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'Spring Update' is in the air
Apple surely had a busy week.
First Apple announced the dates for this year's WWDC, June 8–12.
Then they announced "Apple Business" which will be a portal unifiying Apple Business Manager, the device management capabilities of Apple Business Essentials, hosted email, calendaring, and directory service, and the options to manage your organizations brand and location from Apple Business Connect.
All for free and world wide.
In the announcement, Apple says the availability of Apple Business Manager has also been increased to 200+ countries which is great news for multi-national organizations. Even when using other device management systems, Apple Admins can now use Automated Device Enrollment everywhere. Increased iCloud storage and AppleCare+ for Business remains limited to the US and to devices managed by Apple Business.
If the experiences with Apple Business Essentials are anything to go by, the management capabilities of Apple Business will not scale well beyond a few dozens of devices and comparatively simple deployments. Since that will now also be available to all orgs which have Apple Business Manager, we will surely be testing the capabilities and limitations soon.
Apple Business releases April 14 and I am looking forward to the posts with Apple and Mac Admin experiences.
Then we got the 26.4 updates, which in proper "Spring Update" (Northern Hemisphere) tradition contains quite a bit of interesting things for admins.
Finally, Apple retired the Mac Pro.
This week also marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Mac OS X. I had been putting together some thoughts, but then learned about the demise of the Mac Pro. This week is also very busy personally as we are getting the keys for our new house and preparing to move. I want to do the post on Mac OS X and the Mac Pro proper justice, so it will have to wait a bit more. Until then I can refer to my thoughts on "Twenty years of Mac OS X" from five years ago, which is a good start.
📰 News and Opinion
Mac Admins Europe: Building a Community Closer to Home
Success in 2026 wouldn’t just be a bigger event — it would be an even stronger community.
Mac Admins Foundation Awards 2026 Charles S. Edge New Speaker Grant for MacAD.UK
The Mac Admins Foundation is thrilled to announce that Mirko Steinbrecher as the recipient of the 2026 MacAD.UK Charles S. Edge New Speaker Grant.
⚙️ Apple Updates
What has changed in macOS Tahoe 26.4?
In affected environments, users can successfully sign in with Jamf Connect or a smart card using their PIN, but are then prompted for the login keychain password.
macOS Tahoe 26.4 Update! Everything you need to know.
This isn’t just a routine update. It will most likely be the final major feature release for macOS Tahoe. After what MacAdmins call the “Spring Release,” most development work usually shifts to the next OS, macOS 27, ahead of its debut in June at WWDC26.
macOS 26.4 brings more default app confirmation prompts
In macOS 26.4 Apple has added user confirmation prompts to all file type/UTI default app changes.
macOS 26.4 Presents Deployment Blockers Across Organizations
Tony Young:
In affected environments, users can successfully sign in with Jamf Connect or a smart card using their PIN, but are then prompted for the login keychain password.
New Terminal Security feature explained
Adam Codega/Ferdous Saljooki
In macOS Tahoe 26.4, Apple introduced a new Terminal security feature that warns users when pasting potentially malicious content.
Disabling Rosetta awareness messages on macOS Tahoe
Rich Trouton:
As part of this transition process, as of macOS Tahoe 26.4 there is a new window that will be periodically displayed when apps which are Intel-based get launched on Apple Silicon Macs.
Provisioning Profiles in Mac VMs
It’s a momentous day for Mac developers: you can now provision a device running in a VM. Whether you use VirtualBuddy, UTM, or another app, Xcode can now build, run, and debug apps on multiple versions of macOS without having to reboot. This includes apps that have entitlements for iCloud and other Apple services.
🔐 Security and Privacy
GhostClaw/GhostLoader Malware: GitHub Repositories & AI Workflow Attacks
Jamf Threat Labs details how the GhostClaw malware campaign uses GitHub repositories and AI-assisted development workflows to deliver credential-stealing payloads on macOS.
DarkSword Exploit Threatens iPhones Still Running iOS 18
If you’re concerned about DarkSword, upgrading to iOS 26 is a better option than living in Lockdown Mode in iOS 18.
Someone has publicly leaked an exploit kit that can hack millions of iPhones
Now someone has leaked a newer version of DarkSword and published it on the code-sharing site GitHub.
🔨 Support and Tutorials
How to Configure Jamf Connect with Okta
The purpose of this guide is to provide a workflow for Mac administrators to deploy Jamf Connect using Okta as the Identity Provider (IdP).
Read the macOS update progress bar
To capture all the phases that precede installation of an update, the progress bar moves through a series of stages
Cleaning up installs arrays from munkipkg payloads
One of the ways to tell Munki whether something is installed or not is to use an installs array. If the installs array is not configured correctly, though, it can result in an install loop.
Managing automatic installation of Background Security Improvements for macOS using Blueprints in Jamf Pro
Rich Trouton:
As a follow-up to my previous post for managing Background Security Improvements (BSIs) using Jamf Pro’s Blueprints, it looks like I misunderstood what one of the management options was actually doing.
🎧 Listen
Ten Year Podiversary
It was March 2016 when the first episode of the Mac Admins Podcast dropped, lead by the theme song that Adam Codega composed the first time he opened garage band. Hard to believe it! What’s changed since 2016? What’s the same? What do we think will be the same in 2036 if we’re still doing this?
Wildfire Warnings, Aging Clients, and AI’s Growing Impact
The hosts discuss unseasonably warm February weather in Boulder, a small wildfire near the Flatiron Mountains, and concerns about drought, low snowpack, and higher summer fire risk.
The challenges of remote support for IT
Tyler Luchtman from My Computer Works joins the show to talk about how they support businesses using Macs and the challenges of remote IT support.
This is all it takes to stop a train
we speak with San Francisco Chronicle transportation reporter Rachel Swan about what the BART outages revealed about the state of the system’s aging technology, why public infrastructure so often struggles to modernize, and what exactly went wrong in the three prior outages.