For many years while working at ETH Zürich, I developed a set of shell scripts for performing API actions on multiple Jamf instances. These remained for internal use only due to the specific nature of the ETH setup. However, as I am between jobs at the moment while waiting for...
At the end of October, I said goodbye to ETH Zürich as my employers of 6.5 years. I’d like to pause to reflect on my journey. I came to Basel, Switzerland in March 2016, leaving my previous job in the University of Bristol to follow my wife, who started a...
Jamf Pro is introducing a new Jamf Cloud Distribution Point (JCDS), including an official API endpoint for uploading packages. 🎉🥳🍾🪅 This promises to provide Jamf Pro Cloud customers with a reliable method for automated package uploads. This blog post explains what you need to know in order to set up...
At the recent MacAdmins UK conference I gave a presentation about my erase-install script. The video is now available here. At the end of this presentation, I included a section on what happens when a project you share online has become popular. This section seemed to resonate with some of...
On 23 May 2023, at 12:15 PM BST, I proudly presented at the MacAdmins UK Conference, on the following topic: Erase-Install: A Tool for Upgrading and Reinstalling your Mac March 26, 2018: the release of macOS 10.13.4 introduced a new resource in the macOS installer apps that allowed us to...
Thanks to the excellent contribution of Henrik Engström (@creation on the MacAdmins Slack), there is a new AutoPkg processor in the JamfUploader suite of processors. Jamf Pro can accumulate packages quickly if you have a broad suite of applications to deploy, and when you’ve automated the upload of those packages...
When setting up my own machine, I often like to install some applications into my own User Applications folder (/Users/$currentuser/Applications). This folder does not exist by default, but is recognised as an Applications folder by macOS when created, and items within appear in Spotlight just like any app installed in...
Strange behaviour had been bugging me in the Network Pane of macOS System Preferences (System Settings since macOS Ventura) ever since the introduction of system extensions in macOS Catalina 10.15. System extensions are the replacement for kernel extensions (confusingly referred to as “System Extensions” in macOS System Preferences and in...
Many open source tools and vendor products for Mac use the softwareupdate command to check for software updates. Typically, they will use the folllowing argument: softwareupdate --list This polls Apple’s software catalogs, which normally takes a few seconds. However, many members of the Mac admin community have in recent times...
I’m a bit late with this blog post due to holidays and a family emergency, but I was very proud to appear on the MacAdmins Podcast in Episode 276, which was released on 1 August, 2022. Click here for links to the podcast episode and shownotes To celebrate, here is...
