July 2025 – MacAdmins Meeting

July 2025 – MacAdmins Meeting

July 16th, 2025 – University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting


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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, July 16th, 2025, at 11 AM MT, and we will provide live broadcasts and archives that will be made available 2-3 days after the meeting.

 

Mac Health Check – Dan K. Snelson, The Church of LDS


The Mac Health Check presentation by Dan K. Snelson,  introduces a practical and user-friendly approach to surfacing Mac compliance information directly to end-users via Jamf Self Service. Built using the open-source utility swiftDialog—a SwiftUI-based tool for macOS 12 and later—the solution acts as a “heads-up display” that presents real-time system health and policy compliance status in a clear and interactive format. The tool is particularly valuable in IT support workflows, serving as an initial triage point for Tier 1 support by confirming network access, credentials, and Jamf connectivity, while also acting as a verification tool for Tier 2 teams during or after remediation efforts.

 

Mac Health Check performs a broad range of system compliance checks. These include verifying whether the macOS version meets organizational standards, detecting pending software updates (including deferred ones), and checking the status of critical services like Apple Push Notification (APNs), Jamf Pro check-ins, and inventory submissions. It also evaluates firewall status, System Integrity Protection (SIP), FileVault encryption, system uptime, available disk space, and even assesses network quality. Additionally, it checks for the presence of key security applications such as CrowdStrike Falcon, Cisco Umbrella, and GlobalProtect, but can be customized to support security applications that your organization distributes. Each of these checks can be internally scripted or triggered as external Jamf Pro policies, with the results displayed to the user in a categorized and color-coded interface.

Deployment of Mac Health Check involves configuring organizational defaults, embedding the script in Jamf, creating a policy to run it on demand or at login, and testing to ensure proper output and behavior. Administrators can customize the user interface using swiftDialog’s markdown and visual capabilities, making the experience both informative and approachable. The tool logs results for IT review but does not alter device configurations, making it ideal for visibility without intrusion.

About Dan K. Snelson

Dan K. Snelson is a senior systems engineer with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, managing Macs worldwide. He writes the Snelson.us blog, and you can find him on the MacAdmins Slack as dan-snelson.

WWDC 2025 Recap – What’s New for Education – Yogen Kushi, Apple 


Join us for an in-depth discussion of the key education-focused announcements from Apple’s WWDC 2025, with a spotlight on what’s new for IT teams managing Apple devices in education environments. This session will cover important updates across macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Apple School Manager that will shape how we deploy, manage, and support Apple platforms in the classroom and across campuses.

We’ll explore the latest MDM enhancements, changes to Apple School Manager APIs, and updates to accessibility features that support inclusive learning environments. You’ll also hear about improvements to the Mac Evaluation Utility, support for Intel and Rosetta, and best practices for migrating managed devices across systems. We’ll walk through updates in the MDM reference, including new payloads and the growing use of declarative device management.

This is also the ideal time to begin testing the beta versions of the upcoming operating systems, ensuring your workflows, apps, and configurations are fully compatible before the fall rollout. We’ll review how to file effective bug reports using Feedback Assistant, and share how to get involved with the AppleSeed for IT program to gain early access and direct feedback channels with Apple engineers.

About Yogen Kushi

Custodian of Apple’s technical relationship with Higher Education institutions in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.

Open Discussion


Questions, comments, problems, and fixes.

Directions


This meeting will not be held in person but virtually via Zoom video communications architecture.

With Zoom, we will implement the following security best practices:
 
  • 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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