346: Vandelay Tech Industries

Topics:

-Jerry & Sam have a rare show together

-Sam is short staffed for a week and, of course, everything happens at once

-A discussion brews about the state of business in Connecticut 

-Working remotely is something Joe is very familiar with but Sam discusses working remotely with clients that move out of state

-An Apple retail store is relocating to a closer location to Sam & Joe, possibly creating new opportunities

-When business is slow, Jerry has some methods of drumming up business by developing partnerships.  One example is Drive Savers’ partner program: https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com/partner-programs/

-Another great podcast that Jerry suggest (and Sam won’t listen to) is “The Dream” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dream/id1435743296

-Sam was in a difficult spot training a fellow consultancy on Jamf Pro for a client.  When their newly trained employee left, the client was now left in the lurch.

-Jerry talks about some red flags to look out for when meeting with potential new clients

-As Sam tries to automate more in his business, he came across a Zendesk integration called Deadline, by SweetHawk: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/deadline/

 -A tip from Jerry for after hours or automated replies to inquiries is the smith.ai web widget: https://docs.smith.ai/article/pzfvnbq5xl-how-to-access-your-smith-ai-live-chat-widget-code

-Sam is exploring a similiar web widget from Zendesk: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203908456-Using-Web-Widget-to-embed-customer-service-in-your-website

-Teaser for another show, Sam goes head first into Addigy functionality and finds a treasure trove of features

344: No Worries

Topics:

-Joe cracks one open to start the show

-Jerry & Joe discuss business at the start of the new year

-As a follow up to Joe’s recent client security issues, they talk about various pieces of advice that clients may or may not follow

-As things change, it does create work for our consultancies

-With Catalina, Migration Assistant has proven challenging as it can misreport successful migrations

-As Joe goes deeper into some Catalina war stories, Mail data loss becomes a bit of a nightmare

-The battle rages on over upgrading early and challenges persist

-Joe & Jerry take a stroll down memory lane in Mac history

-Joe reveals that Tim Nyberg, of The Mac Guys+ & patron of the show sent him a Macintosh SE30 to add to his Mac Museum

-Jerry has rave reviews about a product called Turbo Boot Switcher, recommended by Marco Arment.  He says it has done wonders to improve battery life on his MacBook Pro: https://www.rugarciap.com/turbo-boost-switcher-for-os-x/

-Mac Updater will scan your system to tell you which apps need updating: http://www.corecode.io

-As Jerry keeps the recommendations rolling, he talks about some great apps from Patrick Wardle, including knockknock & lulu: https://objective-see.com

-Jerry’s latest peeve is when clients respond with “no worries”

343: It Doggles The Mind

Topics:

-The boys are back in town (spread the word)

-Joe gives Jerry credit for an old Time Machine reference to turn off low priority throttle for a speedy backup 
http://osxdaily.com/2016/04/17/speed-up-time-machine-by-removing-low-process-priority-throttling/

-Joe has two clients in a short span that were victims of “hacking”

-In one instance, an Apple ID was stolen. In another, a transfer of 20k was almost completed by an evil doer 

-The common factor between the two was the user’s cellular number

-With SIM hijacking, an attacker can port your SIM to a new device or even to switch carriers

-Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter) was a victim of SIM hijacking https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/technology/sim-swap-jack-dorsey-hack.html

-The crew laments over all of these security concerns that surround us, and are astonished that people still don’t get it

-Joe’s other client, lost access to their business phone number. His carrier first required a police report 

-Joe has a theory that these events were planned during Apple’s holiday shutdown, since resources are thin 

-An incredibly important recommendation is to create a PIN for your cellular carrier as another layer of protection 

-Another tip is to not use your cellular phone as your two factor authentication. Rather use an Authenticator app o Google voice number.

-Samsung Pass’ presentation included icons from that were complete rip offs of Face ID & Touch ID
https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-copied-apple-face-id-touch-id-icon-ces-keynote-2020-1

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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

336: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Topics:

-Sam is in Minnesota at the Jamf Nation User Conference

-Meanwhile, he has just returned from an Apple training gig in Alaska

-While at JNUC, Sam again ran into friend of the show, Chris Stout of STOUT https://stout.computer

-A call to action for our listeners!  Take photos in various locations with your Command Control Power t-shirt

-Sam takes a closer look at his process he recently used with a large deployment:
-Sam used AutoDMG for a quick restore of macOS: https://github.com/MagerValp/AutoDMG
-The createinstallmedia command worked well as an offline installer of macOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
-Here are the disks that were used to backup user data: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S1PCSV5/ref=twister_B07Y17L7BZ?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

-Joe takes us back in time to discuss the early encounters with Startup Security Utility on T2 computers

-Sam notices a difference in the behavior of users in large, corporate environments vs the SMB clients we are used to

-Joe deals with some confusion dealing with Daylite Saving while in Sedona, Arizona

-The topic of time zones reminds Sam about an issue he has with his Mac auto correcting time…incorrectly

-The Safari beachball bug has been plaguing Joe for a while

-Sam & Joe compare keychains

-After installing countless Synology NAS devices, Sam dug up a Github project which allowed for a python script to be run to do a speed test on the Synology: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli

-When moving from a Windows Server to Synology, Sam had to do some Googling but found a tool built-in to Windows Server called Robocopy.  Here is an example of syntax to preserve modification dates & times: robocopy /s /e /DCOPY:T