🔒 Patreon Special

IT Pros: exclusive shows await you on Patreon, focusing on the more challenging aspects of running your practice and working with clients and employees.

495: Just Give Me The Good Support

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Topics:

-We recollect the OnForce days with the Apple Consultants Network.

-Jerry has some follow up after his recent lightning strike. He has a heck of a time getting the replacement modem to operate at the proper speeds.

-It speaks to the larger issues of declining quality of technical support.

-One of Jerry’s older clients lost access to her SBC Global email account, which is now in the hands of AT&T. One month later, he has to revisit this after a phishing scam.

-Joe has follow up to his emojis not working when in clamshell mode. Command+Control+Space works as a keyboard shortcut.

-The ScriptingOSX.com newsletter helps Joe out with a tool called Screen Nudge to allow screen recording via automation.

-Although you can no longer schedule reboots in macOS Ventura, Charles Edge mentions using the pmset command on Krypted.com

-As Joe brings up Apple’s language on software updates/upgrades, we discuss the current methods of managing them for clients.

-Shoutout to TidBITS Content Network and their latest holiday gift guide.

-A big thank you to our latest patron, Rod Miller of RQM Consulting.

494: My Curmudgeon Ways

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Topics:

-There are some downsides to push clients to recommended upgrades & services. Their expectations are high and anything that goes wrong is on you.

-Should we put our efforts more into gaining new clients than encouraging clients to make changes?

-Some clients aren’t worth pushing additional services to.

-Sam continues his story of an incredibly frustrating employee that doesn’t reply and then blames HCS for a lack of support.

-As the group discusses Sam’s client’s security policies, Joe brings up the features and different approach of Kolide.

-Joe talks about Custom Checks from Kolide, which offer the ability to investigate specific security concerns on a computer.

-Joe touts Ross Matsuda, who offers up some great tools on his site https://www.sudoade.com. One of them being the ability to add admin privileges with logging.

-Sam has personal experience with using Kolide on his work computer and he shares what he found.

492: Lightening! Not the Connector

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Topics:

-As a tree on Jerry’s property gets hit by lightening, he ends up down a rabbit hole of technical troubleshooting.

-He goes through various replacement equipment and testing. Two products he recommends:
Coaxial surge protector
Ethernet surge protector

-He quickly finds that even basic things like turning on/off lights is difficult without internet.

-A handy surge filter turns out to be a great, low cost option to protect from future lighting strikes.

-Good advice from Dave Provine about proper grounding.

-YouTube TV increases Joe’s monthly subscription cost. Except he finds that paying through Apple turns out to be the additional cost factor.

-Sam expresses his frustration at increasing streaming costs.

-After experiencing some client losses, Sam looks to manage company processes better. He finds his answer in Monday.com.

491: Who Am I?

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Topics:

-Jerry deals with some complications when one of his clients opens a satellite office in another company’s space.

-Confusion arises when an A/V vendor Joe works with says his client mentions another “IT guy”.

-Be careful with warranty statuses for Ubiquiti purchases on Amazon.

-One of Sam’s clients receives a FUD newsletter from a competitor looking to solicit business.

-Apple software updates are continually problematic. But Joe talks about Addigy’s beta software update MDM command. He also talks about a GitHub project known as Nudge.

-S.U.P.E.R.M.A.N. is another popular software update Girhub project that has a bright future.

-An employee fired off an aggressive email chain with Sam over the weekend.

-App Updater is a useful tool that Joe has been testing and Jerry has been using for a while. Also discussed on an episode of MacGeekGab.

-Installomator is another incredibly useful GitHub app install tool by friend of the show, Armin Briegel of Scripting OS X.

-As Joe talks Ventura features, Jerry talks about the dangers of iCloud Shared Photo Library.