In this section, we're going to cover Mac hardware troubleshooting, we're going to talk about firmware
updates.
We're talking about the system management and parameter RAM.
We're talking about food security.
And we're going to discuss just briefly some of the new technologies like the two security chip.
We'll start by talking briefly about Mac Firmware at the heart of every Macintosh, which really makes
an Intel Mac a Mac is the Apple firmware.
And usually during the process of a major operating system upgrade, as you can see here with MAHABA,
there is oftentimes a firmware update that's required and the operating system will tell you as part
of the installation when that's required and walk you through the steps to update the firmware.
As part of this process, you'll usually hear a long tone, something different than what you've heard
before.
Don't let it freak you out.
It's it's normal, but it is something you may not have heard come from your Mac before you basically
go through the process.
Let it finish.
Let him finish the firmware update.
You'll see a status bar.
It may up, may restart a couple of times, and then it'll continue with the operating system install.
And so it's not that big of a deal.
It's really pretty hands off for the most part.
The one thing I do want to touch on, though, if you're managing multiple Macs and you're planning
to do a massive reimage with the new operating system, you really want to make sure that the firmware
update that's required gets installed prior to reimaging.
And that can sometimes include having to install the operating system to get the firmware and then reimage
that hard drive with your image if you're if you're doing that kind of a workflow.
Apple's recommended process is to actually do an install of OS 10 on the machine with the actual installer
application.
So it captures the firmware and we'll get into those different options later in the course.
But it is important to note that you may end up with an unbeatable Mac if you're trying to install an
operating system that requires firmware in that firmware.
Update didn't get installed because you image.
Next, we're going to talk about RAM and SC.
So P Ram stands for Parameter Ram and it's really been around since the first Mac.
It's really a small amount of memory that contains various hardware settings like your alarm clock,
the mouse speed volume of the sound monitor def, virtual memory and ram and disk cache, among many
other things.
Sometimes some strange values or garbage data gets collected in in that memory space and can cause your
Mac to do some weird things.
It's good to know that you probably don't have to do this on a regular basis.
I haven't probably zapped the P ram on my machine probably in at least a year or longer.
But to do this, it's really very simple.
You just boot up your Mac holding down command option P and R for Parameter Rampa and let the machine
boot keep holding down those keys until you hear it twice.
If you have a Mac that chimes, you'll hear it chime and then you'll want to keep holding for it to
chime again.
Typically, unless you've got the very default volume, one of the things you'll know that this takes
effect is that the volume will change.
If you have your volume down very low, you'll hear the chime the second time and maybe you hadn't before,
or if your volume was that very loud, you'll hear the child the second time to be quieter because it
will default it out.
So that that's part of that sound volume setting that basically gets reset when you blow away the parameter
ram.
The other thing is the sexy and sexy stands for system management controller, and this is a unique
thing built into Intel based Macs, and it controls other hardware things, too, that a little bit
more interesting, like fans backlit on your keyboard.
If you have a MacBook Pro that has a backlit keyboard, deals with things with the power button, it
works with this performance.
One of the things I found before where I had an issue with a Mac pro tower because I was unable to boot
the machine up, but I would plug it in.
I hit the power button and I, I thought that the issue was that I had a bad power supply.
But it turns out that was just an issue with the CMC and performing this step actually resolved it and
allowed me to move the computer up.
Unfortunately, I drugged the 70 pound boost to the Apple store before I found that out.
But anyway, I want to share that with you guys.
There's really just a couple different ways to do this, and it really depends on your Mac.
The most common one we'll start with, which is the more recent Mac books and MacBook pros without a
removable battery.
And essentially what you're doing there is pressing shift control, option command and the power button
at the time that the machine boots up and then that will reset it.
If you've got a MacBook with a removable battery, which you want to do is remove the battery, unplug
the power and hold the power button down for about five seconds, then put your battery back in and
plug the power back in and turn it on.
Normally, that will be the sexy reset for that model.
And then if you've got any other kind of Mac like an iMac or Mac Mini or Mac Pro, something that doesn't
have batteries, an actual desktop, Mac, you want to unplug the power, you want to hold that power
button for five seconds, then plug the power back in and turn it on.
