My Digital Life

Yesterday I was having a conversation with someone about the iPhone configuration utility and heard a comment asking why the iPhone allows settings to be emailed to the device.  What they meant was that if your device is un-configured it wouldn’t have any email accounts to receive the settings - a chicken and egg kinda thing.

The simple answer is for ongoing maintenance of the config.  Sure it’ll be easier to deploy an initial setup using other means - the web for example.  But if you already have iPhones out in the field email should be a good delivery method for applying changes.

One thing to consider there though is training your users not to install configuration profiles that are marked as un-trusted, or that they are not expecting.  After all, anyone can download the config utilities and email out profiles.

Apple have just released the new configuration utilities for the new iPhones.  As I covered a few weeks ago, these will allow enterprises to develop specific configuration files for iPhones within their infrastructures.  It’s a very welcome move, like many businesses I’ve certainly seen a number of business requests for iPhones and the prospect of managing another platform could have been quite daunting.

iPhone Web Configuration Utility for Mac
iPhone Web Configuration Utility for Windows
iPhone Configuration Utility 1.0 Mac OS X

Each of these tools will allow you to create xml configuration files that can be either emailed to the devices or opened from the web browser.  The Configuration Utility 1.0 however can also track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs.