Category: Weekly News

Lot’s of helpful posts by many admins to help with the 10.13.4 update. Thanks to all who share their experiences and knowledge.

There were two big Apple related news items. First Bloomberg had an article which states that Apple is planning to use the their own chips in Macs starting in 2020 (only two years from now). In an odd juxtapostition we also got an update on the progress of the new Mac Prowhich Apple now says will ship in 2019. (I can think of a few ways how this could work out. Some are good and some are… worrying… I may post on this at a later time.)

James Thomson (developer of PCalc (iOS, Mac and AppleTV!) illustrates this wonderfully in this tweet.

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 10.13.4 Spring Update for Mac Admins
• Installing and Using Command Line Tools

📰News and Opinion

• Apple teases ‘late spring’ launch of new Business Manager platform for enterprise users – Chance Miller, 9to5Mac
• Announcing 1.1.1.1: the fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service – Matthew Prince, Cloudflare Blog
• macOS 10.13.4: DisplayLink, Duet Display, and other Virtual Graphics Products Not Working – Bob Boerner, Plugable (was not sure whether to put this under ‘Bugs’)

2020 Macs

• Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs From 2020, Replacing Intel – Ian King, Mark Gurman, Bloomberg
• James Thomson: “Is it time to bring back this snail?… ”
• The Fifth Age Of Macintosh: What Happens If Apple Dumps Intel? – Andy Ihnatko
• Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs From 2020, Replacing Intel – Michael Tsai

Mac Pro

• Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro will be shaped by workflows – Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch
• New Mac Pro Won’t Arrive Until 2019 – Michael Tsai
• Me on Twitter: “Apple hired a team of video professionals to understands their needs and workflows for a future product… …I wish Apple hired a team of Mac System Administrators…”

🔐Security

• Have I Been Pwned is Now Partnering With 1Password – Troy Hunt,
• Python Mac users on 10.12, upgrade to pip 9.0.3 (due to TLS deprecation)
• Ask The Expert: APFS Encryption – Julie Urban, BlackBag Technologies

🐞Bugs

• 11.3 GA Volume Purchased apps return the wrong bundle ID when install command is pushed
• 10.13.4 Installer can not be used to upgrade a 10.12.6 Virtual Machine
• Existing Kernel Extension policy not respected on update to 10.13

🔨Support and HowTos

• Lecture Your Sudoers – Charles Edge
• Inside iCloud Drive: Pushed updates, that syncing feeling – Howard Oakley
• Building Better Backups with Carbon Copy Cloner – Mike Bombich
• Jamf Freshdesk Plugin – Charles Edge
• Mixing Terminal with GUI apps – Howard Oakley
• Managing macOS Software Updates with the AirWatch Agent and Chef – Jeremy Baker
• Dabbling With Docker – Robin Laurén
• Modifying Safari’s Auto-Play Preferences – Zack McCauley
• Suppressing the Data & Privacy pop-up window on macOS High Sierra – Rich Trouton

macOS 10.13.4 posts:

• Erase All Contents And Settings – erase and reinstall macOS in situ – Graham Pugh (updated)
• Steve Troughton-Smith“Don’t forget that macOS 10.13.4 has a 64-bit-only mode”
• User-initiated computer enrollment now using MDM profile enrollment in Jamf Pro 10.3 – Rich Trouton
• Using QuickAdd-based user-initiated enrollment on macOS High Sierra with Jamf Pro 10.3 – Rich Trouton
• Updated notes on deploying images to iMac Pro – Greg Neagle

Charles Edge has continued his series of posts on how to replace macOS Server services:

• Export data from Open Directory for migrating users and groups
• Install the RADIUS Server on a Synology
• Export DNS Records from macOS Server
• Install Directory Services on a Synology
• Securing Squirrel with Let’s Encrypt on Synology DSM – Mike solin

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Making the Touch Bar finally useful – By abandoning crappy Apple guidelines – vas3k
• Erik Gomez: Script to package Xcode Simulators
• Script For User Self Enrolling In Jamf Pro Testing Group – Chris Collins

🍏Apple Support

• macOS Server – Service Migration Guide v1
• What’s new in macOS Server 5.6

♻️Updates and Releases

• Jamf Pro 10.4 Beta
• macOS Server 5.6 this update hides all services but Open Directory, Profile Manager and Xsan from the UI. When you upgrade an existing installation, active services will remain visible. You can (for now) add the deprecated services from the ‘View’ menu.
• William Smith: “MacAdmins waiting for Microsoft AutoUpdate 4.0 to release this month… Look instead for v3.18. It contains the msupdate command line tool. Just doesn’t have the new icon and version number. In Insider Slow this week.”

