X World 2025
2-3 SEPTEMBER • NAARM | MELBOURNE
TUESDAY 2 SEP 2025
9:00am
X WORLD REGISTRATION OPENS
10:00am G.01/02
WELCOME
10:15am - Special PresentationG.01/02
KEEP LEARNING, KEEP LEADING: THE ADMIN’S ROLE IN APPLE’S NEXT CHAPTER
Arek Dreyer
About the presenter
Arek Dreyer is a Principal Solutions Engineer at Kandji, where he helps organizations securely deploy and manage Apple devices at scale. With over 25 years of experience in Apple device management, Arek has been a trusted advisor, trainer, and author to IT professionals worldwide. Before joining Kandji, Dreyer co-authored Managing Apple Devices and several books in the Apple Pro Training Series, including Mac OS X Directory Services, macOS Support Essentials, and macOS Server Essentials. His first X World was 15 years ago.
11:00am - Special PresentationG.01/02
DEPLOYMENT, SECURITY & THE LATEST FOR IT: MODERN DEFENSIBLE ARCHITECTURE
Apple Enterprise
A session to be presented by the Apple Enterprise team.
12:15pm
LUNCH
1:30pm G.01/02
MACOS 26: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Robert Hammen, SAP
Need the lowdown on what's up with the latest version of macOS? This session will be your guide into the new features and changes coming in macOS 26, and how they'll affect you and your users, and what need to focus on in testing.
Like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, it's an annual MacAdmin task to learn about/adopt the latest features in the forthcoming new OS. In this session, we'll cover all of the important changes, from an IT perspective, as well as what you need to do to be ready to support the new OS release on Day 0.
About the presenter
As a former IT manager, consultant, Apple Certified System Administrator, and Apple Certified Trainer, Robert hass been managing Macs since before the days of OS X. After 5 years managing the tens of thousands of Apple devices at SpaceX, sending 58 iPads to orbit with astronauts and cosmonauts, he is now part of the Mac Center of Excellence team at SAP. While not of Australian heritage, he does own three modern Holdens in the USA.
2:30pm G.01/02
FURTHER ADVENTURES WITH SHORTCUTS & JAMF ACTIONS
Damian Cavanagh, Compnow
With more than half of macOS 26's time in the WWDC25 Keynote devoted to Shortcuts (and Spotlight), Apple's continued emphasis sees more and more admins recognising their value in device management workflows.
This session showcases solutions that leverage Shortcuts' ability to address old problems in new ways, or provide entirely new capabilities:
- Shortcuts & Apple Configurator: A real-world example
- App-level Shortcuts for admin workflows
- Using Shortcuts in scripts and CLI
- Sharing Shortcuts to end-user devices
Too many admins mistakenly think Shortcuts is the tech version of a first aid kit, but session attendees will see how it's at least an ambluance, probably an operating theatre, and might just be an entire hospital!
About the presenter
Damo has been working with Apple or their partners since 2011, and this will be his fourth X World as a speaker. Best-known for his pioneering work with Shortcuts for admin workflows, Damo is also a passionate Apple Vision Pro power-user with over 1,000 hours on the platform. Other tech hobbies include Swift dev, home automation, and 3D printing, which are balanced by as much time in nature as possible! Damian has been at Compnow since 2021, holding positions in both the Apple Enterprise (AAER) and Apple Education (AAES) programs and working closely with Apple's local team to plan, oversee and deliver Professional Services.
2:30pm G.03
SECURING MACOS
Jon Rhoades, SVI
Securing endpoints has never been more important. This talks covers the fundentals of securing macOS and where it sits within today's enterprise IT enviroment.
About the presenter
Jon is head of IT for St Vincent's Institute of Medical Research and is a Certified IT Security Manager and nearly has a Master of Cyber Security.
3:00pm
AFTERNOON TEA
3:45pm G.01/02
BAKING MACOS VM'S
Daniel MacLaughlin, Jamf
macOS VMs are a key component in an Apple admin's toolbox. Learn how you can streamline macOS VM's with automation tools and processes to upskill your workflows.
About the presenter
Daniel is a Senior Consulting Engineer with Jamf, with a passion for automating workflows and working smarter, not harder. When he's not answering questions about certificates, MDM migrations, or general APIs, you'll find him playing D&D or Magic: The Gathering, brewing beer, or discussing whisky.
4:25pm G.03
YOU CAN HELP - CONTRIBUTING TO YOUR FAVOURITE MACADMIN OPEN SOURCE TOOLS
Bart Reardon, CSIRO
Managing Macs would be nothing like it is today without the many open source tools and scripts that are provided by countless others in the MacAdmin community, whether they solve a problem or provide a service. We rely on many of these tools daily to do our jobs effectively.
