Название: Beyond Scripting: Building Swift Apps for Apple Administrators
Автор: Charles Edge, Joel Rennich, Jeremy Bannister
Издательство: Apress
Год: 2026
Страниц: 261
Язык: английский
Формат: True PDF, True EPUB
Размер: 17.9 MB

Client Platform Engineers, device administrators, and others charged with managing large fleets of devices need to be able to wield open-source tools, conform them to their unique use cases, and get them on devices securely. This has traditionally been done with other languages, some of which have evolved since the early days of Unix – the early days of the very idea of an operating system. But the increasingly closed nature of Apple devices means that these skills need to move to Swift, and all the good and bad that comes with that.

This book is about how to build Swift applications that automate tasks on Apple devices. Things like pulling information down from a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution to configure settings, deliver apps to devices, and gain telemetry into areas of the system that might not otherwise be available to legacy scripting tools that can’t get entitlements to manage various aspects of systems. We want to make the world a more secure place, and this is one of the ways we get there. Beyond Scripting gets more into long-term code maintenance, distribution methods (especially for admins that don’t use the App Store), unit testing, entitlements, and other more advanced topics that will be required to go beyond a team of one.

Swift was designed by Apple to be approachable – a language for everyone who wants to build for the Apple ecosystem, not just people with computer science degrees. That premise aligns almost perfectly with the MacAdmins community, where many of the best minds in the business are self-taught, lateral thinkers who learned by doing and by sharing. The MacAdmins world has always run on open source, on blog posts, on “here’s how I figured it out” – and that spirit is very much alive in these pages.

This book will not make you a full-time software developer. If that’s what you’re after, there are plenty of resources that go much deeper into theory and architecture. What this book will do is get you dangerous – dangerous in the best possible sense. It will give you the tools to build the things you’ve been imagining: a small utility to tell users what’s happening during a management workflow, an authentication helper that fits your environment exactly, a tiny automation that lets you enjoy your morning coffee a bit more. The best way to use this book is with a project in mind. It doesn’t need to be ambitious – in fact, the less ambitious the better to start. Each chapter adds a piece, and by the end, the pieces fit together.

What You'll Learn:

How to wield Swift for secure device automation tasks.
How to convert your code into compiled scripts.
How to build functional programs for device inventory.
How to integrate with enterprise systems for seamless operation.
How to master Mobile Device Management (MDM) with Swift.

Who This Book Is For:
This book is for client platform engineers, device administrators, and anyone managing large fleets of Apple devices.

Contents: