An update on App Installers

[JustinC]

At this year’s JNUC 2021, we announced App Installers; a streamlined way to deploy and update Mac applications, removing the tedious tasks of sourcing, deploying and maintaining non-Mac App Store titles. 

This month, we launched a private beta with select customers to gather initial feedback on the new workflow. All customers can expect to see App Installers in the Jamf Beta Program early next year. Any interested customer can sign up for the Jamf Beta Program here.

Once generally available, App Installers will be included with cloud-hosted Jamf Pro, Business Plan, and Enterprise Plan subscriptions. We are very excited to make this new workflow available and we cannot wait to hear your feedback.

[davidi4]

So, do the client Macs get the installers (Word, etc) directly from a Jamf distribution site or directly from the developer’s download site (ie: macadmins.software)? This is a question I’m going to get asked by infosec. 

I think it’s a great move for apps which need to go to “all” devices as part of the COE or “core” apps. Can’t wait to see more apps added. 

[JustinC]

@davidi4 The clients get the software from a Jamf hosted source. We ourselves only work on install media directly sourced from the vendor, not third party download sites. With Jamf Pro 10.38 we have added additional metadata to each title so that an admin can see a lot more information about the package. This includes the original source URL of the package.

[JustinC]

Hi @davidi4 . The client Macs get the installers directly from a Jamf distribution site. We are getting the original source directly from the vendor website (not from any third party sources) and then doing some additional work to the package to make it work properly with App Installers. You can see all of the source information within the metadata field when configuring an App Installer deployment for a given software title. The source link is clickable if you want to download the original source media for your own testing/discovery purposes.

[uurazzle]

Hi @davidi4,

I haven't investigated, but since these are Modata (Now Jamf) I believe they are customized versions of the installer with uninstalling features? Would like Jamf to provide more details about the installers, if they are customized and how are they customized, etc. 

[JustinC]

Hi @uurazzle we were trying to use the original vendor packages as much as possible and were only repackaging if the original installers were either not available in a .pkg format and/or were not available as a universal installer. I provide a little more information about this here https://www.jamf.com/blog/jamf-app-installers-faq/

Unfortunately many vendor installer packages have some 'quirks' when they are deployed via the InstallEnterpriseApplication MDM command versus standard GUI or CLI methods. This will require us to repackage more titles than originally estimated to address these issues.

[uurazzle]

Hi @JustinC:

So, I believe previously Modata provided uninstallers with their service. Since you are just using developer installers, will you make uninstallers available in the future? Or is the Jamf Pro admin to depend & trust on developer uninstallers or scripts or build custom ones themselves?