Just a “minor” update. The EraseInstall app now shows the progress that the startosinstall command gives in the command line. This also should help with some better error reporting when the startosinstall command errors out.
I say “minor” but small UI change required some major rewiring underneath. It also required us to dive deeper into how shell commands are executed from Swift than we wanted to.
We have also tested this version to work with macOS Catalina which was released yesterday.
We have more “major” features planned for the future!
During my testing in the Catalina beta version I was able to download 10.15, 10.14.6, 10.14.5, and 10.13.6. I was not able to test if 10.13.6 would download the hardware specific build of 10.13.6 for the 2018 MacBook Pro, since I do not have that hardware.
I would assume that downloading an Installer application for a macOS version that is not supported on the hardware you are running the command on would fail. (Again I did not have such hardware available for testing.)
So far the only way to download the macOS Installer in some automated fashion was using Greg Neagle’s installinstallmacos.py script. That script still has some abilities that do not seem to be available to the softwareupdate command, but it is good to see Apple accepting the need for this kind of workflow.
Greetings from Gothenburg, where I have been attending MacSysAdmin conference this week. I am humbled to be among the amazing line-up of speakers again. My thanks and congratulations to the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and, especially, attendees for another wonderful conference! See you all next year!
In other news, we got Catalina beta 9 earlier this week and then ‘GM seed’ yesterday. So, this also seems to be coming to a close. Several other Apple related updates as well.
Also note that if you are still using TextWrangler it will not run on 10.15! BBEdit is now free, the paid license or subscription will unlock more features.
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!
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!
Once again, I had the honor to present at MacSysAdmin in Gothenburg. My topic this year was “Moving to zsh.”
I have created a supporting page with a link to the Keynote slide deck and all the other links and notes. Once the session video is up, I will add the link there as well.
Another week of releases. We got iOS 13.1, iPadOS and tvOS. Also a misnumbered Supplemental Update for macOS Mojave.
There was also the interesting incident of the Google Updater process that deletes the /var symbolic link, which shows how quickly the MacAdmin community can come together and solve an issue. Great work, everyone!
Graham Pugh: “IBM have issued a hotfix for SPSSStatistics 26 silent installer so that it works with recent JDKs (11+). Check your support channels for ”Interim Fix IF007“. IF006 also updates the JRE that gets installed.”
Tim Perfitt: “In an unexpected turn of events, I am now releasing Imagr builds: https://t.co/o80PeR2GMO”
CarrickDB: “Every stack overflow answer about bash: Answer 1: Use ${VAR}:$_!% Comment 1: No, it’s _$${}VAR!$$ Comment 2: No, it’s [[{$VAR} == !*%&#$*#)#]] comment 3: No, it’s #&$!@[&#”[$^$#]@“?$(#$)&&=‘$_$&*’]($&)@:””
Harald Monihart: “We have more people running macOS 10.15 seeds @SAP than versions that are older than 12 months. Kudos to @lauraroesler for leading the macOSCatalina readiness and @laxthxdude for a great security and compliancy framework that motivates users to keep their Macs up to date”
Guilherme Rambo: “Approve sudo with Apple Watch on Catalina with this handy plug-in. https://t.co/KQWIaBB3Vb (via @NSBiscuit) https://github.com/biscuitehh/pam-watchid”
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!
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!
That post contains an example adapted from the ‘Pro git’ documentation which shows how to display the current branch and repo in the prompt.
Personally, I don’t like the Terminal window to be cluttered up with repeated information. While the information from the git repository does change over time, it does not change that frequently, and the information gets repeated over and over.
While I was researching the last post, which describes how to display the current working directory in Terminal’s window title bar, I learnt that you can also set a window title using a different escape code.
So, instead of repeating the git information on every prompt, we can show it in the window or tab title bar.
You can find the code to set this up in my dotfiles repository on Github. To use it make sure the git_vcs_setup file is in your fpath and load it in your .zshrc with
# Git status
autoload -U git_vcs_setup && git_vcs_setup
Note that this file sets up two functions: update_terminal_window_title and update_terminal_tab_title. Terminal can have separate information titles for tabs and the entire window. When there are no tabs (or technically, just a single tab) Terminal displays both titles.
The status info above will show the repository, the current branch, a U when there are unstaged changes, and a S when there are staged, but uncommitted changes.
If you want more details in the status, you might want to consider using a more powerful solution to retrieve the git status, such as this project.
Apple’s release schedule this year is certainly not following any previous pattern.
After releasing a beta of iOS 13.1 during the beta phase of 13.0. Apple then announced that iOS 13.0 (for the iPhones) would be released on Sep 19 (yesterday) and iOS 13.1, together with iPadOS 13.1 on September 30. Yesterday, iOS 13.0 was released on schedule, but the release date for iOS and iPadOS 13.1 was moved ahead to September 24.
watchOS 6 was release yesterday alongside iOS 13, but only for Series 3 and up. While Series 1 and 2 watches will be supported by watchOS 6, they will have to wait for an update “later this year.”
Meanwhile, all we know about the Catalina release date is “October 2019.”
As the features and products become more and more intertwined and dependent on hardware, software, and cloud services, getting everything ready for release at the same time seems like an enormous, self-imposed burden.
