Armin Briegel
I have been working with Macs and other Apple devices for over twenty-five years and probably held most existing technical job titles at one time or another. I worked for nearly ten years at Apple Germany and US as a Systems Engineer, Consulting Engineer, and Solutions Architect.
Then I worked for five years as System Administrator at University of Southern California where I had to put Mac management theory in to practice with Jamf Casper, Munki, and many, many custom scripts and packages.
We recently moved back to Europe which gives me an opportunity to ponder my career, the present and future of Mac management, and write about all of it.
Books
I have written five books for Apple Administrators:
- macOS Installation for Apple Administrators
- Packaging for Apple Administrators
- Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators
- Moving to zsh
- macOS Terminal and Shell
Presentations and Media
I regularly give presentations on topics relevant to Apple Administration and Scripting at conferences and meeting. Some are available online:
Mac Manager Meeting, Marriot Library of the University of Utah, January 2017
Presentation on Packaging: Video, Notes and Links
MacAdmins Podcast, Episode 33, April 2017
MacSysAdmin, Göteborg, October 2017
Presentation “Scripting Bash”: MacSysAdmin 2017 Session Documentation (Direct link to video), Notes and Links
MacAD.UK Speaker Interview (Jan 2018)
Want to write a book? Armin Briegel Talks Self Publishing macOS and iBooks
MacAD.UK, London, February 2018
Presentation: “The macOS School of Terminal Witchcraft and Wizardry” (Session Notes and Links)
MacSysAdmin, Göteborg, October 2018
Presentation: Swift for Apple Admins
MacAdmins Podcast, Episode 102 – Erase All the Things
MacAD.UK, London, March 2019
Presentation: Modern Deployment Workflows for Business
MacSysAdmin, Göteborg, October 2019
Presentation: Moving to zsh
CommandControlPower, Episode 342, Jan 2020
Texas Apple Admins Virtual, May 2020
Presentation: Obscure Terminal Features
PSU Mac Admins Conference, Campfire Session, May 2020
Presentation: Moving to zsh
Virtual JNUC 2020, October 2020
Presentation: Scripting Jamf Pro
MacSysAdmin 2020, October 2020
Presentation: Practical Scripting
My sincere congratulations for your work.
Hi,
You have a lot of useful stuff here and in your gists on github but what are the license terms if any?
If it exactly possible for your audience to legally use this information without getting sued if you, or your heirs, go nuts in the future?
I have found your posts so helpful and well written (despite the few typos) that I have bought the book as a thank you. I don’t particularly want this comment to be public but I do want you to receive the thanks.
Hi, nobody can answer this, so here’s hoping you can.
I can’t figure out how to replace a data value in a plist file from terminal.
I started with defaults write, but that’s a fail, because it cannot go more than one level deep (sub-key).
Now, I have been trying for days to use PlistBuddy, but no luck. It cannot write the data as-is, without masking it.
The value is already in the plist file, so I want to use it as-is, and just chance 1 character.
Can you please look at my post and see if you can help?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62080134/how-do-you-enter-data-in-plistbuddy
I am pretty frustrated, and to the point of thinking about getting sloppy, and just using awk.
thanks
I have been using `scout` for tasks like this: Use scout to read Property Lists
I’m new to zsh and your site has helped a lot. Thank you.
Greetings Armin,
I think maybe you need to add your zsh book to the list above on your “About the Author” page? I splurged for Father’s Day and bought all of your other books (I already had the zsh one) from Apple Books, so now I have a full Briegel library!
Hi,
The zsh setup series purely for Mac users are really appreciated.
Nowadays, the network is fast and convenient, but the information is less explicit for small group of users like Mac lovers.
Look forward for more articles~
Hi Armin, I’m interested in your last book “MacOS Terminal and shell”: please let me know if it is for neewbie, intermediate or expert users (I’m not so beginner); we could see the book’s index? Thanks a lot
The book assumes no or little prior knowledge. You can find a description and the table of contents here https://scriptingosx.com/mac0s-terminal-and-shell/