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221: DMARC, Eero's & Toupee's

Topics:

- Joe discusses the problem with automatically forwarding mail in the era of DMARC and walks through an explanation from Kerio:

- You have a hosted Kerio email account, with a domain of clientname.com

- You have a forwarding rule configured to forward all email addressed to name@clientname.com to clientaddress@gmail.com

- Gmail enforces a DMARC policy

- Gmail sees the forwarded email as if they were coming from the original sender, e.g.: Facebook, PayPal, etc. etc.

- But the emails are NOT coming from the mailservers of those senders (e.g. mail.facebook.com, mail.paypal.com – fake examples), they are actually coming from the Kerio mail server (mail.itekmail.com)

- This triggers a failure of compliance with DMARC, since the sending mail server doesn't match the sending address.

- Unfortunately there isn't much we can do about this, other than use the main account (name@clientname.com), setting it up on a mail client of your choice, to avoid this problem.

- Joe and Jerry discuss Eero, and Joe explains the challenge of configuring an alternate subnet:

- Eero ad automatically assigned 192.168.7.1 subnet

- AV guy had static IPs manually assigned to two IR controllers

- had to use Advanced settings to hangs subnet to 10.0.0.0 (10.0.1.0 not an option; annoying because that's a common Apple one so this must be a common issue)

- tried to adjust starting IP to 10.0.0.1, subnet to 255.255.0.0, and ending IP to 10.0.1.254; didn't work

- after updating, allowed me to select 10.0.0.0 range and change it to 10.0.1.0 range, which worked

220: Joe's Hard Days Night

Topics:

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Managing Client Time: Jerry talks about assisting client looking to run FedEx Shipping Manger.  Parallels installation, Windows 10 and finally a failing FedEx Shipping Manager install.

Joe takes on his long days journey into night, performing Apple Security Updates on Late 2014 Retina 5K iMac and a 2013 Mac Pro, both running El Capitan 10.11.6. Security Update makes the Macs non-bootable.

Update: Stay tuned for a follow up about this issue!

Flashback to Episode 181: Solutions For The Apple Consultant / LSD- What A Long Strange Trip Its Been

- similar symptoms as before: custom app icons failing to show in the dock, generic app icons being shown in their place, same thing happening in Finder windows, folder listing taking minutes before even the contents of the Applications folder would display and even then only generic app icons, Spotlight having weird text overlay, general GUI rendering issues, and generic icon representing the result of a search for Terminal

- solution from the first "trip" didn't work (removing the contents of /private/var/folders/* and restarting), nor did Safe Boot, PRAM reset, SMC reset, reinstall of 10.11.6

- solution on the Mac Pro was boot to clone, use CCC to restore clone to internal SSD

- tried same solution on iMac, booted to clone just fine and used CCC to restore clone to internal SSD, but then it got into a "boot loop" where it would show Apple logo and brief progress bar, then back screen, then reboot and show Apple logo, and repeat

- reinstalled 10.11.6 on iMac internal SSD after restoring the clone, and it worked

- "Just Say No" to updates? Bonus: Are Acid Flashbacks A Myth?

Plus:

Sam takes us through his on site installation of Ubiquiti UniFi hardware and we compare vs. Eero Pro and AirPort Extreme.

Joe discusses setup of Cannon Printer using buggy built in software.

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219: Nobody Beats The Wiz

TOPICS:

  • Jerry & Joe revisit Circle by Disney - https://meetcircle.com . An issue issue with a test device still sending messages even after it was reset.

Circle Go https://meetcircle.com/circle-go/ - "works anywhere" has lowerd its subscription price to $4.99 per month for up to 10 devices

  • Joe discusses offering to upload and merge client photos as a service.Her references an original Macworld article about using iCloud Photo Library to merge photo libraries; and a newer article .
    Jerry talks about using iPhoto Library Manager and PowerPhotos from

  • Joe wheels and deals with his cable provider, Optimum for faster broadband rates.

    Joe contacts Verizon to add a second static IP to cellular SIM for free. PEP Wave device automatically acquired the static IP and reconnected, amazingly; doubled cellular data from 8GB to 16GB+2GB free for $5 more per month; can switch to business plan when using more than 5 lines, with discounts starting around 8%;

    Joe contacts AT&T to drop an old iPad line that was costing $10 per month; spoke with retention department and was offered 20GB data for same price as previous 10GB price; they offered to send free Samsung Galaxy Classic Watch (retail: $350) for free to use the with iPad line in the interest of keeping the line active; no commitment or contract; I can set up the watch and then if I don't like it I can keep it, give it away, or sell it and still cancel the line with no penalty; wonder what they'll offer me when I call back to cancel it a second time!

