510: Interview With Dav James of DIJ Consulting

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Topics:

-This week we welcome Dav James of DIJ Consulting.

-Dav originally started at Apple in a variety of roles and moved to corporate IT support.

-DIJ Consulting is a Monday.com partner and works a lot on the automation side of things.

-We get into using integrations with Monday and services like Zendesk for automatic creation of tickets.

-Joe does some reporting in Numbers but it is more of a manual process so automation peaks his interest.

-The basics of Monday is that it is a task management software.

-Some of the frustrations Sam is feeling is the need of many different portals to manage things. Monday can integrate with a variety of those services and provide a centralized portal.

-Something as simple as centralized alerts was a big reason why Sam moved to Monday.

-Moving large amounts of data used to be a weak link that has now seen a major improvement.

-Affordability is a big draw of Monday.

-Connecting all the dots between the various services and Monday.com may be an initial challenge. Dav is working on how to make that easier for consultancies.

-You can find Dav on YouTube and in MacAdmins Slack.

-Taking action on a show request, Dav started the Monday channel in MacAdmins Slack as well.

506: Time Machine Blues

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Topics:

-We would like to thank new Patreon member Rolf Woodward, and thank Bruce Corson for increasing his pledge.

-Time Machine is hopelessly broken in Jerry’s recent dealings.

-He has been recommending Carbon Copy Cloner.

-Joe had a specific issue where the Contacts app database was extremely large and causing an issue with backups.

-Sam is very keen on company policies where local file data is not company responsibility.

-Jerry talks about supporting a customer who had some major issues after a computer migration.

-BackBlaze has a great service to ship a drive with backup data.

-Joe talks about important directories to be aware of when troubleshooting macOS.

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504: The Joe Penalty Box System

Topics:

-Sam had a work themed nightmare where he accidentally deleted a client’s data.

-Jerry had a real life situation like this years ago.

-Sometimes it’s difficult to fall asleep when your brain is still thinking about work problems and solutions.

-Sam hit a hard limit of two step authentication with Apple IDs.

-He set up and eSIM for the first time to get a second phone number on his iPhone.

-Jerry updates us on his new managed services plan. He feels there is more money to be made with residential clients on this plan.

-After off boarding an employee, a company owned computer showed back up in Watchman after months of being dormant.

-Joe is surprised when a client immediately signs up for his monthly plan.

-Do you specify priority support in your marketing materials?

503: Interview With Ross Matsuda of Sudoade.com & Sys Admin at Ntiva

Topics:

-On this episode, we welcome Ross Matsuda - Apple Systems Administrator from Ntiva.

-Ross is also the creator of sudoade

-Ross majored in theatrical direction with a minor in graphic design.

-He spent 7 years as an Apple Genius and also with Apple corporate.

-We discuss the necessity of support with Apple’s products.

-We get into GUI scripting with AppleScript on Ross’s site, sudoade. He developed a way to integrate automation with Addigy to only see the minor updates available.

-Initially using Nudge, he decided to develop a method that worked best for  his users.

-Joe has seen a much higher level of software update compliance since using Nudge and Ross’s solution.

-PSA - get your Mac computers at least to 12.6.3 to avoid unexpected problems when performing updates.

-Joe & Ross talk about simpler ways of presenting information and designing for the user experience.

Best Of CCP - 001: WWDC Keynote Reflections: Mac Pro, etc

501: You Lost Me With "Go To Finder

Topics:

-Jerry focuses on backups and talks about Backblaze B2 and the backup data format.

-Copying/pasting has been problematic for Jerry. Joe suggests looking at third party clipboard management tools.

-Odd characters in file names are still a thing.

-Joe talks about the MacPaw Foundation and their support of Ukraine.

-Paste and Match Style and its keyboard shortcut is a great feature, but not all apps support it well.

-LastPass and their most recent breach causes concern for customers that are already skittish about password managers.

-Nord VPN shares the 200 most commonly used passwords.

-Not all Rackspace PSTs have been restored.

-Why does the Help menu in an app show general help information instead of help for the app you are in?

-Joe wants a more obvious Eject menu for removable media.

-When you PIN conversations, it creates a series of frustrations for Joe & Jerry.

-Potential (and existing) customers don’t always understand the value of our time.