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Preventing the macOS Catalina upgrade advertisement from appearing in the...
Not yet ready for macOS Catalina in your environment, but you’ve trained your folks to look at the Software Update preference pane to see if there’s available updates? One of the ways Apple is...
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Enable automatic macOS and App Store updates on macOS Catalina with a profile
A while back, I wrote a post on enabling automatic software updates on OS X Yosemite through macOS Mojave. As part of the post, I mentioned that it wasn’t possible to manage the options for automatic...
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Most Apple apps installed with the OS have a new filesystem location
Starting with Mac OS X 10.0.0, Mac apps have traditionally been installed into /Applications or /Applications/Utilities. It appears to be the same on macOS Catalina, but appearances can be deceiving....
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Enabling root on a Mac which hasn’t gone through macOS Catalina’s Setup...
On certain occasions, it may be necessary to configure settings on a Mac which has not yet gone through Apple’s Setup Assistant. This process usually involves enabling the root account and setting a...
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The macOS user template directories have a new filesystem location on macOS...
New users on a Mac have a certain set of default settings which are copied into their user profiles the first time they log in. Starting with Mac OS X 10.0.0, these settings have been stored in the...
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Certificate used to sign older Apple software expiring on October 24, 2019
On February 10, 2015, a number of Mac admins noticed that Apple was re-issuing a number of software updates. The updates themselves hadn’t changed, but were being reposted. Apple, why are you reposting...
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Managing macOS Catalina’s FileVault 2 with fdesetup
Since its initial release in OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.x, Apple’s main tool for managing FileVault 2 encryption has been fdesetup. With the transition from managing Core Storage-based encryption on HFS+...
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Suppressing the Screen Time pop-up window with a profile on macOS Catalina
Apple has introduced a number of pop-up windows in various OS versions, which appear the first time you log into a Mac and sometimes also after OS updates. For macOS Catalina, Apple has introduced one...
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Rebuilding your macOS Recovery volume or partition with create_macos_recovery
I recently got an email from a former colleague, requesting assistance with a problem they were seeing. They were cloning drives with macOS Catalina, but their cloning process was not including the...
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Suppressing the Touch ID pop-up window with a profile on macOS Catalina
Apple has introduced a number of pop-up windows over the years, which appear the first time you log into a Mac and sometimes also after OS updates. In 2016, Apple introduced one for Touch ID as part of...
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Downloading macOS installers with updated signing certificates on macOS Catalina
As a follow-up to last week’s expiration of the certificate used to sign previously-released macOS installers, Apple has released re-signed macOS installers with the new certificate which is good until...
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Apple moving older macOS installers from the Mac App Store
Apple has started making the following macOS installers available outside of the Mac App Store (MAS). macOS Sierra OS X El Capitan OS X Yosemite For each listed OS installer, Apple has direct download...
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AutoPkg recipes for macOS Sierra, OS X El Capitan and OS X Yosemite OS...
Now that Apple has made direct download links available for older OS installers, I’ve written AutoPkg .download and .pkg recipes for the following macOS installers: macOS Sierra OS X El Capitan OS X...
View ArticleSlides from the “MDM: From “Nice to Have” To Necessity” session at Jamf...
For those who wanted a copy of my MDM talk at Jamf Nation User Conference 2019, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format. PDF – https://tinyurl.com/JNUC2019PDF Keynote –...
View ArticleIdentifying vendors of installed Java JDKs using Jamf Pro
Since Oracle’s license change for Java 11 and later took effect in October 2018, where Oracle announced that they would now be charging for the production use of Oracle’s Java 11 and later, the number...
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Identifying Self Service policies with missing icons
As part of setting up Self Service policies in Jamf Pro, the usual practice is to include an icon to help the user distinguish between various Self Service policies. However, when copying policy...
View ArticleSession videos from Jamf Nation User Conference 2019 now available
Jamf has posted the session videos for from Jamf Nation User Conference 2019, including the video for my “MDM: From Nice-To-Have to Necessity” session. For those interested, all of the the JNUC 2019...
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Enabling or disabling all Jamf Pro policies using the API
Every so often, it may be useful to be able to enable or disable all of your current Jamf Pro policies. In those cases, depending on how many policies you have, it can be tedious to have to do them one...
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Deploying Terminal profile settings using macOS configuration profiles
A number of Mac admins have their Terminal appearance settings configured just the way they like them, but it can be a bit of manual work to export and import them. After having to manually configure...
View ArticleApple Device Management book now available for purchase from Amazon and Apress
I’ve been working on a new book with my colleague Charles Edge and I’m delighted to announce it’s now available for regular sale from both Amazon and Apress, our publisher! Just in time to bring a...
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