Earlier this year I wrote a post on whether packaging is dead. Since I wrote a book on Packaging and have also invested much of my career in macOS I do have quite some interest in the topic.
(Please buy the book! If you have bought and read it, please leave a review!)
After that post I made myself a reminder to re-visit the topic post WWDC. I was very much expecting to be proven wrong or hopelessly optimistic. This reminder has been bugging me for a while. I have had a hard time to consolidate my thoughts into writing.
It’s not that this year’s WWDC was boring. Quite the opposite. The new iPads Pro look wonderful and I want one. Apple also announced great new iMacs and MacBooks and a space-grey iMac Pro, demonstrating they still care about the Mac line. (The Mac mini, however, got no love this time around. I do hope the line gets at least a speed bump and we don’t have to wait for a the new Mac Pro to get a decent option for screenless Macs. I’ve given up on servers…) And finally, both iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra (10.13) look like solid updates with lots of new features for users and developers. This was a great WWDC!
Mac admins were concerned that this update would lock down macOS in a similar fashion to iOS. The worst case scenarios painted a picture where not even admin users would be able to get root privileges and you couldn’t install third party daemons and agents any more, fundamentally breaking the way all management systems work. Admins would have to re-work their workflows to work through MDMs, which are not yet capable to bear this burden. The new Apple File System APFS would break NetBoot and all the tools admins use to image Macs.
What happened was… well… nothing much really.
Mac-narök has been postponed.
(Excellent talk by Micheal Lynn at MacDevOps YVR, just a few minutes before the WWDC Keynote. Go watch it.)
There will be changes in High Sierra that affect admins. APFS on macOS is definitely going to happen. In the current (first) beta there is an option to disable the filesystem conversion during upgrade, but it is unknown wether that option will still exist in the release. You can now add iOS devices to DEP even if they were not registered at purchase. You can control a firmware password on Macs with profiles. There are some (minor) changes to files and folders protected by SIP.
I don’t believe or want to suggest the posts above and many other people who predicted the end of Mac Administration as we know it were hysterical or unnecessarily panicked. When they were written there were strong indications and hints that Apple was planning a lockdown of some form soon. MDM only Mac administration might still happen in a future update. However, we seem to have gotten an reprieve, which is good.
Why did the lockdown not happen now? Excellent question, which I do not know the answer to. There was a big outcry from the Mac admin community and many used their official channels (Apple reps and support, Radar, Feedback) to tell Apple what a huge imposition such a quick and drastic change would be. Also many third-party application developers are reluctant to (or cannot) move to the Mac App Store, which would be a requirement in an MDM only world.
For now it seems that common admin tools will run on High Sierra and APFS with just some minor adjustments. This includes packages! Packaging is not dead! Long live Packaging! …and all the other tools!
(On the other hand, some things may still break or be removed during the beta phase.)
Does that mean we should just happily keep doing what we are doing? No. Even if Apple does not yet enforce ‘MDM-only’ they are clearly moving towards ‘more MDM.’ We still have to re-evaluate every setting and workflow with MDM in mind. There are some great solutions already that can combine MDM with e.g. Munki, Chef or Puppet.
Even though imaging, whether you choose the “thick” or “thin” approach, will probably still work in High Sierra, you should be thinking about alternative strategies. DEP plus application installs and updates are more flexible and powerful than full disk imaging.
There are certain setups, such as classrooms and training centers, which require frequent re-imaging with short turnaround times. Ironically, the tech that was predicted to kill imaging might provide a solution. APFS disk snapshots could provide a solution for fast system restores. The tools for this do not seem to be fully in place yet, but the time to test and file bugs is now.
The MDM ‘InstallApplication’ command, which installs the agent software, such as the Munki or Jamf client, should be supported by management systems. This would allow clients to be connected to the management system without user interference and the client software to add to the limited functionality of MDM with tools that admins already have solutions and expertise for.
So the post WWDC summary: the ‘End of Things as We Know Them’ has been postponed. Imaging will still work, but you want to start examining and testing alternatives. Packages and scripts remain relevant, but there are interesting new means of distributing them.
It is already apparent the next WWDC will have more exciting news ready for Mac and iOS Admins. Until then we will be busy learning the new features and tools in High Sierra and iOS 11 and laying the groundwork to the future.