OS X El Capitan: Parental Controls NOT working

W4RH34D wrote:

I'm concerned though, that this is a result of their yearly release cycle or something like mismanagement of the development of features. El Capitan had one of the biggest overhauls of the system according to what I've read about what they did with security. What kind of lead time did that give 3rd party developers to make sure their drivers worked? I know most printer companies were caught with their pants down and had to scramble to get drivers out while star micron has yet to release a new driver for the printer proxy service.

If they release a new OS every year, at what point will it destroy smaller companies trying to keep up?

I love the rapid innovation, but it looks like there are realities that need to be dealt with to keep this sort of pace going.

El Capitan was in beta testing for a year. A year should be enough time to get your you-know-what together, if you're a third-party developer.

Well it looks like most everyone we work with had a few stumbles out the gate. Parallels, Lightspeed, brother printers, outlook, Pro Tools etc.

Must have been super complex changes. IDK

These are educational tools used in most middle and high school and it is not functional with Parental Controls turned on.

Situations like this are probably the reason, why systems used in such an environment aren´t updated spontaneously, rather carefully after checking if it will -at least- work like before. Things which aren´t happening in devLabs of apple as it seems.

Yes 100% agree. It depends on the extensiveness of the testing though, like for example, it may appear good then you find out that parental controls doesn't work so you have to time machine back to the older version. Or your POS software checks out fine, but don't realize it pops up an insane parental controls dialogue for printer proxy in the middle of a busy work day.

I was able to roll back the problem machines and the frustration was minimal.

I admit I had been lulled to sleep it had been working so well for so long.

I haven't got one set up, but, would using a Virtual Machine at least help us limp through this until we get a fix ? Perhaps set up a Root account so you can move applications out of the Applications folder. In the main user account, the only application in the dock would be Parallels or VMware, add it to startup items and force it to full screen view ?

Have you ever checked out simple finder? It is really the rug that holds the room together.

I have, in my frustration-laden testing a couple of days ago, but I don't recall it working properly 😟 hence the VM idea. Got to be worth a shot. Is there any reason why it couldn't work ?

Yeah, I would just use Yosemite if that is an option. If you can get Mountain Lion on there, like the other user suggested, that is when it all worked the way it is supposed to.

It keeps people out of the computer and network.

I'd love if they'd grace us with a simple safari to go along with simple finder.

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

The errors that happen for some users but not all (or sometimes but not all) are the hardest to figure out, and this seems to be one of those.

Regarding remote access to a mac, it is usually very easy. Back to my mac works quite well, allowing me to access my home iMac from wherever, just by clicking in the Finder sidebar.

I just had to laugh at this. I have had many Macs over the last 15 years or so with networking provided by variety of different modems/routers at different times, and I have NEVER succeeded in getting Back to My Mac to work reliably, no matter what ports I open, close, forward, etc. I gave up on it a few years ago as another feature which 'just doesn't work' and moved to a VNC tool instead, which works reliably every time. Don't get me wrong, I use Windows in the workplace and loathe it, but at least when it goes wrong you can fix it with a bit of effort. When Macs go wrong it's usually because Apple's solution simply doesn't work in your use case and there's nothing you can do about it.

Having finished migrating to El Capitan on my son's laptop as well as the family Mini, I do seem to have got things working, by taking the 'one setting at a time, lock the padlock, exit settings, wait a bit, go back in and do the next one' advice above. The settings are remaining set, and the computers do actually restrict access as advertised. Tiresome though, and I still have the problem that I need to manually unlock every secure address accessed by every app and every piece of advertising on every page anyone visits, which is pretty soul-destroying.

We have compliance rules that require 2 factor authentication. Over VPN, OSX Remote Desktop is amazing. However, ARD still needs some work. I'd recommend having SSH available on every computer you use ARD on as when it crashes you'll need terminal or local access.

I wouldn't recommend an OS X VM- at least not with Parallels. The Parallels tools are meant mainly for windows, and OS X guest support is only experimental. The display resolution and graphics quality are terrible. Yosemite won't even let me turn on the transparent dock.

I guess it's ok for a little bit of messing around with, but not as a substitute for a real computer. Here's a screenshot of my Yosemite VM in Parallels 11. I have 16GB ram and 8GB allocated to Yosemite.

My parental controls won't "stick" at all. Not after locking it. Not after restarting. Not an any of my 6 Macs on El Capitan. Not at all.

I wish my 3 machines didn't have these problems, how did yo get so lucky? what is different i wonder. did you change what apps were allowed in a mangaged user- and get them to 'stick'. seems the settings wont save and websites that are allowed cannot be accessed. i love all else about apple/mac but this one is sooo frustrating.

yes, i did follow those steps on another machine and got it to work, even the apps. once i got that done, it copy and pasted those "stuck/saved" settings to other users and that worked as well so this saved having to do it all over again for another user. That way I only have to modify a couple things instead of all of them. as an aside, Back to My Mac wouldn't work, did all the steps the apple site says. A senior advisor recm'd "teamviewer". It was <1 min install and works beautifully, from anyhwhere in the world, on any network. Free for personal use.

Luke, did you try doing one tab @ a time then backing out from parental, to users, to sys pref? wait 1 min before trying to change another....😠😠😢