249: Live Show - A Series Of Unfortunate Events

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Topics:

-Joe calls back to a 27" iMac hinge repair.  Sam & Joe have both used https://www.themachack.com to hold up the display.  But Joe references that Apple will reimburse customers with proof of repair.

-TI83 Calculator was Joe's calculator of choice in high school.  You can still get one on Amazon!
https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-TI-83-Graphing-Calculator/dp/B00001N2QU

-The Jiggler was a handy program Jerry had used to keep FileVault moving along.  But unfortunately he has some follow up news regarding FileVault that wasn't so great.

-The team discusses fusion drives and weighing cost options for clients

-Joe introduces a new segment to the show, "Joe's Konspiracy Korner"
In this week's konspiracy, Joe throws around theories about a rash of errors on macOS computers. - "macOS could not be installed on your computer.  The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged"
Some solutions offered from Stack Exchange - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/299808/high-sierra-the-path-system-installation-packages-osinstall-mpkg-appears-to-b

-Sam got bleeped! Guess the banned word and we'll give you credit on the show!

-Sam brings up a scenario where a client lost her iPhone with Find My iPhone off and a lost iTunes backup password.  Jerry offers a possible solution in LCOM Soft:
https://www.elcomsoft.com/

-Some Synology follow up from Sam regarding rebuilding a RAID.  This was discussed on an Episode 241 with Weldon Dodd.

-Jerry has some rave reviews about a podcast app for Apple Watch called Outcast
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/outcast-for-apple-watch/

Some more of Jerry's reviews:
PopClip Extensions
pilotmoon.com/popclip/

Card Hop
https://flexibits.com/cardhop

-Joe's pop quiz: how is a shut down and cold boot different from a restart?

-Another new segment from Joe!  How to think like a client?
This week: Backups.  A client wouldn't realize that the key to laptops backing up reliably is to plug them into power while they are open and awake, unless they support Power Nap (Dark Wake). The default setting is not to back up while on battery power.

-One of Jerry's clients has an issue where she thought all of her documents appearing as My Documents.zip.  The explanation is something we have all encountered before.

-How much time have you spent assisting clients with downloading and running TeamViewer?

THANK YOU TO OUR PATREON SPONSORS!

248: Interview with Jeramy LeCompte and Daniel Allen of FLEXdesk by Rooted Consulting

Topics:

We have the great pleasure of having not one, but two guests on this week.  Jeramy LeCompte and Daniel Allen of Rooted Consulting join us to talk about their outsourced help desk service, FLEXdesk.

Jeramy lecompte

daniel allen

FLEXdesk is a flexible, outsourced HelpDesk service that allows you to quickly and easily scale your business with a highly qualified and experienced team without adding the expenses associated with traditional employees. This allows you to focus on customer support and gives you peace of mind to provide a great customer experience.

-Daniel answers some questions regarding minimum requirements and overall logistics of onboarding new clients

-Jeramy also talks about providing tier 1 and tier 2 support for their customers as well as offering tier 3 when necessary.

-Everyone on the FLEXdesk team has obtained at least Apple Certified Support Professional status

-They discuss the challenges that all teams face when dealing with a new end user that may be unfamiliar with the personnel

-Documentation is key and makes the handoff seamless to the FLEXdesk team

-Some benefits of FLEXdesk:
    -Allows you to free up time to focus on building your business
    -Takes out the need to hire a full time employee
    -Reduces costs in training and on-boarding 

-Scheduling and prioritizing is a critical aspect of how they operate

-Looking to get started?  Email support@rootedconsulting.org to reach out to a member of the team.  Or visit www.rootedconsulting.org/flexdesk

244: Victory From The Jaws Of Defeat

Topics:

-This week we are proud to be sponsored by FLEXdesk, an offering from our friends at Rooted Consulting.  FLEXdesk - Help Desk support that grows with you

-Sam shares a story where a client has some confusion with hardware

-Social media and clients.  Do they mix? 

-Joe shares a story about a client calling and saying the keyboards were not working at their retail store so they couldn't check out customers. We walked through looking for a battery compartment or a way to plug them in, but they didn't seem to have any way to change batteries or charge them. Then Joe remembered that the Logitech keyboards are solar powered and wonders if something changed in the environment. Client said they recently replaced all the lights with energy efficient LEDs! Apparently the new LED lights are so efficient, they don't have any spare light to charge the keyboards (or more likely, they aren't the right wavelength of light to work with the solar panels).

-Sam talks about voice recognition when meeting someone in person

-After upgrading a hard drive on a 27" iMac, Sam realizes he needed to fix the hinge.  He found an excellent option from The Mac Hack. As it turns out, a site that Joe knows well.

-Joe investigates a situation where sent mail doesn't show in the client's Sent mailbox. Mail.app was configured to BCC the client on all emails, and Gmail was deleting the copy from his Sent when the copy in the Inbox was deleted.

