Category: Weekly News

Many new posts, regarding macOS Mojave and iOS 12. Usually I do not upgrade my main devices to beta versions, but this time I am sorely tempted.

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• MacAdmins Slack – a highly opinionated guide

📰News and Opinion

• WWDC 2018: Apple’s counterintuitive business moves – Dan Moren, Macworld
• Every Default macOS Wallpaper – in Glorious 5K Resolution – 512 Pixels
• Is it time to buy an eGPU? – Howard Oakley
• On The Sad State of Macintosh Hardware – Quentin Carnicelli, Rogue Amoeba
• On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware – John Gruber, Daring Fireball

🏜 macOS Mojave

• Apple Books: What’s new in iOS 12 – Serentiy Caldwell, iMore
• MDM updates from WWDC 2018 – Nick Thompson, Jamf Blog

🎤Siri Shortcuts

• The incredible importance of Siri Suggestions
• Siri Shortcuts FAQ: Everything you need to know! – Matthew Cassinelli, iMore
• Shortcuts: A New Vision for Siri and iOS Automation – Federico Viticci, MacStories

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

• Tom Bridge: “Erik is one of the best engineers in our field, and his skills are legion. A degree should not be a gate to an IT career.”
• William Smith: “Please help spread the word! My company is awarding sponsorships to attend #JNUC to 10 individuals from underrepresented groups within the technology sector. If you’d like to apply or know someone who’d benefit from attending”
• Jamf: “For the third year in a row, we’re running the #JNUC Diversity Sponsorship program and will award sponsorships to 10 individuals from underrepresented groups within the tech sector. Apply today for your pass to the largest #Apple IT event on the planet!”
• William Smith: “Microsoft Office 2019 — that’s 2–0–1–9 — for Mac Preview should release tomorrow. Just a continuation of the normal monthly Insider updates with a only a brand name change. First production release (16.17) releases in a few months. #MacAdmins”
• Tim Perfitt: “A customer told me they got up and did a dance after imaging Windows 10 onto iMacs via MDT / SCCM using Winclone 7 Pro. Winclone 7 makes you dance with happiness.”
• Ole Begemann: “Tadaaa! My first self-generated Dynamic Wallpaper for macOS Mojave. Reverse engineering file formats is fun. 🕵️‍♂️… ”

🐞Bugs and Security

• I can be Apple, and so can you – Josh Pitts, Okta
• I’m Spartacus – David Acland, moof IT

🔨Support and HowTos

• Transitions: Munki in a Cloud – Tom Bridge
• MacDevOps YVR 2018: terraform-munki – Clayton Burlison
• Redirect with nginx before hitting a load balancer – Ross Derewianko
• Microsoft’s failed attempt on Debian packaging – There and back again how to not do postinstallation scripts
• Chart: How Long Does Apple Support Older iPhone Models? – Patrick Wagner, Statista
• Can’t install the Mojave beta on an external drive? Try this – Howard Oakley
• How to downgrade your iPhone or iPad from the developer beta of iOS 12 to iOS 11 – Serenity Cladwell, Rene Ritchie, iMore
• Installing and Debugging on Mojave – Michael Tsai
• Meraki, Apple Classroom and ‘Not-shared’ shared iPads – Darren Wallace, moof IT
• Unified but not uniform: how the log has changed – Howard Oakley
• 7 tips and tricks for using the Classic API – Brad Becker, Jamf Blog

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Updated Xcode command line tools installer script now available – Rich Trouton
• Getting Jamf iOS Installed App Count – Nathaniel Strauss
• Preview To The Full – Tony Williams
• Sending Jamf Pro notifications to Slack – Rich Trouton

🍏Apple Support

• How to delete your Apple ID account

♻️Updates and Releases

• createUser
• Consolation 3.0b14 now supports Mojave’s Signposts in High Sierra and more
• Jamf Pro 10.5.0
• Office 2019 for Mac Preview is ready for commercial customers

📺To Watch

• MacDevOps:YVR 2018
  • Featured Talks
  • All Talks
• Hands-on: 50+ new macOS Mojave changes and features – Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac
• xcconfig – Olof Hellman, Seattle Xcoders May 12, 2018

🎧To Listen

• Hope is a Cruel Mistress, Live at MacDevOps YVR – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

There are no ads on my webpage or this newsletter. If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!

• Weblog
• Weekly Email Newsletter (TinyLetter)
• Twitter
• micro.blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

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!

• ‘macOS Installation for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

WWDC week! A peak at all the wonderful new stuff coming to us in iOS 12, watchOS 5, tvOS 12 and macOS Mojave 10.14.

