At present we use Munki/Managed Software Centre to distribute some Apple programs which are typically installed using the Mac App Store – Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iMovie. We do this for a few reasons, most of which come down to not being sure that everyone using one of our Macs will have an App Store account.

Our work-around, which is tacitly approved by Apple, is to install the programs on one Mac using a managed AppleID and then bundle them up and install on all our other machines. Mostly this works fine, but can lead to a little confusion when the App Store on the client Mac offers to update one of the programs, which then triggers a prompt for the password for the managed AppleID. The solution in this case is to ignore that prompt and allow Munki to push out the updates for Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iMovie.

Obviously this is not the absolute best user experience. Once all of our systems are enrolled in Device Management we will be able to use the official Apple method for App management, the Volume Purchase Plan (VPP). This will let us push App Store apps to managed devices (macOS and iOS) and this will hopefully stop these moments of confusion.