🎧To Listen

• I have been hugely enjoying Brain McCullough’s ‘Techmeme Ride Home’ podcast which gives you a 15–20 minute summary of tech related news for the day for your, well, ride home, or to work, depending on your time zone

📚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’

What a week!

This would have been an interesting with many amazing articles and posts by fellow MacAdmins on different topics. But then there was Apple’s Education event and (finally) the spring updates (10.13.4, 11.3 etc.) dropped yesterday.

10.13.4 brings (yet again) many changes for macOS management, read the summaries and posts carefully.

PSU MacAdmins Conference 2018 registration is open!

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.)

Happy Easter! (Hope you get a long Easter week-end to catch up with the reading!)

#! On Scripting OS X

• Thoughts on Books

📰News and Opinion

• Apple Proposes New Accessibility Emojis – Emojipe
• Mac Kung Fu: “Is Thunderbolt a failure? My Mac has Thunderbolt 2. An Amazon search reveals only one thing that isn’t a cable, hub or hard drive dock. Can’t imagine eGPUs being anything other than limited pro/enthusiast. What exactly is Thunderbolt for? Solving a problem that doesn’t exist?…”
• Apple Business Manager Documentation Publicly Available – Charles Edge
• Foxconn buys Belkin

Education Event

• iWork 4.0 Adds Full Apple Pencil Support; Pages Becomes Spiritual Successor to iBooks Author – Ryan Christoffel, MacStories
• Pages is no iBooks Author Replacement (Updated) – Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels
• Pages, iBooks Author, and eBooks creation: Everything you need to know – Serenity Cladwell, iMore
• iWork: 21 ways Apple just improved Pages, Numbers, Keynote – Jonny Evans, Apple Must
• Box and iWork: real-time collaboration on Pages, Numbers, and Keynote – Jon Fan, Box Blog
• David Colville: “One Simplified Login Experience”
• Apple’s Lane Tech Education Event – Michael Tsai
• Making The Grade: Why Apple’s education strategy is not based on reality – Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac
• Apple’s love note to education – Rene Ritchie, iMore
• All about the Logitech Crayon – Dave Mark, The Loop

Spring Updates

• iOS 11.3 is available today – Apple
• Apple Releases iOS 11.3 with iPhone Battery Settings, ARKit 1.5, New Animoji, and More – Ryan Christoffel, MacStories
• Apple to Offer Customers Greater Access to Their Personal Data Online – Ryan Christoffel, MacStories
• Rob Griffiths: “This little macOS 10.13.4 tidbit hasn’t gotten any attention at all, yet it’s been a requested feature for 15 years!”

🐞Bugs and Security

• Uh Oh! Unified Logs in High Sierra (10.13) Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes via Disk Utility.app — mac4n6.com
• macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 still leaks encryption passwords in plain text – Howard Oakley

🔨Support and HowTos

• Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra – Howard Oakley
• Tip for testing the new Jamf Pro 10.3 enrollment workflow – Emily Kausalik
• macOS testing tricks – Reusing base images and obtaining a root shell prior to SetupAssistant with LanguageChooser – Erik Gomez
• Really Friendly Command Line Intro – Tracy Osborn, Hello Web Books
• Securing Ubooquity with Let’s Encrypt on Synology DSM – Mike Solin
• Solving problems with iCloud Drive – Howard Oakley
• The Mac Pro That Just Would Not Shut Down – Tom Bridge
• A Crash Course in UEFI – LightBulbOne
• Update Packages on Synology – Charles Edge
• OAuth 2.0: The Complete Guide
• Install WordPress on a Synology – Charles Edge
• Install Web Services on a Synology – Charles Edge

