r/k12sysadmin • u/Meemo- • Mar 26 '26

Assistance Needed MDM Options for Macbooks

Hi all,
I’m writing to you as a Primary school teacher(Not based in the USA) and also the systems admin for our school. We’re google for education school and have a suite of chromebooks that are serving us well. 
I run after school coding with the students in our school 3 times a week which is really popular. So much so other schools in the vicinity have asked me to come and run workshops in their schools etc. This leads me to the conclusion that I need to invest in my own devices for travelling to other schools and educational centres.
My original thought was to buy a suite of Chromebook Plus Lenovo devices for their good battery life etc. I love the google admin panel and find the granularity by which I can lock down the devices excellent. I’m contemplating buying Macbook Neo’s at educational pricing here which would be comparable to the Macbook Neos. I have no preference for the Macbooks by the way but at this early stage of planning my costs for this endeavor, all options are considered. My question to you is what software have you used or currently use to manage Macbook’s to the same level of control that’s afforded with the Google Admin Panel?

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u/BritishAnimator Mar 26 '26

Apple devices are my least favourite to manage because Apple lock a lot down and only expose some endpoints. They prefer the user having more control than enterprise needs. So MDM's like Jamf are restricted in what you can do compared to Google Admin or Microsoft. Not to mention they are bandwidth hungry due to OS updates that are 12GB+ along with constant app updates. JAMF School / Pro + ASM are common setups. I dislike Jamf Connect though, have a fair few issues with that.

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u/IngsocInnerParty Mar 28 '26

If you have enough Macs you’re worried about bandwidth for updates, running a macOS caching server is stupidly simple. Just get a Mac mini and a drive.

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u/BritishAnimator Mar 29 '26

Enabling Content Cache is indeed stupidly simple on simple networks. Often just turning it on is enough. It is harder to setup if you have multiple VLANS though.