And that was basically the solution to my issue where I thought my Mac Pro had a bad power supply.
Next, let's talk about security so this can be particularly helpful to lock down different boot settings
in a public facing Mac environment or maybe a computer lab or a library of education facility or somewhere
else where you've got, you know, Max available for people's use but really aren't able to just keep
an eye on them 100 percent of the time.
This will avoid things like having people bring in their own removable devices with their own operating
systems on them and boot up the machine and do other things to the the internal drive or run their operating
system on your hardware and your network.
So this is pretty important.
So I want to talk about this.
You first.
You have to boot into recovery mode, whether you're using Internet recovery or off of a recovery recovery,
bootable partition or removable drive.
Once you do that, and since it's in the reboot environment, I can only show you the slides here.
But what will happen is you'll you'll boot into that.
You'll have that Olsztyn boot utilities that we talked about in a previous lesson, and you'll go up
to the utilities menu and you'll have the option to choose from where password utility.
Once you do that, by default, password protection is off.
You just tap the or click the turn on for more password option.
Enter a password, make sure that you know what that password is because it's quite difficult to recover
this.
If you if you put the wrong one in or you don't or you forget what your password is, you go ahead and
set the password and then it will ask you to go ahead and quit and it will reboot.
The next time that the computer restarts, security will be enabled.
And basically what that means is that it'll boot up normally right off the hard drive.
But if something happens where let's say someone holds down the option key to try to boot up off of
a boot up and choose a different drive to boot from, they'll be given something like this, basically
a padlock asking for a password, and they'll need that password to be able to access those boot options
and choose other drives.
Lastly here, I want to talk a little bit about the two security chip that's in many of the newer Macintosh's,
the iMac pro, the newer Mac Mini in particular.
And then, of course, the newer MacBook pros all have a T2 security chip in them.
Strangely enough, the twenty nineteen iMac does not.
And I don't know if that's because Apple made a decision based on the fact that these machines are heavily
deployed in the education space and monolithic imaging and network voting is still very popular in those
areas.
Or if there's another architecture reason why they left the T two out of the iMac.
But for now, the iMac still will support NetSuite and does not have the restrictions and security features
that the two offers in some of these other newer models.
So, as I mentioned, NetSuite is basically disabled.
Network boot is not allowed on any Mac that uses the T two.
It also restricts removable media boot.
And I'll show just a minute how to get around that if you if you need to in your environment.
It also disables some third party repairs.
So many of the things if you are basically trying to open your own Mac and do some changes and fixes
and things like that, you may run into some issues on a Mac that has a T to chip in there.
It has built in encryption as well, and the SSD are typically soldered onto the board as a result because
it's an integrated unit with a T two.
So if you have a Mac that has a T two and you need to replace the internal drive, that's usually not
possible.
It does have some other good features, though, like it has the secure enclave, which will touch ID
data, for example, and it adds some new hardware level security on the audio and camera.
There's actually a piece of the logic board that physically disconnects the camera and the microphone
on your MacBook Pro when it's closed and not in use to keep any kind of third party applications that
might be spying or something else from happening that would use the audio or video feeds in your machine
with a D to.
So pretty good features there.
But it is kind of a bummer about the net boot thing.
If you if you're heavily using that boot in your environment, you know, we all have to use some other
ways to basically set up your Macs, which fortunately will teach you how to do later in this course.
If you do have a T two security chip in your machine and you do need to get in there and change some
of the boot security, this is how you do it.
You'll need a boot into recovery mode again.
And very similar to where we were just in for changing the firmware password.
You have the option to make some changes in secure boot and external boot.
So you can see these options here by default.
We have full security and disallowing booting from external media.
So you'll need to go in there and enable those things if you need to boot off of an external drive or
if you want to run other operating systems on your machine rather than the current Mac OS.
So you can see there's options here to turn that off and so you can install Linux or other things on
your Mac medium, security is basically various side operating system that Apple's used in the past,
but maybe not the latest.
And then full security is really the the latest devices that are available.
So the interesting things that you can make those changes and then restart the machine, if you have
to remove boot off removable media, you have that option.