Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2019-07-12

Apple released an unexpected update to the entry-level MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13“ this week. What the new release replaces is interesting, as well: the non-retina entry level MacBook Air, the no-Touchbar 13” MacBook Pro, and the 12″ MacBook are all discontinued.

The iMac and the (cylinder) Mac Pro are the only remaining Mac models without a T2 chip. All current Mac models except the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro now require macOS 10.14 Mojave as their minimum OS.

We also got an interesting vulnerability story with the popular videoconferencing software Zoom. The reaction from Zoom was slow, they did not address the issue until the researcher published the problem, but Apple reacted much faster, adding the problematic local web server, that Zoom installed to bypass some of the system’s user security to macOS’s Malware Removal Tool’s list of, well, malware within 24 hours.

Finally, I am going to give a half-day class based on the ‘Moving to zsh’ article series at our offices in Amsterdam on September 6. If you are wondering why Apple is changing the default shell, how it will affect you, and how you can increase your Terminal productivity with zsh, then sign up here!

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macOS Catalina and iOS 13

MacAdmins on Twitter

  • Sisyphus-J: “MacOS/iOS Entitlement database now updated for MacOS 15 and iOS 13 beta 3. with over 150 more daemons and 500 more entitlements.. including such fine gems as com.apple.rootless.kext-more-securer-management http://newosxbook.com/ent.jl”
  • Mustafa Hussain: “In macOS, when you drop a Calendar event into the Terminal, the Terminal adopts the event’s color. As it should.… ”
  • Steve Troughton-Smith: “Disasters like Zoom are why the Mac gets progressively more locked-down, and why commandline tools and daemons can’t be exempt from signing & security. By default, we should trust no software, and neither should the hardware it runs on…”
  • Alex Wild: “Apparently sailors used to use a log, tied to a measured rope & thrown overboard, to periodically measure the speed of a boat. They’d then write the data in a ”log-book“ Which is why we now use the word ”log“ to record data. Things I learned. https://www.etymonline.com/word/log”
  • Isaac T.: “Confirmed with Apple: sharing with SMB is broken in macOS Mojave 10.14.5. The problem: ”smbd“ deadlocks with multiple users connected to a share. Engineering knows and is working on it. Time to resolution: unknown. Here are the options: 1/” (thread)
  • Rich Mogull: ““Shadow IT” is merely how the fearful describe the reduction of friction and democratization of technology to better enable agile business.”

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Mac Admin, Consultant, and Author