Software

Five GitHub Repos to Level Up Your Swift Skills
As developers, we know you’re always working to level up your skills. We’ve got some of our favorite (and your favorite) repos for Swift.

New Apple Silicon: When to Migrate to the M1 Mac
Are you ready to move to the M1 Mac? We’ve got a rundown of the new Apple silicon and what migration could look like for your dev team.

MacStadium - An Experienced Partner for Mac Clouds
We have over 3,000 customers around the world that rely upon MacStadium each day, but if you are just learning about us for the first time, you may be asking “who is MacStadium?”

iOS Developer Survey Pt. 3 - Your Projects
In this last installment of Dave Verwer’s iOS Developer Community Survey, we’re turning our analytical eye to what iOS developers are working on both personally and professionally.

How to K8s: Sharing Data Between Containers in a Pod
In part three of our How to K8s series, we take you through emptyDir and volume, and how to share data between containers in a pod.

Open Source iOS Testing Platforms to Consider When Testing Your Next App
There are a lot of players in the iOS testing landscape. We’ve picked four open source platforms for your consideration.

5 Outrageously Popular Open-Source iOS Libraries
Reusable code that follows industry standards is important for delivering projects quickly and maintaining a code base with multiple collaborators. We’ve put together this list of popular open-source libraries for iOS.

2 New Xcode 11.4 Features for Swift that We Love
Xcode’s latest release, 11.4 Beta 3, has brought advancements across the board. Here’s our rundown of the two new features we love and think could benefit you the most.

Orka Plugins Rundown: Part 2
These three plugins are the most recent additions to Orka, and have all been greeted warmly by folks who are using them already. Check out how Orka integrates with your CI pipeline (part 2).

Orka Plugins Rundown: Part 1
With Orka’s simple CLI and our growing library of plugins and integrations, ease-of-use is central to our targeted user experience. In short, Orka is a tool for everyone.

2019 Mac Pros at MacStadium
The 2019 Mac Pros have arrived and our benchmarking has started! For this first round of benchmarking, we used NodeJS and Wikipedia’s iOS build. Check out the results we got when the new Pro was put up against its earlier counterparts.

YAML for the People: A Human Readable Primer
If you haven’t yet heard much about YAML, it – very much like JSON or XML – is just a way of representing structured data. Learn more in this beginner's guide.

Automate Your CI With These 3 Powerful Tools in 2020
Is CI automation on your team's wishlist for 2020? Check out this piece for three must-have tools before getting started.

Put Your Things Away with MacStadium’s Five Storage Options
With one or more of our five storage solutions your team will be ready and able to focus on the work at hand. We break them down in this piece.

Try Orka with a Playground Environment
Try Orka hands-on! Get access to a free Orka demo environment for a two-hour window -- spin up VMs, explore the Orka CLI, try the Jenkins plugin, and more.

Best VM Configurations for Your Specific Use Case
In this piece we highlight a few VM configuration settings that you may be overlooking. To optimize performance, these are things you want to take a look at.

Reports of Xcode 11 building slow: 50% increase in build times?
We recently had a call with a customer who has been experiencing slow run-times after moving to Xcode 11. Have you experienced similar issues? We want to know!

Introducing Orka
MacStadium has officially released Orka, our new virtualization layer for Mac build infrastructure based on Docker and Kubernetes technology. In this video, the MacStadium team shares why Orka was created, how Orka works, why building on Macs is different than other platforms, and much more.

Homebrew Tests Catalina on Orka
Participating in the Orka beta program this summer, Homebrew teamed up with MacStadium to test the macOS Catalina beta on Orka to great success.

Announcing Orka - Orchestration with Kubernetes on Apple
Released today, Orka (Orchestration with Kubernetes on Apple) is our new virtualization layer for Mac build infrastructure based on Docker and Kubernetes technology.

Benchmarking with Multiple vSphere Builds Using Jenkins
We've set out to discover best practices when virtualizing with vSphere and Jenkins when paired with MacStadium. Read what we consider to be the best way to produce ephemeral VMs.

CI/CD Differences on Mac Infrastructure
CI/CD, regardless of the OS associated with it, is generally the same at a high level. However, there are some distinctions in the world of Mac CI/CD including Mac-specific tools and best practices.

Provisioning on MacStadium with Terraform
In the latest in a series of helpful posts for new MacStadium adopters, get tips for using HashiCorp's Terraform with each of MacStadium's virtualization platforms.

Provisioning on MacStadium with Ansible
In a series of blog posts, we will provide some pointers and a few examples for new MacStadium adopters to use as a guide. Let's start with Ansible...

CI Changes with Catalyst
Apple highlighted Catalyst’s new features and increased functionality at WWDC. When mass adoption hits, there will need to be some changes to Mac-related CI workflows.

