Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2018-01-05

Happy New Year, everyone!

For those who follow the Gregorian way of counting trips around the sun, anyway.

2018 is certainly not starting slowly. We got a good look at Secure Boot in the iMac Pro thanks to Tim Perfitt. And then we got two major security problems, endearingly called ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’.

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#! On Scripting OS X

• NetInstall is Dead, too
• MacAD.UK Interview on self-publishing Books

🎇Turn of Year

• My work in 2017 – groob.io
• Apple Macintosh: What the Mac needs in 2018 – Jason Snell, Macworld
• Biggest problems facing Apple in 2018 – Rene Ritchie, iMore
• Krypted.com Turns 13 Today! – Charles Edge, Krypted.com

🖥iMac Pro

• NetInstall is Dead, too
• Network Traces from SecureBoot on iMac Pro – Tim Perfitt, Twocanoes Software
• SecureBoot & the 2017 iMac Pro – Tim Perfitt, Twocanoes Software
• The T2 chip makes the iMac Pro the start of a Mac revolution – Jason Snell, Macworld

🔐Meltdown and Spectre

• About speculative execution vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs – Apple Support
• About the security content of macOS High Sierra 10.13.2, Security Update 2017–002 Sierra, and Security Update 2017–005 El Capitan – Apple Support (Updated Jan, 4 for CVE–2017–5754)
• ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’ FAQ: What Mac and iOS users need to know about the Intel, AMD, and ARM flaw – Rene Ritchie, iMore
• Reading privileged memory with a side-channel – Project Zero
• Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign – The Register
• Mac Model PCID Status (Google doc)

📰News and Opinion

• The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students – Valerie Strauss, Washington Post

🔨Support and HowTos

• A Slack notification post-processor for AutoPkg/JSSImporter – Graham Pugh
• Creating local user accounts with pycreateuserpkg – Rich Trouton
• Decrypting an APFS encrypted volume using diskutil on macOS 10.13.2 – Rich Trouton
• This New Years Day, Learn The Jot Command – Charles Edge, krypted.com
• FileMaker and OmniGraffle – Sal Soghoian
• Stop Apps From Installing Automatically On A Mac When Purchased On Another Mac Charles Edge, krypted.com
• Remote control a Mac from an iPhone via Workflow – Jason Snell, Six Colors

🍏Apple Support

• A Message to Our Customers – Apple
• iPhone Battery and Performance
• Apple Developer Program Membership Fee Waivers
• Adjust SMB browsing behavior in macOS High Sierra 10.13 (from November, but new to me)

♻️Updates and Releases

• jAlly (iOS): See information on device in Jamf Pro on you iPhone!
• Pythonista 3.2 (iOS): now can save and sync files in iCloud and open Python scripts from other apps
• Jamf Pro 10.2 Beta

🛠Open Source

• Ethenyl/JamfKit: A JSS communication framework written in Swift
• Build macOS packages with GCP Container Builder

📺To Watch

• jamJAR – What, Why, How – macmule
• The macOS School of Terminal Witchcraft and Wizardry – Mac Admin and Developer Conference 2017
• Armin Briegel talks self publishing and iBooks

🎧To Listen

• The End of 2017, The Beginning of The Future – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

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