Apple Vision Pro in the Enterprise

It’s finally here! After 8 months of waiting and much longer since the rumors began, the Apple Vision Pro has arrived at my doorstep. Over the last few days journalists, bloggers and influencers have been posting their unboxing videos, setup tutorials and reviews. This review is different, as I have one goal in mind: I want to see where the Vision Pro fits in the enterprise space. I’ll look at it from my vantage point as a systems engineer, but I’ll wear some of my other hats as well.

macOS Sonoma: Did It Meet Expectations?

Where have I been for the last few months? And why have I not been posting? I’ve had a lot on my plate, both personally and professionally, but it was time to dust off the typewriter and share some of what I have been up to. I had saved in the drafts an article aptly named “Winter is Coming, Sonoma is almost here.” I never got a chance to actually push publish.

macOS 14 Wishlist

It is almost here! Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), and with it will come the announcement of the new version of macOS 14 Redwood. (Of course I’m guessing about the name). A lot of enterprises are now fully on macOS Ventura or have most of their fleets on the latest OS. This is the time when the Engineering teams are well versed in the new features and bugs and are also starting to look ahead at what is next.

Advanced Network Troubleshooting on iPad and iPhone

Every once in a while we experience a network problem on an iOS or iPadOS device that requires deeper troubleshooting. For example, a VPN client that is not connecting and has limited logging capability. On the other side, the network team is saying: “It’s not us, it’s the client.” The only way to approach this is with data. On a macOS device you would fire up tcpdump and get what you need, but what about iOS and iPadOS?

How to Over-Engineer a Blog

Like many of my colleagues in the Mac Admin field, I had been wanting to start a blog for a while. True, there are many, many Apple related blogs out there, so why one more? At the core, I love technology, so I was partly motivated to share the unique tidbits that I ran across in my day-to-day. But another part was about the how, about the technology involved. I’m always looking to step out of my comfort zone and try something new.

macOS Ventura Custom Screen Saver Idle Time Change

Controlling the idle time before the Screen Saver activates is a common sense security practice. It is one of the first items that auditors ask for. For a long time we have been able to control this setting via MDM profiles, but Ventura introduced a welcome change. Let’s take macOS Monterey as an example. In the screenshot below, a profile is being applied to set the Screen Saver to activate if the device is idle for 900 seconds (15 minutes).

How to Screen Record during DEP Setup Assistant

Screen Recording during Enrollment and setup. We often have to create screen recordings for training, documentation or troubleshooting purposes. I was surprised at a mac admins meeting when someone asked how they should do it and using a cell phone to record was suggested. Yes, you could do that in a pinch, but the quality is not great, especially for training material or for a larger audience. The other idea included video capture devices and external streaming hardware and software, like you would use for live streaming a gaming session.

Workspace ONE, Postman and API Custom Commands

When using Workspace ONE for modern management of macOS devices, most of the time I live in the UI, but once in a while it makes sense to just use the API. You can use any method, from PowerShell in Windows to the terminal, but for this example I’ll use Postman , you can check out my post for more of my commonly used tools. I won’t go into the process of downloading and setting up Postman or creating the necessary permissions for an API account on your WS1 instance.

OpenAI - ChatGPT and the future of mac admins

This week I got to play a little with OpenAI ChatGPT bot, and wow, we have to talk about this… Any time there is a fundamental leap in technology, it comes with the usual responses: apprehension, denial and most often fear. OpenAI’s ChatGPT chat bot is no different, it is by no means the first, but it is definitely one of the most advanced that has been opened for the public to try out.

Printing with YSoft on macOS Ventura

CUPS has changed! And it may have gone unnoticed to some. One of the many challenges of integrating a new OS is testing compatibility with all of your existing software stack. Sometimes you know what to expect. For example, an architecture change like Intel to Apple Silicon, or KEXT to System Extensions. But it is the quiet changes that can hurt you the most. The sometimes undocumented deprecations in API, cyphers, etc.