Helping out and contributing is a great way to show your apreciation to those that work on these projects and is a great way to feed back into a resource that gives so much. You don't even need to be a developer or be able to write a script.
In this talk we'll go over a number of ways you can lend a hand using real world examples on projects you may already be using, and also what to expect when offering help and the best ways to go about it.
About the presenter
Bart has worked for the CSIRO for over 23 years and is based in Canberra. Bart currently works for CSIRO’s desktop infrastructure team and leads development for the Mac and Linux Desktop SOE’s, managing 1500 macOS and Linux workstations using JAMF, FleetDM, Munki and other open source tools. He has contributed to Munki, macOSLAPS, Nudge and Outset open source projects, as well as developed swiftDialog using SwiftUI and released as open source to the macadmins community.
4:25pm G.01/02
IF ONLY YOU KNEW THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE…
Marcus Ransom, Jamf
Local admin or standard user? Often a contentious decision to make for an organisation, but sometimes the justification for both sides can be driven by misconceptions or ideas based on how other platforms behave. Let’s look at the pros and cons of both sides of the argument and how to ensure that whatever you end up deciding is the right approach for your users. Along the way, we will look at some of the tools that you can use to ensure your objectives are met, whether you choose admin, standard, or somewhere in between!
About the presenter
Marcus has been managing Apple technology across enterprise and education for over two decades. Helping customers deliver uncompromising user experiences in a secure and sustainable way is the part of his job he enjoys the most. He is a Senior Sales Engineer at Jamf based in Melbourne, Australia and is one of the hosts of the Mac Admins Podcast
5:00pm
LIGHT MEAL
We appreciate that some of you will want to move on to local pubs for informal catchups. For those wanting to stick around, we'll have drinks (from 5pm) and food options (from 6pm). This event ends at 7pm.
WEDNESDAY 3 SEP 2025
9:00am
REGISTRATION OPENS
10:00am G.01/02
WELCOME AND HOUSEKEEPING
10:15am G.01/02
ZEN AND THE ART OF MACADMIN MENTAL MAINTENANCE
Robert Hammen, SAP
Behold your guide to achieving zen as a Mac admin. In this presentation, we'll share tips and tricks and discuss job change, imposter syndrome, managing job stress, navigating performance reviews, and more! Learn to juggle fewer plates and dodge fewer flaming chainsaws. It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this!
Example topics: What job stressors exist? How can they be managed or ameliorated? How do you deal with Imposter Syndrome? How can you prepare for reviews? When is it time to consider changing jobs, or careers?
About the presenter
As a former IT manager, consultant, Apple Certified System Administrator, and Apple Certified Trainer, Robert has been managing Macs since before the days of OS X. After 5 years managing the tens of thousands of Apple devices at SpaceX, sending 58 iPads to orbit with astronauts and cosmonauts, he has recently joined the Mac Center of Excellence team at SAP. Although not Australian, he does own three late-model Holdens!
11:15am G.01/02
HELLO COMPLIANCE BENCHMARKS, CIAO JAMF COMPLIANCE EDITOR
Martin Piron & Stu McDonald, Seek & Jamf
Jamf compliance benchmarks is an exiting new feature that Jamf admins have been wanting for a long time. It was announced at JNUC24, now it’s time to see how it actually works!
You’ll hear how we moved to the compliance benchmarks after having enforced CIS Level 1 using the well known Jamf Compliance Editor in our enterprise.
Is early adoption of compliance benchmarks worth it? Join us to learn about the new features it gives us and help you decide if moving should be on your to-do list or not.
About the presenter
Martin has considerable experience working with Apple products. With more than fifteen years of experience both in Australia and Europe, he has worked in a range of environments from small service providers to large enterprise environments. He is currently a Senior Engineer in the Client Platform Team at SEEK.
11:15am G.03
MANAGING MULTI-USER MACS IN A SINGLE-USER WORLD
Cameron Kay, UNSW Sydney
This talk discusses managing a fleet of multi-user Macs in teaching labs and staff offices at a university. The challenges imposed on multi-user Macs in a world where most management tools and applications are designed and tested for single-user Macs. How automated enrolment, auto-advance, minimum required macOS version, automated application deployment & patching, scheduled software updates, compliance baselines, LAPS, API-driven scripting, and remote wipe has made it possible for a team of 2 engineers to manage 470 multi-user Macs and 2250 single-user Macs and 320 applications. Plus what could be possible in the future with Platform SSO and DDM.
About the presenter
Cameron Kay has been managing fleets of Macs in universities in New Zealand & Australia for 30 years. An active member of the Mac Admin community sharing knowledge and providing feedback.
