I’d like to experiment with MDM for mine and my child’s iPhones, and possibly my child’s MacBook.

I self host tons of mainly docker based services and have a domain, with everything behind traefik already.

Does anyone know a good MDM solution/tutorial to do this? I started to try one free recommended one but it was unfortunately a windows service, and then the apple side setup seemed very complicated and I could really use a tutorial.

And if anyone has done it, what are the main benefits over the regular parental controls?

  • Kadaj21@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    What about the family sharing and all that jazz? Add kiddos account under yours and you can set age/time limits and stuff like that.

    • InformalTrifle@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      That’s what I am using at the moment but wondered what extra MDM would allow. Plus it’s an opportunity to learn and mess around with it :)

  • oDDmON@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    If the self hosted option doesn’t pan out, would suggest iMazing.

    They have an MDM now and their previous versions for personal use were superb, versus iTunes.

  • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Configurator if you have a MacOS device already and want the OG. Plus it does allow for device supervision. Although you may have to register as an enterprise system for that. That’s really going to be the key thing here as last time I recall signing my org up for MDM we had to provide tax documents.

    Apple uses JAMF, and their prices are so low and it’s so easy that for strictly Apple devices I’d go that route. I do believe there is an on prem version of Jamf as well, but you still pay yearly for it.

    There’s also Hexcloud, whatever VMware is calling there’s now, and technically sccm can do device MDM.

    Main benefits come from supervised mode. On iPads you can enable multi user support with sign in. You can remove access to messaging or other apps, but beyond that the differences between MDM and parental locks aren’t as wide.

    • InformalTrifle@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      Ah, I didn’t realise it might be difficult on the apple side registering as a company etc. Maybe it’s not worth the effort, but I’m gonna look into the options you mentioned

      • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Supervised mode gives you basically all the cool options post IOS 12. That said, it’s been about 4 years since I’ve done any of that registration stuff and I know it changed a lot during the pandemic. So it could be easier now.

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I’d say locking it down is a feature of being managed, not necessarily what it does.

        When managing devices, you can enable users to have as much control as you’d like.

        It’s more about being able to manage devices from a single place, similar to what business does with workstations and servers (e.g. MS SCOM.

        Plenty of users still have admin rights even with SCOM being used. It still really helps from a support perspective.

  • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I remember researching the topic a while back. SimpleMDM seems to do it, but it requires paying Apple $300 a year. Luckily, Mosyle allows up to 30 devices for free.