Apple certification programs are IT professional certifications for Apple Inc. products. They are designed to create a high level of technical proficiency among Macintosh service technicians, help desk support, technical support, system administrators, and professional users. Apple certification exams are offered at Prometric testing centers and Apple Authorized Training Centers, as well as online through Pearson Vue.
These certifications are designed for individuals interested in becoming Apple service technicians, help desk, desktop support, or Macintosh consultants who need all-around experience in servicing Macintosh computers. It includes two separate certifications.
This certification is for the repair and diagnostics of all Macintosh desktops, portables, and servers. This certification is required to perform warranted hardware repairs for an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
Previously, the hardware certification came in the combination of Apple Certified Desktop Technician (ACDT) and Apple Certified Portable Technician (ACPT), but has been combined into a single hardware certification. This certification also includes an extensive knowledge of Apple's operating system OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard including its installation, settings, troubleshooting, and applications.
Before November 2014, the Apple Certified Macintosh Technician did not cover the Retina MacBook Pro lineup, as well as all Macs released after 2012. To repair a Late-2013 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, one must be an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician and pass an exam for repairing 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros (Late 2013 to Early 2015). All technicians who received certification after November 20, 2014 are certified to repair any Mac released before 2015. [3]
These certifications are designed for individuals who need a high skill-level in the use of Apple's pro applications or for professionals who provide support for Final Cut Pro software and peripheral devices.
These certifications are designed for IT professionals who support Mac OS X or who perform Mac OS X desktop support and troubleshooting, such as help desk staff, system administrators, service technicians, and service desk personnel. Each certification is specific to the version of OS X it relates to; an administrator who was qualified as ACTC for OS X 10.4 Tiger is not an ACTC for 10.6 Snow Leopard. Recertification exams are available to speed the process of moving from one version to the next. OS X 10.6 exams were only available until 31 May 2012, when they were withdrawn.
This certification is designed for system administrators who provide support to OS X users, as well as maintain the OS X Server platform.
The ACTC certification pathway was withdrawn for new students in 2015.
This certification is catered for system administrators managing large multiplatform IT networks using Mac OS X Server and other Apple technologies. The ACSA program has been changed to offer individuals more flexibility and is now focused on individual job functions. Each passed exam earns a specialization certificate and a specific number of credits toward ACSA certification, which requires a total of 7 valid (unexpired) credits. OS X 10.6 is the last version to have this certification, there is no equivalent for OS X 10.7 Lion.
Verifies in-depth knowledge of Xsan architecture, including an ability to install and configure systems, architect and maintain networks, customize and troubleshoot services, and integrate Mac OS X, Final Cut Server, and other Apple technologies within an Xsan installation. ACMA certification is for system administrators and technicians working for resellers, post houses, studios or other large facilities. To earn ACMA status, students must pass three required exams and one elective exam as outlined below.
Plus one of the following:
Verifies comprehensive knowledge of Apple's SAN file system for Mac OS X. An Xsan Administrator is responsible for the life cycle of Xsan, including installation, deployment, infrastructure. To earn Xsan Administrator certification, students must pass one exam. Xsan 2 exams are only available until 31 May 2012, when they will be withdrawn following Apple's integration of Xsan into OS X Server 10.7.
Certified Associate certifications are designed for professionals, educators and students to validate their skills in Apple's digital lifestyle and authoring applications and iWork.
macOS, originally Mac OS X, previously shortened as OS X, is a Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and laptop computers, it is the second most widely used desktop OS, after Microsoft Windows and ahead of all Linux distributions, including ChromeOS and SteamOS. As of 2024, the most recent release of macOS is macOS 15 Sequoia, the 21st major version of macOS.
QuickTime is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term QuickTime also refers to the QuickTime Player front-end media player application, which is built-into macOS, and was formerly available for Windows.
Mac OS X Server is a series of discontinued Unix-like server operating systems developed by Apple Inc. based on macOS. It provided server functionality and system administration tools, and tools to manage both macOS-based computers and iOS-based devices, network services such as a mail transfer agent, AFP and SMB servers, an LDAP server, and a domain name server, as well as server applications including a Web server, database, and calendar server.
TextEdit is an open-source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with macOS since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-like operating systems such as Linux. It is powered by Apple Advanced Typography.
Carbon was one of two primary C-based application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Apple for the macOS operating system. Carbon provided a good degree of backward compatibility for programs that ran on Mac OS 8 and 9. Developers could use the Carbon APIs to port (“carbonize”) their “classic” Mac applications and software to the Mac OS X platform with little effort, compared to porting the app to the entirely different Cocoa system, which originated in OPENSTEP. With the release of macOS 10.15 Catalina, the Carbon API was officially discontinued and removed, leaving Cocoa as the sole primary API for developing macOS applications.
