Apple to Discontinue Fleetsmith Enterprise Device Management Service on October 21 - MacRumorsOpen MenuShow RoundupsShow Forums menuVisit ForumsOpen Sidebar
Skip to Content

Apple to Discontinue Fleetsmith Enterprise Device Management Service on October 21

by

Apple later this year will discontinue Fleetsmith, its mobile device management (MDM) solution for administrators needing to manage fleets of Apple devices.

fleetsmith
The company announced the decision in a support document, in which it says that as of April 21, 2022, it has discontinued new signups for Fleetsmith. Existing Fleetsmith customers can continue to use the service until October 21, 2022.

After that date, customers will no longer be able to log into the service and devices will no longer receive configuration profiles from the Fleetsmith server.

The nature of MDM is that it lets customers securely and wirelessly configure devices, whether they're owned by the user or their organization, and Fleetsmith lets users oversee a fleet of Apple products, automatically managing apps, settings, and security preferences while implementing best practices for IT and security.

Apple acquired the enterprise security software in June 2020, and many Apple devices have a built-in framework that supports mobile device management.

To help customers migrate from Fleetsmith to other MDM solutions before its discontinuation, Apple has provided support documents for choosing an MDM solution and planning your MDM migration.

Tag: Fleetsmith

Top Rated Comments

B
bviktor
52 months ago

Simply put, Apple needs something as integrated as Google Workspaces manages Chromebook & Android devices. They needed it yesterday.
More like Azure + Active Directory. Google is an afterthought compared to those.

I find it ridiculous that Apple makes it constantly harder and harder to make their consumer devices enterprise-ready. As if they're actively preventing corporations from migrating to Apple.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DHagan4755 Avatar
DHagan4755
52 months ago
They bought Fleetsmith only to later shut it down? 🤔 Hmmm...
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Apple Knowledge Navigator Avatar
Apple Knowledge Navigator
52 months ago

They bought Fleetsmith only to later shut it down? 🤔 Hmmm...
No, they will likely continue to use the backend/technologies but re-structured as Business Essentials.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DHagan4755 Avatar
DHagan4755
52 months ago
Simply put, Apple needs something as integrated as Google Workspaces manages Chromebook & Android devices. They needed it yesterday.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
D
Dreamail
52 months ago

They bought Fleetsmith only to later shut it down? 🤔 Hmmm...
Remember Shake?

Best compositing software in the world at the time. Apple bought it, realized it's too much work to port to 64 bit - and shut it down - while promising that they will come out with something much better in future. 12+ years later we are still waiting...

All the while Foundry's Nuke made the world's number 3 compositing software into the world's number 1 high-end compositing solution - while still having the inferior UI, IMHO.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bradman83 Avatar
bradman83
52 months ago

No, they will likely continue to use the backend/technologies but re-structured as Business Essentials.
That's exactly what Apple did with Dark Sky - bought it, shut it down, kept the back-end in place. Which is a shame, because while they've added Dark Sky features to the Weather app it's still not nearly as good as the Dark Sky app was. (That and Dark Sky had, you know, an actual iPad app).
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Read All Comments