Welcome to Brown’s Bytes! Your weekly insight from Mobliciti’s CTO Andy Brown. Follow #brownsbytes
10th June 2022
Well, there was clearly only one thing I could be talking about this week…
Apple is holding their WWDC this week… whilst the conference is aimed at developers, there is always quite a bit of content that’s relevant for the wider audience, so I’ve been tuned in!
iOS16
Ok – so let’s get the big news out of the way first… iOS16 was revealed to allow developers to get ready for the launch later in the year.
Although it’s what I would call an ‘iterative’ release (i.e., it doesn’t radically change the fundamentals), there is quite a lot of cool stuff in here that Enterprise Admins will need to consider for the future.
I’ll come back to that… the BIG news was which devices are going to be supported on iOS16.
In line with previous cycles, it was widely expected that the iPhone 6S (introduced back in 2015) would drop off as it was the oldest device still supported on iOS 15, but in fact, Apple has drawn the line at the iPhone 8 for continued support.
Apple just called time on the iPhone 6S, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus!
Now, in fairness to Apple, the iPhone 7 was introduced back in 2016 and it will therefore have had 6 years of updates (from launch).
However, if I look at Enterprise estates, there are still quite a lot of these phones still in use. You may say that the iPhone 7 is quite an old phone, but it was only discontinued in September 2019. And by that time it was a cheaper way into the Apple ecosystem, which is often something that Enterprise Customers like to do. So, if you were one of the last buyers of the 7, then you’ll have only had 3 years out of the phone.
Still pretty good compared to Android, but perhaps an iPhone 7 replacement was not expected for budgets this year…
And because UPDATES = PATCHING in iOS land, you will have to retire the older devices once the updates stop (probably around September). This might also be a perfect storm if you want to replace these phones… remember all the supply chain issues in technology?? I’d quickly get in touch if you need to source kit, you have been warned!
What else?
As mentioned, an awful lot is going on in the world of Apple that I definitely can’t do justice to in a single byte, but one of the themes that really struck me this year was how much Apple is now placing their kit at the heart of our everyday lives.
Apple’s summary and vision are enlightening – just in the WWDC Keynote presentation we had:
- iPhone / iPad / Mac / Apple Watch all closely integrated more and more
- Family sharing capabilities that bring entire families into the Apple ecosystem
- The Smart home being brought into the Apple ecosystem with the creation of an Open Standard based on HomeKit
- The iPhone is your Wallet (paying and receiving payments) and Apple is increasingly your bank (they just introduced buy now pay later)
- The iPhone taking over the entire dashboard of your car!
That last point about CarPlay was hammered home by two statistics that Apple shared:
- 98% of new cars sold in the US now support CarPlay
- 79% of US car buyers would only buy a car that supports it!
The second most expensive purchase is already directly linked to the piece of glass in your pocket… and they’re coming for the most expensive (home) next!!
Apple really is increasingly placing their tech at the heart of your daily life! It will soon be too hard to leave!!
And it made me think about the Enterprise market, which can at times feel like it would prefer to ignore all this ‘noise’ going on in the personal space. But the noise is getting louder and louder…
My personal view is that BYOD or COPE are the only answers to this long term. But I’ve run out of space to explain why this week! Get in touch if you’d like to know more about how best to embrace and enhance BYOD as part of your IT strategy.
I might need to do a follow-up… I’ve not even mentioned the M2-powered Mac that’s even better than the M1 chipset I was raving about the other week!
Anyway, thanks for reading!
