Apple had a busy week: Apple AirTags 2, Apple quarterly results, third betas for 26.3 and Apple Creator Studio.
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📸 Focus
Mac Admins Europe, Leiden, Netherlands, April 30
I have been anxiously waiting to be able to talk about this for quite a while now: We have been working on a new Mac Admin community conference in Europe.
Taking place on April 30th in Leiden, Netherlands, this one-day event brings Mac Admins together to share practical knowledge, real-world experience, and build stronger connections across the community.
Inspired by established Mac Admin conferences and from years of local community meetups, the focus is on meaningful content, peer learning, and conversation — by the community, for the community.
(Ticketing isn't quite ready yet, but follow this space for updates when it is.)
📰 News and Opinion
Apply for the 2026 Charles S. Edge New Speaker Grant for MacAdmins at Penn State
The Mac Admins Foundation (MAF) is proud to partner with the MacAdmins Conference at Penn State to offer the Charles S. Edge Jr. New Speakers Grant in 2026.
M.A.C.E. app is a prime example of the Mac admins community at work
As security requirements have tightened in this era of computing, deploying compliance benchmarks like CIS or NIST has become a significant focus for IT admins. M.A.C.E. simplifies the complexity of these government standards by wrapping them into a usable, open-source tool that any IT team can deploy.
Apple's obsession with ads is killing the iPhone
Apple needs to think about the app ecosystem it wants to run. Does it want to reward innovation, encourage small developers to thrive, help customers to navigate millions of apps and find the one that’s best for them? Or does it want to favor bigger developers and help copycats to mislead consumers into downloading the wrong app?
AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage
Cory Doctorow:
AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots
Bugs Apple Loves
The externalities cost estimates might be a little tongue-in-cheek, but honestly, are they all that wrong? One small irritation at the wrong moment can ricochet my happy mood off into the doldrums
⚙️ Apple Updates
Platform Updates
Apple's security update page has "no published CVE Entries" for these updates, but lists the devices for which each of the releases is the last version. These updates replace a certificate required to access Message, iCloud and other services which was going to expire in 2027.
Applications
- Pages 15.1: Mac, iPhone, iPad, visionPro, iCloud, Security
- Keynote 15.1: Mac, iPhone, iPad, visionOS, iCloud
- Numbers 15.1: Mac, iPhone, iPad, visionOS , iCloud
- GarageBand: Mac 10.4.13, iOS 2.3.18
- Logic Pro: Mac 12.0, iPad 3, Logic Remote 1.5.6
- MainStage 4: Release Notes
- Final Cut Pro: Mac 12.0, iPad 3.0, Final Cut Camera 2.0.1, What's new (Mac), What's new (iPad)
- Compressor 5.0
- Motion 6.0
- Pixelmator Pro: Mac, iPad
Support
- About Apple Creator Studio
- Update Apple Creator Studio Keynote, Numbers, and Pages apps
- Install Keynote, Pages, and Numbers 15.1 or later for Mac
Guides
- Apple Platform Deployment: Welcome, What's new, Revision history
- Apple Platform Security: Welcome, Revision history
- Apple Platform Certifications: Welcome, Revision history
Managing iWork in 2026, the Creator Studio update
Generally these updates aren’t that big of a deal, but this one is different, especially for macOS administrators.
Seven things to know about how Apple's Creator Studio subscriptions work
we’ve gathered answers to some questions about how the new subscriptions will work and how they’ll compare to the standalone versions of the apps.
Keynote, Numbers and Pages 15.1 now unified across all Apple operating systems
Neil Martin:
These are now unified offerings, with a single app version for all operating systems. This has significant impact for Mac users as well as admins who deploy them from Apple School or Business Manager.
Apple’s Creator Studio has a rough App Store roll-out
What strikes me most about it is how even Apple is stuck with the App Store and its limitations. Developers are quite familiar with how limited Apple’s back-end systems are and how they can inflict frustration on developers and customers alike. But it’s another level when the same thing happens to Apple and its own apps.
🔐 Security and Privacy
ClawdBot: The New Primary Target for Infostealers in the AI Era
The rise of “Local-First” AI agents has introduced a new, highly lucrative attack surface for cybercriminals. ClawdBot, a rapidly growing open-source personal AI assistant, shifts the locus of computation from the cloud to the user’s local filesystem.
Clawdbot’s rename to Moltbot sparks impersonation campaign
After the viral AI assistant Clawdbot was forced to rename to Moltbot due to a trademark dispute, opportunists moved quickly. Within days, typosquat domains and a cloned GitHub repository appeared—impersonating the project’s creator and positioning infrastructure for a potential supply-chain attack.
More malware from Google search
Little more than a month after I reported that Google’s AI was offering links to malicious scripts, that is happening again, with a slight twist.
Clawdbot becomes Moltbot, but can’t shed security concerns
Security concerns for the new agentic AI tool formerly known as Clawdbot remain, despite a rebrand prompted by trademark concerns raised by Anthropic. Would you be comfortable handing the keys to your identity kingdom over to a bot, one that might be exposed to the open internet?
🔨 Support and Tutorials
XCreds on iPad
I was curious about the options for authenticating with a cloud provider to get access to an iPad (similar to what you get on macOS with XCreds). I got it working.
Clean install macOS
This article explains how you can make the best use of your Mac’s features to perform a clean install.
Deploying Apple software update deferrals using Blueprints in Jamf Pro
Rich Trouton
You can use Blueprints in Jamf Pro to distribute these tokens, using the Software Update Settings component in Blueprints.
🤖 Scripting and Automation
DDM Status from .CSV (0.0.6)
A Jamf Pro-specific interactive shell script to help investigate sideways DDM-enforced OS updates
Dissect And Replace Your Monolithic Legacy Configuration Profiles
Famously (or, infamously), when creating a configuration profile using the Jamf Pro admin console, some of the payloads are constructed such that to enforce any single setting, you have to enforce all settings. Over the years, Jamf have updated some of those payloads so that specific settings can now be assigned, but payloads such as Restrictions, Accessibility, and Login Window Settings still use the old style “mononlithic” payload.
Keep your Mac fleet updated automatically with FleetImporter
added automatic update policies to FleetImporter, making it easier to keep your Mac fleet running the latest software versions. When you enable this feature, FleetImporter creates Fleet policies that detect outdated applications and automatically install updates.
♻️ Updates and Releases
🎧 Listen
Creating an App for Admins
Michael Page is going to talk us through Dock Composer, one of these very tools that he has built to solve his own problem and help others solve the same problems in their environments
All Trails Lead to Rants: Tackling Technology
the hosts discuss the hustle of their busy January, including managing clients during holiday breaks.
Vendor collaboration will be required in the AI era
we finish up our 2-part series about AI and networking with Aruna Ravichandran, SVP & CMO - Collaboration, Enterprise Networking, at Cisco
One privacy change I made for 2026
Ruiz explains why he made the switch, what he values about Brave Search, and why he also refused to switch to any of the major AI platforms in replacing Google.