Category: Weekly News

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2022-11-25

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it this week! Happy “quieter than usual” Thursday and Friday to everyone else!

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News and Opinion

macOS Ventura and iOS 16

Social Media

  • L0Psec on Twitter: “When querying macOS unified logs via the log command, I was looking for a location of known subsystems I could use. Found them within: /System/Library/Preferences/Logging/Subsystems/ On 12.6.1, this directory contains 292 plists. Example in screenshot.”
  • Mr. Macintosh on Twitter: “Almost a month after the release of Ventura, Monterey has taken the lead. Monterey took the lead from Ventura on November 10th and has not given it up since then.”
  • @Morpheus______ on Twitter: “macOS/iOS Entitlements Database now with Monterey and Ventura entitlements.”

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Apple Support

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 — 2022-11-18

Even with… what ever it is that is happening at Twitter… serving as a constant distraction, there were a lot of other interesting posts and articles this week. Put together for you to catch up and ignore the impending doom of our favorite bird site for a while…

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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

Twitter

macOS Ventura and iOS 16

macOS and iOS Updates

Social Media

  • Harald Monihart on LnkedIn: macOS Ventura is still a certified UNIX operating system. It’s hardly mentioned in Apple‘s marketing these days, every macOS release still undergoes the UNIX certification process by The Open Group
  • Aaron Zollo on Twitter: “After you install the new Security Response on iOS 16.2 Beta 3, you can see a separate build number and you have the option to uninstall it.”
  • Justin Velgos on Mastodon.design: “Made an iOS Shortcut to let you follow someone from a different Mastodon instance without the copy/paste hoop-jumping.” (thread)

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 — 2022-11-11

The first Apple Silicon Macs with the M1 chip were introduced two years ago. The MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13″ and Mac mini all kept the same enclosure designs as their Intel-based predecessors, but the chips inside were the largest change for the Mac platform since the Intel transition in 2006.

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At the JNUC conference earlier this year, I noticed that there were no chains of powerstrips running through the audience areas of the presentation rooms. You couldn’t charge your laptop or tablet in the sessions and nobody seemed to be bothered by this. Just this week I ran my MacBook Air M2 and my iPad Air on battery for two days before I bothered looking for my power supply. I still had enough power to run them for the rest of day, which was a good thing, since I realized I still had the US power plug from aforementioned trip to JNUC on my power supply.

Even though they seem to merely sip power, the new chips aren’t slouches either. Apple has had an exceptional position in power/performance ratio in the phone and tablet space, and now, unsurprisingly, Apple laptops are in this position, as well.

For desktop computers, where power use is not quite such a priority, the M1 Max and Ultra configurations provide astounding capability. The only Mac line that has not yet transitioned to Apple Silicon is the Mac Pro. Given the connectivity and expandability of the Mac Pro, it is not suprising this is the last model to transition. The Mac Studio hints at what might be possible, but we will have to wait and see. I could be ungenerous and point out that Apple missed their self-imposed two-year time line of transistioning to Apple Silicon, but honestly, with all the supply chain challenges and other world events that happened since then, it is an amazing achievement to be where they are now.

Apple Silicon is one of the reasons Apple has been the only computer vendor to show growth in the last quarter.

Another amazing aspect of the transition is how smooth it was on the software side. macOS ran without issues from the days of the Developer Kit. This was Apple’s third processor transition in as many decades and you could tell. Rosetta on Apple silicon provides amazing performance for the software that hasn’t been compiled for Apple silicon yet and it is fairly straightforward for vendors and developers to provide native and unverisal binaries. Even though some developers, especially those building electron-based apps, still don’t seem to understand the concept of universal apps.

Apple now has reached their goal of controlling the entire package, or at least the most important parts. They design and build the hardware, the interfaces, the silicon, the software, and many of the services that connect the device to the net and to other devices.

PowerPC was the core for Macs for 12 years. Intel chips lasted for 14 years. I am looking forward to what happens in the next 12-15 years.

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 and iOS Updates

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

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 — 2022-11-04

Ventura is still the dominating topic in the week after its release. We got more articles from admins on managing the new macOS, but also a few issues are surfacing.

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The other dominating topic in tech this week was the Twitter takeover and how or whether the platform will survive and whether users should hold out or not. I am fairly active on Twitter with my @scriptingosx account and to a lesser degree with my personal @titanonearth account, which is nearly 16 years old. Twitter is a main driver of traffic to my weblog, so I have no plans as of yet to leave the platform. But, I will watch and it is likely I will reduce my engagement, possibly to the point where there will only be links to blogposts.

If you are planning to reduce your activity or want to remove yourself completely from Twitter and other social media, you can follow my blog. It has an RSS feed and I strongly recommend using an RSS reader app as an alternative to getting your news addiction satisfied. My favorite is NetNewsWire.