For macOS 10.13.4

• Great Summary on changes in 10.13.4 for admins by Robert Hammen on MacAdmins Slack (also Robert points out that 10.13.4 finally unifies the iMac Pro macOS build, though without imaging that doesn’t matter that much any more)
• Detecting user approved MDM using the profiles command line tool on macOS 10.13.4 – Rich Trouton
• Erase All Contents And Settings (almost) – erase and reinstall macOS in situ – Graham Pugh (Note: Graham Pugh has pointed out that the --eraseinstall option only seems to work when run on a system that is already on APFS)
• New automated restart option added to macOS 10.13.4’s softwareupdate command line tool – Rich Trouton

🤖Scripting and Automation

• New Folder in List View – Eric Hemmete
• Switching to SimpleMDM – Rick Heil
• Working with the SimpleMDM API – Steve Quirke
• C-MDM Part 1 – a hacky, prototype middleware solution for extending MDM with CM – Erik Gomez
• Otto the Automator“AppleScript script for creating a new digital book in Pages.”
• Free conversion of text files with textutil – Howard Oakley
• Steve Hayman: “OK it’s working.” (My new Swift sample code, so much better than "Hello World!)

🍏Apple Support

• Use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote with Box
• Use advanced book creation options in Pages
• Create a book in Pages
• Use an external graphics processor with your Mac
• Prepare your institution for macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 (curiously, the infamous “Upgrading macOS at your institution” article has not yet been updated)

Spring Updates

• iOS 11.3
• About the macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 Update
• watchOS 4.3
• Mobile device management settings (redesigned new page)

Security

• About the security content of macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, Security Update 2018–002 Sierra, and Security Update 2018–002 El Capitan
• About the security content of iOS 11.3
• About the security content of Safari 11.1
• About the security content of Xcode 9.3
• About the security content of tvOS 11.3
• About the security content of watchOS 4.3

♻️Updates and Releases

• Upvote: A multi-platform binary whitelisting solution
• Jamf Pro 10.3.0
• TCM 1.1: Screen Sharing – Twocanoes Software
• Introducing Certificate Request – Twocanoes Software
• Patrick Fergus: “Microsoft Remote Desktop (RDC) for Mac is now available standalone (not from the Mac App Store)” (also on macadmins.software)
• The 1Password 7 Beta for Mac Is Lit and You Can Be, Too – Dave Teare, AgileBits Blog

📺To Watch

• MacADUK 2018 Video Playlist

🎧To Listen

• Graykey and Securing iOS – 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’

Expect some extra news next week as Apple has announced a keynote, in a school in Chicago, no less!

MacAD.UK videos are being posted on YouTube, including a presentation by yours truly…

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

• Update 1.7 for ‘Packaging for Apple Administrators’
• MacAD.UK Terminal Witchcraft and Wizardry Session

📰News and Opinion

• Apple to Host March 27 Event in Chicago: ‘Creative New Ideas for Teachers and Students’ – Mac Rumors
• Why Trust Me to Run This Ship? – Brian Cerchio
• Introducing IBM Watson Services for Core ML – Apple Developer
• Apple Redoubling Efforts on E-Books – John Gruber (of some interest to me…)

🐞Bugs and Security

• Uh Oh! Unified Logs in High Sierra (10.13) Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes via Disk Utility.app — mac4n6.com (this was apparently fixewd in 10.13.2, but still of interest)

🔨Support and HowTos

• Is it possible to prevent conversion to APFS when upgrading to High Sierra? – Hugo Costa, Amsys
• Switching between File-based (WIM) and Block-Based imaging in Winclone 6 – Twocanoes Software
• How to create your own HomeKit camera with a Raspberry Pi and HomeBridge – Andrew O’Hara, AppleInsider
• William Smith: “Heads up for #macadmins deploying Office 2016 for Mac: Starting with the April update, OneDrive will be included in the installer.”
• Owners and groups in the Finder and command line – The Eclectic Light Company
• Install and Use Homebrew on macOS – Charles Edge

Charles Edge has continued his posts on how to replace macOS Server:

• Configure Access To File Shares On WD MyCloud
• Replace the macOS Server DHCP Service with bootp
• Move DHCP Services from macOS Server to Synology

Howard Oakley has been doing some interesting posts on the macOS unified log:

• macOS Unified log: 1 why, what and how
• macOS Unified log: 2 content and extraction
• macOS Unified log: 3 finding your way
• Is the unified log private, or a vulnerability?

