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.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!

357: Interview WIth Chad Keith Of Atlas Solutions

Topics:

-Chad Keith of Atlas Solutions joins the show

-Chad originally called his company “Behind The Mac” but decided to change the name to work well with Apple Business Manager and the Apple Consultants Network

-A listener since the early days of the show, he shares how moved to a monthly services model and hearing fellow consultants was very encouraging.

-At one time, Apple had run a ‘Behind the Mac’ ad campaign: https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/14/apple-behind-the-mac-ad-campaign/

-Chad discusses how it did not take much convincing for most of his clients to move to the MSP model, explaining how the even keeled billing approach appealed to them.

-Calculating monthly pricing for new clients can be difficult and needs ongoing attention

-Having mentors that have been through this is key to developing a plan for pricing

-With clients reaching out, defining a point of contact will help streamline requests

-In the current climate, Chad discusses how his business has been affected with support and travel

-He also talks about how local businesses and communities are affected by COVID-19

-If you haven’t seen John Krasinski’s “Some Good News” broadcasts, you are missing out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5pgG1M_h_U

-Joe shares some ideas for contactless food distribution

-Jerry goes to get pizza dough for the family and quickly changes his mind after seeing the conditions

-A short discussion brews about the loans available from the Small Business Association: https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-business-guidance-loan-resources

-The healthcare industry has changed through all of this and technology has been making more possible while keeping our healthcare workers safer

-Chad Keith has a podcast of his own called “Overcoming Average” http://overcomingaverage.libsyn.com

-Link Tree is where Chad has all his available contact and social media information: http://linktr.ee/atlascarolina

306: Crazy Like a Fox

Topics:

-The crew starts off the show by discussing Multiple PSAs

-Jerry is able to turn a break/fix client into recurring revenue.  He describes the story of attempting to restore from backup and the hoops he had to jump through to get the job done

-Both Joe and Jerry I talk about the dangers of excluding folders from a time machine back up

-Thanks to Mike Bombeck at Carbon Copy Cloner, Jerry is able to follow steps to downgrade a fusion drive on APFS
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/downgrading-apfs-formatted-fusion-volume-from-mojave

-Since Jerry‘s client had updated their operating system on their own, Joe describes the dangers of downgrading and suggests spending that consulting time moving the client forward to the current OS

-An offshoot of Jerry’s Time Machine discussion is APFS conversion and how this process is different in Mojave

-Jerry reveals a bit about how he bills his managed service clients and they discuss the pros and cons of various billing methods

-On the heels of the downgrading conversation, Joe describes having to reinstall High Sierra in order to get Safari working again. Jerry wonders if using Pacifist by Charlesoft would allow viewing the packages in the macOS Installer: https://www.charlessoft.com

-As Joe goes into a story about managing multiple Photos libraries, he discovers that this client has a short lived product called Bevy to centralize their photos.

-Jerry wants to know if he used Power Photos to get the job done
https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

-Joe delivers a prime example of the standards that his company adheres to by investigating and diagnosing files on a linux device and coming away with the win in converting them to jpg to be used in Photos

-Joe reveals a hidden gem in the Finder which allows batch renaming files

267: Microsoft Turd Polishing

Topics:

-Jerry mentions Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin's show, Back To Workon the 5by5 network, and we try our take on their "Odds and Sods" concept.

-One of Jerry’s clients, an architect, has issues with Dropbox and syncing symbolic links.  He offers a solution in the form of an application called Dropbox Any: https://www.sebthedev.com/macdropany 

-Jerry also calls out a Dropbox support article that describes performing a manual uninstall: https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/uninstall-dropbox 

-This same client has a debacle with an Aura drive and an experience where the Apple Store wiped the customer data!  

Article on third party SSD compatibility:
https://blog.macsales.com/42466-a-note-on-high-sierra-compatibility-with-third-party-ssds

-Sam has been working closely with a client to develop a proof of concept to roll out iPad Pro devices and finds challenges with the Microsoft Office products for iOS

-He has also had a very positive experience working with the business team and their measured approach when selling products to the customer

-Joe finds it funny that one of Sam’s solutions is to use Web Clips, an idea that Steve Jobs himself described as a “sweet solution” 11 years ago, a fact that John Gruber periodically jokes about

-In our “I should have known this” segment, Joe realizes while attempting to do a backup that he cannot backup using Time Machine to an APFS volume.  He also finds that he cannot encrypt a Time Machine destination after completing an initial backup.

