Apple Documentation for Education IT Professionals

By: Schoun Regan, Developer Publications

Documentation is crucial to the daily workflow of all IT professionals. As a deployment grows, so does the need for clear, thorough support materials. Apple supports your deployment with extensive documentation covering nearly every aspect of our hardware, software, security, developer tools, and more. Specifically for organizations, the Apple Platform series catalogs essential information to help you get the most from your investment in Apple. Read on to learn about these primary sources of Apple documentation, what each resource is used for, and how to access them.

How Apple User Guides are Organized

Before we look at the Apple Platform Series specifically, it's helpful to understand how Apple organizes documentation. User guides are separated into two primary categories:

Consumer-based User Guides:

• Hardware: Such as iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, Apple TV, Apple Watch, HomePod, and AirPods.
• Apps included with macOS: Such as Safari, Mail, Calendar, Messages, Disk Utility, and Activity Monitor. 
• Apple apps that can be downloaded from the App Store: Such as Classroom, Schoolwork, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Swift Playground, Xcode, and Apple Configurator.
• Safety resources: Such as personal safety with Apple devices.
• Apple consumer services: Such as iCloud.

Information Technology (IT)-based Guides:

• Apple Enterprise and Education services: Such as Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager, Apple Business Essentials, and Apple Business Connect.
• The Apple Platform Series: Apple Platform Certifications, Apple Platform Security, Apple Platform Deployment, Apple Platform Support.

Apple designs support articles as single pages to help users solve issues or learn about hardware and software. These articles start with support.apple.com/ followed by a unique number. Most support articles are designed for the consumer, however some pages are specifically written for IT professionals. These pages are often indicated with the following text:

This article is intended for enterprise and education network administrators.

Searching inside Apple User Guides and Support articles

Search results on support.apple.com, show results from:

• All Apple User Guides for both consumers and IT.
• Apple Platform Series.
• All Apple Support articles.

When you select a link that’s part of a User Guide, you can then search inside that guide by using the search bar on the left of the webpage.

The Apple Platform series

The Apple Platform Series currently consists of four categories:

• Apple Platform Certifications: Apple regularly engages with third-party organizations to provide security assurance, certifying and attesting to the security of Apple’s hardware, operating systems, and services. Certifications are often necessary to meet the requirements of legislation, regulation, and industry norms. A device’s operating system often uses Common Criteria or FIPS 140-3 certifications. All customers—including government agencies and enterprise and education organizations deploying Apple devices—can use Apple’s published hardware, operating system, and services certifications to help demonstrate compliance.
• Apple Platform Security: This guide covers the security of Apple hardware, operating systems, apps, services, developer kits, networking, and more. It provides details about how security technology and features are implemented within Apple platforms. It also helps organizations combine Apple’s security approach with their own policies and procedures to meet their security needs.
• Apple Platform Deployment: Apple Platform Deployment covers every aspect of deploying Apple hardware, operating systems, apps, and services. Among many other topics, this guide helps organizations decide how they want to deploy Apple devices, the method used to enroll them in a device management service, what features to control or restrict, and how to leverage an existing directory structure from an identity provider (IdP) to provide users with a single sign-on experience using their existing credentials.
• Apple Platform Support: Apple designed Apple Platform Support for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Help Desk personnel who support Apple within organizations. It focuses on the knowledge, skills, and tools to troubleshoot Apple hardware, software, and services.

Additional Resources

Beyond the Apple Platform series, Apple offers additional resources for your security and software development teams.

• Apple Security Research contains content about the latest advances in Apple security from Apple engineering teams. Users can also submit information about a security or privacy vulnerability and may be eligible for a reward. The Apple Security Bounty program recognizes users who help Apple protect security and privacy.
• Apple Developer documentation is for developers who write apps or websites designed and optimized for Apple devices. The documentation features examples of code, best practices, and helps developers construct their interface using the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). The Apple Developer Documentation site has a dedicated filter function to help you select the type of technology you want to see.

Apple Documentation is designed to be clear, thorough, and easy to use. With the Apple Platform Series, your teams have access to a vast quantity of information to keep your deployment at its best. Let us know how your teams benefit from these resources in the comments.