440: A Link Of Confusion In The Chain Of Trust

Topics:

-Jerry finds a great deal with AT&T where you can turn in an older iPhone, only to find that it’s not so great. 

-To top it off, the iPhone he returns gets “lost” in the mail.

-1Password recently released a very welcomed new feature to share credentials with users, even if they do not have a 1Password account themselves.
https://support.1password.com/share-items/

-One of Sam’s clients also used 1Password and he describes how to invite people and share vaults.

-A big win for Daylite (daylitemac.com) as Sam had to retrieve an important email communication with a client in order to show the onus was on the client to make a key decision.

-Both 1Password and Daylite by Market Circle are very friendly to the ACN community.

-Jerry has a good iOS 15 Control Center tip.

-What is Apple Music Voice Plan?

-Sam signed up for AppleOne Premier, since he was already paying for a variety of Apple services  that equalled the same price.

-Jerry is frustrated about how Apple News notifies you about an interesting article, only to show a service he needs to subscribe to.

-One of Jerry’s clients had lost access to their iCloud account. He describes the painstaking steps he had to take to try to have his client remember their iPhone unlock code.

-Joe has almost the exact same story with one of his clients.

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

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Topics:

• This week we are excited to be joined by Jason Dettbarn, the founder and CEO of Addigy.

• Dates for The Addigy User Summit have been booked for February, 2022: https://addigy.com/event/addigy-user-summit-2020/

• Throughout the pandemic, they started seeing more VPN and remote control technology being put into use in order to manage devices.

• COVID forced the whole IT industry to improve, since everything had to be done remotely.

• Jason explains how the pandemic has actually effected his business positively.

• Take a European summer this summer authorized by Jason Dettbarn.

• Sam and Jerry think Joe’s been on a break for the past three years.

• Joe thanks Jason for the great product he’s created, specifically Addigy LiveDesktop while he does one of his famous remote migrations.

• Additional remote control capabilities will be announced at their Innovation Summit.

• Join Addigy for their Innovation Summit on June 15! https://addigy.com/innovate2021/

• Quick Tip for Addigy users: Joe has a URL on his site for users to enroll into Addigy on the fly to allow management when they need it.

• Addigy will be adding variables to their Custom Facts in an upcoming update.

• Custom criteria will be added to allow auto assigning devices to a particular policy.

• Addigy is the only multi tenancy solution to allow Single Sign-On for Mac.

• Apps & Books deployment is now available in Self Service.

• Thomas Reed from Malwarebytes will be joining the security panel of the Innovation Summit.

• Addigy places a big value on community.

• The Custom Fact feature allows you to report custom criteria about a computer that isn’t built into Addigy.

• The community aspect is what allowed such a quick remediation of Silver Sparrow.

• “Day zero” support is already too late. Jason explains how Addigy prepares.

• The Command Control Power crew had their own Addigy Summit.

• Use all of the features available to you when installing Addigy.

• Addigy Certified Expert, Addigy Certified Associate certifications are available from Addigy:
  https://addigy.com/training/

• Joe talks about maintaining software updates using Addigy.

• Content caching is a feature that will explored in the near future.

• Jerry has a theory about kernel panic alerts he has seen from some of his users.

• Don’t forget about the Addigy Innovate Summit on June 15th!
  https://addigy.com/innovate2021/

400: Interview With Justin Esgar & Tim Pearson of the ACES Conference

Topics:

-This week we welcome back Justin Esgar and Tim Pearson of the ACES conference.

-Justin gives a recap of virtual ACES.

-He explains how the plans changed for last year’s virtual conference that was originally supposed to be an in-person conference held in Atlanta.

-Justin and Tim speak about the struggles of having an online conference for the first time.

-This year this ACES conference will be taking over the month of May. Every Thursday (tentatively) from noon to 2:30 EST two speakers and a round table session discussing all the aspects of your business. Throughout the month there will also be a couple of other surprises. Tickets will be on sale in February. First 100 people who sign up get a gift box.

-ACES Conference Slack is open for questions http://acesconf.herokuapp.com/

-What will the roundtables look like?

