🔒 Patreon Special Feature

For IT Pros, we offer Patreon exclusive shows with advice and guidance on the more challenging aspects of running your practice and working with your clients and employees.

Get your custom link and subscribe to the exclusive shows!

077: Trust No One, Yoseminite Sam

/

Recorded on November 19, 2014

Topics

- Jerry bails out Joe onsite, and diagnoses an issue where a specific website wouldn't load or respond to pings from a client location, but loaded fine from elsewhere; turned out to be a block on the client's static IP due to three failed login attempts

- we discuss clients trying to set things up and fix things themselves

Yoseminite Sam: a no-nonsense guy

Yoseminite Sam: a no-nonsense guy

- do you give clients easy access to their servers, e.g. Screen Sharing?

- Sam lands a client on bowtie alone: "I'm a no-nonsense guy, and you look like a no-nonsense guy too."

- what's your dress code for consulting?

- Joe details troubleshooting serious permissions issues in Yosemite after a prior "consultant" tried to set up shared calendars

- how do you bill for extensive cleanup work like the saga Joe describes?

- Joe notices a pattern to Security Questions answered by a prior consultant

072: One-Factor Authentication

/

Recorded live on October 14, 2014

Many thanks to our sponsor this week, Watchman Monitoring. We're all big fans and very happy users of Watchman Monitoring. Sign up for your free trial: watchmanmonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

- thanks again to Thomas Reed of AdwareMedic for last week's interview!

- listener questions; @myklreinhart: "I'd love to hear your annoyances about 6+ before I go buy one. For example, one handed typing— is it as tough as made out?"

- Jerry reports on his everyday use of iPhone 6 Plus; points out one-handed keyboard for iOS 8

- the future of input methods: qwerty keyboards vs. whispering into cupped hands; or T9 predictive texting vs. QuickType; or how about purely predictive (Google Now)?

- death of Macworld/iWorld Conference & Expo; Jerry's beige PowerComputing box; recent end of Macworld print magazine

- Dropbox "breach" prompts another security discussion; reminder: Dropbox offers two factor authentication

- BoxCryptor: folder-level or file-level encryption for your Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or OneDrive

- cursory "private cloud" discussion of options including Synology CloudStation, Code42 SharePlan, Kerio SamePage, vs. Apple Snow Leopard Mavericks Server

- new Mac mini coming soon? it's been 721 days...

- Jerry gives us FLAC

 

071: Adware & Malware Focus with Thomas Reed of TheSafeMac and AdwareMedic

/

Recorded on September 30, 2014

Special thanks to Thomas Reed of TheSafeMac and AdwareMedic for joining us this week to review the current state of adware and malware on the Mac!

Topics:

- Thomas has a great post on TheSafeMac: The unchecked growth of Mac adware

- Thomas generously offers AdwareMedic as fully-functional software (donations encouraged)

- thoughts on using AppleScript because it is human-readbale and "open source" by default, which builds trust

070: Shellshock – Apple Bashing

/

Recorded live on September 30, 2014

This week's show has been brought to you by the good folks at Blue Mango Learning Systems, makers of Clarify.  Visit Clarify-It.com to download a free trial of Clarify, and start creating how-to's and instructional documents today – and help others be great.  Use coupon code CCPSENTME for 15% off!

Special thanks to Jon Schwenn of MacMiniVault.com for joining us this week to discuss Shellshock, and Apple's response to this Bash bug

Topics:

- see Jon's post about Shellshock for a recap of the bug, a patch for 10.6 Snow Leopard, and other helpful recommendations

- see also: Apple's purge of GPL-licensed software from OS X

- Pro-Tip: Jon suggests signing up for Apple's Security-Announce mailing list

- we discuss Advanced Camp has been postponed due to speaker cancellations

- Plus: Allen Hancock joins us to talk about Advanced Camp being postponed, and his free 2015 ACN Camp Pre-union webinar – featuring business development topics and how to succeed at Managed Services

