Category: Mac OS X

  • Removing Adobe AIR properly from macOS

    I have been doing a bunch of FortiGate deployments and finally decided to enroll my instance of FortiClient on my daily driver to my firewall at home. Upon doing so, I did a vulnerability scan just out of interest. The only issue identified was Adobe AIR. Now, like most people, I haven’t been using Adobe…

  • IKEv2 VPN on macOS and iOS

    I have been working on an improved and more stable VPN option for macOS users since the demise of PPtP. My personal preference is for an improved firewall experience using UTM appliances like FortiGate and then leveraging SSLVPN, as it seems to work from a large majority of locations and internet connection types. However, the…

  • Mail’s Related Messages view

    A customer just asked about the new conversation view in OS X Lion’s Mail.app. The messages are all displayed together, and there is a link to display the related content at the bottom of each message. There is a menu option under the View menu, “Show Related Messages”, which will put your sent items in-line.…

  • Useful Lion Window Keys

    So… following along in Twitter yesterday, and the following tweets turned up: Nifty little feature in Lion: hold Option and resize a window and do the same only hold shift. Very nice work, Apple.

  • OS X Lion and Cisco VPN Connectivity

    My mate John has written a decent article on Cisco VPN connectivity with Lion. As he didn’t have the latest Cisco VPN Client when he upgraded to Lion, this was a great “workaround”. http://www.uprun.com/blog/2011/7/24/cisco-vpn-client-wont-work-with-lion.html

  • Lion and rebuilding your Mac

    Saw this article this morning, originally on Slashdot, but referred to on a couple of other sites as well. Basically, it is the SysAdmin’s method for getting Lion onto a USB stick for stand-alone reinstalls. Article is here.

  • Issues with iTunes 10.1 and iPhoto 9.1

    A lot of people are reporting issues with iTunes and iPhoto and the annoying “Allow/Deny” Firewall prompts. In a Terminal window, try this: $ codesign -v /Applications/iTunes.app /Applications/iTunes.app: a sealed resource is missing or invalid As an aside, I also checked my copy of iPhoto 9… same thing: $ codesign -v /Applications/iPhoto.app/ /Applications/iPhoto.app/: a sealed…

  • Apple Mail 4.0 and IMAP

    Check out this reference page on the Google Apps help site: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892

  • Using Preview to merge and create multi-page PDFs

    The Preview.app in 10.5 and newer has many new features. One that appears to be undocumented, however, is the creation (merging) of multi-page PDF documents. It’s simple: Use Preview to open up the two PDFs you would like to merge. Choose View » Show Sidebar (or click the Sidebar button). Make sure both PDFs are…

  • Printer Control in a Managed Network Environment

    One of my customers recently complained of having to go out to the receptionist’s computer and type in an administrator password everytime her local USB printer ran out of paper or got a paper jam. I think I have a fix: Create a new group in Workgroup Manager on the server. Add the user to…

  • Software Update AppleScript [Updated]

    Check out this site for a handy AppleScript to manage changing between Apple’s Software Update Servers and a local Software Update server running on a Mac OS X on your own network.

  • Leopard and Snow Leopard Cron Jobs

    http://www.davidlanier.com/story/cron-and-launchctl-on-mac-os-x-105-leopard

  • Snow Leopard Mail “Copy Address” Preferences

    After being frustrated about the “Copy Address” function within Mail 4 in Mac OS X 10.6, I have found a solution: http://macdaddyworld.com/2009/09/14/fixing-copy-address-in-mail-on-10-6 Basically, the trick is to go to Terminal and do the following: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO Hope that helps someone!

  • Apple Stores offline – is Snow Leopard coming? [Updated]

    [Updated 30 minutes later:] Yep – Snow Leopard is “shipping” on August 28, 2009. Good work Apple!

  • Serial Console for Mac OS X

    I have been using “screen /dev/tty.xxxxxxxxxxx” for sometime now, but then stumbled upon this old macosxhints.com page: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061109133825654 Check it out if you still have to occasionally use a serial port.