Happy New Year!
I may have messed up the dates for the holiday in my last news summary. Nevertheless, here we are ready to tackle to the new year, or at least continue as before. It looks like several MacAdmins used the time between the holidays to catch up on some writing.
Apple published the second beta for macOS 14.3 and iOS 17.3 and quickly pulled the iOS beta again, because there were reports of it bricking devices (you can save the device by reviving with iOS 17.3b1 with Apple Configurator)
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As I have mentioned before, TinyLetter, the service I have been using to send the news summary for nearly 300 issues, will shut down at the end of February. After some research and a testing, I have chosen to use Curated going forward. I have been cross-posting the last few issues there already, if you want to see how it looks. If you want, you can already subscribe there.
There are a few more things to sort out, but if all works out, I will move the subscriber list and MacAdmins.news before the end of this month. You shouldn’t have to do anything about this. But the appearance of both the email and the website will change, as will the sender of the email and the RSS feed. So, I believe a heads-up is warranted. I will give another heads-up for the exact date of the switch everything is ready.
📰News and Opinion
- Conference planners, we have to talk – John Mahlman
- Apply to join the Mac Admins Foundation Board – MacAdmins.org
- Timely Apple updates must be in your supplier SLAs – Jonny Evans, Computerworld
- I Just Failed the 2024 Apple Device Support Exam! – Russel Newton, LinkedIn
⚙️Apple Platform Updates
🔐Security and Privacy
- 4-year campaign backdoored iPhones using possibly the most advanced exploit ever – Dan Goodin, Ars Technica
- Threat Hunting Pids Within Apple’s Endpoint Security API – The Mitten Mac
- The Mac Malware of 2023 – Patrick Wardle, Objective-See
🔨Support and HowTos
- MDM Comparison Table – hkystar35
- Deploy packages during prestage with a Manifest file – Mischa van der Bent
- Create a Jamf Smart Group for the Current Version of macOS – HCS Technology Group
- Configure Down Alerts for UniFi networks – Command-Control-Power
- How to fix The Recovery Server Could Not Be Contacted Error! High Sierra Recovery is Still Online but broken! – Mr. Macintosh
- How to Configure Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) in Jamf Pro – HCS Technology Group
🤖Scripting and Automation
- which which? – Fraser Hess
- Run Policies With Jamf Patch Management – John Mahlman
- Setup Your Mac with SYM-Helper.app (1.0.0) – Dan K. Snelson
- Using desktoppr in a managed environment – Armin Briegel
♻️Updates and Releases
- swiftDialog v2.4.0 Beta 1
- Munki 6.4 (MacAdmins open source)
- desktoppr v0.5beta (blog)
- Baseline v2.0beta2
- XCreds 4 Beta 4
- dockutil 3.1.0
🎧To Listen
- 2023 in Review – Mac Admins Podcast
- JumpCloudGo, cyber risk insurance, and a 2024 wishlist – Apple @ Work Podcast, 9to5Mac
- Free Will vs Determinism – Command-Control-Power
- BEST Of CCP: Joe’s Super Secret Password – Command-Control-Power
- Communication tool sprawl – Apple @ Work Podcast, 9to5Mac