Glossary
VPP (Apps and Books)
VPP, now called Apps and Books in Apple Business Manager, is Apple's volume licensing system. An organization buys app licenses in bulk, free or paid, and its MDM assigns them to devices or users without anyone signing in to the App Store. Licenses can be revoked and reassigned when devices change hands.
How it works
The Volume Purchase Program started in 2011 as a separate portal. Since 2018 it lives inside Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager under the name Apps and Books, but every MDM admin still says VPP. The idea is simple: you search the App Store catalog from the portal, buy 200 licenses of an app (or claim 200 free ones), and those licenses appear in your organization's pool.
To use them, the MDM needs a content token, sometimes called a location token, downloaded from ABM. Upload it once and the MDM sees your licenses. From there you assign apps by device serial number, which is the model to use for shared or corporate devices, or by Managed Apple Account for user-centric fleets. Device-based assignment arrived with iOS 9 in 2015 and removed the need for an Apple Account on the device.
On a supervised device, a VPP app installs silently. On an unsupervised one, the user gets a prompt. Either way, the license stays with the organization. Wipe the device and the license returns to the pool.
Why it matters for a fleet
The alternative is ugly. Without VPP, every device needs an Apple Account, someone types a password on 300 screens, and the app licenses belong to whoever's account was used. When that person leaves, so do the apps.
VPP also covers custom apps. A developer can publish a private build through ABM that's visible only to organizations you list, which solves distribution for apps you'd never want on the public store. That option replaced much of what companies used to do with enterprise signing.
Budgeting is cleaner too. Paid apps can be bought with a credit card or with VPP credit purchased through your Apple reseller, and the licenses are an asset you keep. Educational buyers get discounts on many titles at 20 units or more.
How Appaloosa handles it
Appaloosa imports your Apps and Books token and syncs the license pool. You pick an app in the console, target a device group, and Appaloosa assigns licenses and pushes the installation, silently on supervised devices. Licenses from devices that are wiped or retired go back to the pool automatically. The same catalog also holds your internal apps, so users find both in a single place, as shown on the iOS and iPadOS management page.
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