- Kramer & DaVinci Sleep

- Jerry mentions the benefits of the Ditto command

068: Motor City

/

Recorded live on September 16, 2014

- Sam's Detroit fast food field trip - old school McDonalds

- 1 Infinite Loop Branded Flak Jacket for those tough road trips - image

- brief discussion of iPhone 6 vs. iPhone 6 Plus; Jerry points out that iPhone 6 has similar footprint to iPhone 5 in Mophie Air case; see also this helpful on-screen size comparison

- Sam follows up about his client with an HP motherboard issue, which HP diagnosed as a bad drive; HP’s hired tech took the hard drive and “completely forgot” about it

- Jerry discusses pitching Watchman Monitoring - When signing up for Watchman, Tweet the hashtag #ccpsentme and let them know you heard about Watchman product here.

- benefit of a personalized “pitch” email written with TextExpander, vs. a generic newsletter; see also Greg Scown, co-founder of Smile, discussing the new TextExpander touch 3

- check out the 1Password App Extension for iOS 8; another example of iOS 8 changing the game for developers and users

- Mac malware/adware discussion; search Google for "Adobe Flash Player" and check out the ad at the top; claims to install Adobe Flash, but shows the Firefox logo, and actually installs Geneo; why doesn’t Google block these ads? why doesn’t Apple block the installer?

- Thomas Reed, author of TheSafeMac.com, writes about recent Mac adware and Apple’s minimal response; also maintains AdwareMedic

- Channel Camp registration is open

057: Kobayashi Maru

/

- Microsoft's takedown of 23 of No-IP's most common domains to stop malware, claiming their intention to keep "valid" subdomains resolving, but apparently they have been unable to handle the number of requests; Microsoft's statement

- when it rains, it pours: how to cope

- redundancy, fault tolerance, risk tolerance

- Mac mini colocation via Macminicolo.net or Mac Mini Vault

- running a mail server for clients: backup MX via Dyn.com or McAfee SaaS, or using a cheap mail server to forward messages to personal email accounts

- clients sending banking info or passwords by email, forming bad habits

047: You Can't Make 'Em Drink

/

Recorded live April 22, 2014

Sponsored by Smile.  Check out PDFPen for Mac, iPad, and iPhone – our go-to PDF editor.  Add annotations, edit text, even script annotations using AppleScript.  Visit smilesoftware.com/restart for more information.

Topics:

- Jerry's Heartbleed email response and password changing using 1Password; comparison to Dashlane

- Jerry's client with a confusing email address

- AOL accounts frequently being compromised lately; AOL servers rejecting some messages temporarily; Joe's anecdote about a client changing his AOL password from a four-letter name to something slightly more secure

- Sam's 40-iPad deployment

- scripting PDFpen to generate PDFs; see "Imprint All Pages With Text" script included with PDFPen for Mac as a starting point

- Sam signed his first Managed Services client!

- including proactive monitoring using Watchman Monitoring in a Managed Services agreement; see also: Allen's Sample Agreement

- Joe signed his first subscription clients using MoonClerk

- 10.9.3 Beta Access

- Pebble is finally really good now; Apple's wearable coming soon?

- Dyn.com discontinuing free Dynamic DNS service; no-ip offers a replacement service

- Joe's SMB Terror: for every machine on the network, configure: Login Items, Dock aliases, Documents aliases, other file/folder aliases (for each find kind:alias in This Mac, show original, show original, check connection, locate file on afp share, fix alias), Finder sidebar favorites, Keychains, Go: Connect to Server recents and server favorites

- disable Bonjour service advertisements on the Mavericks server using this command:

defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder ProgramArguments -array "/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder" "-launchd" "-NoMulticastAdvertisements"

see also: Apple's KB article

- disable SMB on shares not accessed from Windows machines

046: Secret Out-of-Band Show

/

Recorded on April 9, 2014

This week we are pleased to be sponsored by Drobo.  Check out DroboStore.com and use coupon code CCP50 for $50 off the Drobo 5D or Drobo 5N.

