No new updates this week. Nevertheless, MacAdmins seem to be taking the time to catch up and get some work done, as we got many interesting posts this week. We also got beta3 for 11.4.
MacDeployment is scheduled for June 1–2 and you can register to attend for free! I will be doing “An Online Presentation on Presenting Online.” I have also updated my conference overview page.
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Kandji has commissioned Jason Snell of Six Colors to create an Enterprise Report Card for Apple. This is a chance for Mac Admins to give feedback on how they see Apple.
The deadline to add your score and comments is today May 14, 2021. The results will be compiled to run in early June before WWDC. The contact information is for the survey only and you can choose to remain anonymous.
This is a great chance for MacAdmins to provide some feedback!
📰News and Opinion
- Reimagining Apple’s documentation – Paul Hudson, Hacking with Swift
- inessential: What It Was Like to Sell Apps Online in 2003 – Brent Simmons
- Last Week on My Mac: Would you regret an M1 iMac? – Howard Oakley
- Apple is Holding Back the Creator Economy – Li Jin, Nathan Baschez, and Yash Bagal, Means of Creation
- Jamf Announces Intent to Acquire Wandera, Furthering its Leadership in Apple Enterprise Management – Jamf
- Teradici and MacStadium Collaborate to Enable High-Performance Remote Access for the Mac
- App Store stopped over $1.5 billion in suspect transactions in 2020 – Apple Newsroom
🐦MacAdmins on Twitter
- Rich Trouton: “I learned something usefule about macOS login keychain behavior today: When you’re logged in and open Terminal, your login keychain unlocks for that Terminal session. When you’re connecting to your Mac via SSH and provide your password, your login keychain unlocks for that SSH session. When you’re connecting to your Mac via SSH and are using passwordless login, your login keychain does not unlock for that SSH session. Makes sense, right? No password, no automatic unlock. Still caught me off guard when something I was expecting to work did not work.”
- Brent Simmons: “Right now is actually a pretty great time for Mac apps. Old faves like BBEdit, NetNewsWire, Acorn, OmniOutliner, and many others are still around — and there are amazing newcomers like Sketch and Nova and plenty of others. The best may be yet to come. :)”
- Marco Arment: “Instead, what we keep hearing from Apple is ‘You owe us for your entire business, you should be thankful for everything we’ve done for you, we don’t need you, we’re doing you a favor by allowing you, and your apps add absolutely no value to our highly profitable hardware.’” (Thread)
- Tim Perfitt: “M1 Mac mini arrived! I shall use this thread for my findings.” (Thread)
🔐Security and Privacy
- LaunchDaemon Hijacking: privilege escalation and persistence via insecure folder permissions – Bradley Kemp
- Security update available for Adobe Acrobat and Reader – Adobe Security Bulletin
- Send My: Arbitrary data transmission via Apple’s Find My network – Fabian Bräunlein, Positive Security (more a proof of concept, rather than a security problem, but still interesting)
🔨Support and HowTos
- Virtualizing OpenCore and x86 macOS on Apple Silicon (and even iOS!) – Mykola Grymalyuk (proof of concept, rather than a workable solution, but still very interesting)
- Command to add a secure token to a macOS user account – Alan Siu
- Modern Bootstrapping: Part 1 (Intro) – Mike Solin
- Okta LDAP User Group Membership with Jamf Pro: The Missing Link – A. P. Orlebeke
- How $PATH is Constructed on macOS – 0xmachos
- M1 Recovery Requires Mouse or Trackpad – Twocanoes Software
- Modern Bootstrapping: Part 2 (Building the Packages) – Mike Solin
- What Mac Admins Need to Know about Rosetta 2 – Kandji Blog
- Adobe is dropping PostScript Type 1 font support. Be prepared for the change – Glenn Fleishman, MacWorld
- PostScript Type 1 fonts end of support – Adobe Support
🤖Scripting and Automation
- Making Links Launch Mac Apps & Preferences (And a Script to List URL-Callable PrefPanes & Their Addresses), Nick Tong, LinkedIn
- Using Signing Manager with autopkg-conductor – Rich Trouton
🍏Apple Support
- How to upgrade from iCloud Documents and Data to iCloud Drive (most Apple systems should already have done this switch years ago, this may be relevant if you still have some really old devices)
- Unlock your iPhone with Apple Watch when you’re wearing a face mask
♻️Updates and Releases
- macOS Support Essentials 11: Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) Exam Study Aids, Dan Snelson
- Revise IT (updated with macOS 11 content)
- grahampugh/erase-install 0.20.0
- Free Apple MDM – JumpCloud (Jumpcloud is now free for 10 Users and 10 devices)
- MunkiAdmin 1.8.0 beta 2
- Jamf Pro 10.29
- Signing Manager – Twocanoes Software
🎧To Listen
- Nudging Erik Gomez – Mac Admins Podcast
- Alleviating ransomware’s legal headaches with Jake Bernstein – Lock and Code, Malwarebytes Labs
- Claris CEO Brad Freitag discusses why Claris Connect is uniquely positioned to solve integrations with SIS vendors – Apple @ Work Podcast, 9to5Mac
- Place, Lift, Done! — Command-Control-Power
- Dev Sec Ops with Estela Baca and Chad Calease – MacDevOpsYVR
🎈Just for Fun
📚 Support
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