Mac training / resources

[ChesRuff]

Hello,

 

During my latest meeting with my manager he suggested that I gain some knowledge of the Mac's. I am going to have our current Mac systems admin showing me the ropes but I would really like to get myself a bit of understanding of the MacOS before this, we are currently running El Captain v10.11.06

 

I am coming from a position from only ever using a Mac once before so I am essentially a fresh slate for it. Now my question is does anybody know of any good, preferably free resources that I could read through and follow to boost my technical knowledge, im currently just flicking through the system preferences to see what's what.

[DalekSec]

I was in a similar position and now i am the main Mac admin! I went from hating macOS to loving it and prefering it to Windows! I even have an iPhone now aswell.....

 

It's a very wide subject and it's not as simple as heres a all you need to know for macOS course as there is so much.

 

Personally i brought myself a MacBook (as i needed a laptop anyway) and i just learnt as i went and played around with it. Just simple things at the start like how do i print to PDF up to how do i domain join this.

 

Also i asked a ton of questions on here that i didn't know the answers to! And i still do. Not saying you should go out and buy a personal mac, maybe see if you can borrow a works one for awhile to get your head around it?

[ChesRuff]

That's a great idea, I will definitely be seeing if I can take one of the Mac's we were going to scrap home. So far we have started off with Imaging, software installs, domain switching and screen sharing. Edited March 1, 2019 by ChesRuff

[LTurner3692]

I have a love/hate relationship with them!

 

But i never really found anything worth reading before i started playing! most of it came from trial and error! best advice i can i give is click on everything! literally everything! for all intents and purposes right click on it all to! see what it allows you to open up and do!

[Brimstone]

That's a great idea, I will definitely be seeing if I can take one of the Mac's we were going to scrap home. So far we have started off with Imaging, software installs, domain switching and screen sharing.

 

Please don't start with Imaging Macs (it's dead) please, you should be using an MDM to manage them, here are some resources below....

 

The first 2 are the largest MacAdmin community on the planet....

 

Mac Admin Info

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2016/02/11/getting-started-as-a-mac-admin/

https://www.amsys.co.uk/blog/

krypted.com - Tiny Deathstars of Foulness

[ChesRuff]

Thanks for the resources, will give them a good read through. I'll also have a read about mobile device management with iOS and speak with our system admin about the deployment methods.

[DalekSec]

Modern device management

 

FTFY

 

More and more people calling it Modern now as MDMs manage iMacs and standalone PCs now so calling it Mobile is a bit strange!

 

I agree thought device imaging is dead MDMs is the future (for now)

[ChesRuff]

It did confuse me a tad, we have a MDM system for our Android phones and tablets, so I have only ever know it as mobile.

 

Thanks for the correction, another three letter acronym to add to my brain library of them.

[neilmartin83]

I'd like to highly, highly recommend joining the MacAdmins Slack community - http://macadmins.org - 24,000 members and growing. The #gettingstarted channel is a good place to start and there are platform/tool specific channels for pretty much everything else you could think of.

 

Also, depending on whereabouts you are, there may be a local Apple Admin group that meets up nearby - the two promenant ones are London London Apple Admins and East Midlands http://eastmidsappleadmins.org.uk/

 

There's also the MacADUK conference coming up later this month - https://www.macad.uk/ - maybe your employer might fund a ticket for you?

Edited March 2, 2019 by neilmartin83