MacStadium + Ansible are Making Life Easier for DevOps Teams
Provisioning your Mac cloud virtual machines for macOS and iOS CI just got easier. MacStadium engineers have put together some example Ansible scripts for provisioning your CI build environment.

User and Customer Experience for All
Without users for the platforms we build, even the most groundbreaking applications can quickly turn into shelfware. Humans, of course, can be unpredictable and demanding but—love or hate them—they’re the reason we build platforms in the first place.

macOS Mojave – What You Need to Know
While macOS Mojave is primarily a consumer focused release, there are also lots of performance and stability improvements that will make MacStadium customers happy. Find out what you need to know about upgrading here.

Science confirmed: text replacements do not sync
Text replacement snippets are a useful tool that can be used on macOS and iOS. You create shortcut text that, when typed, expands to something longer.

Some tips on High Sierra at MacStadium
High Sierra is almost among us. Here are a few things you should consider as you decide to upgrade to macOS 10.13.

NuoRDS is a scalable terminal server for Mac
There is a new terminal server option for Mac. It is called NuoRDS. It is simple to install, has a number of options and is quite well developed.

Use Transmit and a Mac mini at MacStadium
The venerable Panic Inc announced Transmit 5 today, and update to a very popular file transfer app that just gets better and better.

Work with macOS on an iPad or iPhone
As iOS becomes more powerful, and screens get larger and larger, many people are traveling with just an iPhone or iPad.

Monitor your Mac servers with iStat from Bjango
Bjango is a well respected and long time developer for great Mac and iOS apps. They have released new apps that will help you monitor your remote servers from your Mac or iOS devices.

Upgrade from OS X 10.11 El Capitan to macOS 10.12 Sierra Best Practices
While there are many brave souls who updated to macOS 10.12 Sierra immediately, we're sure many of you were waiting for the all clear.

iOS 10 brings simple setup with macOS Server
This update brings all sorts of upgrades and features, but there is one particular that is quite useful if you are running a Mac server to host your mail, notes, calendars and other features in macOS Server.

Setup a file server with Resilio on a Mac mini
Resilio Sync is a power application that lets you run your own file syncing server. It has many of the powerful features found in Dropbox, but it runs on your own hardware.

How to Apply the ARP-Fix for Colocated Macs
"Why do I have constant issues connecting to my colocated Mac running OS X?" This question doesn't come up often, but it’s worth sharing the most likely answer and how to fix the issue permanently.

Choosing the Right Tool for Continuous Integration and Development
Many MacStadium customers take advantage of the fast internet connection and strong performance of one or more Mac mini’s to outsource CI and CD build server duties.

Survival of the Most Efficient: Intro to Agile Software Development
With the software industry moving forward rapidly and trends shifting, a delay in product release can be disastrous for a company.

How Travis CI Halved Boot Times for OS X and iOS Testing at MacStadium
Travis CI is one of the best examples of a company succeeding in the continuous integration space with a variety of free and paid, open and closed source platforms.

Apple’s Big Announcement is Here
"It's been way too long." That’s the cryptic message Apple sent out a few weeks ago as a teaser to its big announcement made today.

Hosted PLEX Media Server
Utilizing a hosted Mac at MacStadium to run Plex media server is a great solution! Plex organizes video, music and photos from personal media libraries and streams them to smart TVs, streaming boxes and mobile devices.

OS X 10.9 & 10.10 Bugs & Network ARP Issues
Several weeks ago, we have obtained a working patch which corrects this condition for 10.9.x and 10.10.x. It is our understanding that this patch will eventually be incorporated into a future version of OS X 10.10.x Mavericks.

Hosted OwnCloud File Sync & Share
Configuring a hosted Mac server at MacStadium to run a dedicated OwnCloud private cloud storage solution is a great solution for businesses of any size!

OS X 10.9 Mavericks is here - and its Free!
Great news from Apple today! OS X 10.9 aka 'Mavericks' is now available on the App store for FREE as a single step upgrade for all Mac mini server hardware 2009 and beyond!

Hosted DNS, Web & Mail Server Quick-Start: Part 2
Part two of a 4-part series designed to get new subscribers educated, configured, tested, and ultimately up and running with their Mac servers at MacStadium.

