Intermediate Mac OS and iOS blogs for advanced users and professionals on their way to becoming Apple certified.
Is it possible to prevent conversion to APFS when upgrading to High Sierra?
While I was running macOS Support Essentials 10.13 one of my delegates asked “Is it possible to prevent conversion to APFS when upgrading to High Sierra?” after explaining it to him I realised that most people in the room also didn’t realise this was an option, so I thought I better share it. As most […]
A Week With The iMac Pro
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 […]
Get Ready for macOS High Sierra
You all probably know that Apple’s next operating system for the Mac is called macOS High Sierra. High Sierra introduces new core technologies that improve the most functions of your Mac. From re-architecting how it stores your data to improving how you watch videos to unleashing the full power of the graphics processors. Some of […]
Disable Screensaver Password with a profile
Hi All. You guessed it, it’s another customer request blog 😛 This time I had an education customer request that we disable the requirement to have a password apply shortly after the screensaver starts for student lab devices. This was to prevent students from locking a device at the end of a lesson by walking […]
Configuring Proxies and Firewalls for Apple MDM access
Recently I’ve been looking into configuration for firewalls and proxy in order to get MDM servers working properly. Its been rumoured for a while that Apple has been using third party servers to do some of its validation and content hosting. Opening your network to the 17 Class A range used to fix all issues, […]
How to Enable Night Shift Mode in macOS
On Monday, Apple released 10.12.4 the latest update to macOS Sierra. Along with feature updates to dictation and Siri, they also brought the Night Shift mode introduced to iOS 9.3 to the mac. This feature is available for 2012 and newer macs. What is Night Shift Mode? For those new to the feature it is […]
All You Need to Know About macOS Command Line and Terminal
During several of our macOS Support Essentials classes it has been clear that many people wish to use the Command-Line much more in their day-to-day user support. Unfortunately, the last time that this was taught at a client support level was OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) Support Essentials. We’re rectifying that by creating a new one-day […]
Chrome first run messages revisited – with added profiles
Hi All, and apologies for the unexpected hiatus. Would you believe we’ve been a little busy! Supporting David Acland’s efforts at the amazing MacADUK conference has made me realise that there’s still things I’ve picked up after the last few months that may well help other Mac Admins out there, so I’m back to blogging […]
How to Combat macOS Sierra Calendar Spam
Calendar spam might not be on your radar yet, but over the last few weeks there have been more and more reports of spam calendar invitations. These invites are created to just spam you with sales for various products. The reason why this has become a problem is because macOS and iOS automatically scan your […]
Apple Updates Target Disk Mode
By Daryl McCartney – Apple Master Trainer Hi all, While running an ACMT course recently it became apparent that it is not so well known that when Apple released the latest MacBook (Retina, 12”, Early 2015) they also updated Target Disk Mode to support the latest USB Type C connector. Although the USB-C connector is […]