check all your Macs at once with SOFA feed
Note: this blog post relates to the previous one where I introduce the scripts to check SimpleMDM devices and compare with latest version info in the SOFA feed here: Use the SOFA feed to check if SimpleMDM devices needs updates
Ok, please steal this idea. The idea? To check all your Macs at one time, instead of each device, on device, one at a time.
What do I mean? Well, when I first heard about the SOFA feed which contained all the latest versions I didn’t know what to do with it honestly but soon after I realized that my clever script for checking XProtect version and which I made into a custom attribute in SimpleMDM and added to the dashboard was an incomplete idea.
Ok, I’m smart, I got the XProtect version on each Mac by running a script and then I got SimpleMDM to display it in a dashboard. But what’s missing? Context. Is it the latest version or not? So I added a SOFA check to the script then made SimpleMDM display both the local version and the latest version so I’d know if it was the latest or not. Great, right? Well, maybe.
The problem, I realized is that I wanted to do this for the macOS version too because I wanted to share info with a client/manager etc and realized the list of devices and info about macOS versions for example, lacked the context of whether it was the latest, and should we take action or not. That’s the point, right? collect info then do something about it, if action is required. Update your macOS now.
And then I wondered why I’m getting every Mac to ask itself what is its macOS or XProtect version, etc, when SimpleMDM was asking a lot of those questions already and putting it in a dashboard, accessible via API….
Then it happened, the idea that should be stolen by SimpleMDM and all other management tools. Don’t just display info about a Mac’s macOS version, show the latest version next to it, because I want to know if it should be updated. And also what is the latest that Mac can upgrade to. Maybe it’s running macOS 13.6, is that the latest or is 13.7.7, no wait it changed again, it’s 13.7.8. And by the way the latest compatible upgrade is 15.6.1, now that’s useful info.
| product_name | os_version | latest_major_os | needs_update | latest_compatible_os | latest_compatible_os_version |
| Mac13,1 | 14.7.4 | 14.7.8 | yes | Sequoia 15 | 15.6.1 |
| MacBookPro17,1 | 14.6.1 | 14.7.8 | yes | Sequoia 15 | 15.6.1 |
| Mac13,2 | 15.6 | 15.6.1 | yes | Sequoia 15 | 15.6.1 |
| iMac21,1 | 15.5 | 15.6.1 | yes | Sequoia 15 | 15.6.1 |
| MacBookPro17,1 | 13.6 | 13.7.8 | yes | Sequoia 15 | 15.6.1 |
References:
Check SimpleMDM device list and compare macOS version vs SOFA feed latest
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