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How to remove Otter AI from your org
AI notetakers like Otter AI spread fast. In fact, one Nudge Security customer discovered 800 new accounts created in only 90 days 😱 Viral AI notetakers introduce a slew of data privacy risks by gaining access to calendars and adding themselves to every meeting.
Learn how to find and remove viral ai notetakers.
Spring is in the air
Apple released the first beta for the 26.4 updates of their platforms this week. Traditionally, this "Spring update" (sorry, friends on the Southern Hemisphere) is a larger update with new features, especially with regards to management and that seems to hold up this year. If you have access to AppleSeed for IT (and if you are reading this, you really should) you need to read the document for the IT related features of the 26.4 updates and start testing and giving feedback to Apple and your device management service providers.
📸 Focus
2026 Conference Season
This is also the season where conferences are putting out their schedule. I had already mentioned that we are putting on a one-day conference "Mac Admins Europe" in Leiden, Netherlands on April 30 and am happy to be able to say that the ticketing is now open! There is a limited number of tickets for an early bird price and I have been told they are going quickly!
Also, MDOYVR/YUL and Mac Admins India Connect have announced their dates. Overall, the conference season this year is looking to be great, and as always, I keep a list of Mac Admins conferences on my website.
📰 News and Opinion
From Beneficiary to Maintainer: A Dialog with Dan Snelson on Open Source and the Mac Admin Community
Tony Young:
As a Mac Admin myself, I believe that some of the most impactful progress in macOS management comes not from vendor roadmaps, but from individual admins identifying gaps in their own environments and sharing solutions back with the community.
🔐 Security and Privacy
The hidden risks of the Homebrew Cellar in Vulnerability Management
its convenience and ubiquity may introduce a significant blind spot for security teams if they lack visibility into the "Cellar" - the specific location where Homebrew stores its binaries, known as formulae. Its hidden dependencies, lingering outdated binaries, and relaxed permissions can create serious security gaps.
AI-generated passwords are a security risk
AI cybersecurity firm Irregular tested ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and found that the passwords they generate are “highly predictable,” and not truly random.
ClickFix: Stopped at ⌘+V
ClickFix has quickly become a widely adopted infection technique targeting both macOS and Windows users. Rather than relying on software vulnerabilities or exploit chains, it leverages something much simpler: convincing a user to copy and paste a command into a terminal.
🔨 Support and Tutorials
In the background: Identification
Processes and their threads running in the background can be hard to identify. When they’re having problems, or you just want to discover what WardaSynthesizer is, it can be frustrating trying to obtain more information.
Using Self Service+ as a privilege elevation tool
Rich Trouton:
Among the functionality added to the Self Service+ app is Jamf Connect’s ability to serve as a privilege elevation tool.
🤖 Scripting and Automation
Getting data from multiple tables in FleetDM
If you, like me, are used to doing SQL queries that join tables on a unique ID of some sort, you may find querying multiple tables at once in FleetDM to be confusing.
DDM Status from .CSV
An in-the-trenches update to the Jamf Pro-specific interactive shell script which helps investigate sideways DDM-enforced OS updates
Keep on, keeping on
So keeping the P5 servers healthy is my job. And to help with this I made a P5 Health Check menu bar app (as well as mac app and bash script).
Gill0o/PrefWatch
Making macOS preference management easy for admins and tinkerers — real-time monitoring with ready-to-use commands.Gill0o/PrefWatch: Making macOS preference management easy for admins and tinkerers — real-time monitoring with ready-to-use commands.
huexley/DDMStatus
A lightweight macOS menu bar app that displays Apple DDM (Declarative Device Management) Update enforcement status at a glance.
🍏 Apple Support
Using Intel-based apps on a Mac with Apple silicon
Rosetta enables a Mac with Apple silicon to run Intel-based apps. Support for Rosetta will end in a future version of macOS, so check with the app's developer for an updated version.
If your organization’s Mac computers are unable to upgrade to macOS Tahoe 26
If your Mac has macOS Sequoia 15 installed and you are using a device management service to defer major operating system updates, macOS Tahoe 26 updates may not be available after the deferral period expires.
🎧 Listen
Just Us: Ai Ai Ai…
It’s just us this week, and we’re talking about AI – Apple Intelligence, “Apple” Intelligence, and Apple “Intelligence” – as we dive into a few key developments.
Routers, Returns, and Roustabouts
Jerry and Joe discuss recent weather experiences and delve into network topics, including the Unify travel router, the Unify 5G Max Dream Router, and data SIM options.
SaaS sprawl is a real problem for Apple IT admins
Justin Etkins from Tropic to talk about SaaS sprawl and how Apple IT admins should be thinking about it in the AI era.