A common discussion this summer in the email lists and LinkedIn groups I am in is about the iOS and macOS betas. People who manage iOS and macOS devices have to be aware of what’s happening with beta developments during the summer as we prepare to verify compatibility with printers, external devices, and applications (local and cloud). While I don’t start with this process with beta 1, I will usually begin my “official” testing around the time of the public betas. I’ve been managing macOS and iOS for almost a decade, so I’ve learned a little bit about the process along the way. When you are deploying macOS and iOS on an enterprise level, here are my tips on when to deploy macOS Catalina and iOS 13 (including iPadOS 13).
Through its mobile device management APIs, Apple has built out a lot of tools for IT administrators to have fine-grain control over how they deploy their fleet of devices. While macOS has had great software update controls for many years, it’s a recent addition to iOS (iOS 11.3). On the Windows side of the world (especially in major transitions (7 to 8, 8 to 10, etc.), it’s very common for IT managers to delay major updates for years. A lot of people would question that, but as someone in that role, I can understand wanting things to remain the same. If you control all of your applications, it creates new complexities to update an OS. On the flip side, Apple has done a great job of creating new user features while not creating tons of work for IT departments. There have been some complexities around apps that require Full Disk Access, but other than that, I’ve have great luck with quickly deploying iOS and macOS updates.
Read more at 9to5mac.com