Update week! As they had announced last week Apple released the ‘Spring Updates’ this week. As has been standard in the last two years, these updates contain new behaviors and features, many of which are relevant to MacAdmins.
Frederick Abeloos, aka ‘Traveling Tech Guy,’ has published a book with all his great research on FileVault:
- Book release: Managing FileVault in macOS 10.15 Catalina – Frederick Abeloos
- Buy it on the Apple Books Store (Affiliate link)
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.)
macOS Catalina 10.15.4 and iOS 13.4 Updates
- macOS Catalina 10.15.4
- iOS 13.4
- iPadOS 13.4
- watchOS 6.2
- Apple security updates
- Xcode 11.4
- Swift 5.2
- Universal Purchase for Mac Apps Now Available – Apple Developer (How will this work with VPP?)
- What’s new in mobile device management (via Dave Marra)
- Full Third-Party Cookie Blocking and More – John Wilander, WebKit
- Apple has released macOS 10.15.4 update and Security Updates 2020–002 – Howard Oakley
- What’s New in the macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Update (19E266)? – Mr Macintosh
- MacOS Security Updates – Mojave 2020–002 & High Sierra 2020–002 – Mr Macintosh
- macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Bootstrap changes – Frederick Abeloos
- Kernel extension warning dialogs in macOS Catalina 10.15.4 – Rich Trouton
- How to Verify Your Domain for Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager – HCS Technology Group
News and Opinion
Coronavirus and Remote Work
MacAdmins on Twitter
- William Smith: “Just learned a handy little command to query security information on macOS:
sudo /usr/libexec/mdmclient QuerySecurityInfoThis is a fantastic overview!” - Brian Stucki: “Confirmed: the updated Mac mini will still identify as “Late 2018” in software, etc. Also confirmed: We’re on pace for the biggest Mac mini signup week ever. Feels good to give people access to build servers, remote desktops, etc while working from home.”
- Tim Perfitt: “reply with a Mac keyboard shortcut you wish everyone knew. I’ll start: Control-a jumps to start of line (a is the start of the alphabet to remember) Control-e jumps to end of line (e for ”end“ to remember)” (Read the replies, there are some real good ones.)
Support and HowTos
- Disabling telemetry for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code – Rich Trouton
- A Guide for Configuring the macOS Catalina Kerberos Single Sign-On Extension – HCS Technology Group
- Implementing Google Chrome security best practices with Fleetsmith – Jon Xavier, Fleetsmith Blog
- Updates to Google Chrome deployment for macOS – JamfNation
Scripting and Automation
- Jamf-Custom-Profile-Schemas (Shared repos with json profile schemas to use in Jamf.)
Apple Support
Most of these are via Mr Macintosh – thanks!
- Apple security updates
- About legacy system extensions
- Prepare your Apple devices for working remotely
- Share folders with iCloud Drive
- If you use smart card to log in to your Mac and reset your Active Directory password from another computer – Apple Support
- If your macOS and iOS clients aren’t getting Apple push notifications (Updated with IP Ranges!)
- Use Apple products on enterprise networks (Updated)
- Using Bootstrap Token (via Mike Boylan)
- Deployment Reference for iPhone and iPad (Updated)
Updates and Releases
To Watch
To Listen
- Erin Merchant – Mac Admins Podcast
- Working from Home with Lisa Davies and Kevin Friel – MacDevOpsYVR
- Interview With Adam Engst Of the TidBITS Content Network — Command-Control-Power
Support
If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!
- Weblog
- Weekly Email Newsletter (TinyLetter)
- Apple News
- Micro.blog
- Mastodon.social
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