Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-10-06

Just a short news summary this week, as I am busy presenting today at MacSysAdmin in Gothenburg!


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📰News and Opinion

⚙️macOS and iOS Updates

🔨Support and HowTos

🤖Scripting and Automation

🍏Apple Support

♻️Updates and Releases

🎧To Listen

🎈Just for Fun

📚Support

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Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-09-29

Release week part 2! We got macOS Sonoma 14.0 release. If you were running the RC2, that is the same as the release. We also got the first round of iOS 17.1 and macOS Sonoma 14.1 betas! (It’ll be good to have the minor update numbers for iOS and macOS in sync for a change.


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macOS Sonoma

Reviews

MacAdmins

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Apple Support

Updates and Releases

To Watch

To Listen

Just for Fun

Support

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Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-09-22

Release week number one! We got iOS 17 and all the siblings. Next week, the updates will continue with the macOS Sonoma release on Sep 26, which Apple already set the stage for with security updates for iOS 16 and 17, and macOS Monterey and Ventura yesterday, as well as a second RC for macOS Sonoma.


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As expected, Big Sur did not get a security update. But there is a Safari update for Big Sur and Monterey. Apple’s productivity apps (Keynote, Numbers, Pages, iMovie and some of the Pro apps) also got updates.

The new iPhones 15 and Apple watches are shipping today. I am getting a new Series 9 watch, which will be an upgrade from my previous Series 5, where the battery has trouble lasting through my busier days. I am also considering upgrading from my iPhone 12 mini to the iPhone 15 Pro. My wife has the 14 Pro and I am very envious of the camera. But I want to go to the Apple Store and hold and feel the new phone first, and then decide whether to order or wait whether the mini form factor will see a revival in the next generation of the iPhone SE. (I don’t have much hope.)

Jamf Nation User Conference was this week, and from what I saw from afar, everyone had a great time. You can find a summary of the keynote on the Jamf blog.

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News and Opinion

iOS and iPad OS 17

macOS

Other Platforms

Applications

Community

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Updates and Releases

To Listen

Support

If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!

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Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-09-15

The Apple event this week, brought the expected iPhone 15 and Apple Watch updates. You can read all about them on Apple’s event page and the usual suspects.


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More importantly for Mac and iOS Admins: iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and watchOS 10 will be released September 18. macOS Sonoma 14.0 will be released September 26. This is four weeks earlier than the release of macOS Ventura. There were RC releases for all beta platforms this week.

JNUC is next week, safe travel and a fun conference for everyone who is going!

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Focus

News and Opinion

macOS Sonoma and iOS 17

macOS and iOS Updates

Social Media

  • David Nelson: “When reading what’s changed in the latest iPhone we tend to get comparisons to the immediate previous model. Not so helpful if you’re coming from a device that’s two or more years old. The “Compare iPhone Models” page helps. It includes devices all the way back to the iPhone 6 and the original SE. For example, I can see the weight and dimensions of my 12 Pro compared to a 15 Pro Max.

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Updates and Releases

To Listen

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!

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023–09–08

The news summary is back! And right in time for the Apple event next week (Tuesday, Sep 12, 10am PDT)! This is a big heavy summary to catch up on the last eight weeks. If you believe I missed something, let me know and I will add it next week.


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We got macOS 13.5 and iOS 16.6 right at the beginning of the break and a few security updates since then. The macOS Sonoma beta is on the seventh incarnation, iOS 17 and watchOS on the eighth, and, oddly, tvOS is on the ninth.

But aside from the betas and looming system releases, there were many updates for popular MacAdmins tools and software. I myself used the break to write up a few tutorials that have been rattling around in my head for a while.

We have three more big MacAdmin conferences this year: Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) in Austin, Texas, USA, Sep 19–21, MacSysAdmin in Göteborg, Sweden, Oct 3–6 and Objective-by-the-Sea 6.0, in Spain, Oct 9–13.

This year, I will be presenting at MacSysAdmin in Göteborg! I have the closing session on Friday, and will be talking about “MacAdmin Tools” so do not leave early. If you are there, too, be sure to say ‘Hi!’ and you will be rewarded with with some Scripting OS X stickers.

Eight weeks of summer hiatus was a long time. There were several scheduling requirements that lead to the long break this year. I plan to organize this differently next year.

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

macOS Sonoma and iOS 17

macOS and iOS Updates

Social Media

  • Aaron on X: “New in macOS Sonoma: You can now use one Mac to revive or restore another Mac that’s in DFU mode right from Finder. Previously you needed to install Apple Configurator to do this but now it’s built in! Accidentally stumbled upon this while playing around with some stuff.”

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Updates and Releases

To Watch

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!