Also macOS 10.13.5 dropped last Friday, a few hours after I posted the last newsletter. (Already seems so long ago.)

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• Books Update

📰News and Opinion

• How Apple Programmer Sal Soghoian Got Apps Talking to Each Other – Jordan McMahon, Wired

💻WWDC and macOS Mojave

• macOS – Mojave Preview – Apple
• APFS will finally be supported on Fusion Drives – in macOS 10.14 Mojave – Howard Oakley
• macOS Mojave: The MacStories Overview – John Vorhees, MacStories
• macOS 10.14 Mojave Removes Software Update Mechanism From the Mac App Store and Returns it to System Preferences – Tim Hardwick, Mac Rumors
• Apple opens Health Records API to developers – Dave Mark, The Loop
• iOS 12 and watchOS 5: A Roundup of All the Little Things – Ryan Christoffel, MacStories
• With Mojave, Apple makes changes inside and outside Mac App Store – Jason Snell, Six Colors
• Ersatz Free Trials – Daniel Jalkut
• Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave – Michael Tsai

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

• Erik Gomez: “@macjustice brings the potential good news that Apple has (once again) fixed the mdm enrollment bug (the nag) with 10.13.5.”
• Anthony Reimer: “I’ve been a busy #MacAdmin this week. I wrote an AutoPkg recipe that lets you track when a particular Apple Support Article is updated.”
• Eric Holtam: “Note that today’s security update for 10.13 requires 10.13.4. So if you’re going from 10.13.3 to 10.13.5 it won’t pick up the security update until you’re running 10.13.5.”
• Pepijn Bruienne: “Today’s macOS 10.13.5 update includes an EFI update (CVE–2018–4251) which you want to apply soon. Make sure it’s done with softwareupdate and not a PKG install as previously noted! ”
• Clayton Burlison: “Alright I’m actually pretty excited about this new Notarization in macOS. Plus we got CLI tools.”
• William Smith: “Starting with Office 2016 for Mac 16.14 (releasing this month), Microsoft will be releasing font updates separately from app updates! New and updated fonts are still sandboxed and download into Group Containers.”
• Harald Monihart: “#WWDC2018 is still going on and we are already testing our first internal tools that will support #Mojave’s #darkmode and have 10+ people working on day zero support for 10.14 @SAP…” (click through for images)

🐞Bugs and Security

• Apple Will Soon Report on Government App Store Takedown Requests – Josh Centers, TidBITS
• Breaking macOS Mojave

🔨Support and HowTos

• Bypassing the SecureToken dialog for mobile accounts – Neil Martin
• What’s in the High Sierra 10.13.5 update? – Howard Oakley
• How High Sierra checks your EFI firmware – Howard Oakley

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Enabling Java Management Extensions (JMX) for Jamf Pro – Jamf Knowledge Base
• Installing Mudbox 2018 with Munki – Garrett Yamada
• Reinstall a clean macOS with one button – Bill Smith, Jamf

🍏Apple Support

• About the macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 Update
• About the security content of macOS High Sierra 10.13.5, Security Update 2018–003 Sierra, Security Update 2018–003 El Capitan
• About the security content of iOS 11.4
• Identify counterfeit or uncertified Lightning connector accessories
• Apple Business Manager Help
• Profiles and Logs – Bug Reporting – Apple Developer

♻Updates and Releases

• Revise IT (updated for 10.13 tests)
• stethoscope-app 1.1.8 (open source app from netflix that checks certain security settings)

📺To Watch

• Four important WWDC sessions (h/t Robert Hammen)
  • WWDC 2018 Keynote
  • Platforms State of the Union
  • Your Apps and the Future of macOS Security
  • What’s New in Managing Apple Devices
• MacAdmins Podcast at MacDevOps:YVR 2018

🎧To Listen

• The WWDC Roundtable – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

There are no ads on my webpage or this newsletter. If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!

• Weblog
• Weekly Email Newsletter (TinyLetter)
• Twitter
• micro.blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

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!

• ‘macOS Installation for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

My new book ‘macOS Installation for Apple Administrators’ is out!

Go get it, and read it!

(Please leave a review and share the link on social media!)

Also this is the ‘WWDC eve’ edition of the newsletter. iOS 11.4 dropped this week, but as of now we are still waiting for macOS 10.13.5.

