OS X & iOS Enterprise Tips, News & Resources

VMware has taken headline sponsorship of the Mac Administrator and Developer Conference, running from 20th-21st February at the VUE entertainment complex Leicester Square, London. The event draws together the best Mac admins and developers from across Europe and features a speaker panel comprising experts from across the globe, including many of the world’s foremost experts and published authors in Mac tech. MacAD.UK has run for the last three years and is the only event of its kind in the UK and one of only two in Europe. It presents a unique opportunity for technical professionals to network, learn and plan… read more →

Over the next few weeks, you’ll see quite a few changes to the way we present and offer our training courses online; for classroom courses, on-site training, events and online training too. In the meantime, we need to update you with announcements from Apple relating to its certification courses and exams. Retiring macOS Sierra courses and exams The following courses and exams will retire on 30th June 2018: macOS Support Essentials 10.12 Mac Integration Basics 10.12 So, if you want to get certified on 10.12, please contact us before the 30th June 2018. High Sierra 10.13 courses are now available.… read more →

The writing has been on the wall for macOS Server app for a long time. With the introduction of High Sierra, many of the Server features have found their way into the client version but in spring 2018 macOS Server is having a major overall to focus more on management of computers and devices. A number of services will be deprecated and/or will be hidden on the update to of macOS Server coming in spring 2018. If service been previously configured, you’ll still be able to use with that updated version. Apple said that the deprecated services will be removed in a… read more →

Working in the higher education sector, where your financial years have to be planned out pretty far in advance, the good thing with Apple’s recent policy change around announcing new hardware is that it allows you to budget for it for testing purposes. So, when Apple’s new flagship machine for professionals, the iMac Pro, was released, I was lucky enough to be able to quickly get my hands on the base model to look at what this (pretty revolutionary) new hardware means for the future of Mac management. I’d heard the rumours flying around about the security chip inside, but… read more →

Want to write a technical book to share your knowledge with the Mac community? Armin Briegel has done just this. He’s authored two books on macOS which he self-published on iBooks. We caught up with him just before Christmas 2017 to ask him about his experience and to share tips with aspiring authors. You can meet Armin in person at The Mac Administrator and Developer Conference UK (MacAD.UK) which runs from 20th-21st February 2018 at the VUE entertainment complex in London’s Leicester Square. Links Armin’s website: https://scriptingosx.com Armin’s books: https://scriptingosx.com/books Armin’s Twitter feed: https://www.twitter.com/scriptingosx Edited transcript How did you first… read more →

There has been speculation for years that Apple has been deliberately slowing down older iPhones when new versions of iOS ship. The conspiracy theorists maintain it’s to get us all to upgrade our phones. Apple announced yesterday that it does indeed have algorithms that affect a phone’s speed according to the capability of its battery. Lithium Ion batteries diminish over time so there are only a certain number of charging cycles a battery can take before its performance starts to fade quite dramatically. We now know that when your battery fades, you’ll lose speed. Then, either you need a new… read more →

What do you call it when you, as a Mac Admin, prepare a new or used Mac for a new user (or set of users)? Imaging? Deployment? Provisioning? Any or all of these? Or perhaps, “I don’t call it anything, I just do it”? Yes, we Mac Admins and DevOps are really good at getting stuff done, building community, and are getting better at documenting things. But, one of the things we are not so good at is using consistent terminology when we describe what we do. We’re also a little weak at breaking down our processes in a way… read more →

Hi All. You guessed it, it’s another customer request blog 😛 I had another education customer request us to block the installation of Google Chrome Extensions for their student devices. The little darlings Students had been installing VPN extensions in order to try to by-pass the local proxy filtering. These didn’t actually work still (mini fist pump), but did stop Chrome from working with that user account. Profile to the rescue! After a little bit of digging, I managed to build a profile that will: a) Disable any currently installed Chrome extensions b) Prevent the installation of additional extensions The profile… read more →

Hey all. In case you couldn’t guess, I’ve been completing a lot of on-premise Casper JSS / Jamf Pro Server upgrades recently for customer’s using Windows Servers to host their solution. I’m a big fan of little reminders and checklists so I wrote a short ‘crib-sheet’ style note I use as I complete each one. I thought I should share my list in case it helps anyone else out. Please Note: This is meant as a short reminder of tasks and not a full breakdown of all steps and considerations when upgrading your JSS. As always, your mileage may vary.… read more →

Aka “It is recommended that you use an account that is a local administrator and run the JSS Installer with elevated permissions” Hey all. This is another thing that I occasionally come across as an eternal consultant and keep forgetting the exact command needed to work around it, so externally accessible blog it is! Background So, what am I talking about? Well, if you try to run a JSS installer on Windows with the wrong user you get this error message: The JSS installer (downloaded from the “My Assets” section of Jamf Nation) needs to be run by the full… read more →