A resource fork is a fork of a file on Apple's classic Mac OS operating system that is used to store structured data. It is one of the two forks of a file, along with the data fork, which stores data that the operating system treats as unstructured. Resource fork capability has been carried over to the modern macOS for compatibility.
The history of macOS, Apple's current Mac operating system formerly named Mac OS X until 2011 and then OS X until 2016, began with the company's project to replace its "classic" Mac OS. That system, up to and including its final release Mac OS 9, was a direct descendant of the operating system Apple had used in its Mac computers since their introduction in 1984. However, the current macOS is a UNIX operating system built on technology that had been developed at NeXT from the 1980s until Apple purchased the company in early 1997.
The Power Macintosh G3 is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from November 1997 to August 1999. It represented Apple's first step towards eliminating redundancy and complexity in the product line by replacing eight Power Macintosh models with three: Desktop and Mini Tower models for professional and home use, and an all-in-one model for education. The introduction of the Desktop and Mini Tower models coincided with Apple starting to sell build-to-order Macs directly from its web site in an online store, which was unusual for the time as Dell was the only major computer manufacturer doing this. Apple's move to build-to-order sales of the Power Macintosh G3 also coincided with the acquisition of Power Computing Corporation, which had been providing telephone sales of Macintosh clones for more than two years.
Mac OS X 10.0 is the first major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It was released on March 24, 2001, for a price of $129 after a public beta.
The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), formerly AppleTalk Filing Protocol, is a proprietary network protocol, and part of the Apple File Service (AFS), that offers file services for macOS, classic Mac OS, and Apple II computers. In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and earlier, AFP was the primary protocol for file services. Starting with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Server Message Block (SMB) was made the primary file sharing protocol, with the ability to run an AFP server removed later in macOS 11 Big Sur. AFP supports Unicode file names, POSIX and access-control list permissions, resource forks, named extended attributes, and advanced file locking.
Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) is a Macintosh application produced by Apple Inc., first released on March 14, 2002, that replaced a similar product called Apple Network Assistant. Aimed at computer administrators responsible for large numbers of computers and teachers who need to assist individuals or perform group demonstrations, Apple Remote Desktop allows users to remotely control or monitor other computers over a network. Mac Pro (2019), Mac mini with a 10Gb Ethernet card, and Mac Studio (2022) have Lights Out Management function and are able to power-on by Apple Remote Desktop.
Mac OS X Leopard is the sixth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tiger, and is available in two editions: a desktop version suitable for personal computers, and a server version, Mac OS X Server. It retailed for $129 for the desktop version and $499 for Server. Leopard was superseded by Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009. Mac OS X Leopard is the last version of macOS that supports the PowerPC architecture as its successor, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, functions solely on Intel based Macs.
MacX is an obsolete display server implementation supporting the X11 display server protocol, that ran on System 7, Mac OS 8, and Mac OS 9. It also ran under A/UX. Prior to X11R4 and the introduction of the PowerPC-based Power Macintosh, this server was developed internally by Apple Inc. for the Motorola-68000-based Macintoshes. MacX was initially developed within the Networking and Communications organization as one component of the Apple DEC Alliance suite of products, but later was moved to Apple's A/UX group since X11 was an important part of UNIX user interfaces. Versions supporting X11R4 and X11R5 were developed for Apple by a small team of engineers at AGE Logic, Inc., a San Diego, California company. AGE also OEMed the MacX software under the trade name XoftWare for Macintosh. Apple provided early versions of the Power Macintosh to AGE Logic, and the result was a binary that supported both the Power Macintosh as well as earlier, 68000-based systems.
A computer repair technician is a person who repairs and maintains computers and servers. The technician's responsibilities may extend to include building or configuring new hardware, installing and updating software packages, and creating and maintaining computer networks.
The Power Macintosh 9600 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. It was introduced in February 1997 alongside the Power Macintosh 7300 and 8600, and replaced the Power Macintosh 9500 as Apple's flagship desktop computer.
OS X Yosemite is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.
Mac OS is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The Macintosh operating system is credited with having popularized the graphical user interface concept. It was included with every Macintosh that was sold during the era in which it was developed, and many updates to the system software were done in conjunction with the introduction of new Macintosh systems.
macOS High Sierra is the fourteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. macOS High Sierra was announced at the WWDC 2017 on June 5, 2017 and was released on September 25, 2017. The name "High Sierra" refers to the High Sierra region in California. Its name signified its goal to be a refinement of the previous macOS version, macOS Sierra, focused on performance improvements and technical updates rather than features. This makes it similar to previous macOS releases Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion and El Capitan. Among the apps with notable changes are Photos and Safari.