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macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta Running “Sidecar” Running on Un-Supported MacBook Air with iPad Air 2

macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta Running “Sidecar” Running on Un-Supported MacBook Air with iPad Air 2

With the release of macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta we get a sneak peek at “Sidecar” which allows users to use an iPad as a display. What I soon learned was that my 2013 MacBook Air was not supported.

I then came across the article on AppleInsider that showed us a command to allow Sidecar on a Un-Supported Mac. This video shows how it works in just a few seconds.

The command was originally posted by @stroughtonsmith

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How to create a bootable macOS Sierra USB installer

How to create a bootable macOS Sierra USB installer


*** As with all Betas only install on a non production device and computer that you’re not concerned about & make backups! ***

These advanced steps are intended primarly for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line.

You can download the latest macOS Sierra 10.12 Developer Preview here https://developer.apple.com/download
You will need an Apple Developer Account to sign in and download macOS Sierra 10.12 Developer Preview. Public Beta will be out later in July 2016

Use the ‘createinstallmedia’ command in Terminal to create your bootable usb installer:

  1. Download macOS Sierra 10.12 Developer Preview from the Mac App Store after redeeming the code from the Apple Developer Download site. Quit the installer if it opens automatically after downloading. The installer will be in your Applications folder.
  2. Mount your USB flash drive or other volume. You could also use a secondary internal partition.
  3. Format/Erase your drive and name it “macOSSierra” if you intend on copying and pasting the below command.
  4. Open Terminal (it is found in the Utilities folder)
  5. In terminal paste the following command:
sudo /Applications/Install\ 10.12\ Developer\ Preview.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia  --volume /Volumes/macOSSierra --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ 10.12\ Developer\ Preview.app --nointeraction

You’ve now created a bootable macOS Sierra 10.12 Developer Preview USB installer


Down the road when macOS Sierra 10.12 is at full version I would highly suggest using “DiskMaker X“. It’s simple and easy to use 

Posted by admin on

OS X Mount Active Directory Home Drive Automatically (Working Solution for OS X 10.10)

Prior to OS X 10.9 Mavericks here at the college we would use the option in the “Directory Utility” app to mount the Active Directory home drives. This was done by checking off “Use UNC path from Active Directory” but with OS X 10.9 Mavericks & OS X 10.10 Yosemite there was the adoptions of SMB2 which does not play well with Microsoft’s version of SMB. We would have drives mounting but not the drives we wanted. We would normally want their home folder mounted as (ex. /studentname) but instead it was now being mounted as (ex. share/studentname). This is how we’ve been running for the past two years and haven’t had much luck fixing it. 

Today with the help of a co-worker we were able to come up with an AppleScript that fixes this. Below is the simple script that I saved as an executable app and placed into the /Library/Scripts folder in our images. From here I added the app as a login item in the default profile. Once any user logs in the script would check to see what the users name is then look to Active Directory to poll what their Home Drive is. Next the script converts the backwards slashes “\” (used in the Windows World) to forward slashes “/” (Unix World) then mounts the drive. 

I’ve been testing this on a number of stations and now have it deployed out to some of our labs. 

If you want to use this script you need to make sure you go into “Directory Utility” and un-check “Use UNC path from Active Directory” since we no longer need this and now relying on this AppleScript to do the work.

In the script provided you will need to change “DOMAIN” to your campus domain. For an example our college it’s just “CAMPUS”.

Here’s the script below to use or feel free to download it:

Download http://twistedmac.com/mount_aduser_home_drives.zip

 

 

 

set username to do shell script “whoami”

set homepath to do shell script “dscl ‘/Active Directory/DOMAIN/All Domains/’ -read /Users/” & username & ” | grep SMBHome: | cut -c 10- | sed ‘s/\\\\/\\//g’ “

tell application “Finder”

       try

            mount volume “SMB:” & homepath

      end try

end tell

 

 

When I have the free time I want to convert this into a .plist script to use with launch daemon instead of relying on an app in the login items to make it a little cleaner. Until then this will do the trick and something that I’ve been looking into for some time now without success. 

Hope this helps out others that have been looking for a similar solution.

 

Posted by admin on

Loving iOS 7!

I must say I really like iOS 7! I’ve always had a jailbroken iPhone to have the look, feel & customized usability that I want. Be it Apple, Samsung, BB, etc. they all have great features but also lack many. An iPhone has always been the best of both worlds because of jailbreaking. I could add all the extra features, tweaks & look that make a smartphone the way it really should be. From what I can see and I have read from reviews Apple has really listen to what the users want. They have actually added a number of features that were inspired by jailbreak tweaks. I’m sure there will be a jailbreak in the future for iOS 7 but so far they have already killed off SBSettings & a real app switcher and this is just the tip. Only thing I’m missing now is my 5 icon across option 🙂

Great job Apple and Jony Ive!!

http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7

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