399: Interview With Amy McKnight of The Mac Spa & My Mac Mentor

Topics:

-This week we welcome Amy McKnight, owner of The Mac Spa and Mac Mentor. 

-Amy talks about choosing the Fit Bit over the Apple Watch. 

-It spawns a conversation about fitness. 

-She tells us her story about dealing with the pandemic in the early days and how it affected her businesses. She also used it as an opportunity to pursue other avenues. 

-Amy’s goal has been to reach more people in more places. To that end, they have put their classes on Zoom and made them available to customers outside of the Denver area. 

-As they go more virtual, her company is looking for more partners to help broaden their reach. 

-Joe has been doing remote work for a lot longer than any of us and her inadvertently prepared for these times. 

-How much of these changes are permanent?

-Amy’s primary market is the residential space and focus is on empowering people to understand the technology. 

-Classes are more scalable than the break/fix part of IT. 

-Mac Mentor has some core classes like intro to Mac and managing passwords. 

-Both Amy and Steve have a presentation setup with multiple computers and devices. 

-Friday’s are Q&A sessions just for members. 

-Recurring fees for classes is a great way to keep a good customer base. 

-The Class Pass is now available as an affiliate program. Interested affiliates can sign up with Mac Mentor

-Jerry describes how this can fill a niche for consultants that are busy “fixing”. 

-Stress free support appears to be the opposite of Jerry’s experience. 

-Amy ordered a new MacBook Pro with the M1 chip. 

398: Geeks On The Half Shell

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Topics:

-We share a bit about our numbers and how the pandemic has affected income. 

-Being more aggressive about charging for billable time in situations where you might offer a discount in the past. 

-Jerry finds that sharing documents in Microsoft Teams is not as straightforward as other video conferencing services. 

-Microsoft Teams for Mac is not up to the same standards as Windows.

-Adam Codega has suggested a Microsoft tool to remove all things Microsoft. 

-Joe & Jerry continue on about offering discounts and the negative impacts on a business. 

-We all love UniFi product. But Jerry talks about a new URL for administering their products has changed. This seemingly happened without notice. 

-A snag that Jerry hit was that the first account that gets added to the controller is automatically listed as the owner. So if using your company email, you appear as the owner as opposed to the client. 

-John Moder also provided some advice on this topic. 

-On a positive UniFi note, listener Greg talks of an issue similar to Joe’s where a printer wouldn’t see the Wi-Fi network due to an apostrophe in the name. Creating another SSID was once again the resolution. 

-Jerry wants to get into the discussion of leasing network equipment to customers. 

-Another consultancy actually puts their stickers on customer computers, chargers and equipment. 

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396: FileVault Incrimination

Topics:

-Sam shares with us that he has been vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine.

-He volunteers with the local Emergency Response Team and was given the opportunity for early vaccination.

-Going back to tech, Joe has an issue related to his passwords in Safari hanging up the process. As he digs into the problem, he discovers an issue with his Keychain.

-Howard Oakley from one of our favorite sites, Eclectic Light Company (https://eclecticlight.co), guides him through the process of correcting issues with your Login Keychain.

-Sam shares a great little tidbit he learned from colleague Steve Leebove of Mac Rescue (https://macrescue.com). Holding down the Option key while clicking the Advanced button in Network Preferences reveals additional fields like Hidden or Shareable. But what are the grayed out networks that can only be seen while holding down Option?

-Another good one that Sam found was when attempting to access a backup DMG on a Synology and receives the message “resource temporarily unavailable”. Using the Synology widget for Connected Users, he was able to remove the sessions for that user and mount the DMG after that.

-And oldie but goodie. Joe talks about using Migration Assistant after Setup Assistant and configuring a user as opposed to doing it during. In addition, when going through Migration Assistant, wait for all the folder sizes to be calculated before proceeding with migration. He has a recent engagement with a client where this proved to still be the correct method.

-Sam’s last tip involves KEXT user approvals. When Turbo Boost Switcher Pro was not functioning properly in macOS Big Sur, he had to find a way to re-allow it. Here is the syntax pulled from https://www.rugarciap.com/faqs/: kmutil trigger-panic-medic --volume-root /Volumes/<YourVolumeName>.

-Joe talks about the Staged Extensions folder where these kernel extensions could live prior to approval.

-What is FileVault Disk incrimination?

393: Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! We hope 2021 is a healthy and successful one.

392: Super Spreader Clients

Topics:

-PsiMac and MacWorks joined forces for a Wi-Fi job. Sam was feeling very left out. 

-UniFi and Eero and go to equipment for Wi-Fi jobs. 

-Jerry & Joe go into detail about the job in an aging house with some wireless challenges.

-Using UniFi on this job, Joe talks about adjusting wireless uplink settings in the UniFi Dream Machine controller.

-Sam finally gets to join in and he gets into working with Eero on a job. He begins by dealing with an oddity where an entire network comes to a halt when a particular computer gets turned off.

-He learns some things with Eero like the lack of functionality when using the web interface vs the app.

-Since we are all doing more remotely, Joe takes us through a remote Eero setup. 

-Joe found that setting up this network was actually faster offsite. Which is good on the one hand for efficiency but also a negative for business reasons as it means less billable time. Sam finds similar results.

-Sam brings back an old favorite “pop quiz”, networking edition.

-Jerry has a PSA regarding a Synology with Seagate drives. Be careful where you buy from.

-Amazon had an offer to give a 20% credit on old routers but Jerry has a bad experience with his return.

390: A Cesspool Of Covid

Topics:

-One of Sam’s clients shows off their new podcast studio. Sam stays silent about Command Control Power since he likely has spoken about them. 

-Joe blows Sam’s cover about how he used his new fancy Rode microphone backwards on a recent show. 

-We discuss our first mics. 

-As the guys check in about business status, Sam talks about a client that finally suspended monthly services. 

-Most recently, one of Jerry’s education clients had to request a quote from multiple vendors during a renewal period.

-A recent client call sounded like a Kobayashi Maru and an impossible feat to accomplish so Jerry & Joe figure, let’s refer Sam!

-Joe is really hoping to replace his janky MacBook Pro.

-As this show was recorded before the M1 announcement, Joe considers what new Mac computers will be on the horizon.

-Sam has a strange volume issue with his 2020 MacBook Air

-As we revisit the HP driver issue, Joe credits the MacAdmins Slack for pointing him in the right direction. 

-Joe questions the validation process.

-Should you just live off the grid?

-One of Joe’s clients designed software once used on the space shuttle.