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• New Book: macOS Installation for Apple Administrators

📰News and Opinion

• Let’s (Finally) Say Goodbye to Passwords – Jow Diamond, Okta
• Phil Schiller Explains Steam Link App Rejection – John Vorhees, MacStories
• Last Week on My Mac: The UUID conspiracy – Howard Oakley
• Happy GDPR Day – Ryan Govostes

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

• Federico Viticci: “Don’t mind me, I’m just using a terminal app on my iPad to access a folder from a third-party file provider, fetch a text file, and have native Text-to-Speech read it to me no big deal (this is OpenTerm by @LouisDhauwe reading from @WorkingCopyApp in Files)”
• GaAs Ellie D.: “In case anyone is wondering, you would have to move towards the access point at roughly 621.5 kilometers per second in order to doppler-shift Wi-Fi channel 1 into channel 2.” I have never wondered about this, but now I have so many questions.
• mikeymikey: “It’s a trap. But seriously, there are dozens of horror stories about how there is no good way to get back under the limit should you ever upgrade. Think long and hard before you do.…” On the free month of extended iCloud storage.
• Felix Krause: “ Just found out: over the last 8 years my iOS Safari ”leaked“ my Safari Favorites bookmarks to every single WiFi hotspot and ISP I was ever connected to, as well as all other machines in the same network… Safari always refreshes the favicon of all your Favorites.…”
• Mac Kung Fu: “Version of an Apple support doc until yesterday, when it was removed, talked of enabling Messages in iCloud on the Mac: https://t.co/gQGFbTUbOa Apple’s pulled the 10.13.5 update for a very mysterious reason…”
• Pepijn Bruienne: “If you’re somehow still applying macOS updates using the package installer and not using softwareupdate you’re definitely missing out on EFI updates. The postinstall in FirmwareUpdate.pkg was nixed in ~10.13.3 and softwareupdate/startosinstall took over. A good thing, IMHO.”
• Erik Gomez“Since this is a very common thing that people using #jamf do, you should really perk up and ask them (jamf) why they still haven’t figured out Apple updates after all these years…”

🐞Bugs and Security

• The Curse of Non-Removable MDM – Rachel Viniar

🔨Support and HowTos

• Imaging is More Dead – Anthony Reimer
• Presentation Slides & Demo Videos – Getting Saucy with APFS — mac4n6.com
• Disabling Jamf Pro LDAP wildcard searches to speed up user and group lookups – Rich Trouton
• Making The Grade: Apple’s app installation process explained – Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac
• macOS Smart card questions answered – Daniel Weber, Jamf Blog
• Manage Santa within osquery – Trail of Bits Blog
• Parental Controls keeps blocking allowed apps – Alan Siu
• Pro Tip: One-tap scroll back to the bottom of the camera roll – Charlie Sorrel, Cult of Mac

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Creating text files with no line terminators – Andrew Valentine

🍏Apple Support

• About iOS 11.4 Update
• Security update notes are still outstanding
• If kernel_task is using a large percentage of your Mac CPU
• How to install macOS at your organization (updated)
• iCloud security overview

♻Updates and Releases

• Winclone 7 (blog post, standard, pro) this new release of Winclone almost makes me want to manage dual-boot Macs again… almost
• Things 3.6 (blog post, iPhone, iPad, macOS) improved keyboard navigation
• Retrobatch, new batch image processor for macOS
• RiverNews (Web Site, Mac App Store new RSS reader
• Official WWDC app for iOS
• Unofficial WWDC App for macOS

📺To Watch

• CMD-D, Masters of Automation, 2017 Conference Videos

🎧To Listen

• Behind the Rainbow Curtain – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

There are no ads on my webpage or this newsletter. If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!

• Weblog
• Weekly Email Newsletter (TinyLetter)
• Twitter
• micro.blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

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!

• ‘macOS Installation for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

Some interesting releases this week. Otherwise, you can tell that WWDC is approaching as the macOS/iOS wish lists are appearing.

In other news: I finished the first draft my next book “macOS Installation for Apple Administrators” and have sent it out the test-readers (thank you!). I posted an excerpt on my blog last week: macOS Installation: Strange New World

This topic has proven to be very volatile with Apple changing important parts of the workflows in nearly every update to 10.13. I don’t think this new book completely does the topic justice yet. There are many sections where I’d like to add more detail and depth.

However, I also believe it is already very useful in its current form, especially as ‘deployment season’ is approaching for education administrators, more secure boot Macs are likely to be announced at WWDC and the next macOS (10.14 or whatever) is looming on the horizon.

Like my other books, I plan to regularly update this book at least until the macOS 10.14 (or what ever it ill be called) release. When you purchase the book you will get the updates pushed from the iBooks Store for free.

