MacAdmins Conference 2016

MacAdmins is the premier East Coast conference for anyone who deploys and manages Macs and iOS devices. In 2015 we featured 60 sessions and five workshops with top notch speakers in the Mac OS X and iOS deployment community. MacAdmins offers an incredible level of expertise, value, entertainment, and a great opportunity to network with your fellow admins!

Conference info

http://macadmins.psu.edu/

Penn State University, June 27 - 30, 2016

Attendees

• Ed, Stephen, Devon, Dani

Notes / Talks / Thoughts

Useful Applications Discussed

Recipe Robot

Recipe Robot is the easiest way to create new AutoPkg recipes for simple Mac apps. It consists of two components:

• A Python script that takes various types of input and automatically outputs AutoPkg recipes.
• A native Mac app that puts a friendly face on the Python script and makes it as simple as dragging and dropping. You can download the latest version of the app here.

This two-pronged approach allows AutoPkg novices to easily create recipes that follow community-accepted guidelines, and still provides a command-line tool for more advanced AutoPkg users. Also, using Python for program logic fosters community contribution to this project.

Recipe Robot combined with Autopkg and JSSImporter can be used to automate the deployment and updates of common applications such as Firefox, Chrome.etc without the need for admin or user intervention.

Github: https://github.com/homebysix/recipe-robot

Python w/ Tkinter

Tkinter is Python's de-facto standard GUI (Graphical User Interface) package. It is a thin object-oriented layer on top of Tcl/Tk.

Tkinter should be very useful for making responsive GUIs within the Casper "App Store" instead of having terminal windows used for user input.

Site: https://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter

Resources

• Conference resources: http://macadmins.psu.edu/conference/resources/