Every year, IT experts and Apple fans eagerly await Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. There has been speculation as to whether Apple will unveil its own AI plans in 2024. After all, Microsoft & Co. have positioned themselves in this regard. Now the time has actually come: Apple’s answer followed at WWDC 2024. However, AI was not the only topic at the conference: the Cupertino-based technology company presented a number of innovations for device management – including functions that were already on the wish list of some IT teams. Companies considering the use of Apple Vision Pro have also learnt some interesting facts.
We take a look at which WWDC trends are important for IT departments.
New management options for Apple devices
Now that iPhones and iPads have been used in a professional context for a long time, Macs are increasingly being added – and perhaps the Apple Vision Pro in the future. IT teams should therefore be pleased with some of the innovations presented at WWDC, which promise greater security and overview.
1. Activation Lock will no longer be an obstacle
The “Activation Lock” function undoubtedly provides greater security: if a device is stolen and marked as such in the UEM system, it cannot be used without a special password. So far, so good. But what happens when employees who have activated the function via their personal Apple ID leave the company and forget to deactivate it when they return the device? The necessary code can then no longer be accessed and the device can no longer be used. The good news from WWDC: in future, admins will be able to deactivate the “Activation Lock” function for company devices via Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager. This means that a device can be reprovisioned even if the function is still active when the device is returned.
2. Reducing the risk of external storage
There are always reasons why employees want to connect USB sticks or external hard drives to their Mac – be it to copy photos from a photo shoot to their computer or to save documents from a training course. IT teams don’t like this. After all, every external drive poses a risk – especially if it is a third-party storage medium.
Administrators also receive support for this: thanks to new disc management configurations, they can define whether external storage is permitted or prohibited on a Mac or whether it should only be read-only. This significantly reduces the risk of malware reaching a company device via another data carrier.
3. Managed Apple Accounts bring the corporate domain under control
You can’t get very far on an Apple device without an Apple ID. Employees often use the domain of their employer. This results in numerous company-related accounts that are outside the control of IT. At least until now: in future, admins will be able to specify that new Apple accounts that use the company’s domain must be Managed Apple Accounts. A connection to the identity provider is no longer required for this. Existing accounts that use the company domain can be recorded by IT and transferred to a Managed Apple Account. This provides a much better overview.
4. Software updates via declarative device management
It is probably not one of the favourite activities of employees to carry out software updates, just as it is not one of the favourite activities of IT departments to remind their colleagues to do so. This should now also be easier for both sides. In future, updates will be carried out using declarative device management and beta updates can be managed and tracked using tokens. This means that IT experts will have fewer stomach aches when impatient colleagues want to try out the beta versions presented at WWDC, for example.
5. Further management options
In addition to these changes, there are a few other new features:
- For iPhones and iPads, it is now possible to prevent an eSIM from being removed when users delete the device. It is also possible to control whether an eSIM can be transferred to a new device.
- IT-Teams können Safari-Erweiterungen verwalten und festlegen, welche Extensions erlaubt, „always on“ oder „always off“ sind. For
- Users can see whether an extension is managed.
- In future, users will be able to protect apps using FaceID, TouchID or passcode and hide them on the home screen. Administrators, in turn, will be able to restrict this and – for managed apps – control it on a per-app basis.
6. More management options for the Apple Vision Pro
Apple Vision Pro is now also available in Germany. Exciting management options and innovative functionalities were announced at WWDC. Read more about this in our upcoming blog article.
AI - what does Apple's path look like?
At WWDC 2024, Apple gave the long-awaited answer to how the company is positioning itself in the field of AI: AI functions are to be integrated directly into Apple apps in the future and help with composing emails or enabling image retouching, for example. The functions should be easy to use and recognize correlations across apps. This also applies to Siri, which could become its own assistant. So far, Apple has invented very little that is new compared to other providers, but has presented the topic in the usual way and found a new meaning for the abbreviation “AI” with “Apple Intelligence”. Data protection should make the difference. Apple promises that requests will be processed on the device itself, as far as its computing capacity allows. If this is not sufficient, requests will be processed in encrypted form in a separate AI cloud. Data will not be stored in the process.
What’s exciting here is that Apple is cooperating with OpenAI on the topic of AI. In some cases, users will be notified that ChatGPT may be able to provide better texts. Users would then leave the Apple-only cosmos. However, non-English-speaking countries in particular will have to wait quite a while for the AI functions to be introduced – and may also have to upgrade. This is because the functions will probably only be available on the newer devices.
Conclusion
WWDC addressed some interesting innovations in 2024. When it comes to device management, there are updates for topics that were previously a thorn in the side of some customers and that companies with high security requirements in particular will be pleased about. The topic of AI remains exciting – even if WWDC has provided some initial answers.