You can also subscribe to the weekly news summary by email. (Or recommend it someone else who wants to reduce their engagement on Twitter or social media.)

And last but not least, there is @scriptingosx@mastodon.social. I’ve had that account for a while already and I can tell that traffic and engagement there has picked up significantly in the last week.

macOS Ventura and iOS 16

Social Media

  • Daniel Jalkut: “In light of everything happening at Twitter, a lot of people are wondering “where to go next”. May I suggest, and I am speaking to myself here too, that you invest in your own blog on your own domain? Own your own content, and share your thoughts independently of dingaling CEOs.”
  • Mr. Macintosh: “MacAdmins asked & Apple listened. The macOS Monterey 12.6.1 M1 IPSW restore file is now available. This is important for 2 reasons: 1) After 11.6/12.6 Apple usually stops creating IPSW’s. 2) Admins can restore M1’s & Ventura can be blocked without updating”

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 — 2022-10-21

This is the “Ventura-Eve” edition. On Tuesday, Apple release, a new iPad (no moniker), iPads Pro with M2 chips, AppleTVs and announced the release dates for macOS Ventura and iPadOS 16.1: 24 October. Do you feel ready!?

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Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates Enhanced MDM, Endpoint Security, Internet Privacy & Security, Single Sign-On, and Application Management on a single Apple-only platform.

Click here to learn why Mosyle is all you need to work with Apple.

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While the iPad updates are appreciated, they leave the iPad product in a somewhat confused state. Certain features are only available in certain iPad models, without a discernible pattern. The AppleTV update seems solid, but note that the ethernet port is now exclusive to the higher configuration.

The announcement happened without an “Apple Event.” Also absent were any news regarding the Mac, aside from the Ventura release date. There is still time for more product releases, with or without an event this year and I will be looking forward to them.

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 Ventura and iOS 16

Social Media

  • Felix Schwarz: “The Ventura System Settings app includes an AppleScript sdef but so far nothing indicates it’s functional. I only get errors. For my uses, most of this can be compensated by using the x-apple.systempreferences scheme, but opening Keyboard > Shortcuts that way seems impossible.”

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 — 2022-10-14

Apple’s macOS Ventura Preview page still states “Coming this October.” The rumors, past experience and practicality point to October 24 as the release date for macOS Ventura 13.0 as well as iPadOS 16.1 and the first round of updates for iOS 16, watchOS 9 and all the others.

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On the other hand, Stage Manager still seems to be quite a mess in both iPadOS and macOS. Also, there was no announcement for an Apple Event on October 18, which you would expect if Apple wanted to announce new iPads Pro and/or a new Mac Pro to go with the iPadOS and macOS releases. Apple could very well release new hardware after the system releases, but it would be unusual.

The Mac Pro is the last Mac which has not transitioned to Apple Silicon yet and the two-year transition timeline, ,promised at WWDC 2020 with the Apple Silicon reveal expires in November, two years after the first M1 MacBooks shipped. The Mac mini, which is currently available as M1 and Intel models, also seems due for an upgrade.

We did get a new round of betas this week, which brings macOS 13 to beta 11. As a MacAdmin, you really should log in to AppleSeed for IT and read the beta notes that Apple makes available there, regarding software update deferral.

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 Ventura and iOS 16

macOS and iOS Updates

Social Media

  • William Smith: “As of Tuesday this week, version 16.66 of Microsoft Office for Mac was released and will be the last version to support macOS Catalina 10.15.”

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 — 2022-10-07

MacAdmin conference season is in full swing with MacSysAdmin Online and Objective-by-the-Sea happening this week.

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uberAgent: web app monitoring

uberAgent is an innovative user experience monitoring product for macOS and Windows. uberAgent’s highlights include detailed information about application performance, network reliability drill-downs, application usage metering, browser performance, and web app metrics. Try for yourself and get your free 100 user community license at uberagent.com.

That also means we are getting announcements of the dates of conferences for next year. PSU MacAdmins conference has announced the date for their first post-pandemic in-person conference: July 18–21, 2023. JNUC is planned for Austin, TX on September 19–21, 2023 and MacSysAdmin will be back in Gothenburg, Sweden on October 3–6. I have updated my conferences page with the new dates.

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 Ventura and iOS 16

Social Media

  • John C. Welch: “30 years in IT have taught me this: Being cheap and petty over keyboards and mice is the stupidest thing to do. Someone wants a gaming mouse? Let them have it. The happiness that brings will far outweigh the cost “savings” in making them use the “standard” mouse.” (Thread)

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

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 — 2022-09-22

As I am preparing to travel to JNUC next week, I don’t really have much insightful, or even witty intro… We got an iOS update and a new round of betas. Even if I am distracted, we got some wonderful posts by wonderful people sharing their knowledge and insights. Go read those and many thanks to authors for sharing.