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• The Next Age of the Mac
• BBEdit at 25 and why I still use it

📰News and Opinion

• Yubico launches an SDK that lets iOS devs add support for its NFC keys – Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch
• Razer announces entry-level eGPU enclosure with support for macOS – Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac
• CMD-D Scripting Boot Camp, October 15–17, Atlanta
• Today Mac OS X is as old as the Classic Mac OS – Jason Snell
• iOS 12: Geeky features iOS needs – Jason Snell, Macworld

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

• mikeymikey: “Sad but true. Apple promised APFS docs. Where is our APFS equivalent of this?”
• Bill Lloyd: “Scammers gonna scam.… ” (Why we can’t have nice things…)
• Victor (groob): “Using @osquery and @kolideco to track DEP installs and MDM User approved status”
• Pepijn Bruienne: “Okay, /usr/libexec/remotectl get-property localbridge UniqueChipID could be useful. /usr/libexec/remotectl dumpstate gets all available properties for the bridge device.”
• Jonathan Levin: “#Supraudit for MacOS now allows logging to syslog/os_log in the free version – along with powerful filters, and fully compliant JSON”
• James Thomson: “Mac OS X is as old today as Classic Mac OS was when Mac OS X was first released. Clearly time for the new OS announcement at WWDC 😉”

🐞Bugs and Security

• These 299 macOS apps are so buggy, Apple had to fix them in AppKit – Worth Doing Badly (It has been pointed out, it is unfair to put the blame entirely on the app developers, as some of them were originally working around bugs in Apple’s frameworks and the workarounds required the exceptions later. Still interesting.)
• The 2018 Duo Trusted Access Report: Enterprise Remote Access

🔨Support and HowTos

• Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon – Howard Oakley
• Using NoMAD Login With Jamf DEP Workflows – Nathaniel Strauss (Excellent blogging debut post!)

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Using the Jamf Pro API to mass-delete computers and mobile devices – Rich Trouton
• Approve UAMDM and repush KEXT Profile – Eric Hemmeter

🍏Apple Support

• About iWork and Box collaboration security

♻Updates and Releases

• OpenTerm 2.0 (Terminal like scripting shell for iOS)
• DEPNotify 1.1.0
• VMware Fusion 10.1.2
• 1Password 7.0.1: release notes,
  Mac AppStore

📺To Watch

• Star Trek Movie Bundle 1–10 for $29.99 (off topic, US iTunes store, enjoy!)

🎧To Listen

• Automating Everything, with Sal Soghoian – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

There are no ads on my webpage or this newsletter. If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!

• Weblog
• Weekly Email Newsletter (TinyLetter)
• Twitter
• micro.blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

If you want to support me and this website even further, then consider buying one (or both) of my books. It’s like a subscription fee, but you also get a useful book or two extra!

• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

BBEdit turned 25 years old this week! Congratulations! (I will have a few thoughts on that later.)

I also posted a sneak peak on my next book: “macOS Installation for Apple Administrators”

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• macOS Installation: Strange New World

📰News and Opinion

• BBEdit: Not Quite Bare Bones – Andrew Johnston, TidBITS
• MacOS monitoring the open source way – Michael George, Dropbox Tech Blog
• Should you use shutdown or reboot in the command line? – Howard Oakley
• T-Mobile owner battles dataJAR over magenta logo – BBC News
• An Enterprising Future – Mike Kaply
• New and Improved macOS Native Software Management – Naveen Pitchandi, VMware End-User Computing Blog
• The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers – Erich Schubert

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

• BBEdit: “On this day in 1993, Bare Bones Software released the first commercial version of BBEdit.”
• Yoann Gini: “Apple really need to make DEP evolve to include SAML support for MDM authenticated enrolment. This login/password field is way too limiting for modern corp…”
• Dean Hager: “Jamf Software has hit a major milestone. All 10 million are Apple devices. It’s our mission. Thank you again #JamfNation!…”
• Anthony Reimer: “Big warning to hobbyists using FileMaker for personal databases: new licensing in v.17 increases prices for non-Advanced users and deprecates Runtime. If you have v.14+, upgrade to 17. It might be your terminal version. 1/2” (thread)

🔨Support and HowTos

• Preventing alarms from going off on MDM’ed iPads – Alan Siu
• How To Extract Legacy FileVault-Encrypted Files on macOS 10.13 High Sierra – Apple Tool Box
• MGMT300, Office for Mac, First Run and Activation – Paul Bowden, Microsoft
• Install P5 on the Jellyfish – DAM SAN
• Upgrading from ESXi 6.5 to ESXi 6.7 via SSH and esxcli – Rich Trouton
• Lab Nauseam – Dawn of the DEP – Neil Martin
• How to free up system storage in macOS High Sierra – The Sweet Setup

🤖Scripting and Automation

• JSS Hardcoded account information is bad – Ross Derewianko

♻️Updates and Releases

• Tweetbot 3 for Mac
• Munki 3.3 Release

🎧To Listen

• Nolo Contendere, with Josh Wisenbaker – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

I do not have any ads on my webpage or this newsletter. However, if you want to support me and this website, then please consider buying one (or both) of my books. (Imagine it’s like a subscription fee, but you also get one or two useful books on top!)

