Most Windows users have learned the hard way not to update more than they have to. After all, you never know what the newest fix might break. But when Microsoft issued the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update, including “fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of a computer’s memory”, that sure sounded to Mac users like an update they shouldn’t wait on.

If your job is to administer Macintosh computers, odds are that much of your time is spent working with Adobe’s Creative Suite. And while many have been tempted to uninstall Adobe products out of frustration, removing Creative Suite entirely can be an important (and difficult) step to effective troubleshooting or a clean upgrade.

Windows doesn’t have a long history of interoperability and standards compliance, but the history it does have is somewhat checkered. As a result, most Macintosh administrators develop a knee-jerk aversion to Microsoft products and protocols. So when the first few Photoshop files wind up corrupted on your SMB file shares, complaining of inconsistent permissions issues or just displaying jumbled nonsense, it’s easy to blame the problem on the Windows workstations. More often than not, though, it’s a configuration error on Mac OS X Server that renders these files unavailable or unreadable.

Anyone who supports graphic designers learns to hate fonts. As tiny pieces of software loaded directly into the operating system, they’re responsible for more than their fair share of system issues. So it goes with users whose systems freeze up on login, displaying nothing but their desktop background and a lonely spotlight icon in the upper left corner of the screen. The issue is so common, there are a myriad of third-party tools to address it. And like so many common problems, this one comes down to fonts again.

You’ve just installed a new hardware firewall with the same IP as one that’s being replaced. Your routers can all see it, but traffic from your Macs seems to just disappear. Or you’ve renamed a series of servers the whole company uses, and the Macs can only find them by IP now. You know you can just reboot the problem machines, like you’d power-cycle an unmanaged switch, but that solution is impractical during business hours (and time-consuming on nights or weekends). How can you force a couple hundred Macintosh computers to update their network caches?

Despite Apple’s encouragement to install OS upgrades as soon as they’re released, most systems administrators test updates for a couple of weeks to see if any obvious or significant issues occur in their environment. It’s been two weeks since Apple released Leopard 10.5.3, and while the update fixes a laundry list of problems (including Active Directory, AFP, iCal, Time Machine, and SMB issues), it breaks one simple feature that most Mac users simply can’t live without: With 10.5.3 on client or server machine, some Adobe CS3 applications (primarily Photoshop, but occasionally InDesign) can no longer save to network shares.

One of Leopard’s less beloved security features is the warning that appears when users first open downloaded applications. Given that most software now comes from the internet, this dialog has become a common part of the average Mac user experience. In some cases, though, that one-time process never ends, displaying the same dialog at every launch. The problem is especially common when applications are installed (but not run) by an administrative user.

The Kerberos authentication protocol is an encrypted ticketing system at the heart of Apple’s Open Directory. It is the basis for Mac OS X’s “Single Sign On” features, and a required component for integration with Windows Active Directory domains. Unfortunately, it’s possible for the Kerberos service to stop functioning properly, and when it dies, a good number of your network services die with it.

You’ve just bought your art department new Mac Pros. You’ve cleanly imaged the machines, and you’ve carefully migrated the existing user data. Everyone loves their fast new computers, until the first call comes in. Someone went to change the name of a file on their desktop, and what they got instead was a cryptic error message:

Although Mac OS X has excellent built-in PDF support, there are some jobs that only Adobe’s Acrobat can do. The ability to combine existing documents, create editable forms, and encrypt sensitive data all make Acrobat an indispensable tool. It’s too bad, then, that the application has such a checkered history when it comes to stability. Acrobat 8 Professional, for instance, often crashes right out of the box. If it’s doing so in your environment, there are several ways to get things running smoothly again.