187: "Merry Crimble!"

Recorded live on December 23, 2016

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

- 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!

Gruntwork is the ultimate managed service package for you and your clients. "Think of what you would do when trying to solve a user’s support request: run a disk verification utility. Run permission repair. Update the affected software to the latest version. With Gruntwork, those chores have already been accomplished. Your time spent troubleshooting issues is greatly reduced when the common maladies are already ruled out. Better yet, Gruntwork prevents many common problems, so the Mac just works and you can focus on higher level tasks for your client." 

Find out more at - http://mac-msp.com/gruntwork and tell them CCP sent you.

ACES CONFERENCE 2017
Phoenix, Arizona | May 31-June 1, 2017
ACEs Conference- https://acesconf.com/  is the industry-leading event for growing your IT consulting company. With unique, premium content delivered by world-class speakers, ACEs is THE place for inspiration, ideas, business networking, and instantly-applicable knowledge. It’s no surprise that our attendees continue coming year after year—just one ACEs and you’ll be sold.

Many of us IT professionals are in business because of our innate skills as technologists. ACEs Conference was conceived to help us grow our businesses in every other way. From management and operations tools to sales and growth opportunities and strategies, ACEs will leave you inspired, reinvigorated and equipped to take your business to the next level.

- Enjoy Command Control Power and want more commercial free programs? Please visit our Patreon Page where you can support Command Control Power and help us bring you more commercial free programming.

186: Interview With Dennis Nolan - Cirrus Partners, LLC

Recorded  Sometime In November 2016

Joe and Jerry welcome Dennis Nolan of Cirrus Partners, LLC to the show to talk about his successful managed service practice.

Dennis Nolan is the founder of Cirrus Partners, a 12 year old Madison WI based, Apple IT support business. With a team of 4 talented professionals, they provide managed services and solutions to leading businesses in the southern Wisconsin market. 

Previously Dennis had owned and operated a commercial photography business for 18 years in Austin TX, Minneapolis and finally Madison. Combining creative approaches with a technical skill set has always been his strong suit. His previous work experience has taken him around the globe working in various countries and cultures. From Istanbul with a small Turkish man walking up and down his back in a 300 year old bathhouse to sharing a campfire with the Marlboro Man, his life experiences help shape the creativity and effectiveness of Cirrus Partners' solutions for their clients.

Dennis and his team can be reached at sayhi@gocirrus.com.

- Enjoy Command Control Power and want more commercial free programs? Please visit our Patreon Page where you can support Command Control Power and help us bring you more commercial free programming

185: Live Show "We're Not Geeks To The House"

A favorite iOS app for Joe & Jerry, Panic's Status Board has been discontinued - https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/

Joe follows up about his new MacBook Pro speeds, diving deeper into Apple Mail plug-ins, indexing & high CPU usage.  How long has he been migrating?  Jerry shows his sympathy with similar tales of woe.

Thanks to Tom Bridge for pointing Joe in the right direction with some helpful links for dealing with the Console in macOS Sierra
-https://eclecticlight.co/2016/09/29/welcome-to-macos-sierras-new-console-its-buried-in-terminal/
-https://eclecticlight.co/2016/10/01/using-the-logs-in-sierra-some-practical-tips/

Joe goes into detail about troubleshooting /var/folders, building on a helpful link sent to us by listener Dave Provine
-http://www.magnusviri.com/OS_X_Admin/what-is-var-folders.html

Sam brings back an age old discussion about billing clients for things like conference calls, as well as deciding when it is appropriate not to bill.  Did somebody say managed services?

184: New MacBook Pro Observations -Be Fun All The Time

- Joe's setup: MacBook Pro USB C connected to OWC USB-C Dock: connected to Gigabit Ethernet and two USB devices (speakers and iPad charger). Also powers MacBook Pro. Includes USB-C port on dock, to which I intended to connect AllSmartLife USB C Type to Mini DisplayPort adapter, but it doesn't work when plugged into the dock (but does work when plugged directly into Mac).

- OWC is accepting pre-orders for OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock which adds mini DisplayPort built-in, as well as FW800 and digital audio out.

- Joe observes: Touch ID on the new MacBook is great, and perhaps worth the difference in price vs. the "MacBook Escape" but it doesn't seem to know about Standard users. It prompts for Touch ID when system needs admin authentication, even though I run as a Standard user and my admin account isn't yet set up for Touch ID. 1Password integration is great.

- Joe observes: Touch Bar is a bit distracting, but maybe it's based on the way I type. It keeps changing from text formatting to word suggestions because I have a habit of selecting and deselecting blocks of text when I'm typing and editing.

Rocket - Quick launcher for Touch Bar

Thanks for your support – it keeps us going!

183: I.T. Rehab

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:

- Sam shares a story about a non-profit client who erased their main storage drive when directed by Seagate phone support to reformat the backup and selected the wrong hard drive.  The story inadvertently turns into a therapy session for Sam.  Jerry then coins the term "The Valencia Technique".

- we all know about /var/db/.AppleSetupDone; anyone heard of .AppleUpgrade or .AppleLaunchMigration? Joe discusses an interesting troubleshooting case on an iMac running Sierra

- Circle with Disney (oddly a square device) connects to a network to monitor and allow/deny network traffic based on limits set by parents.  Joe has his introductory experience with this device and explains what he has learned so far.
https://meetcircle.com/

182: Tell Me About The Cloud

Recorded  November 15, 2016

Jerry revisits thin iMac upgrades and procedures.  He offers some “pro tips” based on his experiences and what he has learned from Sam’s mistakes.  He highly recommends the Anker USB 3.0 to SATA 3ft Converter Adapter Cable:
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Converter-Adapter-Cable-included/dp/B005B3VO24

Jerry and Joe discuss an interesting special consideration when upgrading a 13-inch MacBook Pro 2011: see OWC's original blog post and followup; Joe has had good luck using OWC's thermal sensor cable in all iMacs since 2009; we've previously used SSD Fan Control with good results, but generally prefer a hardware solution.

Jerry recounts a Contacts issue he was having with iCloud and third party contact syncing.  He uses the opportunity to quiz the CCP crew on the issue. 

Sam is currently struggling with an issue related to syncing his own calendar data ever since upgrading to Sierra.

Joe has a tough go trying to watch Netflix on his Apple TV and airs his frustrations.

After cloning, Jerry hits an odd issue with Apple Remote Desktop refusing to launch:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/30474023#30474023