Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2021-12-17

On Monday night, Apple published macOS 12.1, iOS 15.2 and siblings. As if Apple admins didn’t already have their hands full remediating the log4shell issue that dropped last Friday.


(Sponsor: SentinelOne)

The Top 10 macOS Malware Discoveries in 2021

Here are the tactics and techniques of each threat and links to deeper technical analyses. Plus, find out the main lessons Mac admins and security teams can learn from this year’s crop of macOS malware so you can better protect your Mac fleets going into 2022.

The Top 10 macOS Malware Discoveries in 2021


macOS 12.1 brings (among other things) SharePlay to Mac. We have to wait a bit longer for Universal Control. The installers for macOS 11.6.2 and 12.1 should also fix the stalled upgrade issue, when upgrading from Mohave or older. iOS 15.2 brings (among other things) a new App Privacy report.

We also got a bunch of app updates: Xcode 13.2, macOS Server, Apple Remote Desktop, and the new Apple Configurator for iPhone, so you can (finally) add Macs with a T2 chip or Apple Silicon to your Automated Enrollment workflows. We also got Swift Playgrounds 4 for iPad which supports building Swift apps with UIKit and SwiftUI and even uploading them to the App Store.

The conferences for next year are already in full planning mode. MacAD.UK has the dates and location set: March 29 and 30 in Brighton, UK. PSU MacAdmin Conf is asking for your opinion on attendance planning. As always, you can find a list of conferences, with dates and links to their websites and session video archives (so you can catch up all those great sessions that you missed), on my conference page.

This is the last news summary of 2021. Thank you all so much for following along, and most importantly to everyone who wrote something helpful to the community. I hope you get some well-deserved downtime over the holidays and am looking forward to reading and sharing all these great posts next year.

The news summary will return on Jan 14, 2022.

Happy New Year!

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macOS 12.1 Monterey, iOS 15.2 and siblings

macOS 12.1 Monterey (21C52)

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Mac Admin, Consultant, and Author