12:00pm
LUNCH
1:15pm G.01/02
WHATS NEW AND WHATS THE FUTURE FOR SWIFTDIALOG
Bart Reardon, CSIRO
Four years and over 5 million downloads later, swiftDialog can be found as the basis of Mac deployment scripts, maintenance tasks and notification workflows from individual Mac admins to organisations like Jamf and Microsoft.
In this talk, we'll go over what's new in swiftDialog and ideas on how to incorporate new and updated features into your scripted workflows. We'll also discuss future plans for version 3 and beyond.
About the presenter
Bart has worked for the CSIRO for over 23 years and is based in Canberra. Bart currently works for CSIRO’s desktop infrastructure team and leads development for the Mac and Linux Desktop SOE’s, managing 1500 macOS and Linux workstations using JAMF, FleetDM, Munki and other open source tools. He has contributed to Munki, macOSLAPS, Nudge and Outset open source projects, as well as developed swiftDialog using SwiftUI and released as open source to the macadmins community.
1:15pm G.03
MACOS METRICS FOR COST OPTIMISATION
Steven Boissezon, Canva
Do your Engineers really need a fully specced MacBook Pro Max with 128GB of memory? Can your customer service team survive with a minimum spec MacBook Air with an 8 core CPU?
Answering these questions can be hard, so this session will look at ways you can monitor performance metrics across your macOS fleet so you can make sure you are providing your users with performant devices, while optimising for cost. In the session we will find out what metrics may be useful to look at, ways you could collect them using your MDM, and how to analyse the results in Datadog with dahsboards.
About the presenter
After getting his start in the world of macOS as a Lead Genius at Apple, Steven has gone on to work in the Client Platform Engineering team at Block (also known as Square/Afterpay) and is now a Senior Engineer on the Device Management team at Canva.
1:55pm G.01/02
OUR PASSWORDLESS FUTURE AND HOW PASSKEYS WORK
Weldon Dodd, Kandji
You’ve no doubt heard lots about the passwordless future. But how do passkeys work, and how do they work on Apple devices. This session will go into detail on how passkeys work and how to identify, manage, and troubleshoot them on your managed devices.
About the presenter
Weldon Dodd began his career running a campus Mac lab and NeXT lab at the University of California. He then went to wireless telecom just as digital networks and the Internet came to mobile. The next stage was automating large Apple deployments and running the Apple Authorized Training Center in Colorado. Weldon joined Kandji in early 2020 where he has built and led several teams, and now serves as a Distinguished Solutions Engineer. Weldon Dodd began his career running a campus Mac lab and NeXT lab at the University of California. He then went to wireless telecom just as digital networks and the Internet came to mobile. The next stage was automating large Apple deployments and running the Apple Authorized Training Center in Colorado. Weldon joined Kandji in early 2020 where he has built and led several teams, and now serves as a Distinguished Solutions Engineer.
1:55pm G.03
LEGACY.EXE - THE STORY OF AN APP THAT REFUSED TO DIE
Jeremy McCowage, CompNow
What do you do when your organisation has a mission-critical Windows app from 2009, no source code, and zero chance of migrating away? You run it natively on macOS — obviously.
This session explores how Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK), originally intended for gaming, can be repurposed to run legacy Windows applications directly on macOS. We’ll walk through real-world examples where GPTK was used to resurrect EXEs from the grave, sidestep infrastructure constraints, and delay costly Windows upgrades.
You’ll learn how to configure GPTK, manage application quirks, and decide when this approach is viable — and when it’s a terrible idea. Whether you’re supporting a university with ancient lab software or an enterprise that refuses to let go of Access 2007, this talk will give you practical tools and unhinged inspiration.
Expect chaos. Expect hacks. Expect results.
About the presenter
An Apple Systems Architect with a background in automation, governance, and large-scale deployment, this speaker has delivered outcomes for organisations like NSW Government, Vodafone, Macquarie University, and Allianz. With a passion for solving legacy tech challenges in unconventional ways, they specialise in high-impact initiatives that reduce technical debt and modernise IT environments. Known for platform optimisation, workflow automation, and strategic leadership, they bring a blend of enterprise experience and creative problem-solving — occasionally powered by GPTK, Python, or pop punk.
2:30pm
AFTERNOON TEA
3:15pm G.01/02
SANTA'S LITTLE HELPER
Harrison Ravazzolo, Fleet Device Management
Santa (https://github.com/northpolesec/santa) is a binary authorization system that has been a cornerstone of macOS security for organizations serious about application control. However, the traditional Santa deployment model comes with additional operational overhead at scale, primarily centered around the need for a dedicated Santa sync server. In the conventional setup, Santa requires a custom sync server implementation to:
- Distribute allow/deny rules across your fleet
- Collect execution events and blocked binary reports
- Manage configuration changes and rule updates
At the time of writing, there are currently three off-the-shelf sync server solutions available:
- Moroz - A golang server that serves hardcoded rules from simple configuration files.
