If you thought that the week after the iOS 14 release would be a quiet week, you would have been wrong.
We got updates for the Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and iMovie, the first bug fix updates for iOS 14 and siblings, macOS Big Sur beta8 and, quite surprisingly: 10.15.7.
It makes you wonder why this update got the 10.15.7 and not “yet another Supplemental Update,” but this is a very welcome change. Many thanks to Mr Macintosh and Howard Oakley for covering the updates so well.
Virtual JNUC 2020 is next week! (September 29 through October 1). My session will be on “Scripting Jamf Pro: Best Practices” on Oct 1 at 11am CDT (18:00 Central European). There will be a live Q&A during and after the session. You can still register for free.
The MacSysAdmin Online will be later in October. Participation will be free, but you can support the team by buying the MacSysAdmin Online T-Shirt, which will also enroll you in an exclusive giveaway raffle.
And just in this week, the “EveryWorld” conference will be online from November 25 to 27. There is a call for participation.
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.)
News and Opinion
- Apple Silicon in Enterprise – Graham Gilbert
- Introducing Swift on Windows – Swift.org
- Microsoft’s new Outlook for Mac design launches in October – Tom Warren, The Verge
- On Widget Shaming – Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels
macOS 11 Big Sur
macOS Catalina 10.15 and iOS 14 Updates
- macOS Catalina 10.15.7
- Downloads: 10.15.7 update, 10.15.7 combo update, Security Update 2020–005 for Mojave, Security Update 2020–005 for High Sierra
- About the security content of macOS Catalina 10.15.7, Security Update 2020–005 High Sierra, Security Update 2020–005 Mojave – Apple Support
- What’s New in the macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Update (19H2)? – Mr Macintosh
- Security Update 2020–005 for Mojave 10.14 & High Sierra 10.13 Released! – Mr Macintosh
- What has changed in macOS Catalina 10.15.7? – Howard Oakley
- Nathaniel Strauss: 10.15.7 fixes the enrollment bug
- iOS 14.0.1
- iPadOS 14.0.1
- watchOS 7.0.1
MacAdmins on Twitter
- Steve Hayman: “Well that’s easy.” (Read the thread for some Hayman scripting wisdom.)
- Carl Ashley: “The elephant in the room: Keeping up to date with OS/app releases isn’t always important. Sometimes, being able to get s**t done with something that works is more important.” (Thread)
- William Smith: “Next month, support for Microsoft Office for Mac changes in two ways: 1. With the release of Big Sur, only these N–2 versions are supported: macOS Big Sur macOS Catalina macOS Mojave 2. Office 2016 for Mac is end-of-lifed. Updates end. Support ends. KB docs begin retiring.”
- mikey: “TIL there’s an osascript cache at
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.osascript/Cache.db
” - Carl Ashley: “Why is it, that in 2020, after many years of having MDM available, are we still not yet able to specify values to pass on to Setup Assistant, or even values for the settings that Setup Assistant sets that we can use in normal profile payloads?” (Thread)
Bugs and Security
Support and HowTos
- How to Fix WatchOS 7 + Unlock My Mac – Tom Bridge
- A brief guide to disk image files – Howard Oakley
- Shipping Jamf Webhooks with Fivetran – T Lark
- How To Downgrade T2 BridgeOS Beta to a Production Version – Mr Macintosh
- How to Configure Jamf Connect Login, Azure, and IDent for Certificate Provisioning – HCS Technology Group
- Thunderbolt Storage in the field: Part 1 – The Gamma Carry test – DAM SAN
- Allowing Outset-run scripts to have access to user folders – Alan Siu
- Jamf School and custom (macOS) profiles – Patrick van Nerum
- macOS Containers and defaults – Jeff Johnson
- 12 Practical Privacy Tips for Your iPhone – Thorin Klosowski, Wirecutter
Scripting and Automation
- isign: resign iOS apps on Linux – Neil Kandalgaonkar
- Pixelmator Pro gets AppleScript support – Pixelmator Blog (Tutorial, via John C. Welch, also John Gruber)
- shell script arguments – Julia Evens, Wizard Zines
Apple Support
- How to search in Apple Business Manager – Apple Support (via Jason Broccardo)
- Content types supported by content caching in macOS
- Apple Business Manager release notes – Apple Support
- Apple School Manager release notes – Apple Support
- Review SCIM requirements for Apple Business Manager
- Tutorial: Configure Apple Business Manager for automatic user provisioning with Azure Active Directory – Microsoft Docs
- Making the Most of the App Store – Apple Developer (new info page)
iWork 10.2 updates
- Pages, Numbers, and Keynote Add Scribble Support, and Other Features – John Voorhees, MacStories
- What’s new in Keynote: Mac, iOS, iCloud, User Guide
- What’s new in Pages: Mac, iOS, iCloud, User Guide
- What’s new in Numbers: Mac, iOS, iCloud, User Guide
- Use videos from the web in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote
- Draw, annotate, and use Scribble in Pages
- Draw and use Scribble in Numbers and Keynote
- iMovie 10.1.16
Updates and Releases
To Listen
- Preparing for Big Sur: What Admins Need to Know About Apple MDM & the Future of Device Management – Jumpcloud Webinar
- Too Close For Comfort — Command-Control-Power
- Mass Storage with Bob Kite – Mac Admins Podcast
Support
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