Happy New Year!
Even though the events of the last few days might make this sound cynical, I mean it honestly. Let’s make the best of it!
I really hope you got to spend the holidays safely with family and get some peace and relaxation. I used some of the extra time to (finally) finish the first draft of my next book: “macOS Terminal and Shell” It should be ready for publishing in a few weeks.
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
- Let’s make 2021 the year of Disk Utility – Howard Oakley
- Jamf is now managing 20 million devices around the world as Apple’s enterprise growth continues – Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac
- VMware Launches All New Online macOS Management Training Course – Paul Mounkes, VMware End-User Computing Blog
macOS 11 Big Sur and Apple silicon Macs
- Booting an M1 Mac from an external disk: it is possible – Howard Oakley
- Big Sur Internet Recovery Unavailable! Replaced with Catalina – Mr. Macintosh
- Deploy packages to Apple Silicon devices – Adobe Help (via Ben Toms)
- Managing Fast User Switching Broken in Big Sur – Nathaniel Strauss
- Putting an M1 MacBook Air or Pro in DFU mode — Mac Lovin’
macOS and iOS Updates
- 10.15.3 Combo & Security Updates are not Creating Backup Snapshots – Mr. Macintosh
- Security Update 2020-001 for Catalina & 2020-007 Mojave + Safari 14.0.2 – Mr. Macintosh
MacAdmins on Twitter
- Joachim Fornallaz: “Keyboard shortcut of the day: In Messages, hit ⌘T to bring up the Tapback chooser for the last message (or the selected one on macOS), then press 1 through 6 to select the Tapback you want.”
- Eric Holtam: “M1 hardware cannot use a PRK to unlock and boot a FilveVaulted disk. Only user passwords. If you don’t like this regression, file feedback.”
- Benedict Evans: “TIL: Google’s Pixel 2, released in 2017, is now unsupported and gets no new software updates. Given today’s security environment, I guess that means I should recycle it. Apple just released iOS 12.5 for devices shipped in 2013.”
- Nathaniel Strauss: “Activation lock on AS Macs is the only way to prevent setting up a machine as new while bypassing MDM/management entirely. JamfPro doesn’t support it yet. Upvote and comment on this feature request if that matters to you.”
- Peter Steinberger: “Homebrew deprecated and removed a parameter within 20 days, shortly before Christmas, breaking automation around the world. Our CI also broke, but I’m sympathetic to the team. The thread is so typical. Only complaining, nobody offering to help or sponsor.” (via Erik Gomez)
Bugs and Security
- Using Jamf Protect to monitor SSH actions – Jaron Bradley, Jamf Blog
- Apple Sending Special iPhones to First Participants in Security Research Device Program – Juli Clover, MacRumors
- Mac App Store updates failing on Mojave – Jeff Johnson
- The Mac Malware of 2020 – Patrick Wardle, Objective-See’s Blog
Support and HowTos
- Resizing an AWS macOS EC2 instance’s boot drive to use all available disk space – Rich Trouton
- Setting up AutoPkg, AutoPkgr and JSSImporter on an Amazon Web Services macOS EC2 instance – Rich Trouton
- Rolling back versions in Munki and using blocking applications arrays – Alan Siu
- If you can log in and use sudo but can’t unlock Sys Pref prefpanes in Big Sur – Alan Siu
- Modern Macs Still Need FileVault. Built-in Mac SSD Encryption Is Easily… – Fritz Ifert-Miller, Kolide
- Notarization: is a notarized app ‘safe’ to use? – Howard oakley
- Using the virtual Apple GPU in VMware VMs – Dr Emily Kausalik
Scripting and Automation
- Integrating AutoPkg into Jamf Pro – Anthony Reimer
- Adobe Flash is dead – let’s get it removed – Rich Trouton
- Semi-automating profile installation in Big Sur – Alan Siu
Apple Support
- Device and Data Access when Personal Safety is At Risk (PDF, I had this in the last summary, but wanted to repeat, because this is important)
- Checklist: If you want to see if anyone else has access to your device or accounts
- Checklist: If you want to stop sharing with someone whom you previously shared with
- Checklist: If you want to make sure no one else can see your location
- Use Apple products on enterprise networks (updated, via Jason Broccardo)
- If the supported resolution isn’t available on an ultrawide or super-ultrawide external display connected to your Mac with Apple M1 chip
Updates and Releases
- Adobe Flash Player End of Life General Information Page
- DeployStudio Server v1.7.8 and v1.7.11 (universal)
- NoMAD2 Beta1
- BBEdit 13.5.4
To Listen
- Getting Ready for the M1 with Erik Schwiebert – Mac Admins Podcast
- macOS Big Sur upgrades with Addigy and Ntiva – Apple @ Work Podcast, 9to5Mac
- Dev And Ops Are Not Working Together – MacDevOpsYVR
- Super Spreader Clients — Command-Control-Power
- End of the Year – Mac Admins Podcast
- Happy New Year — Command-Control-Power
- Rebecca Latimer – Mac Admins Podcast
- Stupid Epson Printer & Nana’s Extension Cord — Command-Control-Power
- Deep learning with Osmo – Apple @ Work Podcast, 9to5Mac
Support
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