(Sponsor: vast limits)

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uberAgent: application performance monitoring

uberAgent is an innovative user experience monitoring product for macOS and Windows. uberAgent’s highlights include detailed information about application performance, network reliability drill-downs, application usage metering, browser performance, and web app metrics. Try for yourself and get your free 100 user community license at uberagent.com.

If you are also at JNUC, I have some Scripting OS X shebang “#!” stickers for those who know to ask (and as long as the supply lasts).

If you ordered MacSysAdmin T-Shirts last year, you also got a surprise Scripting OS X shebang sticker. If you order a MacSysAdmin T-shirt this year (and you still can), you will get a different Scripting OS X sticker. Many thanks to Mischa van der Bent who turned my idea into a great design. You should order a MacSysAdmin T-shirt whether you want the sticker or not, to support the conference which is online October 4–7.

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 Ventura and iOS 16

macOS and iOS Updates

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Apple Support

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 — 2022-09-16

The first of several major Apple OS releases this Fall were iOS 16 and watchOS 9, which were released this week, together with the new tvOS and HomePod software, as well as the new iPhones 14, iPhones 14 Pro, and Apple Watches.

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There is much to like in the new the new iOS 16 and watchOS 9, even for MacAdmins. But the most promising new technologies, such as the improved Declarative Device Management and Managed Device Attestation will take a while to be adopted by the management systems and admins. But I see some really useful applications for deployment with those.

Even though the release of macOS Ventura 13.0 will not be until “October,” we did get updates for macOS Big Sur 11.7, macOS Monterey 12.6, iOS and iPadOS 15.7. (Guess who accidentally upgraded their phone to 15.7 first…) No security update for macOS Catalina, which is not surprising as Apple “retires” updates for major macOS versions after two years. Catalina was the last macOS to use the ’10’ version number that was with us since the early Mac OS X public betas.

The versioning of Big Sur is interesting, as Apple decided this particular security update deserves ‘11.7’ rather than ‘11.6.9,’ even though the build number still starts with ’20G’. I am not complaining, this versioning is a welcome improvement over the previous list of security updates with a year and a number.

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 Ventura and iOS 16

iOS 16

Note: according to the Security Updates page there seems to an iOS 16.0.1 update which is also mentioned in this support article. It might be for only for the iPhone 14 generation and seems to fix an issue where Messages and FaceTime don’t recognize the phone number.

watchOS 9, tvOS 16 and HomePod

Xcode and Swift

Articles

macOS and iOS Updates

macOS Monterey 12.6 and macOS Big Sur 11.7

iOS and iPadOS 15.7

Safari 16

Articles

Social Media

  • William Smith: “We’ve been excited to share this for a while and it’s finally here Jamf customers can now upgrade their own Standard Jamf Cloud instances ahead of scheduled upgrades by signing in to account.jamf.com, choosing Products > Pro and clicking Upgrade.”
  • William Smith: “For Microsoft Office for Mac customers: Version 16.67 releases in mid-November. It will support macOS Ventura 13.0, but more importantly it will end support for macOS Catalina 10.15 and receive no further updates.”
  • mikeymikey: “I don’t see people talking about/knowing about this command much on macOS: security verify-cert -v https://URLGOESHERE The security manpage has some great extra detail about the verb” (Thread for more detail)

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Apple Support

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 — 2022-09-09

The first Apple event this Fall is over. We got new iPhones, AirPods Pro and Apple Watches, including the new Apple Watch Ultra. Even though I don’t do any sports at the extreme level this watch is designed for, (some might argue I don’t do any sport at all which would be only a mild exaggeration) I am very tempted by the Ultra. Maybe it is time to refresh my diver’s license after ~20 years…

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Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates Enhanced MDM, Endpoint Security, Internet Privacy & Security, Single Sign-On, and Application Management on a single Apple-only platform.

Click here to learn why Mosyle is all you need to work with Apple.

iOS 16, watchOS 9 and tvOS 16 will be released September 12. iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura are now marked as “Coming this October.” We also got release candidates for iOS and iPadOS 15.7 and macOS 12.6, which will probably be released alongside iOS 16.

This was the first event this fall. I expect at least one more, but more likely two events, which will cover the remaining product lines. Most relevant to MacAdmins, Apple said they would transition the entire Mac product line to Apple silicon in two years. This self-imposed deadline runs out this November and the Mac Pro is the remaining Intel Mac on the product line. (You can also still order an Intel Mac mini, but might also just be Apple’s option if someone requires Intel for backwards compatibility.) It should be interesting to see what Apple has in store for the Mac and the iPad, later this 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 Ventura and iOS 16

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!