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The case of the missing 26.2 update
Last week, everything looked as if Apple had the 26.2 updates lined up for release this week. And then, well... There was an iOS 26.2 RC2 release.
Don't get me wrong, I very much prefer a better release a week later than a release with known issues, on some arbitrary schedule. But usually, Apple's releases are like clockwork and a week after the RC, you either get a second RC or the release.
The unfortunate aspect of this later-than-expected release is that 90-day software update deferrals for the 26 upgrades expire on Dec 14 (Sunday), so there may be some clients that will see the 26.0 upgrade on Monday. They won't see 26.1 as that is younger than 90 days. But then, once they are upgraded and 26.1 is considered a minor upgrade, if you have a different smaller value for the minor update deferral, 26.1 will be offered immediately. You can avoid this by changing the major update deferral value to the same value as the minor update deferral on Sunday, or maybe even today.
Should the 26.2 update be released later next week, it will be offered after the minor update deferral, which might be in a few days and still annoyingly soon after the users went through the upgrade. Unfortunate timing.
Of course, if you were not maxing out the major update deferral option, this doesn't affect you, because you already went through all this earlier.
Let's see what next week brings.
📰 News and Opinion
Apply Now: First 2026 Mentorship Program Cohort Starts January 5th!
The Mac Admins Foundation is pleased to announce the first mentorship program cohort of 2026.
🔐 Security and Privacy
AI-Poisoning & AMOS Stealer: How Trust Became the Biggest Mac Threat
We expected to find the standard delivery vectors […] Instead, what we found was a simple Google search, followed by a conversation with ChatGPT
How online search and AI can install malware
We have learned to trust many of the steps that here turn out to lead us into trouble, and there’s precious little that macOS can do to protect us. This exploit relies almost entirely on our human weakness to put trust in what’s inherently dangerous.
🔨 Support and Tutorials
🤖 Scripting and Automation
From Bash Script to Native macOS App: The Evolution of Simple Security Check
What started as a practical shell script for checking device security status evolved into a full-featured native macOS application.
How to make a macOS screen saver
First, make sure you really want to. macOS’s screen saver system is absurdly buggy and broken. It’s frustrating to work with and very difficult to make work right.
Bit off-topic, but there are many Mac Admins wondering how to manage Screen Saver settings and the option "just build a custom screen saver" gets thrown out as a possible solution.
Apple does not seem to be interested in screen savers any more, and I kind of agree. Screen savers go originated when bulky CRT monitors were in danger of burning an image into the screen. Turning them off was not an option as frequent power cycles could damage the electronics.
Modern displays might actually suffer from burn-in, too, but just turning them off is no problem. This also saves energy and display life time. We should all prefer short display life times over screen savers.
Nevertheless, this post has many interesting details.
SetDefaultApps
Scott Kendall:
[There is] a nifty CLI app called "utiluti" that allows you to change just about any default app / file type on your system. This script is based on his work, I just put a GUI front end to it for simple app changing.
WallpaperPicker
Scott Kendall:
This nifty little script will allow your users to pick from a selection of custom wallpaper using the carousel effect built into Swift Dialog. The users can optionally choose which display the wallpaper can be set on.
Great use of desktoppr
🎧 Listen
Making your own tools
Neil Johnson’s been building some incredible tools for Mac Admins of late, and we wanted to sit down with him and talking through Apple Policy Explorer and some others.
The impact of AI on Apple IT departments
Apu Pavithran from Hexnode joins the show to talk about AI's impact on Apple IT work and much more.