Bradley C

Matter continues to be the 2023 theme as various smart home manufacturers continue to release supported products. Aqara has long been one of my go-to smart home vendors when you want a low-cost item that supports the latest technology. A prime example of the level of products that Aqara produces is the new U100 door lock that supports Home Key. It’s such a fantastic product at a low cost. Today, they’re delivering the new Aqara T1 Light Strip that has quickly become of my favorite light strip products on the market.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with Mirela Cunjalo, Global Product Management at HP Anyware about their latest announcements and why remote Macs have become paramount in remote editing for TV and movies.

I’ve said multiple times how I think Google’s first-party hardware strategy is something Apple should be copying. While Google doesn’t make everything for the Google smart home ecosystem, they do make some key products like doorbells, thermostats, and cameras. If you’re just getting started with a smart home platform, Google has some easy options to start. Even though I love them, I prefer using HomeKit, so I use the Starling Home Hub in order to make them compatible with HomeKit. I recently picked up the Google Nest smoke detector to see how it works as well. Let’s dive in.

A new corporate IT report from Addigy brings some insightful stats to light about the state of corporate IT teams in terms of cross-border compliance, security, upgrade management, and challenges around distributed workforces.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

Apple debuted physical security key support with iOS 16.3 and macOS 13.2 and the feature works great with iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web. This feature is designed for those who want another layer of protection against targeted attacks such as phishing or social engineering scams. Especially if you’re in a position that would be targeted for attack (celebrity, C-level business executive, etc) then Security Keys are a smart addition to your overall account security posture. Let’s dive into how they work.

Without a doubt, Home Key is my favorite new HomeKit feature in a couple of years. The ability to lock and unlock your door with a tap of your iPhone or Apple Watch has become second nature to me day to day. Both the Level Lock+ and the Aqara Smart Lock U100 are great options for implementing it in your home, but after months of usage, I’ve realized that it’s missing one single feature: Home Key sharing.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with Nadav Avni from Radix about the latest trends for retail organizations using iOS.

Something I’ve been saying to friends and colleagues over the past few months is the trend I see rising among IT professionals is the ability to fire a vendor at any given point. If you get to a place where you’re essentially locked into a vendor’s platform or product, you lose the upper hand when it comes to pricing when renewals come around. Even outside of pricing, if said vendor is no longer meeting your needs, you absolutely need the flexibility to deploy replacement solutions. With iOS 17, Apple’s Return To Service MDM feature gets a nice upgrade that will make it easier to change to new device management vendors.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

When Managed Apple IDs were first released, I was highly critical of them. They were hard to create. They were hard to manage. To be frank, they were almost pointless as well. It’s a good thing Apple didn’t listen to me, though. Over the year, Apple has continued to add features to the Managed Apple ID ecosystem to make them easier to manage, but also more important.

Philips makes some of the absolute best HomeKit products on the market. The Philips Hue Bloom is yet another entry into that lineup. When paired with the Hue hub, you end up with a light that looks great, shines bright, and works perfectly with HomeKit’s Adaptive Lighting.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with Jason Dettbarn from Addigy about the recent chaos around software updates as well as the pulled Rapid Security Response patch.

Is Matter going to be a great thing for smart home users? Yes. Is it going to replace Homebridge as a usable solution? Not anytime soon. I’ve been extremely impressed with the Homebridge platform over the years, and it’s done a lot of good for expanding compatibility for products that either don’t support Matter or ever will in terms of onboarding them into HomeKit. It’s now available on the fast-growing Umbrel home server as well.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

When Apple unveiled Touch ID on the iPhone 5s nearly ten years ago, it wasn’t the first time devices had included biometric unlock options. Many business PC has included it prior, but this was the first time it came to a device meant for the masses. At the time, we were in the midst of moving to a world where the cloud became the center of our. computing world, so a lot of people questioned why Apple made such a big deal about Touch ID staying on device in a secure method rather than “syncing” to other devices. Apple had previously purchased a company known as AuthenTec in 2012 that became the foundation of Touch ID. Today, I want to consider how Apple’s early decisions with Touch ID led to a world where passwords are on the way out… for good.

Door and window sensors aren’t new to HomeKit. They’re one of the original device types, and depending on the use case, it unlocks some super interesting automations. Today, I am taking a look at Aqara’s brand-new Matter-enabled contact sensor that can be used on windows, doors, blinds, or really anywhere you want to track the opening of something.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

In this episode of Apple @ Work, I talk with Kamal Srinivasan from Parallels about the state of virtualization in the age of Apple Silicon.

Continuing with the summer of Matter announcements, TP-Link’s Tapo has just released the industry’s first Matter-enabled smart switches. The Tapo S505 and Tapo S505D are now both available for purchase. Tapo is TP-Link’s smart home brand. TP-Link makes a wide variety of home Wi-Fi routers, business grade networking equipment, and much more.

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates 5 different applications on a single Apple-only platform, allowing Businesses to easily and automatically deploy, manage & protect all their Apple devices. Over 38,000 organizations leverage Mosyle solutions to automate the deployment,  management, and security of millions of Apple devices daily. Request a FREE account today and discover how you can put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

I’ve often said that the Apple IT community is a tight-knit one. To be honest, most of us old-timers are still shocked at how quickly Apple has become one of the dominant endpoints in the enterprise. I can still remember back when Apple didn’t even support Microsoft Exchange. We’ve come a long way as an industry and as a community. Recently, Addigy released a new WatchDog utility aimed at resolving a lingering macOS bug, and instead of releasing it for its customers only – the company released a version that fixed the bug for everyone. It highlights the close-knit vibes of the Apple community and the benefits of Apple’s standardization of device management APIs.

When the news broke in April that WiZ products were coming to Matter, this was a huge benefit to Apple, the HomeKit ecosystem, and to HomeKit users. In fact, I believe no one is benefiting from the Matter rollout to the smart home world than Apple, as they were the ones often left out of the lower-cost products. Matter is an open smart home standard that is supported by Amazon, Google, and Apple, allowing accessory makers to be compatible with a single standard rather than three separate ones.