If you have already bought and read the books, please leave a review on the iBooks Store. Reviews are important to help new potential readers make the purchase decision. Thank you (again)!

• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

Not so busy this week. I have the impression we are entering the calm before the WWDC storm.

I had already mentioned the 20-year anniversary of the iMac last week. However, I have to add this post by Horace Dediu of Asymco where he posted the best infographics on the topic.

I have added two more conferences to the list. X world in Sydney and MacTech in Los Angeles. I put up this list because there were quite a few announcements and schedules published in the last two weeks. I do not plan to make this a permanent section as the MacAdmins Podcast team already has a great list of events nearly every week.

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• PLIST Editor
• Dutch MacAdmins Meeting: 8 June
• Demystifying root on macOS, Part 4 —The Authorization Database (this concludes my series on the root account on macOS)

🎤Conferences

• MacDevOps YVR – June 7–8
• X World, Sydney – June 27–29
• MacAdmins Conference at Penn State – July 10–13
• MacSysAdmin, Göteborg – October 2–5
• MacTech Conference, Los Angeles – Nov 7–9

📰News and Opinion

• My request for all the data Apple had on me was eye-opening – Jefferson Graham, USA Today
• How Long Do Hard Drives Last: 2018 Hard Drives Stats – Andy Klein, Backblaze
• Just in Time – Horace Dediu Asymco
• Last Week on My Mac: Is the macOS command line doomed? – Howard Oakley
• Contacts and People — Ryan Gray
• iOS 11’s Streamlined, Yet Extensible File Management – Federico Vitcci, MacStories (iOS centrix, but this is one set of features I would like to see ported ‘back to the Mac’)

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

• Tim Perfitt: “Getting ready to release Winclone 7 in the next few weeks and am really stoked about this release. Here is why. #winclone7” (Thread)
• Clayton Burlison: “Times when it is acceptable to message me with “I have a problem and need your help” on three different platforms within a time span of 20 minutes? Never is the correct answer.” (Thread)
• Julia Evans: “find” (click to see image, also check out her twitter for more great info graphics: kill, tar, sort & uniq, xargs, grep)

🐞Bugs and Security

• What do Security Updates actually fix? – Howard Oakley
• iOS 11.4 Disables Lightning Connector After 7 Days, Limiting Law Enforcement Access – Juli Clover, Mac Rumors

🔨Support and HowTos

• The Joy of ssh: remote control and quick copying – Howard Oakley
• Detecting if a logged-in user on a FileVault-encrypted Mac has a Secure Token associated with their account – Rich Trouton
• Moving Beyond Scheduled Jobs to Event-Driven Workflows – Jeremy Baker
• How to enable logging in Outlook for Mac – Microsoft Support

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Bulk-extracting and combining audio from .mov to .mp3 – Alan Siu

♻️Updates and Releases

• Discovery 1.0 for Mac (Bonjour Browser 2.0) (iOS version)
• PLIST Editor 1.11 (Read my review.)
• Munki 3.3 Release Candidate 2
• Jamf Pro 10.4.1

🎧To Listen

• State of iOS in Education, with Fraser Speirs – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

There are no ads on my webpage or this newsletter. If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!

• Weblog
• Weekly Email Newsletter (TinyLetter)
• Twitter
• micro.blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

If you want to support me and this website even further, then consider buying one (or both) of my books. It’s like a subscription fee, but you also get a useful book or two extra!

If you have already bought and read the books, please leave a review on the iBooks Store. Reviews are important to help new potential readers make the purchase decision. Thank you (again)!

• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

The conference registration season has begun! Three conferences started their registrations this week. There should be one for you. (The one for me is MacSysAdmin, where I will be presenting among many other great speakers this year.)

We got quite a few security related posts this week. Most important is a note from Twitter that they may have left your password unencrypted on their servers. So go change that right now, if you have not already.

In happier news, the iMac turns 20 this week!

Also in last week’s email I forgot set the subject and the email was sent out with tinyletter’s default subject line. My apologies for the confusion both for you, the readers and any email rules/filters you may have set up.

