macadmin.fraserhess.com

Discoveries and solutions from my work administering Mac computers.

  • 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…

  • Cisco Secure Client in January 2024

    Since the last time I wrote, Cisco Secure Client continues to evolve. Here’s a survey of important changes since 5.0.02075 that affect Mac Admins. New modules Cisco has added three new modules to Secure Client: Name Installer choice identifier New in ThousandEyes choice_thousandeyes 5.0.05040 Duo choice_duo 5.1.0.136 Zero Trust Access choice_zta 5.1.0.136 ThousandEyes installs components…

  • Building a Jamf Self Service policy for Homebrew

    Homebrew, the open-source UNIX package manager tool for macOS, got a new installation option last year: a macOS installer package. This is an exciting change for Mac Admins looking to deploy Homebrew for software developers, sys admins, and refugee Linux nerds in their organizations. That said, the Homebrew package appears built to be installed by…

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  • What could macOS 15 be named?

    In 2014, MacRumors and Consomac uncovered trademarks that pointed to future marketing names of macOS releases. With one exception, macOS Catalina 10.15, the list of trademarks they found has contained every macOS name to date. Here is the list, reordered by release and then alphabetically, complete with links to what they might be named after:…