Trending December 2023 # Making The Grade: Apple Configurator 1.0 Set The Groundwork For Modern Ios Management # Suggested January 2024 # Top 15 Popular

You are reading the article Making The Grade: Apple Configurator 1.0 Set The Groundwork For Modern Ios Management updated in December 2023 on the website Bellydancehcm.com. We hope that the information we have shared is helpful to you. If you find the content interesting and meaningful, please share it with your friends and continue to follow and support us for the latest updates. Suggested January 2024 Making The Grade: Apple Configurator 1.0 Set The Groundwork For Modern Ios Management

When the iPad was released in 2010, we were already using iPod touches in the classroom along with the old MacBooks. The entire management process around Apple’s devices was less straightforward. With the iPod touches, we would buy Apple directly from the iTunes store, and then sync them using a case similar to this one. It was slow, cumbersome, and prone to error as I had to often force quit iTunes and restart the process.

Everything changed in 2012 when Apple released Apple Configurator 1.0.

Apple Configurator for OS X Lion makes it easy for anyone to deploy iPhone, iPad and iPod touch in their school or business. Apple Configurator can be used to quickly configure large numbers of iOS devices with the settings, apps and data you specify for your students, employees or customers. You can prepare a set of new iOS devices that are configured only once and then deployed to users. Update devices to the latest version of iOS, install configuration profiles and apps, and enroll them with your organization’s Mobile Device Management solution, then hand them out. Preparing devices is a great deployment option for enterprises and schools where provide iOS devices to employees or students for their day-to-day professional or educational use. You can supervise a set of iOS devices that you want to control and configure on an ongoing basis. Apply a configuration to each device, and then reapply it after each use simply by reconnecting the device back to Apple Configurator. Supervision is an ideal option for loaning iOS devices to customers (for example, hotels, restaurants, and hospitals), sharing devices among students in a classroom or a lab, or deploying devices for dedicated tasks (for example, retail, field service, or medical). You can assign supervised devices to specific users in your organization. Check out a device to a user and restore the user’s backup (including all their data) to that device; then check the device back in and back up the user’s data for later use, possibly on a completely different device. This works well in educational settings where students need to be able to work with the same data and documents over a prolonged period of time, regardless of which device they are given.

As you can see, a lot of the terminology still used by Apple today dates back to the introduction of Apple Configurator 1.0. This app was released with support for Apple’s newly announced Volume Purchase Program to support licensing apps in bulk. The process wasn’t as streamlined as it is now, though.

After getting the apps installed, you could also configure additional options like Wi-Fi password and customize iOS restrictions. Knowing what we have now, it seems like an elementary product, but at the time, it was light years ahead of anything that was accessible to schools. Apple was still building out its MDM APIs, and this app was a free way to manage devices. It brought some new concepts (Supervision) to iPad management that we still use today.

Apple Configurator is now on version 2, and its roughly still the same core app that it has always been. The workflows are a lot different. Personally, I only use it to kickstart some of my deployment stuff, but otherwise, I use Jamf for everything iPad management wise.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You're reading Making The Grade: Apple Configurator 1.0 Set The Groundwork For Modern Ios Management

Making The Case For Open Source Software

As budgets contract, it is becoming more and more important for schools to consider alternatives to expensive proprietary software. Open source software can provide a viable alternative to traditional software at a fraction of the cost. It is available for free, and is as stable as traditional commercial software (provided schools choose mature software packages). Furthermore, most open source software packages have large communities of developers and users who work towards the common goal of improving the software. This collaborative environment mirrors the style of work educators often seek to create in the classroom.

Open Source vs. Web 2.0

In the last several years educators have begun adopting Web 2.0 sites as alternatives to traditional installed software. The propagation of Web 2.0 sites has provided options not previously available for schools, however there are important distinctions that need to be drawn between Web 2.0 and open source to avoid conflating the terms. First, Web 2.0 sites are not open source. That is to say, the end user has no ability to view, edit, or change the source code of the application. The only permission typically given to the user of a given Web 2.0 site is use of the site. Open source software, on the other hand, affords you the ability to download the source code (the building blocks) of the software.

Web 2.0 sites are hosted on the creating company’s servers, meaning use of the site is dependant on sufficient bandwidth and the site’s servers must be running at a high rate of speed. However, the costs of running Web 2.0 sites can lead to sites shutting down or going to a pay model, leading to frustrated users. Open source software cannot move to a pay model due to inherent restrictions in open source licensing. With open source software, there is no fear that a favorite package will one day cost money. For example, I personally know of many educators who used chúng tôi as a podcast-hosting service. It worked well and was free, until Garageband (the parent company) decided to shut it down. This left many educators searching for a replacement tool.

