Hi All. Yup, I’m back to the customer requests blogs! This was from a customer who wanted some (ideally free) resources for Mac Admins who are just starting out, going beyond the Apple-tools or even just to keep on top of new things.
These resources have been collected from my personal experience as well as two previous blogs:
Courses / Certifications
- Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP)
- Think of this as Mac Support 101. Passing the exam gives you the ACSP certification from Apple!
- Apple IT certification page
- Amsys course page
- Certified Casper Technician (CCT)
- Think about this one as Casper / Jamf Pro 101, with Mac Support 101 sprinkled in! Again, passing the exam gives you the CCT certification from Jamf.
- Jamf course page
- Certified Casper Administrator (CCA)
- Think about this one as Casper / Jamf Pro 201, with Mac Support 201 sprinkled in! Again, passing the exam gives you the CCA certification from Jamf.
- Jamf course page
Forums / Mailing Lists
- MacEnterprise: Mailing list dedicated to all things Mac Admin
- Munki-Dev: Mailing list dedicated to the development of Munki
- Munki-Discuss: Mailing list dedicated to the usage of Munki. Often also contains information for packaging and deploying applications for macOS.
- AutoPKG-Discuss: Mailing list dedicated to the usage of AutoPKG.
- JamfNation: Jamf’s customer forum. Often also contains information for packaging and deploying applications for macOS.
Conferences (Live)
In recent years, Apple has severely cut down on the certifications and therefore official courses for Mac Admins. As a result, conferences have become the best way for Mac Admins to gain new insight and knowledge in best practices to manage their devices. Additionally, they allow you to extend your Mac Admin network, and maybe even quiz a Vendor / Open Source developer on specific ideas or issues… although it may cost a drink or two!
- MacADUK
- London-based conference run by Amsys, catering to all aspects of Mac Administration (Multi-solution).
- Normally in February.
- MacSysAdmin
- Gothenburg, Sweden-based conference, catering to all aspects of Mac Administration (Multi-solution).
- Normally in early October
- Jamf Nation User Conference – JNUC
- Minneapolis, USA-based conference, specifically catering to jamf Mac Admins
- Normally in late October (2017 dates are 24th to 26th October)
- MacAdmins at Penn State
- Pennsylvania State University, USA-based conference, catering to all aspects of Mac Administration (Multi-solution).
- Normally in Mid-July (2017 dates are 11th to 14th July)
Conferences (Videos)
For any sessions and / or conferences you may miss, all the above have / will make the previous recordings available for free. Great if you can’t make it, or want to watch two simultaneous sessions.
- MacADUK
- MacSysAdmin
- Jamf Nation User Conference – JNUC
- Previous – YouTube
- 2016 – YouTube Playlist
- MacAdmins at Penn State
Books
- macOS Support Essentials 10.12
- Textbook from the ACSP course
- Peach Pit
- Managing Apple Devices: Deploying and Maintaining iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan Devices, 3rd Edition
- Packaging for Apple Administrators
- Property Lists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators
- Take Control of the Mac Command Line
- Learning Unix for OS X
- Classic Shell Scripting
- Enterprise Mac Administrators Guide
- Enterprise Mac Security
- Time Management for System Administrators
Online Learning / Videos (Paid)
- Lynda.com
- Monthly Cost
- Range of technical content including Apple IT Related (e.g. https://www.lynda.com/Apple-training-tutorials/106-0.html )
Community
- Mac Admins Slack
- For signup (free) – MacAdmins.org
Blogs
Rather than list out a ton of various blogs to keep an eye on, I have two recommendations (other than this one of course! 😉 ):
- Sign up for the Mac Admins Slack instance, and watch the #blog-feed channel
- Check out Charles Edge’s ‘Some MacAdmin Links’ blog post
Podcast
Apps
Summary
And there you go, a full list of URLs! I hope that they may be of some use to budding Mac Admins somewhere. As always, if you have any questions, queries or comments, let us know below (or @daz_wallace on Mac Admins Slack) and I’ll try to respond to and delve into as many as I can.
The usual Disclaimer: