What a week!
This would have been an interesting with many amazing articles and posts by fellow MacAdmins on different topics. But then there was Apple’s Education event and (finally) the spring updates (10.13.4, 11.3 etc.) dropped yesterday.
10.13.4 brings (yet again) many changes for macOS management, read the summaries and posts carefully.
PSU MacAdmins Conference 2018 registration is open!
If you would rather get the weekly newsletter by email, you can subscribe to the Scripting OS X Weekly Newsletter here!! (Same content, delivered to your Inbox once a week.)
Happy Easter! (Hope you get a long Easter week-end to catch up with the reading!)
#! On Scripting OS X
📰News and Opinion
- Apple Proposes New Accessibility Emojis – Emojipe
- Mac Kung Fu: “Is Thunderbolt a failure? My Mac has Thunderbolt 2. An Amazon search reveals only one thing that isn’t a cable, hub or hard drive dock. Can’t imagine eGPUs being anything other than limited pro/enthusiast. What exactly is Thunderbolt for? Solving a problem that doesn’t exist?…”
- Apple Business Manager Documentation Publicly Available – Charles Edge
- Foxconn buys Belkin
Education Event
- iWork 4.0 Adds Full Apple Pencil Support; Pages Becomes Spiritual Successor to iBooks Author – Ryan Christoffel, MacStories
- Pages is no iBooks Author Replacement (Updated) – Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels
- Pages, iBooks Author, and eBooks creation: Everything you need to know – Serenity Cladwell, iMore
- iWork: 21 ways Apple just improved Pages, Numbers, Keynote – Jonny Evans, Apple Must
- Box and iWork: real-time collaboration on Pages, Numbers, and Keynote – Jon Fan, Box Blog
- David Colville: “One Simplified Login Experience”
- Apple’s Lane Tech Education Event – Michael Tsai
- Making The Grade: Why Apple’s education strategy is not based on reality – Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac
- Apple’s love note to education – Rene Ritchie, iMore
- All about the Logitech Crayon – Dave Mark, The Loop
Spring Updates
- iOS 11.3 is available today – Apple
- Apple Releases iOS 11.3 with iPhone Battery Settings, ARKit 1.5, New Animoji, and More – Ryan Christoffel, MacStories
- Apple to Offer Customers Greater Access to Their Personal Data Online – Ryan Christoffel, MacStories
- Rob Griffiths: “This little macOS 10.13.4 tidbit hasn’t gotten any attention at all, yet it’s been a requested feature for 15 years!”
🐞Bugs and Security
- Uh Oh! Unified Logs in High Sierra (10.13) Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes via Disk Utility.app — mac4n6.com
- macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 still leaks encryption passwords in plain text – Howard Oakley
🔨Support and HowTos
- Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra – Howard Oakley
- Tip for testing the new Jamf Pro 10.3 enrollment workflow – Emily Kausalik
- macOS testing tricks – Reusing base images and obtaining a root shell prior to SetupAssistant with LanguageChooser – Erik Gomez
- Really Friendly Command Line Intro – Tracy Osborn, Hello Web Books
- Securing Ubooquity with Let’s Encrypt on Synology DSM – Mike Solin
- Solving problems with iCloud Drive – Howard Oakley
- The Mac Pro That Just Would Not Shut Down – Tom Bridge
- A Crash Course in UEFI – LightBulbOne
- Update Packages on Synology – Charles Edge
- OAuth 2.0: The Complete Guide
- Install WordPress on a Synology – Charles Edge
- Install Web Services on a Synology – Charles Edge
For macOS 10.13.4
- Great Summary on changes in 10.13.4 for admins by Robert Hammen on MacAdmins Slack (also Robert points out that 10.13.4 finally unifies the iMac Pro macOS build, though without imaging that doesn’t matter that much any more)
- Detecting user approved MDM using the profiles command line tool on macOS 10.13.4 – Rich Trouton
- Erase All Contents And Settings (almost) – erase and reinstall macOS in situ – Graham Pugh (Note: Graham Pugh has pointed out that the
--eraseinstalloption only seems to work when run on a system that is already on APFS) - New automated restart option added to macOS 10.13.4’s softwareupdate command line tool – Rich Trouton
🤖Scripting and Automation
- New Folder in List View – Eric Hemmete
- Switching to SimpleMDM – Rick Heil
- Working with the SimpleMDM API – Steve Quirke
- C-MDM Part 1 – a hacky, prototype middleware solution for extending MDM with CM – Erik Gomez
- Otto the Automator“AppleScript script for creating a new digital book in Pages.”
- Free conversion of text files with textutil – Howard Oakley
- Steve Hayman: “OK it’s working.” (My new Swift sample code, so much better than "Hello World!)
🍏Apple Support
- Use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote with Box
- Use advanced book creation options in Pages
- Create a book in Pages
- Use an external graphics processor with your Mac
- Prepare your institution for macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 (curiously, the infamous “Upgrading macOS at your institution” article has not yet been updated)
Spring Updates
- iOS 11.3
- About the macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 Update
- watchOS 4.3
- Mobile device management settings (redesigned new page)
Security
- About the security content of macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, Security Update 2018–002 Sierra, and Security Update 2018–002 El Capitan
- About the security content of iOS 11.3
- About the security content of Safari 11.1
- About the security content of Xcode 9.3
- About the security content of tvOS 11.3
- About the security content of watchOS 4.3
♻️Updates and Releases
- Upvote: A multi-platform binary whitelisting solution
- Jamf Pro 10.3.0
- TCM 1.1: Screen Sharing – Twocanoes Software
- Introducing Certificate Request – Twocanoes Software
- Patrick Fergus: “Microsoft Remote Desktop (RDC) for Mac is now available standalone (not from the Mac App Store)” (also on macadmins.software)
- The 1Password 7 Beta for Mac Is Lit and You Can Be, Too – Dave Teare, AgileBits Blog
📺To Watch
🎧To Listen
📚Support
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