Open Source Alternatives to Traditional Software

One of my favorite ways to find open source software that is an alternative to traditional software is using chúng tôi This site will offer free and open source substitutes to traditional software. For example, if a school wanted to find an open source alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop software, a visit to chúng tôi reveals an open source package called Gimpshop. This is just one example of many possible alternatives to traditional commercial software.

One way open source software can save schools money is by replacing Microsoft Office. Schools often spend large amounts of money on Microsoft licenses, propagating the dependence on commercial, proprietary software. One alternative to Microsoft Office is LibreOffice. LibreOffice is a free and open source software package that looks and feels much like Microsoft Office and can interact with Office documents.

In my classroom, we often use LibreOffice in place of Microsoft Office because our district has yet to upgrade past the 2003 version of Microsoft Office. LibreOffice gives us newer features and compatibility we did not have with Office 2003. We also use Audacity to record audio. We use Audacity to record podcasts, we create “radio commercials” as projects, and learn to edit audio. Without this free tool, we would have had to invest in a commercial software package for audio editing. This decision has saved us a significant amount.

The other open source software package we use frequently is called iTalc. iTalc is similar to SMART Sync (formerly called SynronEyes) and NetSupport. iTalc allows me to see student screens to provide remote support, demonstrations, and supervision while students are working on their computers. As in the other cases, the use of this software has saved us a significant amount of money.

Practical Advice for Implementing Open Source Software

A proper implementation plan can make the difference between users who thank you and users who get frustrated. There are several ways to ease the transition to an open source software package, especially when it is replacing a traditional commercial package. Here are some tips for planning your transition:

1. Involve key stakeholders. If you educate users ahead of time and prepare them, the transition will be easier. Help your users see the need, help them see the cost savings, and show them that the differences in the software are minimal.

2. Start with early adopters. Each district has an easily identifiable group of users who would be willing to try this out and report possible issues. These same users will become your “go to” folks when the switch goes live.

3. Create short how-to videos and/or screencasts addressing common transition issues. The time it takes to create these will save you help desk requests in the future.

4. Roll out the change over time. Consider running both packages side by side for a year so that users have the chance to try it out.

Open source software can save your school/district/community money while still providing the features users require. In today’s budget crisis, consider how using open source software can replace some of your commercial software.

What The Apple Ios Source Code Leak Means For Iphone Users

What Happened?

So, let’s get the obvious out of the way: Something in iOS’ core operating system was leaked to GitHub by an unknown person, which led to a moderate amount of noise and a pretty large amount of panic.

Apple’s modus operandi usually involves trying to keep the code for its operating systems as locked down as possible, especially since it depends on a blend of hardware and software that could be reverse-engineered if anyone took a good enough look at it.

Unlike other components of iOS whose source code was released by Apple on occasion, the company took painstaking efforts to make sure that iBoot’s code never reached the wrong hands since it is a sort of “master key” that unlocks the ability to run iOS on other hardware in many instances.

Can Hackers Take Advantage of This?

Although iBoot’s code could be (and has been) reverse-engineered at any point in time, most hackers won’t be interested in some code that may or may not imitate Apple’s original stuff.

A good hacker could reverse-engineer something very similar to iBoot but could never reproduce the full product. For both counterfeiters and hackers, having an original copy is important.

At this point, there are certainly many people interested in poking through iBoot, looking for holes to exploit. Surely, both security researchers and hackers are hard at work on that as you’re reading this.

However, we must point out that the code that was leaked belongs to iOS 9, meaning that a good portion of it might be outdated. On the other hand, it could provide some valuable insight on how Apple’s pre-boot process works and allow counterfeiters to create their own platforms that run iOS, boosting the “iPhone copycat” market.

There’s also the fact that vulnerabilities found in iOS 9’s iBoot could still work perfectly fine on hardware running iOS 11. Although iPhone hardware changes frequently, things strictly related to bootup don’t often “need” to change along with it.

For those who are worried about a mass infection of Apple devices, it would take quite an effort to actually do damage by exploiting an iBoot vulnerability. The reason for this is that Apple has multiple layers of fail-safes in both its hardware and software that might make a full-blown infection difficult.

