This was a busy week with many important updates.
However, all this news has been overshadowed by the news of the death of Tycho Sjögren.
My condolences to his close friends and family.
Tycho was probably best known as the organiser of the MacSysAdmin conference in Gothenburg. But he had been working as an admin and trainer for decades, influencing the career of many in the Apple Admin field. You should go and read the reactions and stories on Twitter and in the #macsysadminconf channel on the MacAdmins Slack to see how far his influence reached.
Even though I have only been at MacSysAdmin for the last two years, I was immdiately struck by the atmosphere of the conference. For a speaker, Tycho’s suggestions and criticisms during preparation were helpful and spot-on, as was his praise afterwards. You could feel his deep experience and passion for the conference and, even more, the community. He would build the conference he himself wanted to experience, and as a speaker, you wanted to impress him.
Then Tycho would sit in the first row for every presentation, eagerly paying attention. MacSysAdmin is a single-track conference, because then all the attendees see the same presentations and the hallway conversations are based on the same topics. MacSysAdmin also had many chances for conversations among the participants with many breaks, good food and fun evening activities. This is a great chance to meet friends, old and new, thank people whose presentations or blog posts have helped and inspired you, share solutions, and to discuss the last session.
Tycho was able to share his interest and passion with the entire conference, and his stye and method has influenced others around the world. It lives on in all the big conferences, small local meetings, and in the online meeting places.
We will miss Tycho, but we will keep sharing his interest and passion.
On Scripting OS X
- The Year 2018 for Mac Admins (with my outlook for 2019)
News and Opinion
- PSU MacAdmins 2019 Call For Proposals is Open
- Microsoft Azure Active Directory integration with Jamf Connect debuts – Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac (Jamf Press Release
- The Mac App Store welcomes Office 365 – Apple
- Office 365 for Mac is available on the Mac App Store – Microsoft 365 Blog
- MacADUK 2019 Schedule
MacAdmins on Twitter
- Anthony Reimer:
“#MacAdmins: I’ve updated my article from last September that lists the AutoPkg repos that cannot be seen by AutoPkgr (we’re up to 13).” - Carl Ashley:
“So, #macadmins, if you need to generate a PPPCP profile to letkickstart
work on macOS 10.14+, Apple KB article: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT209161 The binary if you want to keep this in your version control is: ”/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ScreensharingAgent.bundle” - Josh Braun: “I just found out that TextWrangler, which I’d previously thought defunct, lives on as the freemium version of BBEdit and I’m way more psyched about this than I would’ve anticipated.”
- Mac Justice:
“Kind of annoyed at how both Google and Apple photos went whole-hog on fancy AI nonsense but trying to do a collaborative family vacation photo album (a pretty typical scenario!) is still full of UX pain.” - Daniel Jalkut: “macOS 10.14.4 will include the stable ABI Swift libraries!… ”
- Miles Leacy: “The status item “Device Enrollment Program” covers any and all components and hosts required to deliver device enrollment services.…”
Bugs and Security
Support and HowTos
- macOS Support Essentials 10.14 – Apple Pro Training Series: Supporting and Troubleshooting macOS Mojave
- Unlock your FileVault-encrypted boot drive using Disk Utility on macOS Mojave – Rich Trouton
- Make an AutoDMG image always run the language chooser – soundsnw
- For the Love of Pipes – Jessie Frazelle
- macOS security – Secure Kernel Extension Loading (SKEL) – Alex Usov
- Julia Evans: “ssh tips…”
- ESET Endpoint Antivirus – Privacy Preferences Policy Control – Neil Martin
- macOS Mojave VMWare images for DEP testing – soundsnw
- Softly encouraging your users to print in black and white – soundsnw
- Deploy Office for Mac from the Mac App Store – Microsoft Docs (this is how you document on release day… Apple, please take note)
- Microsoft Office and the Mac App Store – Office 365
- Mojave Software Update Issues – Michael Tsai
Scripting and Automation
- Pull iTunes App Categories via Bash – Charles Edge
- Send Smart Group Changes Information From Jamf To IFTTT – Charles Edge
- Building macOS installer disk images for virtual machines with create_macos_vm_install_dmg – Rich Trouton
Apple Support
- What’s new in the updates for macOS Mojave 10.14.3
- macOS Mojave 10.14.3 Release Notes
- About the security content of macOS Mojave 10.14.3, Security Update 2019–001 High Sierra, Security Update 2019–001 Sierra
- About the security content of iOS 12.1.3 (all Apple security updates)
- About iOS 12.1.3
- APFS File System Reference (updated with information on encryption, via Joe Sylve)
Updates and Releases
To Listen
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