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Clean up shell scripts in BBEdit – Eric Holtham

🍏Apple Support

• About encryption on your iMac Pro

♻Updates and Releases

• Certificate Request – Twocanoes Software: Get Digital Certificates for macOS from Active Directory Natively
• DropDMG 3.5.3

📺To Watch

• MacADUK 2018 – Video Playlist
• Slides from MacADUK 2018
• Joe Hall: “I talked about Automating Boot Camp and Windows Deployment on Mac at @LDNAppleAdmns in January. Video is available here”

🎧To Listen

• Not so much LDAP as LDERP, and PSU Organizing Committee! – 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’

Charles Edge is dominating the summary today with a list of posts on how best to replace the waning macOS Server services. Thank you!

We also got the WWDC announcement from Apple. (June 4–8 in San Jose, CA) If you applied to the ticket lottery (before March 22, 10am PDT): Good Luck!

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

• Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off June 4 in San Jose
• Student Scholarships – WWDC

🐞Bugs and Security

• Apple has just pushed an update to XProtect’s security data – Howard Oakley
• GrayKey iPhone unlocker poses serious security concerns – Malwarebytes Labs

🔨Support and HowTos

• macOS Wifi Scanning – Clayton Burlison
• Replace the Web Services in macOS Server with MAMP Pro – Charles Edge
• Cancelling an unwanted FileVault deferred enablement – Rich Trouton
• Replace Time Machine Server on macOS Server with WD’s MyCloud.com – Charles Edge
• Using Managed App Config with Jamf Pro – Charles Edge
• Replace the VPN Server from macOS Server – Charles Edge
• Migrating Data From The Apple Wiki Server – Charles Edge
• Using Terminal At macOS Setup Assistant – Chris Collins
• Basic Synology NAS Setup – Charles Edge

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Tim Perfitt: “You can boot to the recovery partition from the command line (assuming you have SIP disabled or allowed NVRAM changes in SIP)”
• Accessing Finder aliases from the command line: alisma – Howard Oakley
• Google Chrome update notifications with Yo – Graham Gilbert
• macshome: “A super-simple CLI tool that sits in the terminal and prints out DistributedNotificationCenter messages.”
• Using Munki to revert or downgrade software – Greg Neagle
• Possum – A packaging tool for Python AWS Serverless Applications – Bryson Tyrell
• Accessing Finder aliases in your own code: a walk through alisma’s source – Howard Oakley

♻️Updates and Releases

• SplashBuddy 1.2.0

🎧To Listen

• Apple Business Manager? – 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’

No big news this week, which is a nice change.

The first iPhone SDK dropped ten years ago this week. Craig Hockenberry wrote a wonderful retrospective which is worth reading.

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

• A Lot Can Happen in a Decade – Craig Hockenberry
• The Mystery of the Slow Downloads – Panic Blog

🐞Bugs and Security

• Stuck in the past? Your time may get warped, too – Allister Banks
• Malicious Installer Plugins — Xor’d
• Tearing Apart the Undetected (OSX)Coldroot RAT – Objective-See
• Pepijn Bruienne: “Apple just updated the supplemental update for the iMac Pro, build number 17D2104.”

🔨Support and HowTos

• Get The Title Of An App From Apple App Store URLs – Charles Edge
• Recommendations for Optimizing Wifi for Apple Devices – EdTechChris
• Take Out the Trash: How to Clear Pending and Failed Commands in Jamf Pro 10 – EdTechChris
• Replace macOS Server Web Services with MAMP – Charles Edge
• Cable FengShui – Robin Laurén
• Some iTerm2 hacking – Tony Williams

🤖Scripting and Automation

• marczak/pkgdiff
• Bash: if, then, else, and expressions – Charles Edge
• Wrangling Unity in a lab environment – Neil Martin

♻️Updates and Releases

• Late Night Software: Script Debugger 7
• AutoPkg 1.0.4

📚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’

A strange thing happened last Friday (a few hours after the last news summary). Apple updated the kbase article HT208020 – the infamous one that killed imaging. Then the article was reverted back to the old version after a few hours. Presumably some news for 10.13.4 were released prematurely.

