Command Control Power: Apple Tech Support & Business Talk

-After attempting some remote upgrades, Joe found himself in a difficult situation. Thanks to an article from Mr. Macintosh, he was able to get out of a jam.

-Addigy has a fix in their community scripts to correct this issue before upgrades are performed.

-As Sam contemplates a fully remote support solution, Jerry talks about the pain points of doing so.

-One of Sam’s clients encounters a strange copy/paste issue and he quizzes the crew.

-Long time friend of the show, Tim Nyberg talks about how removing excess files in /var/folders can actually improve computer performance as well.

-Sam remotely onboards a new customer and finds a user with a non-standard setup. He had to come up with a creative way to resolve the situation.

-An OG client of Sam’s has a “media cabinet” with some pretty old school equipment.

-Jerry had a “wall wart” that needed mounting in a basement. He uses some heavy duty velcro to keep it up on the wall.

-Jerry wants to know everyone’s take on VPNs. 

-iCloud Private Relay is another option that Joe will start to recommend as it comes out of beta. 

-One of Sam’s approaches is to suggest verbiage in employee agreements as opposed to enforcing technology. 

-More about iCloud Private Relay: About iCloud Private Relay - Apple Support

-Joe brings up valid concerns about using the office firewall as a VPN solution as it may not be scalable.

-Sam’s third party VPN of choice is NordVPN but he has some concerns about it now being in the App Store.

-Jerry wants everyone to use his affiliate links.

-As Sam’s daughter is applying to colleges, he is concerned about one institution’s practice in handling secure documents.

-As Jerry looks to migrate a client’s mail data, he finds that their current provider wont’ provide admin access, likely because they have multiple customers in the same portal.

-Password management and “credential stuffing” is an ongoing process for Joe’s customers. 

-It’s astonishing that some providers allow very insecure passwords.

-Props for TidBITS Content Network for providing incredibly useful content to provide to our customers for topics like password security.

-Keychain Password Manager “memorable” password feature is gone because it was a 32-bit function.

-Jerry talks about using Rackspace for Microsoft 365 hosting. Somehow they don’t offer two factor authentication. 

-Jerry had a struggle migrating a family tenant of Microsoft to a business license. He used Power BI to get it done. 

-Joe ran into a gotcha with a migration and claiming a domain. 

-PowerShell is a knowledge that is a necessity at times. 

-Allowing users to be Global Admins could be dangerous due to how flippant they are with their own passwords. 

-There is a danger to managing a service if that service has issues. 

-Moving to new devices can cause an issue with Authenticator apps. 

-Google Chrome has an extension for scanning QR codes for two factor. 

-Joe talks browser recommendations and password management. 

-Safari has a nice password import feature. 

-CCP loves 1Password but there have been some hiccups in recent versions. 

-PsiMac was closed for the holiday break but Joe needed to be available for customers. He has to deal with a client billing issue. 

-Joe takes copious notes not only for his own team but for the benefit of the clients.

-With the amount of effort that goes into preparing some detailed quotes and projects, should the client be billed? Multiple options are kicked around. 

-Jerry comes up with an effective method that Sam will promptly take and make his own.

-“We have to respect our own time, even if our clients don’t.”

-It’s always tough handling billing for multiple quick emails from a customer.

-An old topic of billing for things like managed backups can be financially beneficial for a consultancy and technically beneficial for the customer. 

-Mike Bombich of Carbon Copy Cloner puts out a great product but also is a great help to the Mac community. 

-Jerry reached out for support with a drive that wouldn’t boot. A product that was kicked around and worked for Jerry, although not officially endorsed, is iBoySoft. Jerry’s situation had a positive outcome reviving an unmountable disk.

-Joe talks about how log4j affected things like Backblaze and UniFi. 

-Sam shares how his UniFi Mac mini died and forced him to review his backup process. 

-Command Control Power has a new sponsor: We welcome Kolide! Visit kolide.com and honest.security to learn more. 

-A classic UniFi/Sonos issue plagued Joe at a particular client. 

-In Jerry’s Sonos situation, he first replaced the old Sonos Bridge products with the newer Sonos Amps. 