-Jerry has some follow up from the 10,000 Songs on Four Wheels Show and using the “Fuzzy Slipper Method”, coined by Jerry himself.  He talks about needing WAN access when setting up a network for a customer in your office.

-Joe has a straight WAN port in his work bench area so he can truly setup a network for clients using unfiltered access

-Joe calls back to Dan Benjamin & Merlin Mann and how he used to listen to them constantly

-We had the pleasure of sitting in on Jeff Porten’s presentation at ACEs 2018 and he has a new book out in the Take Control Series.  The book is called “Take Control of Your Productivity” 
https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/productivity

258: One More Pajama Story

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Topics:

-Sam has a big announcement - HCS has acquired office space in South Norwalk, CT!  Pictures to come soon.  The only downside is he can no longer wear his pajamas to the weekly meetings.

-Joe was hoping to have some follow up from listeners about the Downloads folder not being in the Dock causing hangs in macOS

-Jerry asks Joe for follow up from MacStadium about an IP block that seems to think its in Russia

-Jerry asks the crew about upgrading to TeamViewer 13 and Joe riffs on how "un Mac-like" TeamViewer is as an app

-Jerry forks over a few bucks for disposable booties to wear at clients

-The old crew discusses styles of young people today

-What to do when Face ID doesn't work?

-Lost VPN credentials have been a recent issue for Joe

-Sam discovers Rumpus for Windows!  He may have been living under a rock but had no idea.

-Jerry has recently started working with Meraki products.  He mentions how you can sign up for their webinars and get free gear as well as a three year Meraki license.

-"Joe's Tech Korner" is back as he talks about issue related to Apple Remote Desktop and issues connecting to a Mac remotely.  Using quick thinking, he power cycled the switch remotely, which caused the computer to re-communicate with the network and allowed him back in.

-The group talks about an influx of spoofing emails appearing to come from Rackspace

-Jerry talks up CoRD as an excellent alternative to Microsoft Remote Desktop:
http://cord.sourceforge.net

252: Migrate Is Becoming A Trigger Word For Me

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up for same from Episode 223 "It's not you, it's me" about Mail notifications

-Sam follows up on his experience at the ACN Road Show in Santa Monica, CA

-Sam shares a story from one of our listeners that recovered a stolen MacBook Pro with assistance from the police department

-In working with a client, Joe discovers that Find My iPhone was off.  He also discussed enabling show last location, which is a handy feature.

-Sam tries to inject a new segment in the show, "Sam's travel corner"

-Jerry reminds us about taking a few moments to ask clients for an online review

-Jerry talks about an experience with a client that had a failed High Sierra upgrade - "macOS could not be installed on this computer" and used terminal to correct it:
diskutil list
diskutil umount force /dev/disk1
(Take note of your disk id. disk1 in my case)
diskutil apfs convert /dev/disk1

-We reference Mike Bombich from Carbon Copy Cloner and an APFS issue that was found when dealing with sparse images:
https://bombich.com/blog/2018/02/15/macos-may-lose-data-on-apfs-formatted-disk-images

-Not to be outdone, Joe introduces yet another segment, "Joe's Kuriosity Korner"

-A client that politely declined Joe's monthly services plan ends up with an issue with data loss after a liquid spill and the Apple Store replaced hardware.  PsiMac to the rescue: had her order the hard drive from Backblaze. It contained a full copy of her home folder, which brought her data back.  Two fallout issues were Keychain related and the Photos library.  

-Sam has an issue with spotlight and Outlook 2016 and found a more recent support article to deal with the issue using the mdimport command.  This was a welcome new approach to removing and rebuilding the spotlight database:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2741535/outlook-for-mac-search-returns-no-results-and-task-items-are-not-displ

-A story you have to hear to believe - Joe's client has an issue with sending emails from Outlook and coming out as gibberish to receivers.  After upgrading from Outlook 2011 to 2016, the issue remained.  In the end, an errant carriage return in one of her contact names caused this formatting issue to occur.

"Just re-index it dude" 
-Apparently Sam