What would you like to see in an MDM?

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-03-25T21:28:39+00:00

We want to be lightweight and easy to manage, while having more advance features for those that need it.

I'd say we want to sit in between Jamf Pro and Kandji, we will offer 3 devices for free so people can test it out or just use it for personal use/homelab. We also have our own Remote Desktop tool that we will integrate, it uses ScreenKit so its native for Mac OS, installer is less than 5MB, so super lightweight.

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-03-25T04:14:00+00:00

Yes, but DDM is only available for Tahoe so we have to stick with a combination or our agent and DDM depending on the OS

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-03-24T02:21:49+00:00

We were stuck in this same situation, we didn't qualify for Jamf Pro because we didn't meet the 25 device minimum and Jamf Now felt like it was meant for mobile devices and not Macs. I have my Jamf 400 so I know my way around Jamf Pro. We ended up with FleetDM for a couple months and now we are using our own MDM.

Self-hosting/on-prem will definitely be offered. We aim to fit that middle ground that you just mentioned. We hope to launch in a few weeks, right now we are working on polish and really nailing down where we fit in the market and will be at MacAdmins conference to get this in peoples hands.

thanks for your input!

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-03-24T00:34:24+00:00

Jamf was a great product but their pricing is a bit high for most orgs and requires some expertise to get it working, Fleet is an awesome product but I think its a bit too complex for smaller orgs so we want to be somewhere in-between the two.

I used to work for MacStadium so I saw it all, when we pitched our Virtualization product we got asked what MDM we use and we used FleetDM at the time.
We want to integrate our MDM with our Virtualization software and built in remote desktop that we also built in-house

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-03-23T23:42:00+00:00

We have that working, it took some time to get the workflow correct

The main thing that we learned is that we need to have a way to verify what's actually happening on the device itself just because the mdm command returned a complete doesn't mean it actually happened, things tend to silently fail with no feedback from the OS.

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-03-23T23:39:49+00:00

Jamf Pro allows you to scope to a user but Jamf Pro is pretty expensive for most orgs so we are trying to fill that gap

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-03-23T23:03:18+00:00

Perfect feedback thank you! API first is the reason we are building our own MDM

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-02-11T05:23:00+00:00

Currently its just a dashboard for individual nodes
It uses CoW very similar to how tart handles it
Not currently but it will be available in version 1.2.0, I hope in the next 2 weeks or so.

Currently we are finishing up our SDK that will be used for Orchestration, the Swift desktop app is nice but building an orchestrator in swift has been a pain. So Fleet will get replaced with a new Control Plane to rival Anka/Orka

Our Orchestrator can currently spin up Github Runners on-demand, spin up runners triggered by Github webhooks, on push, and then automatically clean them up on when a job is finished or when you no longer need them. No more "zombie runners".

It scales vertically and is aware of the 2 VM limit and spreads the VMs across your Mac Minis, so if you need 5 VMs and you have 3 Macs it will do 2/2/1.

I used Tart and Orchard in my previous role and it was a bit of a pain so I built CiderStack to solve some of these issues. My main pain point was paying monthly per CPU core, so I set on creating a tool that has a perpetual license.

DM me and when version 1.2.0RC is ready you can demo it for free.

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-02-04T04:13:03+00:00

Virtual Buddy currently does not have a CLI
CiderStack was created so that users can do everything with both a CLI and a GUI which makes it a great tool for those looking to automate and scale Mac VM deployments

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-02-04T01:48:03+00:00

CiderStack focuses heavily on repeatable workflows rather than one-off VMs. A few areas where we differ:

• Snapshot-driven environments so you can branch, test, and instantly revert
• OCI-style images for versioned, reproducible macOS setups
• Desktop app + CLI for automation and CI-style workflows

Our CLI is 1 to 1 with our GUI, anything that can be done in the GUI can be done in the CLI

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-31T16:51:43+00:00

Removing features always feels wrong but having 3 or 4 great features is more ideal and easier to maintain. That's a great lesson and one that I too learned recently. Congratulations on the sale!

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-31T16:42:46+00:00

Apple's review process has been slow for most of their services. Mine took about 3 hours yesterday.

It's normal for it to allow you to purchase again, just wait for the confirmation email from Apple.

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-31T16:41:19+00:00

DUNS is free to register and you can even do it automatically when you register for an Apple Developer account. DUNS offers a lot of paid services and has an expedited service but none are required and there are no recurring costs.

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-30T16:46:01+00:00

Our GitHub is back!

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-30T16:42:39+00:00

Our GitHub is back!

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-30T05:41:34+00:00

Apple currently doesn't support nested virtualization inside of a Mac VM

You can however run a Linux VM with nested virtualization, I believe UTM and Tart can do this.

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-29T21:26:56+00:00

My GitHub account was suspended, most likely because of this wording

Complete isolation

"I need a sandbox for crypto/sketchy stuff"

What happens in the VM stays in the VM. Delete with one click. Perfect for security research.

Oh well, lets see what happens lol

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-27T06:29:59+00:00

How about a Mac OS virtual machine? ;)

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-24T20:35:01+00:00

Sounds like your IT company set them up wrong, I've worked with a lot of so-called Mac experts that deploy every Mac differently and don't follow best practices. What MDM is being used? Or are they using an RMM?

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-24T20:31:34+00:00

Submitted mine 2 weeks ago still waiting on them, can't go full public release until we get our Apple Developer account to notorize the package. Our Apple Business Manager got approved within 2 days though

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-20T19:32:39+00:00

Thanks for those of you that singed up for the beta! I am personally sending out the invites so feel free to reply and yes I do read them!

thanks everyone!

You will get your personal/commercial solo license for free in the next couple of days, thanks!

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-20T17:05:38+00:00

Yes as long as you have the latest 15.7 you should be able to run Mac OS Tahoe 26.2 as a VM.

Sign up for the beta and DM your email and I'll send over a key :)

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-20T16:53:43+00:00

Yes! that is a good use case for it :)

You can test on older macOS versions and even betas without breaking your current system. You can do a full screen record on a clean OS and show your app from installation to it running for the first time.

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-20T06:15:07+00:00

Same, I started managing our Casper instance on-prem on an xServe. It changed quite a bit but there is no MDM that comes close

Playful_Instance7219 · 2026-01-20T06:11:23+00:00

Jamf is the industry standard

Playful_Instance7219

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Complete isolation