- Rudolph - An AWS-based serverless sync service built on API GW, DynamoDB, and Lambda components.
- Zentral - An event hub to gather, process, and monitor system events and link them to an inventory.
Running any of these solutions may incur additional infrastructure costs, add additional upkeep, and you might have to adopt a configuration language specific to the solution. What if you could get all the benefits and functionality of a sync server using your existing device management solution?
About the presenter
Harrison is a Solutions Engineer for Fleet Device Management. He’s passionate about improving IT workflows and approaching problems and solutions through a lens of security. Before entering tech, he was a sourdough bread baker in San Francisco.
3:15pm G.03
ELEVATING THE END-USER EXPERIENCE: ROLE-BASED WORKFLOWS FOR THE MODERN WORKFORCE
Winston Wong, Jamf
As mobile device adoption accelerates across industries, organizations face increasing complexity in managing diverse fleets for various personas, use cases, and environments. This often results in fragmented workflows and inconsistent user experiences—particularly in shared or frontline scenarios. To solve this, organizations need a modern, role-aware device management approach that automates tasks, adapts configurations dynamically, and ensures security and compliance. In this session, we’ll explore how leveraging native Apple capabilities—such as automated device reset workflows, shortcut-driven customization, and user role-based configuration—combined with modern mobility tools can deliver a seamless, secure, and intuitive user experience across a wide range of industry verticals.
About the presenter
Winston is an experienced Technologist and Pre-Sales Systems Engineer at Jamf, with a strong focus on Mobility, Cybersecurity, Apple EDR, Zero Trust Network Access, and Security & Compliance frameworks. I bring deep technical expertise supporting both Enterprise customers and Channel partners—advising on complex deployments, leading strategic enablement sessions, and aligning solutions to business outcomes.
3:55pm G.01/02
PLATFORMSSO: WHAT PROBLEMS WILL IT REALLY SOLVE?
Arek Dreyer, Kandji
Let's start with a history of what Platform SSO first set out to do and what features arrived along the way. With that history and challenges out of the way, let's look at why I'm so excited about Platform SSO for macOS 26 for onboarding workflows. And for shared Mac use with Authenticated Guest Access. What can you do today in beta, and what might you be able to do soon? Although I originally thought Platform SSO for macOS 26 meant the definitive end of the need to bind a shared Mac to Active Directory, it turns out there's still one reason you might still need to cling to mobile accounts - for now.
About the presenter
Arek Dreyer is a Principal Solutions Engineer at Kandji, where he helps organizations securely deploy and manage Apple devices at scale. With over 25 years of experience in Apple device management, Arek has been a trusted advisor, trainer, and author to IT professionals worldwide. Before joining Kandji, Dreyer co-authored Managing Apple Devices and several books in the Apple Pro Training Series, including Mac OS X Directory Services, macOS Support Essentials, and macOS Server Essentials. His first X World was 15 years ago.
3:55pm G.03
1000 HOURS WITH APPLE VISION PRO
Damian Cavanagh, Compnow
Damian got his Apple Vision Pro on the Australian launch day, used it for 3 hours a day on average, and has now spent over 1,000 hours on Apple’s newest and most exciting platform.
That’s only $6 per hour! And it's the best money he's ever spent.
From both admin and end-user perspectives, this session will explore:
- What it's been like living in the future since July last year
- AR vs VR for a device that does both so well
- How visionOS has influenced expectations of other devices and platforms
- What innovators and early adopters are doing with Apple Vision Pro
- What Spatial Computing might mean for the future of device usage - and thus management - at school or work
About the presenter
Damo has been working with Apple or their partners since 2011, and this will be his fourth X World as a speaker. Best-known for his pioneering work with Shortcuts for admin workflows, Damo is also a passionate Apple Vision Pro power-user with over 1,000 hours on the platform. Other tech hobbies include Swift dev, home automation, and 3D printing, which are balanced by as much time in nature as possible! Damian has been at Compnow since 2021, holding positions in both the Apple Enterprise (AAER) and Apple Education (AAES) programs and working closely with Apple's local team to plan, oversee and deliver Professional Services.
4:30pm
X WORLD CLOSE
4:45pm G.01/02
MACADMINS PODCAST RECORDING
Marcus Ransom & Sorry James
Join your hosts Marcus Ransom and James Smith (sorryjames) for a live recording of an episode of the Mac Admins Podcast!