Welcome to Brown’s Bytes! Your weekly insight from Mobliciti’s CTO Andy Brown. Follow #brownsbytes
10th September 2021
Following on from last week, this is your annual reminder that a new version of iOS is about to hit…
As is often the case, we’ll try to give a Mobile Admin’s view of this – and this year, I’ll try not to make the same points as I always do! (Unlikely!!)
Clearly, this is a moment of change that most Mobile Admins anticipate and dread in equal measure.
The hope springs eternal that the iOS bug you’ve been nursing for the past 6 months will magically be fixed in the new version.
Meanwhile, the experiences of iOS 13 remain fresh in the memory, serving as a signpost as to how painful these releases can sometimes be when quality control slips at Apple and things break.
For new subscribers the guidance is usually thus:
- Test the new release of iOS 15 in Beta before the new release goes Gold.
- Form an opinion on whether it warrants immediate releasing into the wild.
- Communicate to your users what your guidance to them is…if you don’t, they will install it.
- Be ready for users ignoring point 3!
- Be ready for some random email bug to appear despite all your testing!
- Be ready for the final release being nothing like the final Beta!
- Finally – be ready to throw all that out the window because the new release includes security fixes that need to be implemented immediately!!
The main point of this cycle is to know that you can only control a certain amount of the process**.
So…iOS 15
Regular readers will know I’ve been undertaking extended Beta testing due to my own stupidity! So, my personal thoughts on this are as follows:
- It’s an iteration of iOS 14 – not a revolution.
- The biggest news is arguably what isn’t in the release – the photo scanning bad news story has been kicked into the long grass for now.
- Most public Apps we’ve tested work (apart from my banking – that’s a long story elsewhere).
- As is often the case, Enterprise functions are a bit flakier at present (some apps crashing, issues with pushing internal apps, issues with Safari and certificates). That’s not exhaustive, but it should give an idea that some things may well be broken on day 1.
- There are UI changes in the native Apps (as usual). I particularly dislike the changes in Safari, but am pleased to report that setting an Alarm has been improved (i.e. more like it used to be before it was mucked around with for no good reason).
Having said all that – remember point 6 above…all this is based on the final Betas and it’s not unheard of for the Gold release to differ quite a bit.
We’ll likely find out next week… Apple’s “California Streaming” event is officially set for the 14th of September. Previous experience suggests iOS 15 could be released as soon as the next day.
You may possibly even find more out about what happened in next week’s episode of Browns Bytes!!
** P.S. A few smug Admins will be looking at their Apple Business Manager and UEM controlled (and therefore Supervised) estate feeling smug about the patch controls they implemented for precisely this moment…. get in touch if you want to be one of the smug next time!
