Introducing iOS Updates
Today GroundControl introduces a new and very powerful feature: We can now update the iOS firmware on your devices. Updates are cached, delivered as quickly as possible to your devices, and do not burden your WiFi network. Deliver critical Apple security updates to your entire fleet within 24 hours or less, without shipping to your depot.
Like everything in GroundControl, we’ve made this feature customizable. We like to keep all our devices current, but we understand that every company is different. Firmware updates add a few extra minutes to the deployment, after all. Is 8.0.2 good enough for your needs? The payload entry makes it easy to update only on devices with 8.0.1 and below. Only want to update iPad Airs and not your iPod touches? Use the built-in policies. And of course you can update devices without erasing them, which is good news to institutions with 1-to-1 deployments too.
Note that when updating, GroundControl is able to install only the current Apple release. So no downgrading, folks. (This is a limitation from Apple, which adds the required cryptographic signatures to the current releases only.)
As of today, we are adding this major feature to GroundControl at no additional charge. Of course, you’ll need to update your Launchpad app to get the new version. Please let us know how well it works for you.
Plus, there’s lots more in the release notes.
Coming Soon
We have a few big additions in the next few months. If you want to try any pre-release features, let us know.
- Set Apple IDs via spreadsheet upload
- Firewall-friendly networking, using WebSockets/HTTPS instead of port 5671
- Optionally allow host pairing during supervision
- Support for devices in recovery mode — so you no longer need to manually erase them