Mark Melaccio grabbed screen shots.

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

• Single Brackets vs Double Brackets
• defaults – the Plist Killer

📰News and Opinion

• What I learned at MacADUK 2018 or: Things People Told Me That I Didn’t Know Before – Andrew Valentine
• Deployment: We Need to Talk – Anthony Reimer (his MacAD.UK talk is worth repeating here, also he has a summary on the strange kbase article update that happened last week)
• MarkMelaccio: “They pulled it like an hour later. Side by side of my cached original page, vs the new verbiage.…”
• Tim Perfitt: “So it looks like this happened on the way to the current macOS imaging state we are in: (thread)”
• Timers, reminders, alarms—oh, my! – Dr. Drang
• You’re Probably Underestimating What You Can Do With Your iPhone Home Screen – Rands in Repose

MacAD.UK Session Links

(I have re-included the links from last week.)

• Curing operating system blindness – Graham Gilbert
• Imaging is Dead: Now What? – Greg Neagle
• Managing FileVault 2 on macOS High Sierra – Rich Trouton
• Building your macOS Baseline Requirements – Henry Stamerjohann
• The Sky is Falling – Ben Goodstein
• Deployment: We Need to Talk – Anthony Reimer
• I have (Device) Trust Issues – Diana Birsan
• Your Code Should Document Itself – Bryson Tyrrell

🐞Bugs and Security

• Memcached – disabling UDP on Ubuntu – Neil Martin

🔨Support and HowTos

• When macOS High Sierra’s Content Caching Isn’t Working – Michael Tsai
• Microsoft Skype (definitely) and Teams (maybe) – Disabling automatic updates – Neil Martin
• Invoking Automator Workflows From The Command Line – Charles Edge
• Using installinstallmacos.py to download macOS High Sierra installers – Rich Trouton
• Sharing your known_hosts among your admin peers – Robin Laurén
• Generating Pre-Populated Munki Manifests Utilizing the AirWatch API – Jeremy Baker
• Some Nice HP Switch Settings – Robin Laurén

🤖Scripting and Automation

• BBEdit: how to preview Slack messages – Phil Stokes
• Ryan on Twitter: “Trying to fix that thing where autopkg runs encounter a dmg that is attached but not mounted.”

🍏Apple Support

• About iTunes Store availability Windows XP and Vista and 1st Gen Apple TV will soon not be able to connect to the iTunes Store any more.

♻️Updates and Releases

• Jamf Pro 10.3 Beta

📚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’

This week I was travelling to London for MacAD.UK. So maybe I missed some interesting links. If I did, please let me know and I will include the link next week.

MacAD.UK was great. I had a great time meeting many people, some I already knew and some I had only met virtually so far. Great presentations, hope to see you all again 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.)

#! On Scripting OS X

• MacAD.UK “Witchcraft” Presentation Page

📰News and Opinion

• A History of the Xserve: Apple’s One Rack Wonder – Stephen Hackett, MacStories
• Is APFS fully supported yet? – Howard Oakley
• Bretford: “We love new product suggestions! Our engineering team mocked-up a sample of the first prototype. Great mobility, poor gas mileage! 🚎…”
• iDefrag and iPartition Discontinued – Michael Tsai

MacAD.UK Session Links

Let me know if I missed one!