Hosted DNS, Web & Mail Server Quick-Start: Part 1
This is a 4 part series designed to get new subscribers educated, configured, tested, and ultimately up and running with their Mac servers at MacStadium.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 30: SSH Basics
SSH allows you to connect securely to your server. In this screencast I walk you through connecting to your server using SSH.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 31: SFTP
SFTP is basically FTP through SSH which makes the communications secure back and forth.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 28: Work Group Manager Overview
With the move from 10.6 to 10.7 and 10.8, Apple has still made the Work Group Manager Application available to those who still like the old UI of the application.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 29: Work Group Manager Preferences
Continued coverage of Work Group Manager. If you haven't viewed the previous screencast on Work Group Manager, you will want to view that one first before this one.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 27: Remote Server Management
Because your server is in a hosted environment accessing your server remotely is a must if you are to manage it and get all you can out of it.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 26: Connecting iOS to WebDAV
With so many people using mobile devices as their primary platform, it is important to have a way to share files with those mobile devices from your server.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 25: Wiki - Customization
One of the advantages of using the built in wiki is you can customize it to fit your needs. The wiki can be a great resource to collaborate with others and to share files.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 24: Wiki - Set Up
With Wiki website, Apple gives you a prebuilt template for a wiki that you can use to host your own wiki, blogs, and other online features like an online calendar.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 23: Profile Manager Devices & Groups
Profile Manager allows you to manage many of the details of setting up your devices so you only have to set it up once and then push those profiles to all your devices.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 22: Profile Manager Users & Groups
Once you have Profile Manager set up you can begin to create profiles that you can use to manage your clients and their devices.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 21: Profile Manager iOS Enrollment
Not only does Profile Manager allow you to enroll your Macs in the service, you can also enroll your iOS devices as well.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 20: Profile Manager Mac Enrollment
In order for your Mac's to be able to receive profiles they need to be enrolled in the Profile Manager Service.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 19: Website Server
Built into Mountain Lion Server is a Website Service that allows you to host multiple websites and does all of the routing internally to the proper address.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 18: Mail
One of the benefits of hosting your own server at MacStadium is being able to host your own mail server. Built right into Mountain Lion Server is a Mail Server that can handle the email for your domain.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 17: Time Machine
Back ups are something we all need to do and make sure all of our client machines are doing to protect our data. In addition to local back ups it is a good idea to have remote back ups as well.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 16: FTP
FTP is a service that most people think about when they think about servers. FTP has been the way many people upload files to servers and while it is an older service it is something many still rely on today.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 15: VPN
Secure connections are something most of us think about today especially on unsecured public wifi networks. A VPN connection can create an encrypted connection to keep all of your data safe.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 14: Messages
With your hosted Mountain Lion Server you have a messages service built in that you can configure and control to suit whatever your needs are.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 13: Contacts
In Mountain Lion Server there is a built in contact service that allows you to set up your own private contacts cloud to keep your contact data in sync across your various devices.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 12: Shared Calendar
Running a Mountain Lion Server calendar yourself adds privacy to your schedule and allows you to have complete control over who views and uses your calendar.

Hosted Mountain Lion Server Part 11: Connect and Auto Mount AFP
Once your shares are set up and you have all your file sharing permission set, you will want to start using those shares and get to them in the most convenient way possible.

Hosted OS X Mountain Lion Server Part 10: File Sharing
File sharing is one of the basic services we all expect from a server. Having access to our files and folders from anywhere on whatever devices we are makes sure that we are never without the documents we need.

Hosted OS X Mountain Lion Server Part 9: Users and Groups
Once you have set up your Open Directory Master it is time to add network accounts to your server.

Hosted OS X Mountain Lion Server Part 8: Profile Manager Set Up & MDM
One of the benefits of OS X Server is the built in MDM (Mobile Device Management) service called Profile Manager.

Hosted OS X Mountain Lion Server Part 7: Open Directory
An Open Directory allows for network accounts and is required for some of Mountain Lion's services like Profile Manager.

Hosted OS X Mountain Lion Server Part 6: DNS
In this screencast I cover the DNS Service in Mountain Lion Server. DNS is the most critical service that must be functioning correctly if all the other services are going to work in OS X Server.

Hosted OSX Mountain Lion Server Part 5: SSL Certificates
In this tutorial I cover how to set up SSL Certificates to use the services in Mountain Lion Server.

Hosted OSX Server Part 4: Ice Floor Firewall & Port Forwarding
In this screencast I cover the advanced OSX Firewall configuration using the 3rd party IceFloor Firewall utility and talk about the notion of 'port forwarding'.

Hosted OSX Mountain Lion Server Part 3: Built In Firewall
Because all the ports on your Mac Mini are open in a hosted environment, it becomes more important to deploy a firewall to control who can have access to what services.

Hosted OSX Mountain Lion Server Part 2: Installing OSX Server
In this screen-cast I cover how to install the Mac OS X Server application for 10.8.x Mountain Lion and walk you through the entire installation process for your hosted Mac mini Server at MacStadium.

Hosted OSX Mountain Lion Server Part 1: Setting Up Your Server
In this screen-cast I will cover how to get started with your new Hosted Mac mini Server at MacStadium.

Hosted OSX Mountain Lion Server Series
OSX Server for Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8.x) is an add-on which can be purchased for $19.99 from the Apple App Store and installed on any Apple Mac server running here at MacStadium.

In-Depth Remote Desktop Performance Review
Last year, we ran some blog articles about video performance using various remote desktop programs for remotely managing a Mac mini in the MacStadium datacenter.