Topics:

- Heartbleed; more resources: Heartbleed Hit List, Bruce Schneier, Ars Technica, CloudFlare, NetCraft

- Windows XP End of Life; Laplink PCmover ($60) can help migrate from Windows XP; to keep XP machines running or not?

- referring clients to the Apple Store and asking them to drop your name; providing written recommendations for clients to take into the store; introducing a client to a representative in the store

- iNet, great network scanning utility recommended by Joe

039: Goto Fail

/

Recorded live February 25, 2014

Exclusive sponsor this week: Smile, makers of TextExpander and the PDFpen Family, which includes PDFpen for Mac, PDFpen for iPad, PDFpen for iPhone, and PDFpen Scan+. PDFpen makes it easy to go mobile with PDFpen on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. You can have PDFpen’s editing power on all your devices. PDFpen Scan+, the newest member of the PDFpen Family, lets you add scanning and OCR to your mobile toolkit. PDFpenPro offers extra PDF power on the Mac, including interactive form creation, creating PDFs from websites, and editing tables of contents. Visit smilesoftware.com/restart for details and a brief video introduction to the PDFpen Family.

Topics:

- Joe asks and answers: what is the "J" that appears in some emails? (J is a smiley face in the WingDings font)

- Joe wonders why some people include an extra "P" at the bottom of some emails, i.e. "P Please consider the environment before printing this email" (the P is supposed to be a nice forest scene in the WebDings font)

- Jerry reports being able to receive email using Mail.app in Mavericks version 10.9.2.

- Apple's Goto Fail SSL bug: strategies for proactively notifying clients; timing of updates; test your system at gotofail.com

- Sam's Mavericks 101 class "aha moments"

- Sam recommends Revise IT training app by Amsys

- security concerns about Target Disk Mode and resetpassword utility on Recovery partition

- Jerry, Sam, and our live listeners offer Joe some ideas about what to do when Time Capsule fills up

- Joe offers a tip: temporarily "promote" clients to VIP in order to receive notifications when they email you back about something pertinent, for example when coordinating a time to meet, or if you want to know immediately when a client confirms you should proceed with some work

038: Weather Permitting

/

Recorded live February 18, 2014

Topics:

- Jerry receives a call from the brother of Samantha West

- Joe recommends the SanDisk Extreme 64 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive for diagnostic drives because it's extremely fast and reliable; SanDisk finally announced a fast 128 GB version: SanDisk Extreme PRO® USB 3.0 Flash Drive; some non-spammy reviews from Tom's Hardware and The Wirecutter

- use FileWave Lightning to automate creating our diagnostic partitions?

- Sam recommends the Skooba Design Cable Stable DLX, originally recommended by Ryan Powell in the chat

- Sam explores TeenSafe for iOS security and parental controls; see also OpenDNS, Intego Family Protector, and Spector

035: Interview with Mike Kingsley, Kingsley MacConsulting

/

Interview recorded January 21, 2014; Intro recorded on January 28, 2014

Intro:

- testing Mavericks Server; being Client 0

- using Profile Manager to easily configure CalDAV, CardDAV, VPN services; Sam's trick to save a profile without a user name

- the trial and error of troubleshooting a server leads to uncertainty

- using authrestart to bypass FileVault 2 on next restart; installing software updates that require a restart now does this automatically

- force quitting fsck to allow mounting a drive that was failing to mount, even read-only, after letting fsck complete

- using the "security" command to read the contents of the user's keychain

Interview:

- Mike started his consulting practice in 2004, a great year for Apple

- first computer was an Apple IIe in 1984

- Apple Store has been great source of referrals; helps to think of Apple as a partner, and promote their services like AppleCare and JointVenture

- JointVenture can be a great supplement to help from Apple consultants

- first job was working at Disneyland; customer service was ingrained in the culture and top quality; out of five day training for new hires, three days are purely customer service; helps with consulting: owning issues, taking responsibility; e.g., customer drops ice cream cone, and employee walks customer over to the ice cream stand to facilitate the resolution; how to deal with people who are upset, hearing both sides; if you can't help, who can? 