-Jerry opens a debate about iPad vs Mac as a main workstation. 

-A scary moment for Joe’s client turns into an easy win for Joe. Undo to the rescue. 

-A hug thank you to our newest community members! Thank you for your contributions to the show!

-We welcome back Jason Detrbarn, founder and CEO of Addigy. 

-Jason talks to us about taking a company-wide break over the holidays. 

-Working from home can make it difficult to separate work and home life. Sam discusses one of his tactics. 

-Sam and Joe both needed support from Addigy over the break and they were able to assist without missing a beat. 

-Joe had Migration Assistant going remotely and had to use Addigy Live Terminal to bail him out. 

-Jason talks about the upcoming Addigy Innovate Conference, February 22-23, 2022.

-Automating your workflows is the key to getting out of the habit of repeating the same tasks over and over. 

-With the partnership with Splashtop in place, Jerry is curious about the differences between that and Live Terminal. 

-Automated Device Enrollment with customizations is impressive. 

-Jason discusses how much the community is involved in the direction of new features. 

-Jason gives us a teaser into big UI changes coming in the product. 

-This week we welcome back our friend, Luis Giraldo. Luis is CEO at Ook Enterprises and Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad. 

-A long standing MSP, Luis started Monkey Box in 2013, which carried him over to IT Glue.  

-Luis speaks about managing his time between his MSP company and time with ScalePad. 

-Luis discusses the hero complex that consultants face, where we just want to do right by the customer but have trouble billing appropriately for our time. 

-ScalePad addresses this head on and approaches conversations with customers as a service activity as opposed to a sales pitch. 

-As Sam recalls learning about scheduled client meetings from Luis’ appearance in years past, he talks of more automated and regular reports. 

-Jerry wants to hear about Luis’ business story through Covid times. 

-Somehow he has not opened Apple Mail in months. He has moved to web mail clients and talks about the hardware being of less importance as cloud is the focus..

-Both Sam and Luis have been having trouble hiring new employees. They discuss the employee driven market. 

-Joe has had thoughts about stock options or profit sharing. Luis also brings up what small businesses have to think about to retain employees for the long term. 

-IT consultancy acquisitions and personal brands are hot topics as of late. 

Care to reach out to Luis Giraldo or learn more about him? Look no further.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo

Paul Dippell Interview https://www.n-able.com/studio/paul-dippell-on-operational-maturity

ScalePad - Chief Experience Officer (CXO) https://www.scalepad.com

Ook Enterprises - CEO https://ook.co

Luis’ Jazz albums on Apple Music "It's Always You" - 2008 - https://music.apple.com/ca/album/its-always-you/285522012 "Day Dream" - 2002 - https://music.apple.com/ca/album/day-dream/58606887 (New album coming in 2022 with the New York-based Ben Paterson Trio!)

In the immediate future, he will be in Phoenix Jan 18-20 for the IoTSSA conference https://www.iotssa.com/cybersecurity-expo-phoenix/

Special Thanks to our friends:

-Sam struggles with focus at times and learned from a colleague about a method of efficiency by checking in on email only twice a day. Is that sustainable?

-HCS CT is still hiring. Here is our Indeed posting.

-Joe talks of his challenges working with his new Mac with only two USB-C ports. HyperDrive and others manufacturers are good options for expanding on that.

-How much are external accessories necessary as of late?

-Jerry has some built up anger for people that constantly print things.

-What about digital accumulation?

-Dropbox attempts to opt in syncing is a feature that Joe is not happy about. 

-Sam has moved towards using Microsoft SharePoint internally at HCS. 

-Between the variety of cloud services and branding changes, end users are confused. 

-The crew gets into a discussion about standardizing on software like Outlook and Apple Mail. 

-As more vendors are offering non profit solutions directly, is Tech Soup worth it these days?

Sam Valencia, Jerry Zigmont and Joe Saponare discuss working with Apple technology and clients. Drawn from their combined experience of over 20 years in the Apple Consultants Network, they discuss technical support issues both with the technology and working with clients.