-Joe likes Apple Music playlists. Sam takes live notes. Some good recommnendations: Restorative Yoga Headspace

-Jerry can’t listen to music while working.

-He didn’t find Apple Fitness was working for him. Athlytic is an app that he highly recommends.

-Jerry is currently watching Skinwalker Ranch on Netflix.

-HomePod Mini should have a chargeable battery.

-Sam uses his HomePod as a speaker for his bedroom TV.

-Dark Reader is a great browser extension Sam uses with Safari to automatically enables dark mode for sites, even if they don’t support it.

-Sam’s latest gripe about 1Password is that it has a legit issue auto filling SonicWall pages.

-Why is 1Password 8 not in the App Store?

-Jerry doesn’t like DuckDuckGo.

-We get into browser preferences.

-Jerry and Sam both are independently testing Yubikey by Yubico for authentication.

-HCS wrote a guide for using security keys as a second factor with an Apple ID.

-Sam works with a client for a while before he asks the most basic of questions.

-Amazon DNS causes an issue with internet connectivity for one of Jerry’s clients.

-Sam had a work themed nightmare where he accidentally deleted a client’s data.

-Jerry had a real life situation like this years ago.

-Sometimes it’s difficult to fall asleep when your brain is still thinking about work problems and solutions.

-Sam hit a hard limit of two step authentication with Apple IDs.

-He set up and eSIM for the first time to get a second phone number on his iPhone.

-Jerry updates us on his new managed services plan. He feels there is more money to be made with residential clients on this plan.

-After off boarding an employee, a company owned computer showed back up in Watchman after months of being dormant.

-Joe is surprised when a client immediately signs up for his monthly plan.

-Do you specify priority support in your marketing materials?

-On this episode, we welcome Ross Matsuda - Apple Systems Administrator from Ntiva.

-Ross is also the creator of sudoade

-Ross majored in theatrical direction with a minor in graphic design.

-He spent 7 years as an Apple Genius and also with Apple corporate.

-We discuss the necessity of support with Apple’s products.

-We get into GUI scripting with AppleScript on Ross’s site, sudoade. He developed a way to integrate automation with Addigy to only see the minor updates available.

-Initially using Nudge, he decided to develop a method that worked best for  his users.

-Joe has seen a much higher level of software update compliance since using Nudge and Ross’s solution.

-PSA - get your Mac computers at least to 12.6.3 to avoid unexpected problems when performing updates.

-Joe & Ross talk about simpler ways of presenting information and designing for the user experience.

Apple Consultants Network members Joe Saponare, Sam Valencia and Jerry Zigmont discuss working with Apple technology and clients in their consulting practices. Technical challenges and client relationships are freely shared in this weekly podcast.

-Jerry focuses on backups and talks about Backblaze B2 and the backup data format.

-Copying/pasting has been problematic for Jerry. Joe suggests looking at third party clipboard management tools.

-Odd characters in file names are still a thing.

-Joe talks about the MacPaw Foundation and their support of Ukraine.

-Paste and Match Style and its keyboard shortcut is a great feature, but not all apps support it well.

-LastPass and their most recent breach causes concern for customers that are already skittish about password managers.

-Nord VPN shares the 200 most commonly used passwords.

-Not all Rackspace PSTs have been restored.

-Why does the Help menu in an app show general help information instead of help for the app you are in?

-Joe wants a more obvious Eject menu for removable media.

-When you PIN conversations, it creates a series of frustrations for Joe & Jerry.

-Potential (and existing) customers don’t always understand the value of our time.

-Sam took some time off to travel to Portugal.

-How do you handle reaching out to an employee when they are on vacation and need to be contacted?

-Sam was frustrated at what he considered a simple direction to an employee.

-Joe would like to be able to focus on one aspect of his job.

-Joe develops a “custom fact” in Addigy to deal with Time Machine issues.

-Jerry waltzes in and reigns on Joe’s backup parade.

-Backing up to Synology has been successful for Jerry.

-One of Sam’s client had her son help her with migrating to a new Mac. Needless to say, it went awry.

-Apparently, BackBlaze has a weekly maintenance occur Thursday at 2-4PM Pacific Time. During the middle of the work day!

-Going back to the full window in Apple Music when listening to music seems to elude Joe.

-Jerry doesn’t even use Apple Music anymore. He is a fan of Rhune.

-Enabling text message forwarding on your Mac is necessary to get SMS messages on your Mac.

-Still using macOS Server, Joe ran into a point update to 12.6.1 making shares disappear.

-We welcome back Amy McKnight as a sponsor of Command Control Power! We would like to wish her the best at her new position with VIM Coaching. https://www.vimcoaching.com/amy-mcknight

-Command Control Power is celebrating show 500!

-Galing, Galing! Jerry has a frustrating time dealing with outsourced technical support.

-Sam shared experiences with Microsoft where they always want a phone call, even though you select email as a preferred method of contact.

-Sam finally has a big moment for Addigy Live Desktop where Splashtop struggled through Setup Assistant.

-One of Joe’s clients has an issue with her Apple Studio Display and external devices disconnecting. Some confusion at Apple retail caused a debacle.

-In the midst of all this, Joe leverages the power of Addigy Live Terminal & System Profiler for hardware/software details.

-Billing for this job was not easy.

-A client frustrates Sam by moving network equipment in the office.

-Remote cable termination? Apparently that’s possible for Joe.

-Jerry’s dad needed help with Adobe Lightroom and he thought it best to have him work with a fellow professional. Shout out to Shawn Crogen from XAG Solutions for the referral. Thanks to Ronald Gehrmann of Metro Mac Support for the work.

-After talking about Mouseposé on a recent show, Armin Briegel talked about how he created it when he was working as a consulting engineer at Apple and eventually had it published by Boinx.

Apple Consultants Network members Joe Saponare, Sam Valencia and Jerry Zigmont discuss working with Apple technology and clients in their consulting practices. Technical challenges and client relationships are freely shared in this weekly podcast.

-Happy New Year everyone!

-Jerry orders some new iPhones for the family and accidentally discovers an AT&T service called Right To You. Proof of delivery is required…

-A Wattbox in Joe’s office went haywire -SoftRIAD has a bug with a driver in Monterey with RAID 5.

-RackSpace’s Hosted Exchange outage caused a lot of panic for some of our customers.

Joe, Jerry & Sam give their end of year thoughts as we approach the start of 2023. Happy Holidays everyone!