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• Demystifying root on macOS, Part 3 — root and Scripting

🎤Conferences

• MacDevOps YVR – June 7–8
• MacAdmins Conference at Penn State – July 10–13
• MacSysAdmin, Göteborg – October 2–5

📰News and Opinion

• 12 thoughts on the new Apple enterprise – Jonny Evans, Computerworld
• Apple posts record Q2 profit: charts, live tweets – Jason Snell
• Ask tech questions in private with Stack Overflow’s new enterprise product for smaller teams – Tom Crazit, GeekWire
• 20 years of iMac: A story of relentless design iteration – Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac
• Improving the Advanced Protection Program for iOS users – Dario Salice, Google Blog
• Keeping your account secure – Parag Agrawal, Twitter Blog
• Two passwords are always better than one – Jessy Irwine, The Outline

🐦MacAdmins on Twitter

• Enno Rey: “New ERNW Whitepaper: ”APFS Internals for Forensic Analysis”
• Edge Case: “AirPods case will happily charge from an iOS device, provided a USB condom is used so the phone doesn’t know what the device is. (Without datablock it errors with “AirPods accessory requires too much power”)…”
• Rich Smith: “New version of EFIgy client available with iMac Pro support”
• Kyle Crawford: “startosinstall hangs if run from 10.9.5 recovery. 10.10.5 and newer work.”
• Jason Broccardo: “Not sure when this changed but iCloud now allows you to have more than 99 email rules… ”
• Scripting OS X: “Apple is now selling more Watches than Macs.… ”
• Aaron Freimark: “Apple stops signing iOS 11.3, so only 11.3.1 is installable… Wait, I thought MDMs can now target specific versions in a 90-day window. How’s that going to work now?”
• Paul Lomax: “The most unbelievable aspect of the Star Trek universe is that every ship they meet has compatible video conferencing facilities…”

🐞Bugs and Security

• Jamf mdm -userLevelMdm breaks DEP enrolment on Macs – Rick Goody
• Apple’s latest updates are out – APFS password leakage bug squashed – Paul Ducklin, Naked Security
• Lojack Becomes a Double-Agent – NetScout

🔨Support and HowTos

• What happens when you run cp on the command… – Safia Abdalla
• How to enroll a Mac VM running macOS High Sierra hosted by Parallels Desktop Pro – Howie Isaacks
• How to upgrade your older Mac Pro CPU – Anthony Casella, iMore
• Mobile Device Management Protocol Reference Changelog – Erik Berglund
• Apple iMac Pro and Secure Storage – Pepijn Bruienne Duo Security
• CrashPlan 6.5 stuck on Connecting… and never times out – Alan Siu
• VMware Fusion Custom Networks (vmnets) Demystified – David Spencer
• Bash sessions in macOS (and why you need to understand its working) – Yogesh Khatri

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Finding A Regular Expression Tool – Tony Williams

♻️Updates and Releases

• BBEdit 12.1.3
• EFIgy
• Sloth 2.3
• Jamf Pro 10.4.0

📺To Watch

• Getting Saucy with APFS! – The State of Apple’s New File System – Sarah Edwards

🎧To Listen

• AI as Helpdesk, with Spoke – Mac Admins Podcast

📚Support

I do not have any ads on my webpage or this newsletter. However, if you want to support me and this website, then please consider buying one (or both) of my books. (Imagine it’s like a subscription fee, but you also get one or two useful books on top!)

If you have already bought and read the books, please leave a review on the iBooks Store. Reviews are important to help new potential readers make the purchase decision. Thank you (again)!

• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

Today is Koningsdag (King’s Day) here in the Netherlands. So, because of the holiday, just a quick summary! Have a great week-end, everyone!

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• Demystifying root on macOS, Part 2 — The sudo Command

📰News and Opinion

• Apple releases iOS 11.3.1 with third-party display repair fix, macOS 10.13.4 security update | 9to5Mac
• VMware AirWatch Munki Implementation Teardown – Aaron David Polley
• MacOS Monitoring the open source way – Michael George, DropBox
• RIP: Apple AirPort

🐞Bugs and Security

• New Crossrider variant installs configuration profiles on Macs – Thomas Reed, Malwarebytes Labs

