Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2019-09-20

Apple’s release schedule this year is certainly not following any previous pattern.

After releasing a beta of iOS 13.1 during the beta phase of 13.0. Apple then announced that iOS 13.0 (for the iPhones) would be released on Sep 19 (yesterday) and iOS 13.1, together with iPadOS 13.1 on September 30. Yesterday, iOS 13.0 was released on schedule, but the release date for iOS and iPadOS 13.1 was moved ahead to September 24.

watchOS 6 was release yesterday alongside iOS 13, but only for Series 3 and up. While Series 1 and 2 watches will be supported by watchOS 6, they will have to wait for an update “later this year.”

Meanwhile, all we know about the Catalina release date is “October 2019.”

As the features and products become more and more intertwined and dependent on hardware, software, and cloud services, getting everything ready for release at the same time seems like an enormous, self-imposed burden.

Take, for example, the new Reminders application. All the new features in iOS 13 and Catalina means that the data is stored in a new format, which older versions of the Reminders application cannot read. Because of this, when you update your iPhone to the iOS 13, it will not synchronize with the Reminders app on the iPad or Mac, until you update those, which you cannot for several days or weeks.

Hypothetically, if Apple were to separate the Reminders app from the iOS release cycle, they could have waited for the update until all platforms, including iCloud, can support it. Users could then choose to update the app on all their platforms when it is convenient for them, without interrupting the user’s workflow.

Big feature laden software releases are a relic of the past when software was purchased on physical media in boxes. The big feature reveals at WWDC and then later at the release keynotes bring Apple a lot of attention and press. But, the chaos and delays (perceived and real) of the self-imposed release dates are not helping Apple’s reputation.

And yes, it is easy to criticize from the comfort of sitting behind my MacBook keyboard, while the amazing engineers and managers at Apple have to do all the work. There are probably people at Apple working this out in some way or another. Apple has put features into the interim “Spring” updates for High Sierra and Mojave and are deferring several features shown at WWDC to later versions of iOS 13 and Catalina.

How this continues to develop in the future will certainly be interesting.

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#! On Scripting OS X

📰News and Opinion

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

  • Eric Holtam: “DEP admins: “On September 19, Apple will release updated software license agreements. On that date a Program Administrator must go to the Apple Business Manager website and accept the following agreements to continue to use the program””
  • Scott Knight: “Need to do some quick hex editing? Just use VIM. Open your file and then :%!xxd to view the hex. Edit away and then %!xxd -r to switch back to the binary view. Save just like you would any other file in VIM.”
  • Arek Dreyer: “Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager now available in China, Thailand, Saudia Arabia, and Vietnam. Wow!”
  • Rich Trouton: “Wow! Thanks to everyone who’s pre-ordered, you’ve pushed @cedge318 and my Apple device management book to the top of the charts on Amazon!” ( Pre-order on Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Affiliate Links)
  • Rosyna Keller: “The altool docs have been updated to include the new --store-password-in-keychain-item option, which allows you to create a keychain item specifically for use in notarization scripts that use -p "@keychain:<item name>" ”
  • Arek Dreyer: “Another reminder for the appropriate person in your organization to log in to Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager and agree to the new terms and conditions.”

macOS 10.15 Catalina and iOS 13

🐞Bugs and Security

🔨Support and HowTos

🤖Scripting and Automation

🍏Apple Support

iOS 13

watchOS 6

“watchOS 6 is currently compatible with Apple Watch Series 3 and later. Apple Watch Series 1 and 2 will support watchOS 6 later this year.”

♻️Updates and Releases

🎧To Listen

📚 Support

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Mac Admin, Consultant, and Author