• Curing operating system blindness – Graham Gilbert
• Imaging is Dead: Now What? – Greg Neagle
• Managing FileVault 2 on macOS High Sierra – Rich Trouton
• Building your macOS Baseline Requirements – Henry Stamerjohann
• The Sky is Falling – Ben Goodstein

🐞Bugs and Security

• A defaults bug in tweets:
  • Kyle Crawford: “High Sierra’s defaults read command DELETES your plist if it is invalid.”
  • rdar://37729361: defaults read deletes entire file when reading invalid plist
  • patrick wardle: “as (now publicly) noted ”H. Sierra’s defaults read command DELETES your plist if invalid“-@kcrawford Here’s the bug/reason why: -[CFPDSource copyPropertyListWithoutDrainingPendingChangesValidatingPlist:] in CoreFoundation calls unlink() if plist validation fails🐛🤣 ”
  • Clayton Burlison: “Fixed in beta.”
  • Jeff Johnson: “This is not a bug, it’s a ”feature“ ”
• Code Signing Validation Bug – Michael Tsai

🔨Support and HowTos

• Fix Jamf Pro 10 Reinstall Button Values – Graham Pugh
• Document Versioning – The Eclectic Light Company
• Pepijn Bruienne: “Interesting Restrictions profile key just popped up in – ”forceAuthenticationBeforeAutoFill“ – ”If set to true, the user will have to authenticate before passwords or credit card information can be autofilled in Safari and Apps“ FaceID only 👍”
• Getting a Machine Kerberos Ticket on macOS without binding – Tim Perfitt

🤖Scripting and Automation

• Deploying Autodesk Maya 2018 with Jamf Pro – David Acland, moof IT
• Omni Group Automation: Run Omni Automation from Other Languages
• Remotely Approving UAMDM – Jeremy Baker
• Ole Begemann: “If you regularly type Markdown code tags on iOS, this text replacement is a big timesaver. Two commas for a backtick.…”

🍏Apple Support

• About the security content of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Supplemental Update
• Download macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Supplemental Update (Build 17D102)
• Download macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Supplemental Update for iMac Pro (Build 17D2102)
• About the security content of iOS 11.2.6
• About the security content of watchOS 4.2.3
• About the security content of tvOS 11.2.6

♻️Updates and Releases

• Jamf Pro 10.2.1

🎧To Listen

• Tim Perfitt, Twocanoes Software – 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’

There was some news this week about Apple refocusing the next major OS updates on bug fixing. Will this be (High) Sierra’s Snow Leopard?

Getting ready for my MacAD.UK presentation next week. Looking forward to meeting some of you there!

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

• Setting the PATH in Scripts
• All the Articles
• Dutch MacAdmins Meeting

📰News and Opinion

• How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software – Mark Gurman, Bloomberg
• Apple’s Software “Problem” and “Fixing” It (via twitter) – Steven Sinofsky
• How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs – Michael Tsai
• How Apple Built a Chip Powerhouse to Threaten Qualcomm and Intel – Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

🐞Bugs and Security

• macOS may lose data on APFS-formatted disk images – Mike Bombich
• This new text bomb crashes most Mac and iOS apps with a single Unicode symbol – Taylor Hatmaker, TechCrunch
• Mac Privacy: Sandboxed Mac apps can record your screen at any time without you knowing – Felix Krause
• 10 Security tips for the average user – Darren Wallace, moof IT

🔨Support and Tutorials

• Migrating Data From The Apple Wiki Server – Charles Edge
• Getting Started with Autopkgr – Charles Edge
• Licensing a vmWare vCenter Server – Robin Laurén
• Configuring The New HomePod – Charles Edge
• Get up and running Zentral on Google Cloud Platform — Chapter 1
• Get up and running Zentral on Google Cloud Platform — Chapter 2
• Patch Starter Script – Bryson Tyrell
• Node Plugin To Embed Device Details From Jamf Pro Into Jira Service Desk – Charles Edge
• Migrating the Mail Service From macOS Server – Charles Edge
• Backing up the contents of an AWS-hosted Jamf Pro cloud distribution point to a local directory – Rich Trouton
• Users, Accounts and You! – Josh Wisenbaker, NoMAD

🤖Scripting and Automation

• BBEdit script to open the file I’m looking at in github and copy the URL to my pasteboard – Ben Matasar
• Clean Up XML Formatting in BBEdit – Eric Holtham
• Updating TeX Live – Andrew Valentine
• Setting a Random Wallpaper at Enrolment – James Smith

🍏Apple Support

• Apple Business Manager Beta Help v1.0

♻️Updates and Releases

• VLC 3.0 Vetinari
• Compositor 1.0
• Jamf Pro 10.2
• LemonJar – iOS Console
• GitFinder 1.0
• Script Debugger 7 will offer a free lite mode – Mark Alldritt, Late Night Software

🎧To Listen

• Patrick Wardle, Objective-See and Digita, MacADUK Preview – 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’

No really big news this week. But many Mac Admins took time to write quite a few interestings articles and how tos. Thank you!

