Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2022-03-04

Apple has announced an event for next week. Of course, we don’t know what Apple is going to introduce then, but the fifth beta for macOS 12.3 that we got this week, may be the last. How is your testing going? Have youound all the uses of the Python 2 yet?

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uberAgent: per-application network monitoring

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News and Opinion

MacAdmins on Twitter

  • cdros: “A pattern I’ve seen in many places. Companies hire adults, thrust technology at them, provide little training, and distrust the actions of employees.” (Thread)
  • Asia Orangio: “I’m seeing a lot of people who are surprised to learn their favorite software has been built and/or marketed by a Ukrainian team. Here’s a running list of them (plus how you can help Ukraine fight back)” (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!

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Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2022-02-25

Apple keeps working towards the “Spring release” of macOS 12.3, iOS 15.4 and siblings with a fourth beta round. Last year’s Big Sur 11.3 “spring release” was in late April while in 2020 Catalina 10.15.4 was released in late March. So, we have one or two months to go.

(Sponsor: vast limits)

uberAgent: web app monitoring

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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.

As mentioned before (not just by me), the macOS 12.3 update will remove the Python 2 binary. This should not come as a surprise, but apparently there are still some vendors and developers that are not prepared. Test your deployment workflow and all the software on the beta and notify any vendors of failing installations, applications and tools.

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

MacAdmins on Twitter

  • Scripting OS X: “Apple remains on track to transition all Mac models to Apple silicon. The “two-year” timeline expires either in June (2y after the announcement at WWDC 20) or in November (2y after the first M1 MacBooks) If you require Intel Macs for testing, VMs, or compatibility, buy them now!” (short thread)

Security and Privacy

Support and HowTos

Scripting and Automation

Apple Support

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!

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Update: Installomator 9.0.1

We found a bug had snuck in to Installomator 9.0 which broke applications that download as pkgs wrapped in dmgs, so we have a bug fix update. While we were at it, there were a few other minor changes as well:

  • improved logging levels throughout the script
  • fixed a bug for pkgindmg style labels
  • changed the criteria used to locate an app in the case the it cannot be found in the default locations, this should help with some apps with similar name (Virtual Box and Box Drive)
  • new label: WhiteBox Packages (packages)
  • modified label: loom (added Apple silicon download)

You can get more details and download the pkg installer from the Installomator repo’s release page.

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2022-02-18

For a change, only few changes or announcements this week. Apple followed up last week’s 12.2.1 update with 11.6.3 and a security update for Catalina. But we still got a lot of interesting posts and updates!

(Sponsor: vast limits)

uberAgent: application usage monitoring

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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 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

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 — 2022-02-11

A new beta, a surprising security update (which also fixes a Bluetooth battery drain issue on Monterey), an announcement on the AirTag tracking. Apple sure was busy this week. But everyone else seems to be really busy, too. Lots of news, updates and releases this week.

(Sponsor: vast limits)

uberAgent: application performance monitoring

uberAgent Logo

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.

Another emerging topic is Apple’s treatment of the App Store ecosystem and the developers. There have been a few lawsuits and decisions around the world and I believe that Apple’s reactions might shape the company’s future and their public perception more than any VR/AR products that might be announced.

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 12 Monterey and iOS 15

macOS and iOS Updates

MacAdmins on Twitter

  • Guilherme Rambo: “Thoughts on iOS sideloading. Apple (and people who defend Apple no matter what) make it out as being a big deal that’s going to completely destroy the security of the platform and harm a huge number of innocent users. The reality is way less exciting…” (Thread)
  • mikey: “iOS 15.3.1 and macOS 12.2.1 patch a WebKit use after free (UAF) (CVE-2022-22620). Apple aware that it may have been exploited in the wild”
  • James Rath: “Just a bummer that there aren’t many tracking alternatives for blind folks. Airtags and precision finding are incredibly accessible with VoiceOver support. And we’re a an audience who benefit significantly from things like AirTags. I tried Tile & the app was inaccessible.”

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!