🔨Support and HowTos

• Creating APFS Snapshots at the Setup Assistant – James Smith
• What’s that? Using magic on your Mac – Howard Oakley
• The ins and outs of using tmutil to backup, restore, and review Time Machine backups – Charles Edge
• Record your Apple TV via QuickTime X – Dan Moren, Six Colors
• Deploy Winclone Package with TCM – Tim Perfitt, Twocanoes Software
• Inspecting and creating Mac installer packages on Linux – Charles Edge
• APFS encryption, ghost guest users, and odd UUIDs – Howard Oakley
• Move From Hosting Files From A macOS Server To A macOS Client – Charles Edge
• Configuration Profile Reference Changelog – Erik Berglund
• Considerations when upgrading CrashPlan with Munki – Alan Siu
• 6 Tasks for Basic macOS system monitoring with osquery (Video) – Doug Wilson

MacAdmins on Twitter

• Nigel Kersten: “At the end of 2018, Macs will have been using x86 chips longer than they were using PowerPC.… ”
• Erik Gomez: “If you manage non-supervised iOS devices, be aware that Apple made a rather huge change on iOS 11.3 – moving forward ALL vpp/Enterprise app updates now require user interaction. Prior to iOS 11.3, the user just had to do a one time (per app) acceptance.…”
• Jason Broccardo: “Have a 10.13 Mac hanging at boot and have “Too many corpses being created” errors in the logs, check out GSX article SN4584 (too bad this isn’t a public @AppleSupport kbase article)”
• Graham R Pugh: “Apple Support status pages now include the status of DEP. I just learned this during exchages in a support ticket.”

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Swift Automator Action Xcode Template – macosxautomation
• Deploying iShowU Instant with AutoPkg, Munki and outset: Part 3 – Andrew Valentine

🍏Apple Support

• macOS Security – Overview for IT
• About the security content of iOS 11.3.1
• About the security content of Security Update 2018–001
• About the security content of Safari 11.1

♻Updates and Releases

• AutoDMG v1.8.1

📚Support

I do not have any ads on my webpage or this newsletter. However, if you want to support me and this website, then please consider buying one (or both) of my books. (Imagine it’s like a subscription fee, but you also get one or two useful books on top!)

If you have already bought and read the books, please leave a review on the iBooks Store. Reviews are important to help new potential readers make the purchase decision. Thank you (again)!

• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

Still more articles (and bugs) from the 10.13.4 release coming in. Otherwise this has been a quieter week.

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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• Converting Composer dmg ‘installers’ to pkg
• Demystifying root on macOS, Part 1

📰News and Opinion

• Last Week on My Mac: Apple’s calendar – Howard Oakley
• The View-Source Web – Brent Simmons
• Intel, Microsoft to use GPU to scan memory for malware | Ars Technica

🐞Bugs and Security

• Apple offers extended three year repair program for iPad Pro Smart Keyboards w/ sticking keys & other ‘functional’ issues – Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac
• macOS 10.13.4 Causing Installation Log Failures – Adam Engst, TidBITS
• Helpless Help Menu – Indie Stack
• A Surreptitious Cryptocurrency Miner in the Mac App Store? – Objective-See
• Matthew Green“Guide to iOS estimated passcode cracking times (assumes random decimal passcode + an exploit that breaks SEP throttling): 4 digits: ~13min worst (~6.5avg) 6 digits: ~22.2hrs worst (~11.1avg) 8 digits: ~92.5days worst (~46avg) 10 digits: ~9259days worst (~4629avg)”

🔨Support and HowTos

• Comparing files: FileMerge, opendiff, and BBEdit – Howard Oakley
• Binding Macs to AD using Munki’s Configuration Profile support – Mike Solin
• Sync Cloud Content To Synology – Charles Edge
• Is Apple about to drop QuickTime, DVD and iWork support, and Compressor? – Howard Oakley
• serhii-londar/open-source-mac-os-apps: 🚀 Awesome list of open source applications for macOS. (great list of open source Mac Apps, this one in not restricted to Admin/IT)
• CommunityPatch.com (beta) – Bryson Tyrell
• Jason Broccardo: “Need to kick it around more, but this might be useful for troubleshooting: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ApplePushService.framework/apsctl status | awk '/last full wake incoming push/ {print $6,$7,$8,$9}' | sort Inspired by https://t.co/zURsMjoQqq”
• Keynote – showing off your code in presentations with Magic Move – Neil Martin

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Deploying iShowU Instant with AutoPkg, Munki and outset: Part 1 – Andrew Valentine
• Deploying iShowU Instant with AutoPkg, Munki and outset: Part 2 – Andrew Valentine
• Oracle Java 10 JDK and JRE installation scripts for macOS – Rich Trouton

♻️Updates and Releases

• Things 3.5 (iPhone, iPad, Mac
• Drafts 5 (iOS)

🎧To Listen

• Suffer Not a Jerk – Mac Admins Podcast
• What’s New in iOS 11.3: Podcast Edition with Russ Mohr & Aaron Freimark – Enterprise iOS

📚Support

I do not have any ads on my webpage or this newsletter. However, if you want to support me and this website, then please consider buying one (or both) of my books. (Imagine it’s like a subscription fee, but you also get one or two useful books on top!)

