You can use Managed Client to prevent betas from being offered to Macs using OS X

May 2, 2014 14:57 GMT  ·  By

If the Macs in your organization are being seeded pre-release Apple software for one reason or another, the company offers a quick fix and that is to point your OS X systems to the Apple public software update server. Here’s how to do that.

Apple has published a Support document this week outlining that “Under certain circumstances, some computers may be offered pre-release Apple software updates. You can use Managed Client to make sure that pre-release software is not offered to Macs using OS X.”

The Mac maker doesn’t say if this has anything to do with the newly-opened customer seeding program for OS X betas, but there are two ways to keep your Macs from being offered these updates, and one of them is to point the Macs to a local software update server. As an alternative, administrators are told to point the systems to the Apple public software update server.

“When setting up your managed clients,” the Cupertino giant continues, “use the following URL to point your OS X Mavericks systems to the Apple public software update server: https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz”

Apple asks IT administrators to note that the supplied URL is only valid for Macs that are running the latest version of OS X, aka Mavericks.