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062: Mac Repairs - The Agony and The Ecstasy

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Recorded on July 31, 2014; aired on August 5, 2014

Followup from Dave Provine: How to Restart SMB automatically on Mavericks Server

Liquid Spills - Mircro Replay - 

Tools We Use - Tools that we can’t live Without
8" Straight & Curved Hemostat http://amzn.to/1qXedhv
Magnetic Projet Mat - https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/Magnetic-Project-Mat/IF145-167
iFixit 54 Bit Driver Kit https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/54-Bit-Driver-Kit/IF145-022
Wiha - Wiha 26099 - Screwdriver Set, Slotted, 8Pc 1-4mm Bonus Pack http://amzn.to/1qXcOax
iMac Screen Removal - FastCap HOD-DOUBLE Handle On Demand - http://amzn.to/V2fdSp

http://www.PowerBookMed.com
http://www.iFixit.com

Data Recovery - Driver Savers Partner Program

What repairs you regularly do. 
What repairs you won’t do and why.
Apple Store repair experiences
Depot Experiences
Out of warranty satisfaction repairs
Weirdest Repairs

058: Talking Shop part 10

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Recorded live July 8, 2014

- Jerry's main 13-inch MacBook Air gets depot'd; what to do when your primary machine goes in for repair?

- OWC offers upgrades for flash storage modules in MacBook Air 2010-2011 and 2012 models

- how to restore client data when a machine comes back from Apple with a wiped drive? clone? update & migrate?

- This is the sapphire crystal display from the iPhone 6?

- black screen at startup after migrating data to new MacBook Air; solution: delete loginwindow.plist

- Jerry's black screen Mac mini: reinstalling Mavericks fixed it

- processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #1: fallout from prior liquid damage, covered under 1-year warranty by MicroReplay

- processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #2 after machine froze during sleep: fixed with SMC reset

- Apple's Refurbished Outlet eBay Store

- using SSD Fan Control to work around lack of temperature data on third party hard drives replaced in some iMac models

055: First Macs

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Recorded live June 17, 2014

This week's show is sponsored by Drobo. The Drobo Gen 3 (4-bay) is now shipping! Use coupon code CCP50 for $50 off at DroboStore.com and support the show!

Topics

- Jerry describes an issue where an admin user shows up as being Managed with Parental Controls after an upgrade to Mavericks, despite still appearing as an admin; also a keychain issue with the Local Items keychain

- Joe rambles through trying to remember the details of an issue with iCloud Keychain and SoftwareUpdateLauncher hanging; see this Apple Discussions post

- Sam leverages VoiceOver to navigate a blank screen which turned out to the be login window; we narrowly avoid another server discussion

- WWDC 2014 videos are available online without a developer account; Jerry recommends #702, Managing Apple Devices

- Joe's Export VPN Configurations Automator workflow to help migrate VPN configurations to a new Mac

- Sam, Jerry, and Joe discuss their first Macs which prompts some lively war stories from the chatroom

- Jerry recommends NetNewsWire for RSS feeds and TweetBot for keeping up with Twitter; Sam uses NewsBar; Joe reloads tabs for some reason

048: Stream of Conciousness

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Recorded live on April 29, 2014

  • Thanks to our sponsor, Drobo. Check out the new Drobo Gen 3 with USB 3.0 – move your disk packs from a Gen 2 (four bay FireWire 800) model into the new Gen 3 for an easy upgrade path and 300-500% improvement in speed!  Visit www.drobostore.com and use coupon code CCP50 for $50 off your Drobo 5D or Drobo 5N.

TOPICS:

  • Joe discusses his own personal with his iPhone 5 battery drain and the article for troubleshooting by a former Apple Genius - The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain — Overthought
  • Sam has used iFunBox to remove unwanted files from his clients IOS devices.PhoneView from eCamm is recommended and Jerry has used PhoneClean from iMobie.
  • Creating email signatures and client frustration. 
    Chungwa Soft's - Graffiti Email Signature Plugin for Apple Mail
    Jerry used Joe Workman's Blog post from a few years ago to create his signature - Joe's Blog
  •  Reference to HBO's new series Silicon Valley and a great t-shirt "I Know HTML" - t-shirt
  • Joe makes progress troubleshooting a clients email issues
    How to send an email via telnet - blog post by Drew Moris
  • Mavericks Server Caching Service - Great overview from Krypted
  • A discussion about turning Software Updates on or off
  • PowerMac G4 to Mac mini
  • Team Viewer For Mac and PC - Team Viewer
  • Free Option join.me from LogMeIn
  • What's your fastest SpeedTest?
    SpeedOf.Me HTML5 speed test recommended by Kevin Ginger; no Flash or Java required
  • uninstall Flash Player in Safari for better full screen experience with multi-screen in Mavericks; YouTube's HTML5 player performs better than Flash will less CPU impact; in full screen mode using the Flash Player in Safari on Mavericks
  • fit-Headless recommended by Michael Reinhart to solve "black screen" issues in screen sharing connections

047: You Can't Make 'Em Drink

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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

045: Tech-Savvy Clients and Migration Assistant Woes

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Recorded Live April 8, 2014

Thanks to our sponsor, Drobo. Check out the new Drobo Gen 3 with USB 3.0 – move your disk packs from a Gen 2 (four bay FireWire 800) model into the new Gen 3 for an easy upgrade path and 300-500% improvement in speed!  Visit drobostore.com and use coupon code CCP50 for $50 off your Drobo 5D or Drobo 5N.

Topics:

- ARQ recommended by Jerry for backing up to Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier

- ZyWALL USG50 recommended by Joe for site-to-site VPN tunnels, very stable router

- “cool” clients

- dealing with semi-technical “inside guys” at clients: “don’t open the box”; work from a checklist; “don’t touch the server” and “don’t touch the network”

- Ubiquiti PicoStation recommended by Jerry for extending wireless networks outdoors or to another building

- Migration Assistant woes: Plan A, Migration Assistant, hung with less than a minute remaining; Plan B, Carbon Copy Cloner, detected I/O errors; Plan C, restore from Time Machine backup, worked like a charm

- Jerry called it: Migration Assistant was failing due to bad blocks on the source machine

- recommendation before starting Migration Assistant: fully update source machine, verify disk partition map and file system, rebuild disk directory, and check for bad blocks