If you have already bought and read the books, please leave a review on the iBooks Store. Reviews are important to help new potential readers make the purchase decision. Thank you (again)!

• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’

More ‘Spring Update Fallout’ this week. Users will now get warning when they launch a 32-bit app. Apple is updating older versions of OS X to install the High Sierra Installer app.

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.)

🎂Anniversary

I published the first “Weekly News Summary for Admins” a year ago on this blog. The email newsletter came later in June.

The summary now has a few hundred readers every week. They are split fairly evenly across the weblog and the email newsletter. I have gotten lots of friendly and grateful feedback both from reader and authors.

So, thank you, readers, for your attention, and thank you all the MacAdmin authors who are documenting and sharing their opinions and solutions for everyone!

If you enjoy the news summary, then you can do me a favor by recommending it to another Mac Admin, retweeting it on Twitter or sharing it on your favorite social media. Thank you!

(Now back to the normal program.)

📰News and Opinion

• Apple now globally powered by 100 percent renewable energy
• 21 Years of Low End Mac
• The best text editor for macOS – K.Q. Dreger, The Sweet Setup
• MacAD.UK 2018, Video Montage – Geoff Cross
• iPhone Field Guide — MacSparky (iBooks Store affiliate link)
• The 64-bit Mac app transition: What you need to know – Rene Ritchie, iMore

🐞Bugs and Security

• rdar://39209026: Existing Kernel Extension policy not respected on update to 10.13
• “Allow” button in System Preferences does not work Mouse and trackpad drivers can look to the system as if a user is trying to approve a MDM or kext remotely…
• mikeymikey: “If you’re doing asr restores from macOS 10.13.4 to externally attached target disk mode devices – you may be running into a ”blinking folder“ error on boot of those devices. This is a bug in 10.13.4 asr. It doesn’t bless the volume at the filesystem level.” (read the whole thread)
• Heap overflow in the necp_client_action syscall – Grimm & Scythe Blog

🔨Support and HowTos

• Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP) – More hidden reporting goodness – Neil Martin
• Reclaiming drive space by thinning Apple File System snapshot backups – Rich Trouton
• Managing Google Chrome on macOS with a Config Profile – David Acland, moof IT
• Installing Ubuntu 17.10 on ESXi, from a Mac Client, to the ESXi Server – Tom Bridge
• Solving update problems with softwareupdate – Howard Oakley
• Don’t lose versions: DeepTools preserve them wherever your docs go – Howard Oakley
• Securing MunkiReport with Let’s Encrypt on Synology DSM – Mike Solin
• Unwelcome Apple surprise – Greg Neagle
• Whitelisting third-party kernel extensions using profiles – Rich Trouton
• 32-bit application alert message in macOS 10.13.4 – Rich Trouton

Krypted Server Migration Posts

Charles Edge is continuing his epic series of posts on how to replace macOS Server.

• Migrate From macOS To A Synology Based VPN
• Backup A Mac With Acronis True Image
• Backup Mobile Devices To Synology With Acronis True Image
• Add Antivirus To Your Synology
• Use Backblaze to Backup Mac
• DNS: Install BIND on macOS
• Backup Macs with Carbonite

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Quickly read the length of a string in bash – Charles Edge
• Update Office 2016 for Mac by using msupdate – Microsoft Docs
• A Swift 4 ‘droplet’ scripting prototype, Dropsy – Howard Oakley

🍏Apple Support

• Apple School Manager Help
• 32-bit app compatibility with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4

♻️Updates and Releases

• WhiteBox – Packages 1.2.3
• Fleetsmith is out of beta
• Jamf Pro 10.3.1
• Munki 3.2.1
• NoMAD Pro for Okta 1.1

🎧To Listen

• iOS 11.3, macOS 10.13.4 and What Lies Beneath – MacAdmins Podcast

📚Support

I do not have any ads on my webpage or this newsletter. However, if you want to support me and this website, then please consider buying one (or both) of my books. (Imagine it’s like a subscription fee, but you also get one or two useful books on top!)

If you have already bought and read the books, please leave a review on the iBooks Store. Reviews are important to help new potential readers make the purchase decision. Thank you (again)!

• ‘Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators’
• ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’