Take, for example, the new Reminders application. All the new features in iOS 13 and Catalina means that the data is stored in a new format, which older versions of the Reminders application cannot read. Because of this, when you update your iPhone to the iOS 13, it will not synchronize with the Reminders app on the iPad or Mac, until you update those, which you cannot for several days or weeks.
Hypothetically, if Apple were to separate the Reminders app from the iOS release cycle, they could have waited for the update until all platforms, including iCloud, can support it. Users could then choose to update the app on all their platforms when it is convenient for them, without interrupting the user’s workflow.
Big feature laden software releases are a relic of the past when software was purchased on physical media in boxes. The big feature reveals at WWDC and then later at the release keynotes bring Apple a lot of attention and press. But, the chaos and delays (perceived and real) of the self-imposed release dates are not helping Apple’s reputation.
And yes, it is easy to criticize from the comfort of sitting behind my MacBook keyboard, while the amazing engineers and managers at Apple have to do all the work. There are probably people at Apple working this out in some way or another. Apple has put features into the interim “Spring” updates for High Sierra and Mojave and are deferring several features shown at WWDC to later versions of iOS 13 and Catalina.
How this continues to develop in the future will certainly be interesting.
Eric Holtam: “DEP admins: “On September 19, Apple will release updated software license agreements. On that date a Program Administrator must go to the Apple Business Manager website and accept the following agreements to continue to use the program””
Scott Knight: “Need to do some quick hex editing? Just use VIM. Open your file and then :%!xxd to view the hex. Edit away and then %!xxd -r to switch back to the binary view. Save just like you would any other file in VIM.”
Arek Dreyer: “Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager now available in China, Thailand, Saudia Arabia, and Vietnam. Wow!”
Rich Trouton: “Wow! Thanks to everyone who’s pre-ordered, you’ve pushed @cedge318 and my Apple device management book to the top of the charts on Amazon!” ( Pre-order on Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Affiliate Links)
Rosyna Keller: “The altool docs have been updated to include the new --store-password-in-keychain-item option, which allows you to create a keychain item specifically for use in notarization scripts that use -p "@keychain:<item name>" ”
Arek Dreyer: “Another reminder for the appropriate person in your organization to log in to Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager and agree to the new terms and conditions.”
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!
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!
While I was working on customizing my zsh configuration files for my zsh article series, I noticed that Terminal would not display the current working directory when using zsh. it worked fine when I switched back to bash.
Note: showing the working directory in the window or tab title is enabled by default in Terminal. You can configure what Terminal shows in the title in the Preferences Window for each profile. Select a profile and
Some sleuthing showed me that /etc/bashrc_Apple_Terminal sets up a update_terminal_cwd function which sends some escape codes to Terminal to keep the window title bar updated. This file is sourced by /etc/bashrc for the Terminal.app.
In macOS 10.14 Mojave and earlier, this configuration file has no equivalent for zsh. /etc/zshrc has code that would load /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal, if it existed. However, this file does not exist in macOS Mojave and earlier.
It does in Catalina, though, and it sets up a similar function that is added into the precmd hook. If you have access to the Catalina beta, you can just copy the /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal to your Mojave (or earlier) Mac and it will work.
Alternatively, you can write your own implementation, which is what I did, because I wanted it before the Catalina files existed. My solution exists of the function and its setup in its own file. This file is in a directory that is added to the fpath so I can simply load it with autoload.
# path to my zsh functions folder:
my_zsh_functions=$repo_dir/dotfiles/zshfunctions/
# include my zshfunctions dir in fpath:
if [[ -d $my_zsh_functions ]]; then
fpath=( $my_zsh_functions $fpath )
fi
# only for Mojave and earlier
if [[ $(sw_vers -buildVersion) < "19" ]]; then
# this sets up the connection with the Apple Terminal Title Bar
autoload -U update_terminal_pwd && update_terminal_pwd
fi
And from now, the title will be updated in Mojave (and earlier) and the function won’t even be loaded in Catalina.
This might seem a bit overkill, now that the functionality is in the Catalina file, but it might serve as a useful example when you want to customize, or re-implement similar behavior.
New iPhones! New Apple Watch! Even a new entry level iPad! The Apple iPhone event delivered mostly within expectations. I am not going to link all the detailed posts, you can go to Apple’s Newsroom for the official details.
We got release dates for iOS 13 (Sep 19), iOS 13.1 (Sep 30), iPadOS (Sep 30, unclear if this is iPadOS 13.0 or 13.1, but likely the latter) and macOS 10.15 Catalina (a vague ‘October’). (Check this MacStories post with all the dates, including hardware and services.)
So, there are a few extra weeks this year to test and prepare for the next macOS upgrade. It’ll be a busy fall either way. Make the most of it: Test, prepare, file bugs and feedback!
Eric Holtam: “Notice: Do not try and restore BridgeOS on a machine running a beta OS with Configurator 2. Configurator doesn’t allow backward updates to previous BridgeOS versions and ”bricks“ the machine. ‘AMRestoreErrorDomain error 79 – backwards update not allowed: 17P50541b -> 16PXXX)’ ”
William Smith: “UltraThin Updates take 2: For tomorrow’s Microsoft Office for Mac update, Microsoft AutoUpdate will use UltraThin updates to move 16.28 > 16.29. Should be around 176 MB to update all of Office.”
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!
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!
