467: Interview with Brian Best from BestMacs and Mac-MSP Gruntwork

Topics:

This week on Command Control Power, we are featuring a patron only show for our supporters. If you are already subscribed on Patreon, you will find this show in your private podcast feed. To sign up and get instant access to special features like this one and several other Patreon only episodes, visit us at our Patreon support page and become a patron. For our general audience, we are featuring a classic episode from our catalog of nearly 500 episodes. We hope you enjoy it.

466: How Much Do You Want To Pay A Month?

Topics:

-Sam talks about his recovery from Covid.

-Some personal experiences and opinions are shared.

-Joe shares a sneak peak of an offering for Patrons. A Numbers based tool based on Watchman Monitoring reports with customized output.

-What monthly MSP plan works for you? Do monthly services work for residential clients?

-Jerry has abandoned the “monitoring only” approach since most clients ignored the alerts.

-Raising rates. Is it the right time or the wrong time?

-How do your phrase a rate change to clients?

465: Deeper Down The Rabbit Hole

Topics:

-Joe has an update on using his new Synology with Synlogy Central Management System. After digging around with notifications, he was frustrated. Thanks to Dan Monge of Mac IT Pros for the tip to look at the client Synology notifications as there is an additional CMS column.

-PsiMac charges a monthly service fee for network management.

-“Don’t be afraid to charge the client” -Jerry Zigmont

-A pesky client calls Jerry multiple times as he racking up his Smith.ai bill.

-Someone that needed help and Joe spent some time diagnosing, decides to try and migrate data on her 10 year old computer on her own.

-Jerry expresses concerns about working with customers that have 10 year old equipment and the risks that come with it.

-For new clients, Joe standardizes on getting a system report from Watchman Monitoring.

-PSA - BackBlaze keeps your historical data for only 30 days by default.

-Keeping old hardware for cost saving reasons can end up costing people in the end as the labor to upgrade can be extended due to aging equipment.

-Joe brings up finding better ways to manage automatic updates across different hardware/software.

-UniFi updates seem to handle rolling updates well.

463: Save Changes and Shut Down

Topics:

-Jerry is dealing with what appears to be a case of identity theft. 

-Joe comes up with a trivia question based on chatter on Slack. Where is the physical serial number on the current iMac computers?

-Depot repairs on a personal iMac didn’t work out too well for Jerry. 

-Joe is trying to get details on supported previous operating systems from Apple. 

-With the removal of python 2.7, Jerry uses advice from Armin Briegel to implement Shortcuts. 

-Even without meaning to, clients can take advantage of a “free” consulting call. 

462: Balanced Billing & The "Partner Plan" With Richard Wingfield Of Envision Design

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Topics:

This week on Command Control Power, we are featuring a patron only show for our supporters. If you are already subscribed on Patreon, you will find this show in your private podcast feed. To sign up and get instant access to special features like this one and several other Patreon only episodes, visit us at our Patreon support page and become a patron. For our general audience, we are featuring a classic episode from our catalog of nearly 500 episodes. We hope you enjoy it.

461: Let your Conscience Be your Guide

Topics:

-Joe is tired of being the help desk when Tim is out. 

-Sam has dreams about removing himself from the help desk ticket queue. 

-Sam’s new hire is working out well. 

-Developing guides for common user tasks has been tremendously helpful for Sam. 

-TextExpander is an invaluable tool that we all use. Joe has used it to create his own instructions for users. 

-In this week’s “I should have known this”, Sam realized that disabling the default account on Synology would break the Cloud Sync connection because the process is owned by that account. 

-Joe uses Backup Radar to stay on top of backup alerts. 

-The group discusses Synology’s C2 built in backup solution.

-Joe has been listening to a podcast by Sam Harris about how society relies on technology and how fragile it is. Bridgefy can be used for offline messaging in a scenario where 

-iPhone will be able to be used with satellite communications for emergency services in the future. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-30/apple-plans-to-add-satellite-features-to-iphones-for-emergencies