The macOS User Administration Guide

A practical guide to implementing, managing, and optimizing macOS Big Sur features and tools

Herta Nava

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781838644192
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Operating Systems
• Index: Computer Science

Explore macOS tools and architecture for executing support tasks and system administration, and prepare for the Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) certification exam

Key Features

• Delve into macOS Big Sur, from installation to managing apps and optimizing your environment
• Become an Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) with this comprehensive macOS support guide
• The book is not intended to be a user guide, it covers concepts pertinent for a user acting as an administrator

Book Description

Apple is pushing the capabilities of its technologies to help users achieve high performance, including improvements in its OS running across all Mac systems, macOS, and new technologies such as M1 Silicon chips. This book walks you through macOS from a system administration and support point of view, exploring its latest features.

The book starts by explaining macOS architecture, installation, and startup processes to enable you to get started with the OS. You'll learn how to manage users and discover techniques for user security and privacy. Moving on, you'll get to grips with the macOS file system and learn to manage disks, volumes, and partitions for effective file management. Most of the examples covered in this book are from an administrator's perspective; however, when relevant, a standard user's perspective is also presented. You'll find illustrations for Mac systems running macOS 11 (Big Sur), and when necessary, for macOS 10.15 (macOS Catalina). Finally, you'll explore advanced topics such as networking and using command-line tools for administration tasks.

By the end of this macOS book, you'll be well-versed with macOS features, administration tasks, and best practices. You'll also be able to apply the concepts to increase your chances of success in obtaining Apple certifications such as Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP).

What you will learn

• Understand the fundamentals of the macOS system and architecture
• Configure key services and perform essential troubleshooting in your Mac system
• Install, update, and configure your local macOS system and identify the stages of the startup process
• Create and manage a local user account and set up your customized macOS environment
• Manage your file systems, storage, and permissions
• Explore practices and techniques to work with apps, networks, and security for your Mac system
• Delve into administration tasks such as managing service resources and peripherals

Who this book is for

If you are a Mac system administrator, support and help desk technician or engineer, or Mac power user looking to explore macOS architecture and tooling, then this book is for you. The book assumes beginner-level knowledge of the macOS environment and system administration.

Managing Apps and Documents

As a macOS user or administrator, you will spend a lot of time managing apps and documents. Therefore, you must familiarize yourself with the tools and features macOS offers to facilitate those tasks. In this chapter, you will explore how apps work in macOS, how to use the App Store, how to install and manage apps and app extensions, how to share apps with family members, and how to use the features that macOS provides to manage documents on the spot. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to use all these features to work with apps and documents quickly and efficiently.

More specifically, the following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Understanding apps in macOS
• Using the App Store
• Installing and managing apps
• Managing app extensions
• Sharing apps
• Managing documents

Before we start, let's look at the technical requirements for this chapter.

Technical requirements

This is what you will need for this chapter:

• Basic knowledge of the macOS environment
• A Mac computer with administrator privileges

Understanding apps in macOS

macOS benefits from a large and thriving community of developers. Most popular applications are available in versions for macOS and can be downloaded from the App Store or directly from the developer's website. As for the software that is still not available for macOS, you have alternatives as well. You can either use the built-in Boot Camp tool, which allows you to install and use Windows on Mac, or you can also use third-party alternatives, such as Parallels Desktop, which allows you to have a fully integrated virtual machine for using Windows on Mac without even having to leave your current user session. We will also explore the current state of macOS's app compatibility with 32- and 64-bit apps, Universal apps, and iOS apps.

To use apps in macOS, we need to know the types of apps that macOS supports, and we will talk about them in the following sections of this chapter. More specifically, we will cover the following:

• Supported macOS environments
• App compatibility

Let's begin by exploring the app environments that macOS supports.

Supported macOS environments

The primary application environments or frameworks supported by macOS fall into one of the following development categories:

• Native macOS
• Universal macOS binary
• Unix-based
• Open source

Let's briefly describe each of these categories.

Native macOS

Native macOS applications are developed in high-level application environments. Cocoa and Java are the most commonly used programming interfaces for bringing applications into macOS. Carbon was also used until some time ago, but because of its limitations with recently implemented features in OS X and macOS, it is officially deprecated, and Apple no longer recommends its use for app development. Apps developed with Carbon are considered legacy apps.

If you are (or plan to become) a developer, it is the style of your app that will determine what you should use as your core objects for its implementation. Apple developers have been developing native apps using the Cocoa framework, an object-oriented framework that supports the creation of single-window and multi-window apps, and the Swift programming language for some time now. With Cocoa, apps can have the following styles:

• Single-window utility app: A good example of this type of app is the calculator.
• Single-window library-style app: A good example of this type of app is the iPhoto app, which has only one window. From that single window, the user interacts with its collection or library of items.
• Multi-window document-based app: A good example of this is the Text Edit app, which uses a separate window for every document you open.

No matter which type of style you choose, all apps use the same core set of objects: model, view, and controller. Cocoa provides the default behavior for most of these objects.

If you are interested in developing apps for macOS and wish to know more about app development in Cocoa, I recommend that you visit the Apple Developer website: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/MOSXAppProgrammingGuide/CoreAppDesign/CoreAppDesign.html.

However, bear in mind that Apple announced the introduction of a new framework called SwiftUI, specially created for Swift, since the Cocoa framework was created to work with Objective C. This created problems for developers. SwiftUI is a declarative way of declaring user interfaces for any Apple platform. Although it is still relatively new, it is clear that SwiftUI will grow and improve to become the main means of developing apps for Apple devices very soon.

You can find more information about SwiftUI here: https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/SwiftUI.

The preferred integrated development environment (IDE) for writing the code for your Apple apps is Xcode, which is integrated with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks and supports the development of apps for all of Apple's devices: Mac, Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, and so on. The programming language that is most widely used in Xcode is Swift, but you can use other languages, such as Objective C, C++, and Python. XCode now supports SwiftUI as well.

To learn more about Xcode, including step-by-step guides, you can visit the official Xcode site at https://develope...