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📸 Focus
Opinion: A Snow Leopard release is not the answer
Rather than a singular year focused on quality, Apple needs to adopt such software development methodologies, especially but not limited to comprehensive automated testing, early in their development process.
Snow Leopard often gets called "peak Mac OS." It was the last version of Mac OS X with a two year life time and Mac OS X Lion was a bit of a let down. Apple said Snow Leopard was going to fix a lot of bugs, so that has to be true, right?
In 2008 and 2009 Apple’s resources were streched thin because they had just added the iPhone and a whole new OS to their roster and that got a lot of the attention. They were also working on iPad and its OS and apps, but weren’t talking about it yet. They had to sell that Snow Leopard did not have as many flashy features.
But it did have changes. They dropped PowerPC support and AppleTalk. Finder and QuickTime were new apps, rewritten in Cocoa. They introduced the OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch frameworks to developers, as well an entirely new printing system (CUPS).
The initial release of Snow Leopard was actually quite rocky. There were only eight updates over two years, three of which happened in the first six months to addess some serious issues. The last version of Snow Leopard has the version number “10.6.8 v1.1,” which doesn’t scream reliability to me.
I do not share the nostalgia for Snow Leopard in particular. I have nostalgia for the old, pre-Big Sur user interface, for the whimsical and gorgeous icons, for when the Mac interface dared to have depth, shapes, color and texture, for a time when Apple seemed to care about details and their own Human Interface Guidelines, for when Apple had to compete on innovation, quality, and refinement.
I do agree with Fraser’s analysis. Abandoning the yearly marketing release cycle, or inserting a “Snow Leopard style” release is not going to fix the quality issues that Apple has right now.
Apple needs to pay more attention to quality control, consistency, and usability. Unlike 2008, Apple has plenty of resources, or could afford to hire more. These are challenges of prioritizing quality and bug fixes over other things.
📰 News and Opinion
Mac Admins Foundation Launches 2025 End-of-Year Drive With Matching Donations!
The Mac Admins Foundation is excited to kick off our 2025 End-of-Year Drive, and we’re inviting the entire community to help us reach our goal of 400 total members.
Did I write this, or did an LLM?
And the more I think about it, the more I realize how many unanswered questions are hiding in that discomfort.
Also this previous post: You only notice bad AI
What is Authentic in a world with LLMs?
What this calls for is exploration, for patience, for “no hard decisions,” while we see how the rest of things shake out.
Tom's counterpoint to Kitzy's post above. Both are very thoughtful and worth pondering.
What They Don't Tell You About Maintaining an Open Source Project
i shipped v1, posted it on reddit, got some stars on github. people actually used it. that feeling when someone tells you they're using something you built? incredible.
then i learned that shipping is just the beginning.
Not directly a MacAdmin project, but the summary resonated with me.
How We Turn Apple’s Mac Mini Into High-Performance Dedicated Servers
Take a behind-the-scenes look at how Scaleway brought the Mac mini as-a-Service to life
Fifteen years of Scripting OS X
Fifteen years ago today I published the first post on Scripting OS X.
⚙️ Apple Updates
Latest macOS Tahoe beta fixes bug with Electron apps that caused widespread performance issues
Major Electron-based apps have subsequently released software updates to work around this bug, but this meant waiting for an update from the developer of each Electron app installed on your Mac. With the latest 26.2 betas, Apple has now fixed the incompatibility at a system-wide level.
🔐 Security and Privacy
MacOS Infection Vector: Using AppleScripts to bypass Gatekeeper
Pepe Berba:
This gives an overview of how .scpt AppleScript are used to creatively deliver macOS malware, such as fake office documents or fake Zoom/Teams updates. Previously a technique seen with APT campaigns for macOS, we can now see samples coming from the macOS stealer ecosystem like MacSync and Odyssey.
Also see their post on hiding AppleScripts in Resource Forks.
FlexibleFerret: macOS Malware Deploys in Fake Job Scams
Beware of fake job assessments that ask you to run Terminal commands — they could be a social engineering scheme to deploy the FlexibleFerret malware and steal your credentials.
Fake LinkedIn jobs trick Mac users into downloading Flexible Ferret malware
Researchers have discovered a new attack targeting Mac users. It lures them to a fake job website, then tricks them into downloading malware via a bogus software update.
🔨 Support and Tutorials
Configuring a bootstrap package in Fleet GitOps
Bootstrap packages provide a common way to deliver an initial payload of software, such as a management agent, to a macOS device during the Automated Device Enrollment process.
Disabling the floating thumbnail preview for screenshots on macOS Tahoe
Rich Trouton
One of the features available when taking screenshots is the option to see a floating thumbnail preview of the screenshot before it gets saved to the location you’ve chosen to save screenshots to.
Deploying custom DDM declarations using Blueprints in Jamf Pro
Rich Trouton:
What this means that if you can manually build the JSON payload for a DDM declaration, you should now be able to deploy it using Blueprints even if Jamf does not yet have a Blueprint template available yet for that declaration.
Packaging changes in Cisco Secure Client 5.1.13
The changes in Cisco Secure Client 5.1.13 are largely what one would expect from the thirteenth maintenance release of any software: some minor feature changes and bug fixes. What the release notes do not discuss is a significant change to the way Cisco Secure Client is packaged for macOS.
Getting started with IaC workflows in your environment
How to get started with Terraform to start pursuing Infrastructure as Code workflows in your own Jamf environment.
🤖 Scripting and Automation
JAMF-Pro-Scripts/AdobeDetectMultiple
This script will scan the user's system for multiple versions of all Adobe apps and then present the user with a nice GUI display with multiple options.
Jamf-Upload All The Things
This post explains some of the wider variety of capabilities of JamfUploader.
sbedit, a tool to manipulate the Finder sidebar
I translated all of that into Swift, added more options (remove, list, removeall) and turned it into a shell command with arguments.
Unlocking AutoPkg’s Check Mode
This post walks through what the flag does, how it works internally, and how recipe authors use the EndOfCheckPhase processor to control AutoPkg’s behavior during a check run.
♻️ Updates and Releases
Platform Single Sign-on DIY
This is a post about how to implement Platform Single Sign-on, Apple’s framework for simplifying logins from macOS devices. It builds upon the SSO Extensions, but takes it a bit further.
The PSSO extension for Keycloak they built.
Introducing ABM Warranty for macOS
ABM Warranty solves that by pulling structured, rich warranty data directly from Apple’s backend using your organization’s ABM API key.
🎧 Listen
Running a medical school on Apple
What’s it like managing Apple Devices in a medical school? Brian Atkinson of the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine joins us this week to take us through the challenges of running their whole environment on Apple products. From Macs to tablets to even the Vision Pro!
How the agentic browser changes the game for IT
Alcyr Araujo and Eduardo Vitor join the show to talk about about web browsers with agentic AI capabilities will change how IT works and operates.
JNUC Recap: Platform API, Identity and Security Jamf After Dark
Highlights reveal major progress in platform SSO, automated updates and AI‑driven security insights, showing how Jamf strengthens Apple fleet management.