Weekly News Summary for Admins – 2023-07-07

We got the third set of betas for macOS Sonoma and iOS 17 this week. I hope your testing is going well. Mine actually is, so far.


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Summer is in full swing and the number of posts and articles is declining as people are taking well deserved breaks. This means that this news summary will also go on summer break. It will return on September 9, with a large summary of what happened over the summer, just in time for the final stretch of beta releases and testing before the Fall releases.

That doesn’t mean you won’t hear anything from me. I am planning to use the time to write and finish a few articles that I have been tinkering with and work on some other projects that I have been mulling about. If something really interesting happens that is relevant to MacAdmins I will post about it.

I also plan to post and re-share interesting links on my Mastodon account. With all the turbulence in the social media space, that is the service I am using most right now. There is a nicely sized community of MacAdmins and related experts in the Fediverse now. I will also be (as always) active on the MacAdmins Slack.

I hope you get to enjoy a well-deserved break or at least a bit of a quieter time. See you in September!

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.)

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Updates and Releases

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!

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-06-30

The year is already half over. Summer is in full swing in the northern hemisphere. Nevertheless, MacAdmins everywhere are very busy publishing their wonderful work, in blog posts, GitHub repos, and at conferences and meetings. Several interesting posts and updates this week, thank you all!


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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

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Updates and Releases

To Watch

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!

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-06-23

Busy week with a surprise security update for most Apple platforms, beta 2 for macOS Sonoma, iOS and all their siblings and beta for Xcode 15 with a brand new SDK for visionOS 1.0, which means that you can start building apps for visionOS and play around with visionOS in the simulator…


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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

visionOS 1.0

These links lead to various pages on Apple’s Developer site and are targeted towards that audience and not admins. Nevertheless, I believe they may contain interesting bits for all Apple users.

macOS and iOS Updates

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Updates and Releases

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!

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-06-16

I am still catching up on WWDC videos and processing all the news. But overall it is looking like the system upgrades for this Fall are going to substantial improvements with regards to managing Apple devices.

We also got a new round oof betas for macOS 13.5 and iOS 16.6 this week.


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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.)

macOS Sonoma and iOS 17

Social Media

  • Ricky Mondello on Hachyderm.io: “The feature that allows you to share passkeys and passwords in iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma is not at all limited to families. You can set up shared groups with any collection of close contacts. And you can set up as many groups as you’d like.”

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Apple Support

Updates and Releases

To Watch

To Listen

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!

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2023-06-09

Wow, what a week!


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WWDC 2023

WWDC 23 is on and started with an amazing keynote. When they introduce three new Mac models, including the new Apple silicon based Mac Pro in the first 20 minutes, then you know it’s going to be in for quite ride. After 80 minutes, there was a moment where it wasn’t quite certain there was going to be a “One more thing…” and I thought I would have been happy if they had stopped there. New Macs, Apple silicon transition completed, many good new features for macOS, iOS, and watchOS.

But they didn’t stop and introduced the ‘Vision Pro,’ which is neither a ‘VR’ nor a ‘AR headset’, but a ‘spatial computer’ with a ‘spatial operating system.’ Whatever Apple calls it, this was the preview, mainly for the developers and it will not be available until next year and even then only in the US, so I will take my time until I make my judgement about this. This opinion is a step up from my former opinion of any VR/AR/spatial computer from Apple (or anyone), which can only be described as ‘indifferent.’

The potential of the Vision Pro and concept of ‘spatial computing’ seems great. The question whether Apple can achieve that potential remains. The price point and limited availability are clear signs that Apple is aware that this platform is maybe ‘not quite ready yet.’ But other platforms, like the Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and back in the day, even the Mac and the first PowerBooks took a few years to really find and define their purpose, too.

Sessions for MacAdmins

Apple has released more than 170 sessions for WWDC. Most of those sessions are focused on developers and not people who manage and deploy Macs and other Apple devices. Here is a list of sessions that I think MacAdmins should watch.

If you haven’t seen either of these, you really should. They give an excellent overview of what Apple thinks is relevant for the upcoming platforms. You might have other priorities, and that is fair, but getting the overview picture and an impression of where Apple is heading is important.

Don’t miss this

Always a great overview of what is will happen for Mac and iOS management. Covers many topics that don’t quite merit their own session.

Business & Education

Apple has a “Business & Education” topic in the developer app. These will be in-depth explanations of some specific new features.

Other interesting sessions

While these sessions will likely be very focused on developer topics, they often contain interesting explanations of how to use and sometimes how to manage these features.

And now, on to the news…

Apple devices

macOS Sonoma and iOS 17

Community

News and Opinion

Social Media

  • mikeymikey:open 'x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.Software-Update-Settings.extension?action=showBetaUpdates'” (Thread)

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Apple Support

Updates and Releases

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!