Command Control Power: Apple Tech Support & Business Talk

-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!

-We recollect the OnForce days with the Apple Consultants Network.

-Jerry has some follow up after his recent lightning strike. He has a heck of a time getting the replacement modem to operate at the proper speeds.

-It speaks to the larger issues of declining quality of technical support.

-One of Jerry’s older clients lost access to her SBC Global email account, which is now in the hands of AT&T. One month later, he has to revisit this after a phishing scam.

-Joe has follow up to his emojis not working when in clamshell mode. Command+Control+Space works as a keyboard shortcut.

-The ScriptingOSX.com newsletter helps Joe out with a tool called Screen Nudge to allow screen recording via automation.

-Although you can no longer schedule reboots in macOS Ventura, Charles Edge mentions using the pmset command on Krypted.com

-As Joe brings up Apple’s language on software updates/upgrades, we discuss the current methods of managing them for clients.

-Shoutout to TidBITS Content Network and their latest holiday gift guide.

-A big thank you to our latest patron, Rod Miller of RQM Consulting.

-There are some downsides to push clients to recommended upgrades & services. Their expectations are high and anything that goes wrong is on you.

-Should we put our efforts more into gaining new clients than encouraging clients to make changes?

-Some clients aren’t worth pushing additional services to.

-Sam continues his story of an incredibly frustrating employee that doesn’t reply and then blames HCS for a lack of support.

-As the group discusses Sam’s client’s security policies, Joe brings up the features and different approach of Kolide.

-Joe talks about Custom Checks from Kolide, which offer the ability to investigate specific security concerns on a computer.

-Joe touts Ross Matsuda, who offers up some great tools on his site https://www.sudoade.com. One of them being the ability to add admin privileges with logging.

-Sam has personal experience with using Kolide on his work computer and he shares what he found.