Apple platform deployment – Accessing the latest version when your locale is neither en-ca or en-us

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TL;DR – To get the latest version of Apple platform deployment which has been updated as per the above when your locale is neither en-ca or en-us, go to: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/deployment/welcome/web

More details on this below.

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Apple Platform Deployment – Now available in a locale near you!

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The Apple Deployment Guide (https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/welcome/web) is always updated soon after a major macOS release. However, it can take a couple of weeks for it to become available in many locales.

This year has been no exception, but as of today the Apple Deployment Guide (https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/welcome/web) should now be available to all locales (that link should direct to your locale).

Prior to today, when accessing https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/welcome/web from outside Canada and the US, folks would be redirected to their locales version of the guide, which was dated June 2022.

Even trying https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/deployment/welcome/web would redirect folks to their locales version of the guide.

The one exception was is the en-CA locale (https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/deployment/welcome/web), which doesn’t seem to redirect. And as such, folks outside Canada and the US have been accessing the guide via that URL.

Regardless, its welcome to have the documentation available to all.

And, if so inclined, why not file feedback with Apple along the lines of what I filed below. So those of us outside Canada and the US are not left out in the cold for a couple of weeks next time (maybe):

FB11718598 (When a locales documentation isn’t available, redirect to en-US)

macOS Ventura and bypassing the new SystemPolicyAppBundles privacy policy control

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With every macOS release since macOS Mojave, Apple have added more privacy policy controls (PPPC) for Admins to manage via MDM. And todays release of macOS Ventura, is no different, with two new PPPC which coming with macOS Ventura:

Managed Login Items are something which will I expect will be widely blogged about, but SystemPolicyAppBundles might not be as to trigger this new PPPC requires a narrow path to be trodden and even then, can be bypassed.

The below details the path required to trigger this new PPPC, and how to bypass.

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Farewell macOS Server

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Today, Apple published https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312, which states:

As of April 21, 2022, Apple has discontinued macOS Server. Existing macOS Server customers can continue to download and use the app with macOS Monterey.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312

As someone that cut my teeth with OSX Server on 10.3 (Panther), I’d like to say farewell old friend.

In addition, Apple have posted a document on choosing and MDM solution and as well have another document advising that:

Apple will discontinue Fleetsmith service on October 21, 2022
As of April 21, 2022, Apple has discontinued new signups for Fleetsmith.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213238

If you’re looking for a replacement for either Profile Manager or Fleetsmith, why not head over to the MacAdmins.org Slack, or reach out to folks like.. oh, I dunno.. dataJAR 🙂

Anyways, farewell macOS Server!

Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager Terms Update – March 31, 2022

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As forewarned by Apple a week ago, the Business Manager and School Manager Terms have been updated today.

I’ve covered this a few times, but essentially an AxM Administrator for your organisation will need to agree to the new terms.

Also the AxM Administrator(s) for your organisation should have the above email (or it’s School Manager equivalent).

In the meantime, until terms are accepted:

Devices assigned to a Mobile Device Management (MDM) server in Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager won’t be affected. If you erase all content and settings on a device, the device will still be assigned to the same MDM server, and the same settings will be applied during setup.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203063

macOS Monterey 12.3 will remove Python 2.7 (/usr/bin/python)

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Hot on the heels of macOS Monterey 12.2, Apple have publicly released the macOS Monterey 12.3 Beta Release Notes.

Despite this being a point release, there are a few breaking changes.

The kernels for both the Dropbox Desktop Application and Microsoft OneDrive are called out as deprecated in the release notes, and as such both have updates and/or changes coming to overcome this change.

However, the more impactful change is the removal of Python 2 (/usr/bin/python).

This has a number of ramifications, and is really a very large change to drop in a point release.

See below for more details on this, and how it will likely affect every Mac Admin.

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Maintenance completed!

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Hopefully, all 229 posts from the past eleven years and two months have all been sorted.

All the code examples have been moved to gists from repos, and they will now show inline natively.

There was also still some http:// items from way back when this blog was just http://, which have been moved to https.

And, there was some images missing.. for $reasons.

I’ve also rejigged some backend stuff and removed some older plugins.

So, a fair bit or maintenance over the past 11 days. Let me know if any issues encountered.

Lastly, once more, thanks to @SudarMuthu for the WP Github Gist plugin which served this blog so well.

Where did the code examples go? Well…

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A few folks have noticed that the code examples have disappeared from my posts, well.. I was using a plugin called WP Github Gist to display the code as this blog has been around since before WordPress added native support for Gists.

However, this plugin no longer works.

But, don’t panic!! Things will come back, I just need to manually update the 229 posts here (over 11 years worth), to use Gists.

One of this things I most liked about WP Github Gist and will miss, was the fact that I could link to lines within a file within a GitHub repo and has them displayed. Instead of creating a gist per post (as an example, this file was used across a number of posts).

So, there is some work for me to do.

If you’re looking at a post, and are missing the content, please message me on Slack or Twitter.

No SLA mind, but I’ll look to update the posts requested over the older ones.

And lastly, thanks to @SudarMuthu for the WP Github Gist plugin which served this blog so well.

macOS Monterey prompt: “…..” needs to be updated

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During your testing of macOS Monterey (betas or today after it’s release), you might receive a prompt like that shown above.

Well, does this mean that the “JamfManagementService” needs an update? Nope! and, to be clear, this is something you’ll likely see even if you don’t use Jamf.

Below is some information on this message, what triggers it, and how to start to uncover what on your macOS devices are triggering it.

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Jamf Pro 10.28.0 and Apple APNs changes

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As forewarned by Apple, Richard Purves and recently one of my dataJAR colleagues Richard Mallion, Apple is making a change to APNs on March 31, 2021.

As detailed within the dataJAR blog post, this change is between MDM servers and Apple and not managed devices.

Since Jamf Pro 10.23.0, there has been a toggle to enable this change to HTTP/2 for APNs communication.

However with Jamf Pro 10.28.0 release earlier this week, Jamf Pro will default to HTTP/2 and if you’re self hosting Jamf Pro this release will flip over the APNs communication to use HTTP/2.

If you’re Jamf Cloud, then this change has already been made for you.

So, this short post is just to bring attention to this change for those that need it.

And if you’d like to know more, for more info see the aforementioned blog post on the dataJAR blog.