Miguel Leiva-Gomez

Miguel has been a business growth and technology expert for more than a decade and has written software for even longer. From his little castle in Romania, he presents cold and analytical perspectives to things that affect the tech world.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy. We will not share your data and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Ios (Old School): A Retro Ios 14 Icon Set Review

Changing iOS 14 Home Screen app icons has been in trend for the past few months. There is no denying that once you spend thirty minutes or so, the result is worth the patience. While there are multiple app icon designs, in this review, let us go back to the 80s – the old Apple era.

The app icons in question by Ben Vessey, a freelance designer with an obsession for simplicity, are inspired by Mac OS from 1984. According to him,

Each bespoke icon has been lovingly handcrafted using old school techniques – Steve Jobs would be proud!

But would he be proud? Let us see if these are worthy of adoring your iPhone Home Screen!

Highlights of the Old School app icon set

These iOS app icons derive their inspiration from Apple computers’ typography of the 1980s. This ensures that your modern iPhone operating system meets the old Mac aesthetics, and you get a beautiful fusion. If you are looking to go retro, this is one of the finest app icon sets.

The pixelated black and white app icons are a happy deviation from the standard colorful ones we have on our iPhones since inception. If you like a clean look that is not flashy, the Old School icon set will fit your taste.

You get over a hundred app icons. These include almost all popular in-built (App Store, Music, Camera, etc.) and third-party apps you may have installed on your iPhone like Amazon, Airbnb, Disney+, eBay, Facebook, Gmail, Hulu, Teams, Netflix, and many more!

You might have these frequently used apps on the first or second Home Screen. These retro icons will change the appearance and make things interesting. Now that you know the primary details, let me tell you what you get and how to use them.

What do you get?

After you purchase this icon set, you get the following:

After purchasing, all you have to do is have those app icons (.png images) in the iPhone Photos app and follow the steps below.

How to use these app icons on iPhone

It is effortless to use these app icons to create a beautiful iOS Home Screen. Once you get the hang, for each app, it takes few seconds.

We have a complete guide that explains with screenshots how to change app icons on iPhone. But here is a quick recap.

Repeat the above steps for all apps you like. The above steps may look a lot. But once you follow them the first time, you will realize that it is a quick process. Though, overall (for say, 20 apps), it may take a few minutes.

Once you have the new app icons, take a minute to use one of the six provided wallpapers or use one that you like to achieve the perfect look. You may also play with iOS 14 Home Screen widgets to make your iPhone one of a kind!

Would Old School make Steve Jobs proud? Our verdict

A resounding yes! Minimalist was what Steve Jobs always aspired for, and Old School boasts a clean, minimalistic look that is appealing and easy on the eyes.

However, design is a personal choice. What I like, you may not fancy much, and what you adore may be ok for me. But I found them exciting. Although I would not use these forever, given the low price, I would undoubtedly invest and use them for a few months.

Price: £3.99 or approx $5.5

Download

How To Set The Budget For Your Facebook Ad

The Facebook Ads platform has lots of control options to help you reach your target audience in the most efficient ways.

There are plenty of customizations around target audience, ad copy placements, conversion actions, etc., but one lever that doesn’t get much attention is budget.

There are two types of budget for Facebook – daily and lifetime – each with its own benefits and drawbacks. Choosing the wrong one can be detrimental to your campaign performance.

We’re going to go through each of these in detail below, but first, we need to discuss which levels you want your budgets to be controlled from campaign or ad set.

Campaign Budget Optimization

In the first example, each ad set has a daily budget of $10 that Facebook spends during the day and each generates a few conversions, resulting in a total of 10 conversions.

In the second example, you set a $30 campaign level budget, the same amount as the combined ad set budgets from the first example, and Facebook will (in theory) serve it to the ad sets with the most potential, resulting in ad set spend levels of $7, $18, and $5 and a total of 15 conversions generated.

While this chart makes this seem like a no-brainer, this isn’t always the case. CBO is sensitive to audience size differences.

If you have three ad sets in a campaign, 2 with audiences of 100,000 users and a third with 32 million users, Facebook will almost certainly spend the majority of your campaign budget on the largest audience size as it has the most potential, regardless of the number of conversions or return the smaller ones are seeing.

There are some allowances for daily minimums and maximums with CBO, meaning you can tell Facebook that one ad set can only spend a certain amount while others have to spend at least this much every day.

These can help offset some of those service issues, but they’re not a silver bullet.

