Apple @ Work: ASBMUtil brings a native macOS operating system to the Apple Business experience

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Apple Business and Apple School Manager are fundamental to the use of modern Apple devices. If you use Macs, iPads, or iPhones for business, you spend a lot of time on these sites. The problem is that the web interface can be incredibly boring when dealing with thousands of devices. As we have mentioned several times, Apple released an official API for these services last year, opening the door to automation and new tools. A new native macOS application called ASBMUtil is one such example.

About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers managed the company’s IT network from 2009 to 2021. With his experience in deploying and managing firewalls, switches, mobile device management system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, 1000’s of Macs, and 1000’s of iPads, Bradley will highlight the ways Apple IT managers deploy, IT users deploy IT, support IT users from Apple devices, and train Apple management methods. Apple can improve its products for IT departments.

Bringing the API to the desktop

Rod Christiansen recently introduced ASBMUtil, a native SwiftUI front end designed to interface with your Apple business tools. Instead of struggling with JSON and storage commands, Mac administrators can now interact directly with the Apple Business API through a native application on their Mac.

The main view is a single native table with all the resources managed in your Apple Business account and School Administrator account. Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Apple TVs are displayed next to each other. When you click a row, a sidebar slides through the device’s full details, including product number, order status, device management assignment, AppleCare coverage, and MAC address. You can easily select a number of devices, right-click, and reassign them.

Device browser: You can view all managed devices in one paged, editable table with details sidebar.
Powerful filters: You can filter by device status, order number, model family, or device management server. You can also stack filters to narrow the view to the same devices you need.
MDM server list and functions: This allows you to see every server and what devices are currently assigned to it.
Allocate in bulk and don’t: You can select multiple devices from the table, select a local server, and apply the change. You can also import a CSV if that’s how your favorite scene comes across.
Export to CSV or JSON: You can push your selections or filtered results through the macOS share sheet.
To change multiple profiles: If you manage multiple Apple locations, you can easily switch between different instances of Apple Business and Apple School Manager in the sidebar and manage your information in Settings.

Christiansen also kept the app fully compatible with Apple’s latest API additions. The app supports AppleCare coverage lookups (API 1.3) and can pull Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and built-in Ethernet MAC addresses for macOS (API 1.4), as well as iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and visionOS (API 1.2). Recently, the application added support for API 1.5, which includes an array format of MAC addresses for devices with multiple network connections.

9to5Mac take

I love this app! I jump in and out of Apple School Manager every day, and having this on my dock is a huge time saver. If you manage Apple devices, ASBMUtil is a utility you should add to your toolkit. You can get the latest releases directly from GitHub.