  • Jerry talks about his first failure with a Samsung EVO 850 SSD. The drive tested fine with an open source tool https://www.smartmontools.org along with other more familiar utilities.

  • - Joe chats about a recent upgrade To SoftRAID 5.6 that will support running a SMART test on both USB and FireWire disks.

OS 10 SAT Smart Driver -https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver

-A big thank you to all of our Patreon sponsors!

-A big thank you to all of our Patreon sponsors!

218: Apple TV & Smith.ai - Virtual Receptionists

TOPICS:

  • Jerry discusses his experience running IOS 11 Beta

  • Joe chats about his frustration with Apple TV screen saver and its inability to use iCloud Photo Library albums, e.g. Favorites etc. They show in the interface to select My Photos as the source, but there is no Set as Screensaver button as there is within Shared Albums. The only way to do this is to use a Shared Album? This seems to be a longstanding bug/limitation in tvOS.

  • A long discussion about virtual receptionist services and Jerry's first hand experience using Smith.ai for the last sixty days.

    "Smith is a superior call answering service for small businesses and individuals. Our virtual receptionists help you build better relationships with new and existing customers."

    Pricing begins at $50 per month - http://smith.ai/web/pricing/

    Start your new Smith account today, with a, FREE 30-day/10-call trial covering 9am-9pm EST.

    Mention MacWorks when you signup for your trial or Command-Control-Power

  • Finally! No more annoying robocalls and telemarketers.- Nomorobo

217: On the Road: Not The Original Scroll

TOPICS:

  • Followup: Listener Jimmy Obomsawin • jimmymacsupport.com wrote in to provide additional information regrading changing the email address associated with your Apple I.D.

  • Jerry Talks about his recent European travels

  • Using USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports and adapters on your Mac notebook https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204360
    MacBook supports Target Disk Mode over USB-C, but you need a special "full-featured" (data/sync) USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 USB-C Cable cable. (Remember the days when all Apple products were “full featured"?)

  • Discussion and Rave Review Of The Tom Bihn "Synaspe 19" Backpack
    https://www.tombihn.com/collections/laptop-bags/products/synapse-19?variant=17391738631

    "The Synapse 19 is a carefully calculated, supremely organized backpack, designed for day hiking, everyday carry, and ultralight travel. Its graceful, curvilinear exterior may on first blush look like something akin to sculpture, but in truth it is simply the judicious realization of ultimate utility. No mesh pockets clutter the exterior of this bag, nor extraneous straps festoon it; in it, you'll be able to carry more than you would imagine, and no one will be the wiser."

    https://www.tombihn.com/collections/laptop-bags/products/synapse-19?variant=17391738631

216: The Hokey Pokey

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:

  • Joe talks about slow systems that have not been upgraded.

  • Joe offers a PSA: it's not possible to create an iCloud.com email address beginning with a number, but the Mac doesn't specify the error when it fails for this reason. Thankfully, the error message was specified on the iPhone. Also, there's a limit of three iCloud accounts created per device from a Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

  • Joe talks about building a Frankenstein MacBook Pro that needed the firmware password reset. Mac EFI Reset Tool to the rescue!

  • Jerry mentions delaminating screens and Staingate.

  • Joe mentions yet another PSA about it being impossible to turn off two-factor on some Apple IDs created in iOS 10.3 or macOS 10.12.4.

  • Sam talks about a VMWare Fusion issue, resolved by turning off the floppy drive... in 2017?!

  • We compare the movie Inception to connecting remotely into a Mac running a virtual machine.

  • Sam follows up about logging into any standard user from the login window by using the admin account.

  • We discuss client confusion when setting up Touch ID. Locating the Touch ID sensor behind the screen (a possibility recently discussed on Accidental Tech Podcast) might make this much more clear for clients.

  • Sam discusses feeling like one of his clients – sitting with his Mac in front of the TV, his Mac became haunted... tune in to find out how he exorcised the daemons.

  • Joe wonders what listeners are recommending for antivirus.

  • Joe discusses issues he's seen with malware such as Linky Search changing the homepage in Safari and making it difficult to change or reset.

  • Jerry and Joe discuss the remote power switch capabilities of WattBox and the OvrC app. Thanks to listener Ryan Grimes for the great recommendation!

  • Joe outlines his network failover configuration: main router fails over to WAN2 if WAN1 is down for a few minutes. WattBox power cycles both WAN 1 and WAN 2 modems if WAN still down a couple more minutes. The Cable Modem and Cellular Modem reboot if search engines are unreachable. The Router reboots if search engines and the router are unreachable. (Time Capsule reboots weekly.)