Bit of a lull in the news between the previous iOS 14 and forthcoming macOS 11 releases. Apple is shipping the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPad Air 4 this week and the devices look good in the reviews.
No reason to be bored, though. You probably haven’t caught up with the sessions from Virtual JNUC and MacSysAdmin Online, yet! (To be honest, there are some Campfire sessions I have not gotten around to watch yet.)
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
iOS 14 Updates
MacAdmins on Twitter
- Patrick Wardle: “Previously, a comprehensive macOS firewall could be implemented via a Network Kernel Extension (kext) Apple deprecated kexts, giving us Network Extensions….but apparently (many of) their apps / daemons bypass this filtering mechanism. Are we ok with this!?” (Thread, Michael Tsai)
- Joel Rennich: “Let’s talk attestation and boxes and what that means for generating keys on an iOS device. For a while folks, myself included, have been really interested in getting Apple to provide attestation statements about a key being in the Secure Enclave.” (Thread)
Bugs and Security
- Using all-Apple Thunderbolt hardware to kill my MacBook – Rachel by the Bay
- Meet Face ID and Touch ID for the Web – WebKit
- Let’s talk macOS Authorization – Csaba Fitzl
- We Need To Talk About MACL – Adam Chester
- Apple has pushed updates to XProtect and MRT – Howard Oakley
Support and HowTos
- Last Week on My Mac: Miss Havisham Syndrome – Howard Oakley
- Google LDAP as Cloud Identity Provider in Jamf Pro – Frederick Abeloos
- There’s more to files than data: Structure and data forks – Howard Oakley
Scripting and Automation
- Bash Parameter Expansion – Wizard Zines
- Remotely gathering sysdiagnose files and uploading them to S3 – Rich Trouton
- Dealing with xpath changes in Big Sur – Scripting OS X
- Bash Functions – Wizard Zines
- hjuutilainen/bigsurblocker: Block Big Sur installer app from launching
Updates and Releases
To Listen
- Adobe Packaging in 2020 with Daz Wallace – Mac Admins Podcast
- Backing Up Big Data – MacDevOpsYVR
- If You’re Chuckling, You’re Not Getting It — 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
If you want to support me and this website even further, then consider buying one (or all) of my books. It’s like a subscription fee, but you also get a useful book or two extra!