-Sam recounts being at JFK Airport in New York City when the emergency alert system was used to warn of a water main break in the next terminal and wonders if iBeacon was used to alert only people in the airport.

-We discuss the recent false alarm in Hawaii which also used the emergency alert system, and while Joe can't help but introduce a conspiratorial angle, it was likely due to bad design. Perhaps Heinlein's Razor (or Hanlon's Razor) – "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" – applies here.

-followup on Episode 236: MacBook Pro - Turn Back Time re: Temp user can not be deleted. Joe noticed that when migrating to a clean install of 10.13.2, Migration Assistant prompts to re-enter some users' passwords. For non-admin users, it changes passwords to a temporary password (looks like one generated by Keychain Assistant) and then prompts the user to change it upon first login. Could this be related to the root login issue? And/or to Joe’s Temp user issue? Note the difference in behavior when using Reset Password vs. Change Password. Joe bets that it's related to the method of storing the password hash – maybe there’s a less secure format for legacy accounts with longstanding passwords, which Apple has now deprecated?

239: Joe's Super Secret Password - PSIMacRules!

We're sponsored this week by Watchman Monitoring, a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

TOPICS:

When The Beatles Gave Fans A 'Crimble’ Present
https://www.npr.org/2014/12/21/372257350/when-the-beatles-gave-fans-a-crimble-present

The Kim Komando Show ® and all material pertaining thereto is a Registered Trademark / Servicemark: No. 2,281,044. America's Digital Goddess
https://www.komando.com

Logo (programming language)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)

235: The Lazy Man Migration Assistant

TOPICS:

• Joe wonders: how many clients have gotten the wrong impression when you give them the recommendation "Just use 1Password.”

• iLugger: https://www.ilugger.com/

• Joe reveals another boneheaded move during his company's email migration – learn from his mistake! He exported contacts to a vCard file, but forgot to turn on Export Notes in Contacts app preferences

• CodeTwo Exchange Sync
https://m.codetwo.com/exchange-folder-sync

• The Mac CRM & Project Management app trusted by busy teams.
https://daylitemac.com

• thanks to listener Tim Hannon for the courteous correction about the pronunciation of patron Steve Sorbo's business name, Mac SOS

• Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder
Repair Permissions - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

• how to enable Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) using the kickstart command on the command line:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201710

• Joe walks through his process of migrating data to a new iMac running High Sierra, which provided validation for many consultants best practice for a successful migration. The Migration Assistant built into Setup Assistant didn’t work even after repairing the source drive, rebuilding the source disk directory, letting it calculate the space needed for all items first, etc. Creating a Temp user account, installing all software updates on the destination machine first (just iTunes in this case), and perhaps most importantly using Migration Assistant in the Utilities folder is what finally yielded a successful migration

• Joe offers a bonus migration tip. If you're unable to delete a user account in High Sierra, this helped, surprisingly: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8087348?start=0&tstart=0

234: Letting The Fox Into The Henhouse

We're sponsored this week by Watchman Monitoring, a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

TOPICS:

Michael Thomsen, Director, Origin84 writes:
 

"I think that this is a particular time of year leading into the Christmas period where people can become a bit testy and start demanding things be done faster than usual for the arbitrary "have it in before the holiday" deadlines. Probably harder still in the NH given you're also headed into Fall/Winter.

Off-boarding is a great topic, and a fine art. Until you've had some experience with the good and bad it can be a minefield - especially if it was not your decision to end the relationship. 

As an anecdote we've just lost a contract for a fully Mac design client with on prem storage to a generic 'Cloud Services and Support Provider' who is going to save the company "thousands of dollars" per month by deprecating the on prem storage by moving them to Dropbox Business. 

While this was not what we would recommend or support it ultimately is the businesses decision however we have taken great pride in developing a rigorous but simple and straightforward off-board process more thorough than the new vendors on-boarding process - which in turn has caused some significant questions to be raised whether the new solution and vendor are fit for the job. 

We will continue to take the high road until we part ways, because ultimately once you're not working with a client the only thing they really remember is the way things were left when you walked out."

- Sam's Birthday 

- Apple "Hand Off" Mysterious Hack?

- Apple Genius Bar Diagnosis And Fixes

- High Sierra Installer Being Pushed Out By Apple

- Time Machine Glitch and Fix - Users seeing an error: URLs with the type "file:" are not supported, solved by changing name of Time Capsule disk; old name had a single quote in it

- Apple Watch Player - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/watch-player/id1170672458?mt=8

- Clients Replacing Routers

- Apple vs Watchman - Identifying Hard Drive Errors and Sending your Client To the Apple Store

- Think twice before encrypting your HFS+ volumes on High Sierra
https://bombich.com/blog/2017/09/29/think-twice-before-encrypting-your-hfs-volumes-on-high-sierra