macadmin.fraserhess.com

Discoveries and solutions from my work administering Mac computers.

  • Using the xprotect command in macOS 15

    This year, we set out to build a more stable Zoom Rooms environment at the office. We took the philosophy of treating Zoom Rooms Macs like servers. Software updates would be installed during maintenance windows when the conference rooms weren’t in use. All automatic software update features were disabled via a configuration profile. Rather, software…

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  • Plugging VoiceOver

    Most Mac Admins have heard the announcement about VoiceOver during Setup Assistant. Many times. There’s even a t-shirt. My latest, and very cost effective, approach to muting this on my test computers is to use an audio cable from Dollar Tree. I picked up this short cable and promptly cut the jacks off with a…

  • Thoughts on the M4 Mac mini rumors

    It’s got to have an Ethernet port, right? Last week, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg reported that the Mac mini is getting its first major redesign in 14 years. This would be only the third Mac mini design. This year, I deployed Mac minis in most of our Zoom Rooms. Changes to the product line are…

  • Here’s to Charles Edge

    In April 2022, Charles Edge didn’t know me but invited me to appear on the Mac Admins Podcast. I wasn’t even a Mac admin at the time, at least officially. I had reported a vulnerability and he wanted me to discuss it. I was reticent, thinking this wasn’t relevant to a Mac admin audience. Today,…

  • Building custom Cisco Secure Client installers

    Cisco offers two quite different downloads of its Secure Client for macOS. The one most commonly used by Mac Admins is the “predeploy”. Cisco Secure Client is now a suite of security agents. There are now ten components installed by default when using a predeploy package from Cisco. However, it is doubtful that an organization…