is going to get rid of the duplicate photos the photos of a finger or the floor? My experience is that now that is so easy to take a photo (in increasingly higher resolution) nobody will look through their photos and clear the rubbish out. You could be just filling your servers with 60% unnecessary data? You can't expect your team to do this, maybe its better for the iPads to run our of storage and force the issue? Steve

We use Papercut and like others sync to AD Groups. Our balances are reset each week, Teachers get £10 TAs £8, these do not get charged back to any budgets but do serve to a reminder to think before printing. if they run out they have to ask me for more - Policy is to say yes, but I have spoken to people who repeatedly print more than their allocation. Steve

Have you tried just scrolling across the keyboard with 2 fingers this does the same thing! Steve

Hi I think you have nailed on the head there! Mac OS uses Postscript to print if your printer does not have PS then it can't print. WE have 8 Ricoh C3003 MFDs and approx 150 Mac OS clients and all print fine (the MFDs have Postscript) Steve

We have 2 issues really and am not able to roll out mobile print yet. Issue 1 (happens randomly) users print out an A4 page and the printer picks up a different page size and prints it out in a small part of the page or tiles it out over 4, there is a known issue about this. The app concerned do not have the option to set a page size in the print dialogue ie photos. Issue 2 Try to print a job that is in landscape and it will print it full size but impose that image on a portrait page missing off the LH side of the print and having the top of the page clear (basically not turning the page round). Funny thing though if you trace the print job to the PaperCut server and find the pdf file it sends to print everything is OK there, if you print this then it prints out OK. PaperCut are aware and we are waiting to hear back. So my feelings are that whilst we do need to look (at least at other supplier and get he best price I do need to find someone with the Mac experience to help us as we move forward. Steve

I probably need to stress that as a special school a lot of our evidence is collated in the form of colour photographs rather than showing writing in books etc. Although I still feel there is a way to go in reducing the costs there is only so much that is possible. Steve

HI We're just looking at this again, we entered into new leases for 3 copiers in advance of our moving to a new school. Then after our move another 4, and as things d=bedded in a further 2. The original 3 are due for renewal next year so we're starting to look at the way forward. Our current MFDs are Ricoh and we use PaperCut, follow me queues together with embedded software on the copiers. Our copying costs are still huge over £30k so we want to get best value. The current costs would require going our to tender but have been looking at some the Frameworks out there - has anyone had any experience of these? it seems as though you go directly to the manufacturers so that opens up the variants about what make etc. Lastly we are an Apple school so print from Macs and iPads! Suggestions please Steve