Update: Installomator v9.0

We have updated Installomator to version 9.0. This brings Installomator to 404 labels (390 apps). This update also brings with it many changes in behavior:

  • We have moved the root check to the beginning of the script, and improved DEBUG handling with two different modes. DEBUG=0 is still for production, and 1 is still for the DEBUG we previously knew downloading to the directory it is running from, but 2 will download to temporary folder, will detect updates, but will not install anything, but it will notify the user (almost as running the script without root before).
  • Added option to not interrupt Do Not Disturb full screen apps like Keynote or Zoom with INTERRUPT_DND="no". Default is "yes" which is how it has worked until now.
  • pkgName in a label can now be searched for. An example is logitechoptions, where only the name of the pkg is given, and not the exact file path to it.
  • LSMinimumSystemVersion will now be honered, if the Info.plist in the app is specifying this. That means that an app that has this parameter in that file and it shows that the app requires a newer version of the OS than is currently installed, then we will not install it.
  • New variable RETURN_LABEL_NAME. If given the value 1, like RETURN_LABEL_NAME=1 then Installomator only returns the name of the label. It makes for a better user friendly message for displaying in DEPNotify if that is integrated.
  • Changed logic if IGNORE_APP_STORE_APPS=yes. Before this version a label like microsoftonedrive that was installed from App Store, and that we want to replace with the “ordinary” version, Installomator would still use updateTool, even though IGNORE_APP_STORE_APPS=yes. So we would have to have INSTALL=force in order to have the app replaced, as updateTool would be used. But now if IGNORE_APP_STORE_APPS=yes then updateTool will be not set, and the App Store app will be replaced. BUT if the installed software was not from App Store, then updateTool will not be used, and it would be a kind of a forced install (in the example of microsoftonedrive), except if the version is the same (where installation is skipped).
  • Added variable SYSTEMOWNER that is used when copying files when installing. Default 0 is to change owner of the app to the current user on the Mac, like this user was installing this app themselves. When using 1 we will put “root:wheel” on the app, which can be useful for shared machines.
  • Added option curlOptions to the labels. It can be filled with extra headers need for downloading the specific software. It needs to be an array, like curlOptions=( ). See “mocha”-software-labels.

Logging

  • Introducing variable LOGGING, that can be either of the logging levels
  • Logging levels:
    0: DEBUG Everything is logged
    1: INFO Normal logging behavior
    2: WARN
    3: ERROR
    4: REQ
  • External logging to Datadog
  • A function to shorten duplicate lines in installation logs or output of longer commands
  • Ability to extract install.log in the time when Installomator was running, if further investigations needs to be done to logs

Fixes

  • Fixed a problem with pkgs: If they were mounted with .pkg in the name, then we would find the directory and not the pkg file itself.
  • Minor fix for a check for a pkgName on a DMG. We used ls that would throw an error when not found, so the check was corrected.

Many thanks to Søren Theilgaard who did most, if not all, of the heavy lifting for this release. Also many thanks to everyone else who contributed a new label, issue or other help.

You can get Installomator from the GitHub repo.

Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2022-02-04

Another weighty news summary. After Apple released their updates last week, it seems as if the MDM vendors are following suite. Also MacAdmins are preparing for the demise of Python 2 in macOS 12.3 with many tools updates.

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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

macOS and iOS Updates

MacAdmins on Twitter

  • Rich Trouton: “If you’re using my AutoPkg recipes for Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender ATP has changed its name to Microsoft Defender. Please use the new Microsoft Defender recipes.”
  • Nathaniel Strauss: “Friday IT fun. macOS Monterey 12.2 breaks printing in some environments using a Windows print server with modified RPC security settings. Specifically RpcAuthnLevelPrivacyEnabled. Feel free to reference my case 101616149128.”

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!

Update: quickpkg 1.0beta

QuickPkg is one of those tools that I built for myself a long time ago and has remained useful (at least to me) without many updates.

Since Apple will be removing the pre-installed Python 2 binary from macOS 12.3, I was forced to pull the code out, dust it off and update it to Python 3. I chose to use the MacAdmins “Managed Python” since it provides a nice bundle of libraries which should be useful for some other tools I have (and still need to migrate). It should (probably) work with other Python 3 distributions, as well, but I did not test this at all.

Thankfully, quickpkg did not require very many code changes. I could even remove all the code from Greg Neagle’s FoundationPlist. Python 2 plistlib could not read binary plist files, so that extra functionality was required. But Python 3 plistlib can read and write binary plists and I could save a lot of code.

The script has worked with all of my tests, but I probably have not explored all the weird edge cases yet. So I am releasing it as a beta. Please file issues and/or pull requests on the GitHub repo if you run into any problems.