412: Place, Lift, Done!

Topics:

• We give a shoutout to TidBits, which is a very useful subscription for consultants. Sign up for free apple content here: tcn.tidbits.com

• Joe and Jerry talk about things they have noticed with clients who deal with memory loss.

• Jerry talks about the difficulties of trying to instruct clients over the phone when you do not have remote access.

• Value-based billing is a hot topic.

• They talk about the touch ID on the new Mac and how it has been tripping people up.

• Joe wonders what he is going to have an issue with when he is older even with his profession being completely technology focused now.

• The group talks about purchasing from authorized “resellers”.

• Why doesn’t Apple recognize purchasing from Apple authorized resellers as purchasing from Apple?

• Jerry doesn’t often recommend Drobo, but he is concerned why there are still constraints in the supply chain.

• The group discusses different products and how things have changed.

• Joe talks about Promise and alternatives.

• SoftRAID and OWC isn’t always a match made in heaven.

410: The Person Who Blows The Horn

Topics:

• Sam tells a creepy story about something that happened with one of his old devices the other night.

• Did anyone hear a train in the background?

• Joe & Sam talk about social events during the pandemic and how much more we appreciate seeing each other.

• Joe brings up live desktop with Addigy.

• Stay tuned to an upcoming episode where we welcome back the CEO of Addigy, Jason Dettbarn.

• Joe’s Tip: du -sh command to display disk usage statistics.

• The group talks about the large amount of spam calls they’ve been getting.

• Joe discovered that the spam callers have actually been using real people’s numbers. They wonder how the callers have been doing this.

• Joe has time on his hands to talk to spam callers.

• Sam discusses one of the weird issues he’s had with his replacement iPhone that he can’t really figure out. And Joe could be on to something with a SIM card issue.

409: Interview with Marketcircle CEO, Alykhan Jetha - Makers Of Daylite

Topics:

• This week we are excited to be joined Alykhan Jetha, the founder, president, and CEO of Marketcircle.

• Jerry talks about how impressed he is when he uses Daylite to run his own business.

• AJ explains how he came around to creating the app Daylite when it was originally for their own needs.

• Daylite was shown at Macworld when it first was created.

• AJ shares a story about when Apple approached him and the other creators of Daylite and how hectic the next couple of months were.

• The goal for Daylite is to help small businesses grow. The founders are working to make it easier to use in order to open it up for more people.

• Why has Marketcircle focused on sticking with the Apple platform?

• AJ talks about the evolution of Daylite and the big decisions/changes they had to make, including why they stayed native.

• Jerry recalls the early days of Daylite and he is impressed with how much easier it is to use compared to years ago.

• New improvements are coming to Daylite.

• Sam talks about the benefits of focusing on one platform.

• Jerry encourages viewers to look at Daylite since it has changed so much over the years. You can get a 30 day free trial here https://www.marketcircle.com .

• Sam talks about how helpful Daylite has been for him in communications with clients. Especially the ability to file emails for future reference.

• Jerry and Sam talk about how helpful mail integration features are on Daylite.

• AJ talks about ISO certifications.

• How has Daylite adapted to everything going on in the past year?

407: A Ticking Time Bomb In Your Business

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Topics:

• What exactly is technical debt?

• Jerry has two pretty big professional clients who have accumulated quite a bit of technical debt.

• Spending money on important things will save you the trouble of dealing with it later.

• The group talks about how these clients who refuse to spend money sometimes aren’t sustainable.

• News Flash: On TeamViewer you can now disable in-product marketing messages.

• Sam is looking into a business continuity document that can be very useful especially with clients who don’t listen (thanks to Michael Thompsen of Origin84 for the tip).

• When your system can’t keep up with you it can cause you to be unproductive because you end up wasting time on things and switching tasks.

• Sam tells a story about how one of his client’s old systems finally kicked the bucket and he had to get all of their data back.

• Tip: Update your software about every 2 to 3 years.

• You end up paying less to keep up with updates than to fix everything when it goes wrong.

• Joe actually had to buy floppy disks for a job he had to do on a Powerbook 100.

• Jerry shares two useful tools he uses: Smith.ai and a helpful calendar app called Harmonizely. Harmonizely allow clients to schedule appointments and offers direct integration with Daylite..

• Daylight training has been transformative for Jerry.

• Sam can’t bring himself to start offering calendaring services to his clients. One reason is a need for control.

• Joe also talks about showing just how unavailable you might be.

• Jerry talks about the mysterious “alien arrow” that one of Joe’s clients has been telling him about.

• What is Casper Sky??

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406: Interview With Armin Briegel Author of "macOS Terminal and Shell"

Topics:

• This week we are joined once again by Armin Briegel of scriptingosx.com and the author of “macOS Terminal and Shell”

• Armin speaks about his personal pandemic experience with work and family.

• The group speaks about the differences in how different countries are handling the pandemic. They have extended the lockdown in the Netherlands until April, while it seems the U.S. is loosening up. Vaccinations are rolling out a bit slower in Europe than the States.

• No one’s network was prepared for the pandemic with the amount of people working from home.

• Armin tells us about how conferences in the near future are looking. Many are still holding out but one he was planning on attending has already chosen to go online even though it is scheduled for October.

• It is worrisome for conference speakers because they have to plan on how to talk based on if it is virtual, pre-recorded, or in-person.

• Armin speaks about his experience speaking at virtual conferences and preparing for pre-recorded sessions as well.

• Sam dislikes speaking online when everyone has their camera off because he feels disconnected from the audience.

• Sometimes it is less stressful to present a pre-recorded session and answer questions in the chat.

• Now that presentations are recorded online, you cannot reuse a presentation and you have to build a new one each time.

• Armin plans on presenting at JNUC.

• Sam is looking forward to regularly interacting with people in 2022.

• Armin talks a bit about his new book “macOS Terminal and Shell” (available on Apple Books) and how he began self-publishing in 2016. He has managed to publish a book almost every year since then.

• Jerry talks to Armin about why he specifically chose Terminal as the subject for his book and the difficulties of talking about Terminal and Shell.

• Armin is planning to write his next book on scripting.

• Follow Armin’s informative posts on Scripting OS X

• Help Armin surpass his wife in Twitter followers

405: Accruing Technical Debt

Topics:

• Jerry brings up clients that you need to be more up front with billing for your time so there is no confusion that can lead to an unpaid bill.

• He talks about one particular client that has aging hardware/software and they are scrambling for support. He tries to set expectations early.

• That rings a familiar bell for Joe who might be more inclined to start helping someone right away.

• With Sam’s monthly clients, he has formal paperwork that mentions “discovery”. Often times customers are more inclined to accept that if they know it will save them costs moving forward if you are already familiar with their environment.

• Jerry talks about smaller clients to possibly start small and move incrementally to earn some money up front.

• “Technical debt” is a term Joe coins from all of this.

• Realizing Joe may have missed an opportunity for calling out chargeable items, he realizes that he may need to get more comfortable onboarding a larger client.

• Sam talks about he learned from a similar situation.

• Jerry talks about a very strange problem his client who could not find any of her mail, her inbox was empty (and Time Machine wouldn’t work!)

• Joe remembers back when emails would disappear after updating to Catalina.

• The group discusses the many issues everyone has with mail and the recovery service.

• Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys shared some feedback about using the mobile support feature of Splashtop which leads into a conversation about using it.

• He has a remote support feature on his website (themacguys.com) that helps you download the correct version of Splashtop.

• Sam has to break the news that he had to let go of a really nice office space.