225: Discussions By The Water Cooler

This episode is sponsored by Kalos Consulting, specialty recruiter and business partner of the Apple Consultants Network.

The Kalos team has over 20 years of combined experience in recruiting, and they made in a big splash in the IT space 18 months ago by becoming the only recruiter specializing in Apple’s FileMaker software. Kalos has since placed 17 developers in full-time roles, mostly with companies in the FileMaker Business Alliance. Good news travels fast, and Kalos was asked to extend its services to members of the Apple Consultants Network.

Their goal is to assist you in growing your business by finding the people you need to make that a reality. If your company specializes in Apple IT and you need help growing your team, or you’re an Apple consultant who wants to learn about new opportunities, give Kalos a call at 630.746.5626 for a free consultation. Find out more at KalosConsultingInc.com.

TOPICS:

- iPhone 6 Plus Replacement - Touch Disease 
http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-6-plus-touch-disease-what-is-it-and-what-can-i-do-2016-10

- Max Headroom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom
https://youtu.be/cYdpOjletnc

- Apple Magnetic Adapter Patent - USB-C To Magsafe
http://macs.ws/2h6oMAF

- Important changes to the Dropbox public folder
Effective September 1, 2017, Dropbox Plus and Business users can no longer render HTML content, and the Public folder and its sharing functionality have been disabled
https://www.dropbox.com/help/files-folders/public-folder

- Amazon Web Services - S3
https://aws.amazon.com

AWS Free Usage Tier*
As part of the AWS Free Usage Tier, you can get started with Amazon S3 for free. Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon S3 storage in the Standard Storage class, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15 GB of data transfer out each month for one year.

- Connected Data Transporter Private Cloud File Sync and Share Appliance, Named Computer Technology Review Most Valuable Product (MVP) 2015 Award Winner
http://macs.ws/2h8Gjov

Support for all of the consumer-class Transporters ended on September 01, 2017.
https://helper.nexsansupport.com/tfc_support

---

Thanks again to Kalos Consulting for sponsoring Command Control Power! 

If your company specializes in Apple IT and you need help growing your team, or you’re an Apple consultant who wants to learn about new opportunities, give Kalos a call at 630.746.5626 for a free consultation. Find out more at KalosConsultingInc.com.

224: Interview With Christopher Holmes of Rooted Consulting & HCS Technology Group

TOPICS:

Christopher Holmes of Rooted Consulting and HCS Technology Group
https://www.rootedconsulting.org/
Twitter: @josemocha
Instagram: @josemocha

Chris and Sam talk up Slack and using it internally

Sam going to set up a tent at a local festival as a new avenue to reach out to potential customers
http://www.seaport.org/

A discussion brews about keeping smaller clientele vs large entities that represent a large portion of your income

To sign or not to sign?  Sam contemplates whether signing a new client was the right fit

An opportunity arises where a PC consultancy wants to partner up

Chris talks about his company, Rooted Consulting and their help desk offering called Flex Desk

Hiring is forever on Sam’s mind…

Why is searching network volumes so difficult?

Easy Find vs Finder
http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

Chris brings up AFP going away in High Sierra https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/APFS_Guide/FAQ/FAQ.html

Preventing updates by clients.  The ongoing battle

iOS screen sharing?  TeamViewer says it’s coming in iOS 11!

https://www.teamviewer.com/en/features/ios-screen-sharing/

223: It's not you, it's me!

TOPICS:

Sam gets back from his European tour and gives us all the details

A potential crisis is averted at a large client while Sam is away

Sam puts out a call for an HP managed switch expert

HP Enterprise support is not a joyous experience for Sam

“Don’t we have people that can do this?” - Becoming a manager and keeping the tech

iCloud Photo Sharing goes “belly up” and Sam finds an interesting way to resolve it

Joe has his own iCloud Photo Library sync issue

An interesting situation for Sam when an AirPort Extreme will not allow outbound VPN connections

Sharing the detailed Unifi app with a client backfires on Sam

Joe has the age old problem of clients pinging him for freebies

Sam has trouble multitasking.  Joe has some answers.

Joe’s client emailed the wrong email address for PsiMac with surprising results

Taking it personal when your contact at a client leaves unexpectedly

uBlockorigin is a fascinating ad blocker - https://www.ublock.org

Joe forces Sam to reveal some recently unpleasant experiences with Windows

Sam goes through a tough negotiation pitching MSP to a legacy client

When your potential replacement seeks details about the client

https://www.patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

222: Flashback Followup, Tagging & More

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 details some followup on Flashback from Episode 220

• same issue happened again, but this time the user would log in, apps wouldn't open, but we could log out

• appeared to be user level; our admin user logged in fine

• removed Gruntwork, no change

• removed main user account, preserving home folder; recreated main user account; had been configured to auto login

• Could it be solved but deleting the Finder cache? https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5386679?start=0&tstart=0

-Jerry details his struggles replacing a Comcast EMTA ( embedded multimedia terminal adapter ) modem with an Xfinity branded modem/router to achieve faster speeds.

- Dan Monge - MacITPros.com
Workflow App - Create a List Of The Predefined Commands To Text To Smith.ai
https://smith.ai/blog/2016/03/sms-simpler-more-efficient-way-provide-real-time-s/

-Jerry discusses some of the consumer tech podcasts he listens to like:

• Mac Power Users - https://www.relay.fm/mpu

• Mac Geek Gab - https://www.macobserver.com/show/mac-geek-gab/

• Jason Snell & David Sparks - Free Agent - https://www.relay.fm/freeagents

• Tagging With Terptra - MacPower Users - https://www.relay.fm/mpu/390

Automatic filing with Hazel and Mavericks tags
http://brettterpstra.com/2013/12/20/automatic-filing-with-hazel-and-mavericks-tags/

Hazel - https://www.noodlesoft.com
GUI for Apple Scripting, Watch Folders, Filing, Actions, Renaming Tagging

Jason Snell & David Sparks - Free Agent - #26: A Batphone to My Heart
https://www.relay.fm/freeagents/26

- Smith.ai 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
 

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:

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.