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

• Show the Installer Log During High Sierra Installation

📰News and Opinion

• iMac Pro 18-core Follow Up Review – Craig Hunter
• Cisco, Apple, Aon, Allianz introduce a first in cyber risk management
• With Apologies to the Bard… – Tom Bridge
• Analyzing OSX/CreativeUpdater – Objective-See
• How Long is Long Enough? Minimum Password Lengths by the World’s Top Sites – Troy Hunt
• Adobe Flash Player update to patch security vulnerability – David Acland, moof IT
• Zentral Resources
• Why Micro.blog is Not Another App.net – Brent Simmons

🔨Support and HowTos

• Enable SMB Sharing For Specified Users In macOS – Charles Edge, Krypted
• How the AD Certificate Profile got into macOS when I was at Apple – Tim Perfitt, Twocanoes Software
• Do Sierra or High Sierra report incorrect free disk space? – The Eclectic Light Company
• Scripting in Swift: Checking free disk space – The Eclectic Light Company
• Community Patch Server – Bryson Tyrell
• NoMAD Group Condition for Munki – Mike Solin
• Setting the Screen Saver to a static image – Erik Hemmete
• Deploying Gaussian – Mike Solin
• Disabling auto-updates on Slack for Mac – Rick Heil
• Deploying JMP Pro 12.x and 13.x licenses – Mike Solin
• macOS Beta Images – Clayton Burlison
• Watching folders – 1 for users – The Eclectic Light Company

🍏Apple Support

• macOS 10.13.3 – OpenSource

♻️Updates and Releases

• BBEdit 12.1: 64 bit enabled and a few of other new features
• SplashBuddy 1.2
• Louis D’hauwe on Twitter: “Coming soon to OpenTerm: scripting ”

🎧To Listen

• Canvas #52: SSH from iOS
• Mac Admins Podcast, Episode 68: Alas, I Knew Him Horatio

📚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’

This week was a bit quieter and given the news from the last few weeks, that is probably a good thing. Quite a few very interesting and useful articles, though.

Ed Marczak has put together a great site with information for the ‘new’ Mac Admin: Mac Admin Info

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

• Scripting OS X on micro.blog
• And now Server.app, too!

📰News and Opinion

• 20 Conferences for Mac and iOS Professionals in 2018 – Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
• Mac Malware of 2017 – Objective-See
• Apple announces the date for the Sierra course retirement – Amsys
• The Mac, The Myth, The Legend: How Snow Leopard became synonymous with reliability – Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac
• This is Tim: Transcript of Apple’s Q1 2018 earnings call – Jason Snell, Six Colors
• Apple Q1 2018 earnings: Record revenue, beating the estimates – Jason Snell, Six Colors

🔨Support and HowTos

• Mac Admin Info – Ed Marczak
• APFS Bootable Clone With Command Line – Belight Software
• A Better Online Experience – tnetenba
• Faster Munki Downloads from Nginx – Zack McCauley
• defaults write with double slash – Per Olofsen
• Running configuration data updates for Apple’s XProtect and MRT security tools – Daz Wallace, moof IT
• Reusable script for updating EA values in Jamf Pro with the API – Emily Kausalik
• Ten Things I Wish I’d Known About bash – zwischenzugs
• Ten More Things I Wish I’d Known About bash – zwischenzugs

🍏Apple Support

• 64-bit Requirement for Mac Apps – Apple Developer (not really new, but has been a topic last week since 10.13.4 warns about 32-bit apps, also a good place to remind you of this shared document listing 32-bit apps )

♻️Updates and Releases

• Boot Runner 3.0
• Munki 3.2 Official Release
• Further improvements in xattred 1.0b3

📚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’