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035: Interview with Mike Kingsley, Kingsley MacConsulting

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Interview recorded January 21, 2014; Intro recorded on January 28, 2014

Intro:

- testing Mavericks Server; being Client 0

- using Profile Manager to easily configure CalDAV, CardDAV, VPN services; Sam's trick to save a profile without a user name

- the trial and error of troubleshooting a server leads to uncertainty

- using authrestart to bypass FileVault 2 on next restart; installing software updates that require a restart now does this automatically

- force quitting fsck to allow mounting a drive that was failing to mount, even read-only, after letting fsck complete

- using the "security" command to read the contents of the user's keychain

Interview:

- Mike started his consulting practice in 2004, a great year for Apple

- first computer was an Apple IIe in 1984

- Apple Store has been great source of referrals; helps to think of Apple as a partner, and promote their services like AppleCare and JointVenture

- JointVenture can be a great supplement to help from Apple consultants

- first job was working at Disneyland; customer service was ingrained in the culture and top quality; out of five day training for new hires, three days are purely customer service; helps with consulting: owning issues, taking responsibility; e.g., customer drops ice cream cone, and employee walks customer over to the ice cream stand to facilitate the resolution; how to deal with people who are upset, hearing both sides; if you can't help, who can? 

023: Fall 2013 Releases - Mavericks, iLife, iWork, Retina MacBook Pro, iPad Air, Retina iPad mini

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Recorded Live on October 22, 2013  

We have plenty to discuss this week about Apple's Fall 2013 releases, as well as new details about the forthcoming Mac Pro.

Topics:

- Migration Assistant bug upgrading to Mavericks; Apple updates Migration Assistant six hours too late to save Jerry's afternoon

- advising clients about when to upgrade to Mavericks

- using Carbon Copy Cloner's Disk Center to clone the Recovery Partition

- Carbon Copy Cloner's partner program: contact eddie@bombich.com

- iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina; Apple setting the stage for iPad Pro?

- hard drive upgrades, SSD upgrades, hybrid drives?

- Sam's client migration from iPhone to Android

- Mac Pro pricing and support for up to six Thunderbolt displays or three 4K displays

Follow up:

- 1Password 4 for Mac with Multiple and Shared Vaults; securely sharing data among members of a team using Secure Notes

Mentions:

- Lion Disk Maker

- Carbon Copy Cloner

- gizoogle.net

019: Interview with Elaine Kwok, Product Marketing Manager for Promise Technology

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Intro Recorded Live on October 1, 2013; Interview Recorded on September 24, 2013

Jerry, Sam, and Joe are pleased to be joined this week by Elaine Kwok, Product Marketing Manager for Promise Technology.

As with the original release of Thunderbolt in 2011, Promise will be first to market with Thunderbolt 2 peripherals to be released alongside the forthcoming Mac Pro redesign later this fall.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Elaine for taking the time to discuss the Promise product line with us, especially during this busy time as the company gears up for Thunderbolt 2.  Stay tuned for exciting updates from Promise!

But first, listen to Joe recount his recent data recovery success through his MacGyvering of a hard drive with a broken mini USB connector on the bridge board of a WD MyBook for Mac. The tools at his disposal were as follows: a USB connector salvaged from a non-working donor enclosure; a pair of needle nose pliers; a rubber band; a plastic dust cover from a mini-DVI to DVI adapter; a spare 3.5" hard drive; and a spool of kapton tape. Go!

Topics:

- VTrak E-Class, VTrak A-Class SAN solutions

- SANLink Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapter

- Pegasus R6 RAID Storage

- Pegasus J2 portable Thunderbolt SSD & Pegasus J4 2.5" Thunderbolt enclosure

 

Update – here's just the Elaine Kwok Interview.

001: WWDC Keynote Reflections: Mac Pro, Mavericks, iOS 7

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Listen to co-hosts Sam Valencia of HCS Technology Group, Jerry Zigmont of MacWorks, and Joe Saponare of PsiMac discuss our post-WWDC reflections, recorded on June 21, 2013 – the first day of summer and the beginning of our new podcast.

Topics:

  • The new Mac Pro
  • Mavericks
  • iOS 7
  • The next ten years of Apple
  • Mac and iOS vs. Windows 8
  • Iterative innovation or alien technology?
  • Predicting the longterm effects of technology

Show Notes:

Thanks to fellow ACN, Joe Fong, who sent me the Power Mac G4 Cube almost six years ago.

Regarding predicting the pricing of 1 TB of flash storage for the new Mac Pro: upgrading the MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina display to 768 GB flash storage from 128 GB costs $900 as a CTO option on the Apple Store.

According to Apple's iOS 7 features page: "AirDrop is available on iPhone 5, iPad (4th generation), iPad mini, and iPod touch (5th generation) and requires an iCloud account."

It was Windows 95 that didn't ship with IE or TCP/IP with the default network installation, not Windows XP.

The Steve Jobs story recalled by Joe is told by Andy Hertzfeld at folklore.org. Steve Jobs once motivated an engineer to improve the startup speed of the original Macintosh by saying it would save dozens of lifetimes:

 
“How many people are going to be using the Macintosh? A million? No, more than that. In a few years, I bet five million people will be booting up their Macintoshes at least once a day. Well, let’s say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and that’s 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that’s probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you’ve saved a dozen lives.”

“That’s really worth it, don’t you think?”
— Steve Jobs, 1983