15 Jan Jan 2026 – MacAdmins Meeting
January 21st, 2026 – University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting
The University of Utah MacAdmins Meeting is held virtually monthly on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 11 AM Mountain Time. Presentations cover Apple technology and integration in a heterogeneous university enterprise environment. This month’s meeting will be held on Wed, January 21st, 2026, at 11 AM MT virtually using Zoom.
Live broadcasts and archives are available to the MacAdmin community 2-3 days post-meeting.
Handling Difficult Customers and Improving IT Support – Jeremey Kenney, GlobalMac IT
Delivering excellent Mac administration depends as much on how you interact with people as on technical skill. In this session, Jeremey presents practical communication techniques—active listening, plain-language explanations, and clear expectation-setting—that make users feel heard and confident even when fixes take time. He’ll walk through concise, reusable language and conversation structures that speed troubleshooting, reduce repeat contacts, and preserve goodwill, plus simple de-escalation tactics for handling upset or frustrated users without escalating tensions.
The second part focuses on systems and culture: lightweight triage and templated but human responses, knowledge-base improvements, and automation that removes repetitive work so teams can focus on higher-value support. Jeremey also covers how to measure support health with a few actionable metrics (like first-contact resolution and user satisfaction) and how to run blameless post-incident reviews and coaching sessions that turn failures into documented improvements. Attendees will leave with a short playbook of phrases, process changes, and measurement ideas they can apply right away to raise the professionalism and effectiveness of their Mac support.
About Jeremey Kenney
Jeremey Kenney is an IT leader with 18 years of experience in leadership and 12 years specializing in the Apple ecosystem. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, he has supported Apple technology from multiple perspectives‚ first as a Senior AppleCare Advisor and later in the managed services space. Jeremey is passionate about leveraging technology to drive efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and support businesses in maximizing their Apple environments.
Modern macOS Identity-Jamf Connect & Platform SSO by William Smith, Jamf
Platform Single Sign-On (Platform SSO) is Apple’s native identity management framework for macOS, designed to integrate an external identity provider directly into the login window, enable single sign-on for native and web applications, and synchronize local account passwords with the identity provider. While Platform SSO introduces important foundational capabilities, organizations still need to evaluate how well it meets real-world enterprise requirements.
In this session, we’ll explore what Platform SSO can do today, what’s required to configure and deploy it, and where its current limitations may appear. We’ll then compare it with Jamf Connect, highlighting how Jamf Connect builds on Apple’s identity framework to deliver a more flexible, user-friendly, and enterprise-ready authentication experience. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of when Platform SSO may be sufficient on its own—and when Jamf Connect provides the additional control, customization, and scalability needed for modern macOS environments.
About William Smith
Bill helps train and support internal Professional Services engineers and partners delivering services on behalf of Jamf. Occasionally, he’ll contribute to the Jamf Blog, present technical webinars for customers, and speak on his experiences helping customers at the Jamf Nation User Conference or other conferences. He’s been a customer, an Integrator, and an employee over the past 20 years.
Deploying, Recovering, and Authenticating Macs in 2026 by Timothy Perfitt, Twocanoes Software
This presentation for the University of Utah MacAdmins will cover recent Two Canoes tools and platform behaviors that directly impact modern macOS identity, deployment, and recovery workflows. Tim Perfitt will focus on XCreds—how cloud and macOS password synchronization works, FileVault enablement, login-window behavior, and practical troubleshooting when credentials aren’t captured at first login—then connect those identity topics to deployment tooling like MDS and DFU-based restores. He’ll explain how Apple Silicon security and evolving macOS authorization and recovery architectures influence end-to-end provisioning, and provide concrete, repeatable steps and diagnostics that MacAdmins can use to reduce technician time and improve classroom and lab uptime.
If time allows, Tim will briefly touch on several lower-priority but practical items: secure token and bootstrap token handling and volume-ownership considerations (including when to escrow or generate tokens via the command line); DFU restore resiliency patterns such as decoupled restore steps and automatic retries; MDS 6.x quirks on newer macOS releases (package-signing and system keychain prompts) and their mitigations; Password Utility and credential-hygiene guidance; Automaton 2 and USB-hub integrations for faster staging; and a short troubleshooting checklist for intermittent installer/restore failures on Apple Silicon.
About Timothy Perfitt
Timothy Perfitt is the Founder and President of Twocanoes Software, located in Naperville, IL. Tim started Twocanoes Software after a decade of working at Apple, Inc., in engineering. He is the creator of Winclone, Boot Runner, MDS, Smart Card Utility, and many more successful products focused on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. His most recent open-source project, XCreds, provides a powerful and secure way to authenticate to cloud providers from the Mac. Tim is focused on macOS and iOS authentication, including certificate-based authentication, smart cards, remote access, and code signing. Tim has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University and a Masters Degree from California State University. Tim enjoys renovating his grandfather’s Model A and going to the dog park with his two labs.
Open Discussion
Questions, comments, problems, and fixes.
Directions
This meeting will not be held in person but virtually via Zoom video communications architecture.
- Require a Password to Join This meeting will require a password to join. Information will be emailed via a campus internal list, but if you are external and want to attend the meeting, please use the Contact Us form to receive details. Otherwise, the archive of the meeting will be available 2-3 days after the live meeting.
- Waiting Room When joining the meeting, you will be placed in the Waiting Room by default, and the hosts will give you access to the live meeting.
- Miscellaneous We will also implement other settings and safeguards to secure the meeting.
Archived Presentation(s)
- Archives of the presentations will be available on this web page.
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