{"id":26494,"date":"2021-12-02T12:50:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T12:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/?p=26494"},"modified":"2022-10-20T18:13:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T17:13:37","slug":"adding-mac-support-part-2-resources-for-the-new-maybe-unwilling-mac-admin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/adding-mac-support-part-2-resources-for-the-new-maybe-unwilling-mac-admin","title":{"rendered":"Adding Mac support, part 2: Resources for the new, maybe unwilling, Mac admin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p5\">My previous blog was, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/blog\/adding-mac-support-never-used-a-mac-before\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cI\u2019ve never used a Mac, and now I need to manage them.\u201d<\/a> For the second installment of this series I will highlight some key tools and resources for the new Mac admin.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p7\">Strap on your utility belt<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\">For most management tasks, you can generally rely on your RMM of choice to interact with your Macs and act as an abstraction layer between you and the as-yet-unfamiliar OS. Use Safari, or download whichever browser works best for you. They\u2019re pretty much all available for the Mac, even Edge (yes, Microsoft Edge).<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">For writing scripts and editing configuration files, you\u2019ll probably need a simple text editor, and Apple conveniently provides <b>TextEdit<\/b> for free. It will conveniently open all kinds of files that it has no business opening. Also conveniently, it will invisibly translate a basic text file into the highly inconvenient Rich Text Format and break your heart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Therefore, one of the first applications I install on any Mac I use is <b>BBEdit<\/b>, from Bare Bones Software <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barebones.com\/products\/bbedit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s2\">https:\/\/www.barebones.com\/products\/bbedit\/<\/span><\/a> ($49.99 for all the bells and whistles, but you can use the free version forever). I promise I\u2019m not being paid by Bare Bones to endorse their software, but I wouldn\u2019t complain if they sent me a T-shirt. That\u2019s right, a text editor that has its own merch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The secret weapon of Mac admins everywhere, <b>AutoPKG<\/b> will take software and other files you need to distribute to your Macs and package them into an installer you can easily deploy remotely. There\u2019s a massive library of \u201crecipes\u201d to help you tap into the powerful automation engine hiding under its unassuming surface. Download it from <a href=\"http:\/\/autopkg.github.io\/autopkg\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s2\">http:\/\/autopkg.github.io\/autopkg\/<\/span><\/a><span class=\"s2\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">AutoPKG, like many of the best admin tools, runs on the command line. So you\u2019ll want to make yourself familiar with <b>Terminal<\/b>, which is the application that gives you direct access to the Unix underpinnings of MacOS. For that, I recommend diving into the articles and books available at <b>Scripting OS X<\/b> (<a href=\"https:\/\/scriptingosx.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s2\">https:\/\/scriptingosx.com\/<\/span><\/a>).<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Most of the command line utilities you will need are already installed by default, but just about everything else you might need can be accessed through <b>Homebrew<\/b>. \u201cBrew\u201d is the package manager, much like yum or apt on a Linux system. Coming from Windows, you may be familiar with Chocolatey. The concept is the same: one command to run that will install, update, or uninstall a wide variety of third-party applications and libraries that don\u2019t come installed by default. You can find installation instructions and the massive list of supported software at <a href=\"https:\/\/brew.sh\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s2\">https:\/\/brew.sh\/<\/span><\/a><span class=\"s2\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p7\">Educate yourself<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p8\">The best way to learn is hands-on and in person. And there\u2019s no better way to jumpstart your Mac admin knowledge than to attend a conference with hundreds of other IT professionals, all packed into a confined space, teaching and learning from one another. On second thought, it\u2019s still 2021. Stay home and watch the presentations instead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p10\"><span class=\"s3\">Each year, Apple gathers the tribe of Mac and iOS programmers for their <b>Worldwide Developer Conference<\/b>. <\/span>It\u2019s often the place where new hardware is revealed and new versions of MacOS are demonstrated publicly for the first time, and you might even bump into Bono. <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/wwdc21\/%22%20%5Co%20%22https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/wwdc21\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s4\">https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/wwdc<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"p10\">Growing out of a Penn State event and initially focused on the higher-education market, the <b>MacAdmins Conference<\/b> is a four-day affair with hundreds of attendees and session tracks on everything from systems administration to software development.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/macadmins.psu.edu\/%22%20%5Co%20%22https:\/\/macadmins.psu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s4\">https:\/\/macadmins.psu.edu\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"p10\">Do you really need an excuse for your company to send you to Maui (hint hint)? The <b>Objective by the Sea<\/b> security conference gets its name from a pun on a programming language and the conference location. Don\u2019t let that discourage you: Mac-focused cybersecurity sessions with industry experts are guaranteed to fascinate and terrify you. I know they scare the crap out of me.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/objectivebythesea.com\/v4\/%22%20%5Co%20%22https:\/\/objectivebythesea.com\/v4\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s4\">https:\/\/objectivebythesea.com\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New to managing Macs? Have you had Mac support forced upon you? Don\u2019t worry\u2014our Mac Support blogs will help you learn to love them.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-26494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","topic-apple","topic-head-nerds"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Adding Mac support for your MSP\u2019s clients\u2014Part 2 | N-able<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mac-focused cybersecurity sessions with industry experts are guaranteed to fascinate and terrify you. Learn more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/adding-mac-support-part-2-resources-for-the-new-maybe-unwilling-mac-admin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"it_IT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Adding Mac support for your MSP\u2019s clients\u2014Part 2 | N-able\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mac-focused cybersecurity sessions with industry experts are guaranteed to fascinate and terrify you. 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