One of the biggest enterprise additions to iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 is a significant change to Apple’s MDM (mobile device management) protocol. Earlier MDM changes primarily focused on adding new management, security, or deployment features, extending what MDM could enforce. Declarative management, introduced at the company’s developer conference in June, is the first change that modifies the protocol itself.
While declarative management will make its debut with iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Apple said it will also be supported in macOS Monterey, though not right away.
Apple MDM today
Before we get to what declarative management is, let’s take a a brief recap of Apple’s MDM protocol as it has previously been implemented.
Apple MDM encompasses a handful of different components: configuration and provisioning profiles, the MDM service, and various MDM commands.
