• iPhone,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    Talking A Look Under Apple Configurator's Hood

    Apple Configurator has now been in my grubby hands long enough for me to start looking at it a little deeper than I did in the introductory article I did awhile back. Architecturally, Apple Configurator keeps its data in ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.configurator. Here, you’ll find a directory called IPSWs, another called Resources, file called AppleConfigurator.storedata and another called Users.storedata. The IPSWs directory is where operating system versions, per model of iOS are stored. These look something like iPad2,1_5.1_9B176_Restore.ipsw, which is iOS 5.1 for a standard iPad 2. iPad 1, the retina display iPad, as well as each iPod Touch and iPhone 4 each have their own entry as well. The IPSWs…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    S/MIME in OS X Isn't Just For Tin Hat Wearing Nerds Anymore

    S/MIME, or Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is the de facto standard for encrypting and signing mail. You can encrypt mail to keep prying eyes off of it. Signing though, is much more common as it addresses the issue of non-repudiation in many organizations, or giving people a way to make sure that the email that they think you sent really came from you. It was also available in GPG plug-ins for mail, back in the day. But S/MIME used to really be for people who thought the government was out to get them, work for government agencies, just liked to be kinda’ nerdy or actually had something to hide. But…