503: Interview With Ross Matsuda of Sudoade.com & Sys Admin at Ntiva

Topics:

-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.

464: Interview With Jason Dettbarn / Founder & CEO of Addigy - Cloud Based Mac Management Platform

Topics:

Topics:

-This week we welcome back Jason Dettbarn. Founder and CEO of Addigy

-There has been a 50% growth in the MSP sector and they are banking on this sector.

-We talk Apple Business Essentials and it’s coexisting with a third party MDM like Addigy.

-This is also contributing to fixing the foundational changes needed.

-Addigy has a big training arm.

-Jason discusses providing tools to migrate MDM vendors.

-Addigy uses Gainsight to understand and react to customer satisfaction levels.

-Joe & Sam talk about how managing software updates has become more challenging.

-Jason’s team is working hard on InTune compliance and Okta integration.

-Addigy was named one of Inc. Magazine’s Best Places to Work

255: Live April Show - Deep Down In A Bunker In Switzerland

We welcome our new VIP Patreon sponsors:

Zvon Petric - At Your Server

Topics:

-Jerry has an amusing client story about a lost password and how he put Addigy to good use

-Speaking of passwords, Sam describes an uncanny story about how an Apple employee guessed a user's password out of thin air

-Sam describes a story of how a client was scammed via email for over $200,000.  It calls to mind that Ubiquiti was similarly the victim of an email scam to the tune of $47 million dollars!  
http://fortune.com/2015/08/10/ubiquiti-networks-email-scam-40-million/

-Two possible options for secure mail:
Proton Mail: proton.me, formerly protonmail.com
Mimecast: https://www.mimecast.com

-Joe encounters an interesting startup message in verbose mode: "Too many corpses being created"

-One of Jerry's clients has some issues with spam filtering with Only My Email and directing messages to Fast Mail

-Is long propagation time still a thing?

-GFI sucks! - According to Joe's experiences.  Media Temple isn't much better.
Go to status.gfi.com and view the history to have a laugh

-Jerry has an interesting experience with Sherweb where a certificate trust dialogue box appears for a client's email...

-Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer: https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com

-Sam runs across a situation where copying files using the Synology GUI was unbearably slow.  He ended up enabling SSH on the Synology and used a host Mac to initiate an SSH connection and utilitized the cp command:
cp -pr /source/directory/ /destination/directory/

-ACEs is just around the corner and the group shares some great quotes from previous attendees.  If you haven't already, sign up for ACEs today!

-Sam & Joe have a secret meeting at PsiMac World Headquarters

-Joe spins a yarn about calendar invites and an Apple ID, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Exchange, oh my!

252: Migrate Is Becoming A Trigger Word For Me

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up for same from Episode 223 "It's not you, it's me" about Mail notifications

-Sam follows up on his experience at the ACN Road Show in Santa Monica, CA

-Sam shares a story from one of our listeners that recovered a stolen MacBook Pro with assistance from the police department

-In working with a client, Joe discovers that Find My iPhone was off.  He also discussed enabling show last location, which is a handy feature.

-Sam tries to inject a new segment in the show, "Sam's travel corner"

-Jerry reminds us about taking a few moments to ask clients for an online review

-Jerry talks about an experience with a client that had a failed High Sierra upgrade - "macOS could not be installed on this computer" and used terminal to correct it:
diskutil list
diskutil umount force /dev/disk1
(Take note of your disk id. disk1 in my case)
diskutil apfs convert /dev/disk1

-We reference Mike Bombich from Carbon Copy Cloner and an APFS issue that was found when dealing with sparse images:
https://bombich.com/blog/2018/02/15/macos-may-lose-data-on-apfs-formatted-disk-images

-Not to be outdone, Joe introduces yet another segment, "Joe's Kuriosity Korner"

-A client that politely declined Joe's monthly services plan ends up with an issue with data loss after a liquid spill and the Apple Store replaced hardware.  PsiMac to the rescue: had her order the hard drive from Backblaze. It contained a full copy of her home folder, which brought her data back.  Two fallout issues were Keychain related and the Photos library.  

-Sam has an issue with spotlight and Outlook 2016 and found a more recent support article to deal with the issue using the mdimport command.  This was a welcome new approach to removing and rebuilding the spotlight database:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2741535/outlook-for-mac-search-returns-no-results-and-task-items-are-not-displ

-A story you have to hear to believe - Joe's client has an issue with sending emails from Outlook and coming out as gibberish to receivers.  After upgrading from Outlook 2011 to 2016, the issue remained.  In the end, an errant carriage return in one of her contact names caused this formatting issue to occur.

"Just re-index it dude" 
-Apparently Sam

243: Star Belly & Plain Belly Sneetches

Topics:

We're sponsored this week by Watchman Monitoring, a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

-Jerry humbly shares a story of formatting the wrong drive while preparing new external installers and things to watch out for in APFS volumes when booted from HFS+

-Joe almost attempted a migration to Sierra from High Sierra when setting up Judy's new computer

-Jerry compares HFS+ to APFS issues to the Dr. Seuss Sneetches

-Sam shares his latest experience with Daylite and how he has seen the power of the product.  Our own Jerry Zigmont can help!
http://www.daylitemac.com

-This leads into a further conversation about Daylite as a product and methods of integration

-Joe has frustrations about Microsoft's auto update.  It provides a perfect opportunity to discuss our friends at Addigy

-Jerry talks about some of his non-public facing websites to try and make things easier for his clients.  But as it turns out, it ends up creating frustration.

-The group compares MSP models and how they all operate slightly differently

-Joe was listening to the mac catalog and has some followup from episode 231: “Grant BigLanik Easy Access” re: Amazon Gift Cards: very annoying, resulted in having to use AirPlane Mode to finish a recipe for Curried Butternut Squash and Pear Soup on AllRecipes.com. (Joe misstated this as SimplyRecipes.com in the podcast. The Editor regrets the mistake.)
 

235: The Lazy Man Migration Assistant

TOPICS:

• Joe wonders: how many clients have gotten the wrong impression when you give them the recommendation "Just use 1Password.”

• iLugger: https://www.ilugger.com/

• Joe reveals another boneheaded move during his company's email migration – learn from his mistake! He exported contacts to a vCard file, but forgot to turn on Export Notes in Contacts app preferences

• CodeTwo Exchange Sync
https://m.codetwo.com/exchange-folder-sync

• The Mac CRM & Project Management app trusted by busy teams.
https://daylitemac.com

• thanks to listener Tim Hannon for the courteous correction about the pronunciation of patron Steve Sorbo's business name, Mac SOS

• Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder
Repair Permissions - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

• how to enable Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) using the kickstart command on the command line:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201710

• Joe walks through his process of migrating data to a new iMac running High Sierra, which provided validation for many consultants best practice for a successful migration. The Migration Assistant built into Setup Assistant didn’t work even after repairing the source drive, rebuilding the source disk directory, letting it calculate the space needed for all items first, etc. Creating a Temp user account, installing all software updates on the destination machine first (just iTunes in this case), and perhaps most importantly using Migration Assistant in the Utilities folder is what finally yielded a successful migration

• Joe offers a bonus migration tip. If you're unable to delete a user account in High Sierra, this helped, surprisingly: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8087348?start=0&tstart=0