034: Interview with Ben Greiner, Inventor of Robot Cloud and President of Forget Computers

/

Interview Recorded on January 14, 2014; Intro Recorded on January 21, 2014


Intro:

- Sam's friend's lost iPhone

- 1Password's great security audit feature

- Mat Honan's epic hack

- solving the password problem

- MonkeyBox

- Apple's two-step verification


Topics:

- Robot Cloud is built on JAMF Software Casper Suite, customized for multi-tenant use, designed for Mac/iOS management; working closely with JAMF since early 2007

- Robot Cloud has been available as a product since 2013 and is designed for 1-100 seats

- Forget Computers employs 13 people, 10 full time, all but two are technical

- DeviceScout is offered as an add-on for consultants who already have a JSS (JAMF Software Server)

- Inventory & Alerts (JAMF "recon" + added alerting and ZenDesk integration via Support Menu app) @ $5/month/device

- Policies (automated patching, advanced troubleshooting) @ $10/month/device

- Ben's background in consulting: worked as a creative at an ad agency, de facto IT person there; started as a team of 1 in 1998 as Digital Logic, then rebranded as Forget Computers; ACN since 2001; merged with another company in 2005, and attempted to integrate the two companies without success; left with two other consultants at the end of 2005, rebirth of Forget Computers, based in Chicago

- more about Security, Certificates, Network Requirements, etc.

021: Interview with Jim Sherhart, VP of Product Marketing for Drobo

/

Recorded Live October 8, 2013

Topics:

- Jim's journey: after three years at Drobo, he left with founding CEO of Drobo, Geoff Barrall, to run marketing at Connected Data, creators of Transporter. Then a year later, Connected Data was acquired by Drobo which brought Jim back to the company.

- Transporter's improvements over the PogoPlug

- cloud storage vs. private/personal cloud services; the benefit of controlling the device

- Drobo Accelerator Bay enabling large, fast, cheap SSD cache for Drobo 5D, Drobo 5N, or Drobo Mini, e.g. 64 GB mSATA drive

018: New iPhones: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

/

Recorded Live on September 24, 2013

Topics:

- iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c

- Maker Faire

- Touch ID security

- the trouble with Activation Lock in the Enterprise; disabling Find My iPhone

- wireless network improvements; outdoor enclosures to extend a wireless network outside

- Joe's story of seeing iOS 6.1.3 running on an iPad and thinking it was much older

- Verizon reps recommending Android phones, receiving commission

Picks of the Week:

- Macwireless.com – Joe

- Inssider – Sam

- WiFi Explorer & NetSpot (See also this review from Glenn Fleishman at Macworld) – Jerry

 

002: Security, iCloud Keychain syncing, bookkeeping, growing your practice

/

Sam, Jerry, and Joe discuss topics related to growing your consulting practice: secure info sharing among team members and clients, bookkeeping, and administrative assistance. Includes a brief review of services we offer to clients.

Plus: a how-to for configuring multiple tax rates in QuickBooks.

Co-hosted by Jerry Zigmont of MacWorks, Sam Valencia of HCS Technology Group, and Joe Saponare of PsiMac.

Topics:

  • consultant security best practices
  • team secure info sharing
  • client security tendencies
  • proposed solutions for dealing with multiple Apple IDs
  • the promise of technology
  • iCloud keychain syncing
  • MobileMe war stories
  • Configuring multiple tax rates in QuickBooks
  • Billings Pro
  • redundant data entry in bookkeeping systems
  • hiring a part-time or full-time administrative assistant; or not

Memorable lines:

Regarding the presumably forthcoming iPhone 5S: "this time, the 'S' can stand for 'Secure'."

Great advice once given at the ACN Business Meeting regarding growing your technology consultancy: "do yourself a favor: the first person you hire should be an administrative person."