MDS is based on the idea that you should be able to easily wipe and reinstall a Mac quickly and easily in an automated way.
This adds additional time for setup and configuration and reduces security if that security feature is not re-enabled after booting from an external volume. Recent Macs cannot boot from external volumes unless that security setting is disabled in the Startup Security Utility when booted to the recovery partition. The macOS installer has an optional feature to install packages after macOS has been installed. It also required an internet connection to check for firmware updates during the install process. Due to the number of Macs that did not have up-to-date firmware, Apple introduced software and firmware limitations that require macOS to be installed with an Apple-provided macOS installer. Previous versions of macOS and Mac hardware supported block-based imaging to deploy macOS and associated configuration and hardware. Recent Macs do not support NetBoot or booting to external drives for setup: MDS solves this problem by providing a mechanism for initially installing macOS and software packages via the recovery partition. MDS is a macOS application to create the resources needed to automate the install of macOS and initial software packages.