If you do plan on using ad set minimums and maximums, don’t use them to dictate the entirety of your campaign daily budget. This won’t allow Facebook to learn and optimize to the best performing audience and it would be the same as if you were using ad set level budgets.

Instead, dictate only about 50% of your budget across your ad sets and let Facebook do the rest of the work.

With that out of the way, now let’s dig into the pros and cons of Daily vs. Lifetime budgets on Facebook.

Daily Budgets

The Drawback:

Facebook will not only spend up to that daily budget limit, it will actively try to spend the full daily budget you’ve given every single day, no matter what performance is on that given day.

In the image above, the ad set budget is $32 and it’s spot on where the average spend is for the past 30 days.

Facebook targeting operates more like Display than Search, so it’s working to get impressions in front of a target audience rather than responding to their fluctuant demand. With daily budgets, Facebook will show as many impressions as it needs to that target audience to make up your daily spend.

That might sound ominous, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. More on that in a minute.

The Benefits:

First, I want to revisit the “spending the whole budget everyday” thing. This pattern of spending allows for much easier pacing of spend.

Each day you can count on Facebook spending the same amount, making it much easier to control your budgets and plan ahead financially.

Additionally, if your ad set is performing well and you’re getting the returns you want, then there’s no harm in scaling into your full daily budget to get those results as soon as you can since future performance is never guaranteed.

Additionally, if you work with weekly, monthly, or quarterly budgets and they change from time to time, daily budgets are a great option. Lifetime budgets, as we’ll discuss, are best when a budget is set and then left in place until the end date is reached.

If you’re anticipating regular changes to your budget, daily budgets are likely the better choice.

When changing daily budgets, there is a best practice to keep in mind: limit budget adjustments to 20% of their original level for each day. Any change larger than this will have too great of an impact on the Facebook algorithm and performance can be negatively impacted.

If you’re needing to double your spend or cut it in half, ideally, you would make changes every day in 20% increments until you reached the level you needed. (I realize this isn’t always doable, but if it is, this is the right way to go.)

Lifetime Budgets

With Lifetime budgets, you give Facebook the budget you’d like to spend for the entirety of the campaign and then choose the date the ad set should end on. These operate differently than daily budgets but also come with their own benefits and drawbacks.

The Benefits:

With Lifetime budgets, Facebook will adjust daily spend levels based on the results of the campaign. On days where performance is strong, Facebook will spend a little higher than the average daily budget to reach the lifetime goal.

On days where performance is lower, it will underspend to save funds for another day. At the end of the campaign, you will only spend the lifetime budget you set at launch (or adjusted to as the campaign went on).

But if you’re only scheduling them because you don’t think someone will fill out a form past 8 pm, then I encourage you to start with all days and hours running and see what performance you get first.

Sometimes folks aren’t able to be on their phones during typical hours and they may take action in the wee hours of the night.

The Drawbacks:

With the good comes the bad, but admittedly, the “bad” for Lifetime budgets is more a sense of convenience than anything.

With Lifetime budgets, daily spend can fluctuate quite a bit and those fluctuations can make it difficult to predict or plan on what type of coverage you’ll get on any individual day.

If you’re in an important season for your business and need to ensure you have coverage or simply want to know what to expect when it comes to spend, it might make more sense to go with daily budgets.

If you are certain there will be no changes to the time frame or budget, this is a great option. But if you’re likely to get additional budget or lengthen or shorten your promotion, then this might not be a good fit.

Although adjusting budget and changing the end date are possible, doing so will impact how Facebook prioritizes your budget.

If you set an ad set to run for two weeks, but then have to cut it down to only one after a couple of days, Facebook is then going to adjust and spend a much higher amount on those last few days to try and spend your Lifetime budget during the shortened period.

If you do need to change the date range or budget, I suggest you also adjust the other to balance out and mitigate any large swings in average daily spend to try and prevent performance from tanking.

Conclusion

Controlling budgets on Facebook is sort of a dealer’s choice option, but there’s technically no right or wrong way to do it, only some scenarios where one option might make more sense than another.

Hopefully, this rundown makes you feel more confident in setting up budgets and knowing what all options you have at your disposal!

Featured Image Credit: Paulo Bobita

Tracking The Evolution Of The Project Management

A project manager plays an important role in managing human resources and handling all aspects of a project efficiently. They are mainly associated with the construction and engineering industry, but with the increasing popularity of effective project management, the demand for a manager has been growing exponentially across various industries.

