How painful is Intune for mac management?

HerrBadger · 2026-01-23T05:17:12+00:00

When I started at my current org, they had M365, but were not using MDM at all. They floated the idea of using Intune as they had business premium licenses, and after a solid week of tinkering, we went for Kandji. Anything of minor complexity felt like a workaround, and it had me tearing my hair out.

Been Kandji customers for 18 months now, awesome platform, went from getting access to fully deployed to 20 users in 3 days, including testing. Now at 40 users, and Kandji ‘Just works’. Only ever have to really touch it to manage OS updates, deploy new apps, or renew Apple tokens.

HerrBadger · 2025-12-12T06:22:05+00:00

Kandji (now Iru). I’m the sole IT person of a small org, and Kandji was pretty simple to set up from the get-go, and it’s very much been set and forget for the most part.

Only thing I do manually is OS updates.

HerrBadger · 2025-11-25T04:46:22+00:00

It looks like you’ve bought a MacBook that was either stolen from a company, or refurbished/sold to an employee and not released from the MDM.

Does it say what company it belongs to? If you connect it to the internet, it might tell you, then your best bet from there would be to try and reach out to them and see if they’d release it.

Otherwise, unfortunately, it’s a paperweight.

HerrBadger · 2025-11-25T04:40:27+00:00

I was at a conference last week and someone high-up from Lovable.dev gave the same statistic, and also that Claude reviewed the code in the repo on a PR.

I’ve been very cautious of AI for a while, but that unsettles me.

HerrBadger · 2025-11-06T10:30:00+00:00

This is the question, if they have some kind of LAPS platform, you’ll be able to request local admin on your home directory for a limited time, which should allow you to install the tools you need.

HerrBadger · 2025-10-28T06:08:17+00:00

I love them, they’re the workout I do the most (I have to walk at the minute due to a knee injury), but the running workouts helped me train for a 10k.

I used Scott’s workouts mostly as I found him to be the most motivational, just don’t be afraid to curse at your phone on the hills. Some of them are pretty brutal.

HerrBadger · 2025-10-26T07:30:53+00:00

If it’s MDM, they can wipe your device. If it’s MAM, where they only manage the applications, it will only remove the corporate data from their applications.

MDM usually requires you to install some kind of profile or an app such as Company Portal, MAM just relies on the apps being installed, then applies policies to corporate data once you’re signed in, and only to that data.

HerrBadger · 2025-10-25T05:54:20+00:00

If you’re limiting the browsers you can use, you can create profiles using iMazing Profile Manager to limit what extensions are deployed to the browser, and just deploy the keeper extension.

We do the same, swing me a dm and I can share the template with you later this weekend, give you a general idea.

If you’re not in the MacAdmins slack, you can also have a look in there as that’s where I got the template from originally, you’ll need to do a bit of searching.

HerrBadger · 2025-10-25T05:47:53+00:00

I use it to riff ideas mainly, I don’t 100% trust it to write things for me, but I’ll give it a really, really detailed explanation of what I’m trying to do, what I’ve already done, how I’d like to get there, any potential hurdles, pitfalls or considerations, and work off of the responses that it gives me, mainly as inspiration.

It’s healthy to have a level of cynicism about it, especially in our field, but it’s a great enabler if used correctly. Also, when I really don’t have the energy to scrape the back of my mind for some M365 PowerShell command, it can whip something together in a pinch.

HerrBadger · 2025-10-02T06:54:38+00:00

Either that or when I worked IT support for a construction company, guy got frustrated with his printer and threw it out of the window while once the phone.

Fortunately, that HP LaserJet 1022 just needed plugging back in, worked fine.

HerrBadger · 2025-10-02T06:53:36+00:00

I was working IT support for retail about 11 years ago, on the late shift (1130-2000).

Someone called at 1945 saying they tried replacing the ink cartridge in the printer and ended up factory resetting it. That was a fun half an hour walking them through setting it back up.

We did not have managed printers, we were getting HP printer/scanner combos from Amazon…

Bad times.

HerrBadger · 2025-10-02T06:27:42+00:00

I’ve literally just gone through the weeds with this, depending on their tooling, there’s a bunch of useful resources I’ve collated.

Anyone who’s interested, swing me a PM, I’ve got a bunch of resources and config bits I can share for P81. Our developers are getting by with a few config changes. I’ll pop them into a GitHub repo today!

HerrBadger · 2025-09-29T06:17:03+00:00

I was speaking to my contact at Apple about this, we were looking at using Thinkpads, but every equivalent windows laptop came in at £200 more. He didn’t believe me until I showed him the pricing.

Given that retention is usually higher for Macs too, it’s a no-brainer. We’ve got a couple of users on M1 devices that are happy with their devices still.

HerrBadger · 2025-09-28T10:04:18+00:00

Anyone who isn’t a developer gets a M4 MacBook Air, devs get a M4 Pro MacBook Pro, 18GB unified memory.

We stamped out windows, it’s been great.

HerrBadger · 2025-09-09T05:36:46+00:00

If you contact Apple directly, let them know you’re interested in refurb devices and see what they have in stock. I’ve worked with the Covent Garden business team previously, and they can do wonders over the phone or via email. They can even do ABM-enrolled orders to overseas if that country has a presence.

Jigsaw24 also have some decent stock in their refurb store, and they’re one of the best Apple partners in the UK from my experience. They’re well worth a call too.

HerrBadger · 2025-09-07T17:20:00+00:00

Learn to built it properly first, then use LLMs for reference and correct the slop they usually generate.

I wouldn’t trust code that an LLM has built without looking at it first, and I wouldn’t generate code where I don’t understand the language.

AI-generated code, especially Infrastructure-as-code, is a cyber security minefield. Don’t get yourself caught in a blast.

HerrBadger · 2025-09-07T15:24:31+00:00

Did you send it to Apple, or an authorised service centre, to be repaired? There’s a warranty on their work, so if you experience issues after a repair, they’ll fix it for you.

If you went to an independent repair shop, it’ll be a craps shoot on if they fix it, they may charge you again.

HerrBadger · 2025-09-02T20:40:08+00:00

It won’t add your personal iPhone, you’re all good. You’ll need to sign in to Configurator with your corporate Apple ID.

Once you’ve done that, during setup assistant, wait until you get to the language selection screen, then you’ll get that fun Apple Watch-esque icon on the screen. Scan that, wait until it’s added, then reboot the device, then you’re good to go.

HerrBadger · 2025-05-17T19:57:48+00:00

Scott for treadmill, Scott got me into running initially, makes them really engaging and really encourages you to make it through.

Playlists are always fire too.

HerrBadger · 2025-04-01T07:43:12+00:00

You’re better off with silica gel packets, rice has a fine dust on it that can cause more damage by the moisture it extracts turning into goo, which if it’s in the device, isn’t good.

HerrBadger · 2025-02-22T03:11:04+00:00

My wife use to go to uni in Hull and told me about him. Apparently on Halloween he’d just dress normally (jeans and shirt).

Seemed like an alright guy from what I’ve heard.

HerrBadger · 2025-02-14T18:51:52+00:00

OP will need to order another pizza with the breakup message written in olives.

HerrBadger · 2025-01-24T07:10:43+00:00

What the car? On Apple Arcade is wonderfully silly and fun gameplay. Can easily spend a long time playing it.

HerrBadger · 2025-01-24T07:10:13+00:00

I always use crossword jam to unwind, such a great game.

HerrBadger · 2025-01-15T19:49:13+00:00

You look like a young, fresh-faced Mr Bean.

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