Today is the first day of July which means that 2022 is half done. For me, this always comes as a bit of a surprise. Every day and week seem to be crammed with more and more news, events, and things to do and often seem interminable. But, days and weeks as a plural seem to be just flitting by.
(Sponsor: SentinelOne)
Use of Obfuscated Beacons in ‘pymafka’ Supply Chain Attack Signals a New Trend in macOS Attack TTPs
A new typosquatting attack against the PyPI repository targets enterprise Macs with a distinctive obfuscation method.
In other “where has the time gone” related news: the first iPhone was released 15 years ago this week. Back then, the iPhone was obviously the beginning of something new, though no-one, or very few, grasped just how big and transformative smart phones were going to be, for Apple, the industry, and society as a whole.
Apple is special to have several products that disrupted their markets, but the iPhone stands out even among these. A mobile super computer with always-on connectivity in your pocket was imaginable before, but the reality exceeded most fiction and fantasies, and in many ways ran off in directions that weren’t anticipated at all.
Of course, the success of the iPhone and all the related products also transformed the company from permanently “beleaguered” to a multi-trillion-dollar company, which created several markets in its periphery. The “people who manage Apple devices for organisations” or “MacAdmins” niche is of course one of these markets and one I am very happy to provide some service to. This niche existed 15 years ago, but on a very different scale.
By coincidence, the iPhone arrived about 15 years after I took the first steps in the “Mac admin” space, when I started working with some companies helping them manage their “Macintosh” deployments in 1992. So much manual work back then…
Let’s see what the next 15 years bring!
Aside from reminiscing, July 1st also means that summer is here (in the Northern hemisphere) and some things really are slowing down a bit. Hope you will some time off to relax and enjoy!
If you think your company or product is a good fit to sponsor this newsletter, please contact me!
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
- Announcing the Mac Admins Foundation Store – MacAdmins.org
- Last Week on My Mac: Apple to kill all support for Sierra and earlier – Howard Oakley
- Base 13-Inch MacBook Pro With M2 Chip Has Significantly Slower SSD Speeds – Joe Rossignol, MacRumors
- Being an Ally in the Office – Pam Lefkowitz
macOS Ventura and iOS 16
- Why Passkeys Will Be Simpler and More Secure Than Passwords – Glenn Fleischman, TidBITS
- What is Platform SSOe and how will it transform user logins? – Sean Rabbitt, Jamf Blog
Security and Privacy
Support and HowTos
- Creating Data Enabled Culture – Thomas Larkin
- Change Default Finder Views Using defaults – Charles Edge
- Local IT Admin Accounts on Managed Mac Computers: Yes or No? – Matt Wilson, Kandji
- AD bind apocalypse – Patrick van Nerum
- How to identify the Bundle ID for macOS and iOS applications – Brian van Peski
- Startup and Recovery Modes on M1 and M2 Macs – Howard Oakley
- Open Compressed ZIP Files Saved in OneDrive – HCS Technology Group
Scripting and Automation
- BBEdit Hosts File Syntax Highlighting – Rob Allen
- “Pausing” initial Jamf Pro inventory collection – Dan K. Snelson
- Packaging & Deploying uniFLOW SmartClient for macOS – Gray
Updates and Releases
- Jamf Pro 10.39.1
- RRZE FAU networkShareMounter 2.1.0
- ninxsoft/Mist 0.1.1: A Mac utility that automatically downloads macOS Firmwares / Installers
To Listen
Just for Fun
Support
If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!
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!