Best Of CCP - 325: Interview With John Moder of Crisp Solutions, LLC

583: Apple's Privacy Paradox & iPhone Lost At Sea

Joe Saponare discusses their experience with a CarPlay after-market device, highlighting its usefulness for maps and its limitations, such as poor sound quality and occasional connectivity issues. They also mention the convenience of Amazon’s return policy and the lack of significant improvements in CarPlay over the years. Joe concludes by noting that their car’s USB port, which only provides power when the vehicle is running, helps reduce the jankiness of the after market device.

Jerry and Sam discuss the use of CarPlay in the Honda, noting that Tesla lacks CarPlay support due to Elon Musk’s disdain for Apple. They also mention the availability of a Ubiquiti charging unit for Tesla and the potential influence of iPhone users on car manufacturers’ decisions regarding CarPlay support. The conversation concludes with a discussion about the poor quality and service of RVs, highlighting the use of cheap components and long service delays.

Apple’s new monthly permission prompt for screenshots and screen recording may affect third-party software, including Apple Remote Desktop. The prompts can be overwhelming for users, leading to fatigue and potential security risks. MDM functionality may provide a solution for businesses, but it can also be confusing for users and may not always be effective.

Users face fatigue from excessive privacy and security prompts, leading to potential security risks. Apple should improve the interface and provide a “best practice” mode for standard users, while offering advanced options for power users. MDM profiles can be effective in managing permissions, but exceptions may exist.

Joe discusses the need for a more user-friendly interface for Backblaze, highlighting the inconvenience of requiring users to navigate through system settings to enable it. Sam expresses frustration with 1Password’s synchronization issues and suggest exploring alternative password managers like Bitwarden. Additionally, Sam shares a story about an iPhone sinking in water and the inability to locate it using Find My iPhone due to a lack of iCloud syncing.

Jerry shares a tip for creating unique URLs for emails using AppleScript and TextExpander.

Jerry’s tip: APPLESCRIPT TO LINK TO APPLE MAIL MESSAGE
https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2019/02/applescript-to-link-to-apple-mail-message/

Chat concludes with concerns about AI, clarifying that Apple’s implementation prioritizes device-based processing and offers the option to disable AI features.

582: Mercury Retrograde and Tech Troubles: Is There a Connection?

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Jerry and Sam discuss issues with Zoom’s SMS campaign requirements and RingCentral’s lack of shared SMS functionality. Jerry also shares his frustration with RingCentral’s call handling limitations and the need for an unused extension to utilize advanced features.

For Joe, clients bypass Smith.ai by pressing extensions, leading to increased costs. Apple Intelligence may help manage notifications upon returning from being off the grid.

The hosts discuss the need for digital detox and features in Apple’s notification system. They also share their experiences with managing notifications and the potential benefits of AI-driven prioritization.

Sam has had an initially successful rollout of pricing emails to clients and he talks about the positive response he has received.

Jerry shares frustration with clients ignoring service recommendations despite positive feedback. After some input from Joe and Sam, he considers personalizing emails and including recommendations in newsletters to improve response rates. Joe also mentions the importance of using a personal email address instead of a bulk email service to avoid being filtered out as spam.

A customer’s easy acceptance of a significant rate increase led to a discussion about the importance of maintaining a consistent network stack. Despite the challenges, we discuss the value of following established procedures to ensure successful outcomes.

Joe wonders if Mercury being in retrograde has had any affect on clients being able to follow simple instructions.

Joe brings up the dangers of deep fake audio and how to protect against it. He even brings up a story of how Ferrari thwarted a deepfake attempt. They suggest using context knowledge or a safe word to identify potential scammers.

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Best Of CCP - 221: DMARC, Eero's & Toupee's

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Joe discusses the problem with automatically forwarding mail in the era of DMARC and walks through an explanation from Kerio:

- You have a hosted Kerio email account, with a domain of clientname.com

- You have a forwarding rule configured to forward all email addressed to name@clientname.com to clientaddress@gmail.com

- Gmail enforces a DMARC policy

- Gmail sees the forwarded email as if they were coming from the original sender, e.g.: Facebook, PayPal, etc. etc.

- But the emails are NOT coming from the mailservers of those senders (e.g. mail.facebook.com, mail.paypal.com – fake examples), they are actually coming from the Kerio mail server (mail.itekmail.com)

- This triggers a failure of compliance with DMARC, since the sending mail server doesn't match the sending address.

- Unfortunately there isn't much we can do about this, other than use the main account (name@clientname.com), setting it up on a mail client of your choice, to avoid this problem.

- Joe and Jerry discuss Eero, and Joe explains the challenge of configuring an alternate subnet:

- Eero ad automatically assigned 192.168.7.1 subnet

- AV guy had static IPs manually assigned to two IR controllers

- had to use Advanced settings to hangs subnet to 10.0.0.0 (10.0.1.0 not an option; annoying because that's a common Apple one so this must be a common issue)

- tried to adjust starting IP to 10.0.0.1, subnet to 255.255.0.0, and ending IP to 10.0.1.254; didn't work

- after updating, allowed me to select 10.0.0.0 range and change it to 10.0.1.0 range, which worked

580: Mission Critical: The Power Struggle

In this episode of Command Control Power, the team discusses ongoing technical challenges involving network equipment and power management. Joe shares updates on troubleshooting a host of issues with his elevator client, alongside dealing with generator compatibilities and frequent power outages. The conversation includes insights from Jerry and Sam, while addressing client concerns and experiences with improving power protection and network reliability. They delve into various power backup solutions and the frustrations of managing sophisticated networking equipment under unpredictable conditions.

-Joe has an update to his elevator client story.

-Sam and Jerry both have generators now but of course, have not lost power since the installation.

-To have true uninterruptible power using a UPS, there are specific models and settings needed.

-Joe recommends the Ecoflow River 2 for a portable power station: https://us.ecoflow.com/products/river-2-portable-power-station

-We want to know what Joe has to do when troubleshooting requires an onsite visit.

-On top of all of this, Joe’s client has 2 UniFi mission critical switches: https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/all-power-tech/products/usw-mission-critical

-The “Joe” recipe for recycling power on UniFi devices is to unplug for 2 minutes.

-For warranty, always buy direct from UniFi.

-Sam really wants to know the client mood after everything that has happened.

-Jerry is sporting a CCP shirt from friend and Patron, Richard Wingfield. Thanks Richard!

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Best Of CCP - Interview With Adam Engst Of the TidBITS Content Network