The year is not starting slowly. We got the third round of betas for macOS 14.3 and iOS 17.3, which fix the “bricking” issue some users had with iOS 17.3 beta 2. Apple has also announced the release date for Apple Vision Pro.
The migration of this newsletter is proceeding well. Next week, I plan to move the website. A bit sad that the standalone MacAdmins.news website wasn’t meant to last very long, but the new setup means I will not have to maintain the email form of the newsletter separately from the web site anymore, which saves a lot of effort. Aside from the appearance, this should not affect anything, except that the RSS feed URL will change.
I plan to import the current subscriber base to the new service the week of Jan 22, just in time for the 300th issue of the Scripting OS X/MacAdmins.news weekly on Jan 26. Then, you will hopefully and thankfully not have to hear about this again for a long time.
I have been cross posting the last few issues to the new service for the last few weeks. If you are curious you can already check it out and subscribe there. That’ll also help me shake out any issues that might still remain. Let me know what you think!
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📸Focus
Apple Vision Pro was announced for “early 2024” and Apple is keeping that promise. Initial release is US only. That and the price point will limit initial adoption, but I believe all Apple admins are very curious to see not only how this device works, but also how this device will fit into work environments.
So far, no information on management capabilities for visionOS has been released. Even though visionOS is yet another iOS derivate, I find it likely that we will not have management capabilities in the 1.0 release. Even with all the secrecy, I think we would have seen some signature of visionOS support in the MDM developer documentation.
But, there might be a visionOS 1.1 coinciding with macOS 14.4 and iOS 17.4 in April/May and this “Spring Update” has often brought new management features for all of Apple’s platform. Or we may have to wait until a later, major release of visionOS for management support. That would not be unprecedented.
📰News and Opinion
⚙️Apple Updates
- Xcode 15.2: Mac App Store, Developer Downloads, Developer Release Notes
- Magic Keyboard Firmware Update 2.0.6
🔐Security and Privacy
- Tailored Event Monitoring on macOS – Jamf Trusted Access
- seclook: Automatic security lookups from your clipboard
🔨Support and HowTos
- Unlocking Insights: An Introductory Guide to Integrating Jamf Pro and Microsoft Power BI for Powerful Reporting – The Geeky Gordo
- Upcoming change will enforce LAPS on Prestage admin accounts – R Stasel Jamf Nation Community
- Clearing the logged-in Microsoft SSO user on macOS using Microsoft’s Company Portal app – Rich Trouton
- The Continuity Camera and ‘Unlock With Apple Watch’ Conspiracy – Niléane, MacStories
🤖Scripting and Automation
- JSON & the Arg-nauts – Brock Walters, Jamf Nation Community
- A Convenience Script to Quickly Spin Up a macOS Test VM in UTM – Trevor Sysock
- bash tricks – Julia Evans
♻️Updates and Releases
📺To Watch
- The University of Utah Presentation 2023 – Ross Matsuda
- My presentation @ the Benelux Apple Admins Meetup – Rob Potvin