A project manager is known for their ability to complete and deliver all types and complexities of projects in a timely manner. They provide leadership and direction to their teams, helping them navigate the tricky parts of projects efficiently. For the past three decades, the PMP exam has been considered the main qualification for a project manager.

These technologies work with an extensive range of software applications to help managers achieve their project goals while staying within budget and timeline and without wasting resources. Today, the goals of a manager go beyond the basic management process. It’s more about achieving stakeholder satisfaction and ensuring that each process is executed according to the client’s instructions with minimal risk of errors.

Evolution of PMBOK Guide

PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) is a guide for aspiring project managers that are planning to appear for the PMP exam. Although the content in the guide has changed over the past few years, the primary goal remains the same. PMBOK is one of the most crucial elements of project management. It helps you learn the basics of project management, the emerging trends in this industry, and the latest technological changes and the impact they have on your projects.

The first PMBOK was released in 1996 as a guide that teaches aspiring project managers the fundamentals of management, challenges a manager faces, decision−making, and so on. This guide covers the entire syllabus of the PMP exam.

Four years later, the second version of the PMBOK was released. The guide was filled with more valuable and informative content for the project manager’s growth. It also included practices and techniques which proved beneficial for managers. Then came the third version that included the latest and revised project management processes, improving the project’s lifecycle and making the management part more efficient. This version covered integration, cost, risk, time quality, procurement, and scope management.

The fourth version of PMBOK is one of the most popular editions, as it introduced stakeholders as key players in any project. The guide focuses on how to improve a project’s efficiency and ensure the successful completion of a given project while satisfying the needs of stakeholders and keeping them up−to−date with the project’s status. The PMBOK’s fifth version continued the focus on stakeholders.

Latest Editions of PMBOK

You may have heard of different project management methodologies and their role in improving management and bringing efficiency to all organizational processes. Well, to gain knowledge about project management, you need to check the 6th and 7th editions of PMBOK that introduced agile project management methodologies.

In addition to that, you can notice changes in the techniques, management processes, and other aspects of project management after going over the 6th edition of PMBOK. Among other concepts, it discusses Agile methodology applications. Agile methodology is about dividing the project into several sprints, which can be accomplished more efficiently than traditional management. The 6th edition has also highlighted the role of strategic thinking in project management and how it plays a crucial role in driving business growth.

The latest edition of PMBOK, i.e., the 7th part, was released recently in 2023. This latest version talks about the drastic change brought to the PMP format. The focus has now been shifted to reducing those lengthy guides into shorter management procedures. Now, the section is expanded to cover a wide range of project management techniques, which are efficient, manageable, and generate better results than the previous models.

The syllabus meets the demand for the changes introduced recently in the PMP exam. For example, the most common change in the 7th edition is the increased focus on principles instead of management processes. If you have read all 6 versions, you may have noticed how the focus had always been on the individual tasks. In the last few editions, managers shared techniques and tools that can help you achieve success in different tasks. The latest version, however, focuses more on the project and the final delivery.

What does Project Management Look Like Today?

Today, project management has a broader scope than in previous decades. The latest challenge that nearly all project managers have faced is shifting to a remote and hybrid work environment. As most businesses had shut down during the pandemic, people had to move work to the cloud. Businesses allowed employees to operate work from home so that the work could be continued.

Although the pandemic ended and operations returned to normal, the work−from−home trend hasn’t changed. This has presented new challenges for project management. Communication, for instance, has become the biggest challenge for project managers handling remote teams or a combination of remote and hybrid workers.

Fortunately, we have several tools, like Zoom and Skype, that makes communication easier and allows managers to conduct face−to−face interactions. The role of a project manager isn’t limited to overseeing different tasks, but it’s equally important that you know how to resolve conflicts, give and take feedback, conduct regular meetings, and divide your projects into smaller and achievable tasks. Note that finishing a project requires dedication, hard work, and the right management strategies.

This was all about the evolution of project management and how PMBOK has come a long way in making project management an effective, better, and more cost−efficient process. If you are planning to become a project manager, check the 6th and 7th editions of PMBOK to prepare for the PMP exam.

Update the detailed information about Making The Grade: Apple Configurator 1.0 Set The Groundwork For Modern Ios Management on the Bellydancehcm.com website. We hope the article's content will meet your needs, and we will regularly update the information to provide you with the fastest and most accurate information. Have a great day!