Managed Preferences vs. Configuration Profiles

[djf3188]

Please forgive the stupid questions -- I'm a Windows admin and I'm being baptized by fire with Mac management with JSS. :)

All of our Macs are on Snow Leopard but we're quickly needing to move to Mountain Lion so I'm trying to make heads or tails of what we've done so far with trying to configure JSS to manage Snow Leopard machines.

During our implementation it was understood that Managed Preferences were for Snow Leopard machines and below, and Configuration Profiles are for Lion machines and above. Is this true, or where would Managed Preferences come into play with Mountain Lion?

Reason I ask is that I can find the settings for com.apple.screensaver in Managed Preferences, for example, yet I don't see anywhere in Configuration Profiles to set this without somehow importing an XML file to get these preferences in there.

So, oh great Masters of the Mac, can you tell me if I still need to use Managed Preferences or if everything should live in Configuration Profiles?

Thanks!

[mm2270]

So, the general answer on this is that Apple has "deprecated" Managed Preferences (MCX) under Mountain Lion. What that actually means in practice isn't much though, since MCX still generally works in 10.8, as well as 10.7. That isn't to say that every managed preference you try to apply to 10.7 or 10.8 Macs will work, but our experience has been that most of them work just fine. Apple is just pushing configuration profiles in 10.7 and above as the future.
Keep in mind that using profiles in 10.7/10.8 requires some certificate communication between your JSS and your Macs to be in place to make use of it. MCX doesn't care either way, so if that's a concern or issue, keep that in mind.

If you search around on this forum, you'll see lots of threads of folks having issues getting profiles to apply correctly. While Apple may tout them as the future, it doesn't mean they don't have their own issues and bugs.

[djf3188]

Thanks mm2270. That said, is it reasonable to expect updates from JAMF to get more of these MCX settings easily findable within the Configuration Profiles section of the JSS with future releases?

[mm2270]

Well, the problem is that the Configuration Profile options that show up in the JSS are taken verbatim from what Apple includes in its own management tools. JAMF doesn't add anything, if much, to that list. So, while I wouldn't expect JAMF to really add anything here, if Apple adds new capabilities, JAMF will likely follow suit and add them shortly after.
As for MCX templates in Managed Preferences, I would not expect to see anything new show up there given that Apple is trying to push everyone in the direction of Config profiles. I would not even be surprised to eventually see Managed Preferences get removed from the JSS altogether, but that probably won't happen for a while.

[Matt]

Config Profiles have thus far proven to be useless. They are so hit or miss and with MCX's going away and Apples typical roadmapless approach I am worried.

[jarednichols]

@Matt
I wouldn't worry too much about MCX in the near future. Apple's pre-10.2 pkg format was deprecated long ago but I've seen installers still using it. How long ago was Jaguar?

[Matt]

Apple has been much quicker these days though to pull the plug, especially with iOS intruding into the desktop arena.