Clik here to view.
Mac Admin & Developer Conference UK
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be speaking at the inaugural Mac Admin & Developer Conference UK, which is taking place in London from February 9th – 10th, 2016. You can see the entire list of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mining OS X for Apple’s artwork
When building a presentation in Keynote, I often use Apple’s icons and other images included in OS X to illustrate my slides. This is because Apple’s already done a lot of work creating high-res images...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Updated CasperCheck now available
JAMF announced today that, due to changes that are coming in OS X 10.11, Casper’s jamf binary will be moving its location in a future release of Casper. For those not familiar with Casper, the jamf...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gatekeeper automatically re-enables after 30 days on Yosemite and later
On OS X 10.10.x and later, disabling Gatekeeper does not mean it is permanently off. After a set amount of time (currently 30 days), Gatekeeper will automatically re-enable itself with the Allow apps...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Recovering Automator workflows from Automator applications
Every so often, source code for an application gets lost, mislaid or not given to a customer. In that case, the application’s user may need to do a lot of work to decompile the application and see if...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Creating an Office 2016 15.12.3 installer
One of the issues I worked on this week was building a new Office 2016 installer after Microsoft began making Office 2016 available to its volume license customers. I have an existing process to build...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Modifying Oracle’s Java SDK to run Java applications on OS X
As part of releasing the developer betas for OS X 10.11, Apple announced that El Capitan would be the end of the line for the Java 6 runtime and tools provided by Apple, with the clear statement that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
FileVault 2 on Yosemite is now FIPS 140-2 Compliant
Apple announced on Saturday, August 8th that the FIPS 140-2 validations for the cryptographic modules used by iOS 8 and OS X 10.10.x have now been completed. This is significant news for folks who want...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Session videos now available from Penn State MacAdmins Conference 2015
The good folks at Penn State have begun posting the session videos from the Penn State MacAdmins Conference 2015. The sessions slides and currently available videos are all accessible from the Penn...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Using QuickRadar to file bug reports with Apple
I’ve started filing bug reports with Apple using a handy tool named QuickRadar. It helps streamline the process by filing bug reports via a native app on my Mac, rather than having to go through this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Creating a VMware ESXi-hosted VM using VMware Fusion 8.x
A new feature in VMware Fusion 8 Professional is the ability to create a new VM on an ESXi 6.x server. This new functionality gives Fusion users on OS X another tool for managing VMs on VMware’s ESXi...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NetBooting and System Integrity Protection
Apple took an unusual step this week and released a knowledgebase (KBase) article that refers to an as-yet unreleased operating system: Prepare for NetBoot, NetInstall, and NetRestore requirements in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
System Integrity Protection and the end of XProtect management for browser...
OS X El Capitan adds a new security feature named System Integrity Protection (SIP). Among other things, SIP prevents parties other than Apple from adding, deleting or modifying directories and files...
View ArticleClik here to view.
System Integrity Protection and resetting NVRAM
OS X El Capitan’s new System Integrity Protection (SIP) security feature stores its active security configuration in NVRAM. This allows SIP’s configuration to persist across OS installs, but this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PATH environment variables and Casper 9.8
In the wake of the release of Casper 9.8, where the Casper agent’s jamf and jamfAgent binaries have made their planned move from /usr/sbin to /usr/local/jamf/bin, a number of Casper-using folks who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Downloading older versions of OS X using Recovery
As of September 28th, 2015, Apple has apparently removed the listings for older versions of OS X and other discontinued software from the Purchased tab of users who had previously purchased or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Outlook 2011, OS X El Capitan and the Pinwheel of Patience
If you’re planning to upgrade to OS X El Capitan and you use Outlook 2011 to get email from Microsoft Exchange, you may want to delay upgrading. On El Capitan, connecting to Exchange email servers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
System Integrity Protection – Adding another layer to Apple’s security model
As part of the release of OS X El Capitan, Apple has added a new layer named System Integrity Protection (SIP) to its security model. To understand how System Integrity Protection fits in, let’s first...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Enabling an IPv6-only network using Internet Sharing on El Capitan
One of the hidden features of OS X El Capitan is the ability to enable Internet Sharing to provide only IPv6 addresses. This feature was added to El Capitan to help developers ensure their apps are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Configuring System Integrity Protection without booting to Recovery HD
One interesting part of Apple’s developer documentation for System Integrity Protection (SIP) is the note shown below, indicating that it’s possible to configure SIP for environments that can’t access...
View Article