macOS
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This past weekend, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg reported that iOS 27 will be a “no-frills ‘Snow Leopard’ update” focused on “quality improvements and artificial intelligence features.” If you remember the Mac OS X Snow Leopard release with fondness, as I do, you’ll be tempted to see this as the solution to the software quality issues…
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Cisco Secure Client 5.1.13 features minor updates and bug fixes, with significant changes in its macOS packaging. The GUI client is now a separate installer choice, enhancing deployment flexibility. Mac admins can choose not to install the GUI app if unnecessary.
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macOS can be cleanly re-installed using Erase All Contents and Settings, transferring an IPSW file while in DFU mode, and by using the startosinstall –eraseinstall command in the macOS Install app. All of these come with trade offs. None of them are exactly the same as a factory Mac. EACS IPSW EI OS version Same…
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macOS Sequoia 15 introduces a new privacy feature: randomized MAC addresses for Wi-Fi networks. Each Wi-Fi SSID gets a different random MAC address, instead of the network interface’s physical MAC address, in order to prevent tracking across public networks. This feature has been available on iOS since version 14. The macOS 15 TCP/IP stack uses…
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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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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…
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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:…
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This post assumes a familiarity with macOS packaging. Apple’s aerial screen savers are a headlining feature in macOS Sonoma. These screen savers are also integrated with the desktop wallpaper, slowly pausing behind windows after the Mac is awoken or unlocked from screen saver. A screen saver/wallpaper combination featuring the Sonoma region of California is the…
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Howard Oakley posted this weekend about problems installing XProtect updates when a Content Caching server is available. His post prompted me to dig into a similar situation I had last week: I couldn’t install Command Line Tools for Xcode while my Content Caching service was online. Fortunately, /var/log/install.log had a lot of verbose logging about…
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Researching Keyboard Setup Assistant started as an exercise in suppressing it during a demonstration video of our Mac provisioning process. My findings quickly became part of that very provisioning process. Background macOS presents Keyboard Setup Assistant when it encounters an unknown 3rd party keyboard. The assistant guides the user to press a couple of keys…
macadmin.fraserhess.com 