345: Taekwondo MSP

Topics:

-Sam is on the island of Manhattan teaching a Jamf class

-He also has an update to the issues affecting him since upgrading to Catalina, including the loss of iCloud reminders.

-Besides blocking Catalina with Addigy and other MDM solutions, ignoring Catalina in Software Update is a good addition: sudo softwareupdate —ignore “macOS Catalina”

-Sam describes frustrations when attempting to set up voice recognition using “Hey Siri” on his HomePod

-Making a push through Addigy is a focus Sam Is trying to make a priority in 2020

-A bug in Safari with Addigy is properly displaying APNs Push Certificate expiration dates.  Other browsers work as expected.

-Joe has had success with clients using secure passwords with the strong password feature in Safari

-Follow up to Joe’s SIM hacking issue with his client - the department that handles issues with porting at Verizon is the Unauthorized Port Team

-A client that Sam parted ways with had decided to fight his final bill so a mutually agreed upon number

-Sam decided to add verbiage to his MSP that ensures his company is always involved in the decision making for technology related purchases

-A big thank you to Richard Wingfield and Justin Esgar for solid advice in Sam updating his MSP agreement

-New billing practices, additional details, and per user/per device pricing are some of the changes and updates that are being planned out

-The next trick is to find the time to implement all of these changes

342: Armin Briegel of Scripting OS X - Moving To zsh

Topics:

-Armin Briegel from Scripting OS X https://scriptingosx.com joins us on Command Control Power!

-Armin is promoting his new book called “Moving to zsh”

-He recently presented at MacSysAdmin https://www.macsysadmin.se in Gothenburg, Sweden
You can find Armin’s and other presentation videos here: https://scriptingosx.com/2019/10/macsysadmin-session-videos/

-Armin’s career goes from Germany, to the United States and currently in The Netherlands.  During his career he had the opportunity to work for Apple.

-Before moving back to Europe, Armin was training his replacement when he was asked about books available to learn topics for the Mac.  This was one of the inspirations for writing his first book.

-Before “Moving to zsh, Armin wrote three other books:
Packaging for Apple Administrators: https://scriptingosx.com/packaging-for-apple-administrators/
-PropertyLists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators: https://scriptingosx.com/pr3-for-apple-administrators/
-macOS Installation: https://scriptingosx.com/macos-installation-for-apple-administrators/

-Upgrading a Mac to Catalina, 10.15 will result in your default shell remaining at bash

-If you create a new user, clean install the OS, or purchase a new computer, your default shell will be Z Shell

-Questions come up related to current commands and scripts and how they are affected by the change

-Sam lets it slip that he is now running Catalina on his production computer

-He discusses an issue with Reminders in Catalina and Joe talks of the Apple Mail data loss issues

-Sam asks Armin if we will see Erase All Contents and Settings in Catalina since we now have separate APFS containers for the OS & data, similar to iOS

-User enrollment is another new feature that is fascinating for features like enterprise wipe

-Erase & Install is a custom app that Armin wrote ((https://bitbucket.org/prowarehouse-nl/erase-install/), which gives the user a user interface that leverages startosinstall to wipe a computer.  In Europe, with GDPR, this provided a confirmation for a user that a business computer was wiped of personal data.

-Sign up for the Scripting OS X newsletter here: https://tinyletter.com/scriptingosx

341: Have A Mindful New Year

Topics:

-Joe has taken to using a journal, largely inspired by his epic road trip.  Joe uses the Day One app https://dayoneapp.com

-Sam agrees with the practice and talks of his long term journaling goals

-Sam Harris’ meditation app, Waking Up is another recommendation from Joe: https://wakingup.com

-We at Command Control Power wish everyone a happy. healthy (and mindful) new year!

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!

340: Scrooge McDuck Meets Marley's Ghost

Topics:

-A merry crimble to everyone!

-Jerry calls Sam Scrooge McDuck

-Alrhough timing is tough, Sam has to let an employee go

-A topic that is born out of this experience is “offboarding”

-Joe has some experience in this arena. He talks about some of the logistics and difficulties that comes with that. 

-that experience also caused Joe to tighten up his onboarding process 

-One of the concerns of releasing an employee is unemployment benefits 

-Does timing really matter that much?

-Business and friendship do not mix 

-Access for services and devices, while considered, needed to be re-evaluated 

-Sam has one thing to say about Joe’s shared contacts issue: DayliteMac.com

-Replacing the most employee is not on the immediate radar for HCS as of right now 

-Since answering calls was one part of Sam’s for employee’s job, he might now look at a virtual assistant service like smith.ai

-Subcontractors can be a good resource to fill company needs with less of a burden

-Data loss is a major topic that is a point of pride for the crew

-The team gets chummy about the support they have for each other

339: Client Gift Giving & More

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up about the HEViC files wreaking havoc and his photo screensaver.  After changing the screensaver, the files are no longer taking up a lot of space

-Sam & Jerry both use the Brooklyn screensaver from Github: https://github.com/pedrommcarrasco/Brooklyn

-Jerry wants to know what the guys are doing for client gifts for the holidays.  Joe & Sam’s answers: nada.

-What Jerry has been doing over the years is to send gift baskets to key people within his most valuable clients

-An important point that Jerry brings up is that once you start, it is very difficult to stop giving gifts each year.  Sam has a vendor story that is right along those lines.

-Getting back to tech, Joe has a client with intermittent wake from sleep issues.  His team did some bench testing to reproduce the issues, and they found this thread.  All 3 had people use the extension cord solution and it seemed to work for everyone:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/167291/suddenly-apple-wired-keyboard-not-working
https://www.zigpress.com/2014/12/30/has-your-apple-mac-external-usb-keyboard-stopped-working/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5470234

-Jerry has a story about a 21.5” iMac upgrade gone wrong and he gets salty when describing the details.  He was able to perform a repair offsite and save the day!

-Joe has some positive information to share about TeamViewer and how it handles modifier keys

-Sam was excited about TeamViewer coming to Synology and quickly installed the app, only to find that remote access is only available for TeamViewer for Windows:
https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/TeamViewer-IoT-Labs/IoT-Remote-AppControl-solution-and-Synology-NAS-boxes/td-p/33052
Please note that there are some known issues:

• Connections are currently only possible from TeamViewer 13.1 running on Windows.

• macOS, Linux or mobile clients are not supported.

-Joe talks about Sophos being upgraded to Sophos Home.  Jerry also has experience with ESET antivirus.

-To keep our Ubiquiti streak going, Joe discusses changing the wireless mesh uplink priority and how it can greatly improve the stability of a mesh network:
https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002262328-UniFi-UAP-Configuring-Wireless-Uplink#5

-On the flip side, Sam learned from Ubiquiti support that disabling wireless uplink should improve the stability of wired access points

338: Merry & Bright With Addigy

Topics:

-The crew does an Addigy check up to see where they stand with managed clients 

 -Joe brands his Addigy restart scripts after the show and it’s a top rated download!

-Jerry & Joe consider adding snarky comments to their messages to users 

-Joe talks more about his fancy scripts like rebuilding the spotlight index and checking for download sizes
ls -lh /Library/Addigy/download-cache/downloading
The main part of Joe's script:
du -sh /Library/Addigy/download-cache/downloading | cut -f1,1

-TeamViewer’s version upgrades and the lack of ability to manage from an earlier version frustrates Joe

-Inside a scam call center by Jim Browning youtube channel that busts fake tech support scam centers: https://youtu.be/xb_rgQ4IDS8

-Joe complains that users will not accept Apple’s advice for strong passwords but will accept fake tech support scams. Jerry has a different take on the password feature.