-Joe and Tim speak about the benefits of attending a conference like ACES.

-Joe tells a story about an experience he had at the 2017 ACES conference that helped him with his business recently.

-For the newly initiated, what is ACES?

-Justin explains why he started ACES and speaks about how welcoming the ACN community is.

-Everyone talks about how interacting with more people helps you improve your business and learn more.

-Tim shares a head scratcher with the group that involves remote access.

-The group discusses internet providers and cellular service companies.

-Justin talks about how they are going to continue the “Women in IT ACES Scholarship”. Three tickets will be given to women in IT who apply here: https://acesconf.com/women-in-it-equality-scholarship/

-Follow Leonard Fienstein on Tik Tok!

389: Pandemic Update With Adam Engst of TidBITS Content Network

Topics:

-Adam Engst of TidBITS Content Network  joins us once again to talk business during COVID and some new opportunities.

-The last time we had Adam on was mid March, just after the world began to change.

-Joe observes how things are once again going in the wrong direction.

-As the president of his local runner’s club, he is always on the lookout for important news to evaluate risks.

-We discuss the effects this has had on people not just with work or physical health, but mental health as well.

-Adam and the crew kick around many interesting thoughts and ideas about society as a whole.

-What’s going to happen with office space and real estate as a whole after this is all said and done?

-As companies have had to pivot during these times, Adam talks about how TidBITS has begun working with a school in Australia to distribute technical information.

-This opportunity of working with institutions with large IT footprints could be a new avenue for TidBITS Content Network.

366: Do You Think I'm An Idiot?

Topics:

-Jerry poses the question to the group: what if clients want to downgrade from macOS Catalina?

-Turns out Jerry has a real situation that dealt with this very issue. It turned into a cluster but it did require a Time Machine backup and reinstall of the previous OS. 

-An inadvertent sales tactic for Joe is reaching out to a client who has been sitting on a proposal for a long time and saying they will close the ticket. Astonishingly, it causes clients to immediately respond. 

-After two visits to a client, Sam experience issues out of his controls, one with Apple and one with Jamf. He describes how it just makes him look bad. Joe and Jerry can relate. 

-Jerry has a great relationship with an Apple Authorized Reseller, Micro Decision Systems in NY. Richard Cooperman has always made the client experience easier. In a recent instance, Jerry describes having a tough time swapping out a recently purchased problematic computer.  Jerry personally offered to step up to the plate for the customer but Richard came through in the end. 

-Sam can’t wrap his head around the mess at a new client. Various application and operating system versions, status of admin accounts, compliance are all factor that are making his head hurt. 

-Jerry hits the nail on the head when describing unexpected hours and a hurt to the bottom line. 

-Jerry is reminded of being frustrated with clients that always seem like they have something better to do. 

364: Makin' A Ruckus

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Topics:

-CCP is doing video again!

-Sam has a yarn to spin about dealing with a Ruckus ZoneDirect 1200 that died. After hours and hour of support and three ZoneDirectors later, he had the situation under control. In short, he has a ZoneDirector 1200 to sell. It can be yours for a low, low price!

-The team discusses working with wireless vendors and the difference in price points. Justifying costs are a large part of working with clients in the SMB market.

-Sam was surprised to find out that Ruckus supported a complete replacement of their hardware, free of charge, even 7 years after purchase.

-In the end, Sam only billed 2 hours of time for the Ruckus nightmare. An old discussion gets rehashed about billing appropriately when time goes way over initial an initial estimate.

-Jerry makes what should have been a simple change with Crush FTP and it blows up in his face. The vendor worked diligently to correct the issue after a recent update.

-Joe sees the light about project based pricing vs billable hours.

-Jerry talks about a “not to exceed” price, which can be helpful to comfort clients who are concerned about cost.

-Do you read release notes? Joe does. After struggling with Finder copies to a new RAID on 10.15.4 and continual crashes, Joe looks to update to 10.15.5. The release notes for 10.15.5 says “large data transfers to RAID volumes no longer cause Finder to be unresponsive”.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_notes/macos_catalina_10_15_5_release_notes

-Joe recalls remote support in the early days, where we guided our clients almost by memory.

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