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247: Interview with Michael Thomsen, Director, Origin84

- Michael Thomsen, Director at Origin84, Proactive Support Professional, Sydney, Australia
Origin84 is an Apple-focussed technology consultancy based in Surry Hills, NSW.

Michael has spent over ten years of working professionally alongside the sales and service branches of Apple Australia. He has gained a deep understanding of the complexities and uniqueness of selling and supporting Apple branded equipment. 

After 8 years of independent consulting he founded Origin84 in 2015 to meet the opening in the Australian market for a mid size Apple focussed support and management consultancy. Over the past 12 months Origin84 has grown to be a premiere supplier of premium professional services in Australia to the advertising, marketing and banking sectors - or any company who rely on Macs to make their living. Origin84 has also been specifically sought out to work with a number of international and multinational clientele.

Topics:

-Joe remembers the kind gift that Michael gave us during the live ACEs show last year

-Home users are not part of Origin 84's business focus

-Requirements for ACNs outside of the US are different and some of those details come in to focus

-Australia has a small market and is heavily regulated and Michael gives us his thoughts and process

-Michael changed his model from ordering application licenses to having the client purchase, thereby adjusting risk/reward ratio.  It also empowers the client as opposed to you holding all the keys and a false sense of job security.

-As Jerry comments on Michaelā€™s keen business acumen, he talks about his influences

-An interesting discussion brews about putting profit first, then factor in all of your costs

-Sound advice about considering margins in your timing to allow for less stress on your team to get the job done right instead of worrying about the clock
Shaun Blanc - https://shawnblanc.net/margin/

-ā€œI donā€™t like apologizingā€.  Michael goes on to talk about not making mistakes, and thatā€™s where time comes in as a benefit for your engineers as well as the clients.

-Joe brings up the origin of the Origin 84 name (hereā€™s a hint, the year 1984 plays a role)

-A deeper dive about the ACN program not only outside of the United States, but what the ACN of the future will look like.

 

- "Whip-smart ideas and advice for businesses who earn a living with their Macs."
         -Michael Thomsen

Origin Eighty-Four PTY Limited
1 Ann Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW, 2010
Call: 1300 800 936

 

Here is an example of Origin84's unique vision of working with their customers

Here is an example of Origin84's unique vision of working with their customers

246: Let Go Of My Echo or Echo Location

Topics:

Will you be at ACEs 2018? Join us there & catch a live show!
Register Here:
https://acesconf.com/ccp

-Joe has some follow up on the Gmail Bcc mystery

-A talk about the latest ACN announcements, including the ACN Roadshow.  Joe will be attending in NYC on March 13th and Sam will be in Santa Monica on February 21st.

-Jerry has a very odd story about ordering an Echo for a customer via his Amazon account

-A macOS Server PSA from Joe - Apple Support article about changes coming in macOS Server

-Sam hasn't had a lot of affection for Airport Extremes but this latest issue with firewall settings and port forwarding not working doesn't give him the warm & fuzzies

-Jerry has an issue with a possibly bad Samsung Evo 850 and ends up replacing it within another with success
Etrecheck.com is a handy tool he has used to detect software & hardware problems on Macs

-Have you heard Jerry mention Occam's Razor on show's past.  Curious as to what the reference is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

-220/221 Volts Whatever it takes? - YouTube (Mr. Mom reference!)

-Joe attempts a pop quiz about Photos and the All Photos vs Photos view

-Sam has to secretly Google "how to pair Air Pods" while at a client

-While Jerry is on-site to work on a Synology, he is asked to assist with a problem iMac.  As it turned out, he was sending them Watchman alerts all along about a drive failure.

-Joe has some follow up on MacBook Pro uptime; MacBook Pro with slow wake from sleep after closing lid? Try restarting! Slow changing network interfaces? Try restarting!

-Encryption a Fusion drive with FileVault was proving to be a long and arduous process for Jerry.  Only periodically moving the mouse would force it to progress again.  Jerry found a free app called "Jiggler" to keep the mouse active periodically. 
http://www.sticksoftware.com/software/Jiggler.html
To see the status of the encryption process, he used this command:
diskutil cs list | grep ā€œConversion Progressā€ 

 

245: Updates & Followup Fiesta

Topics:

- High Sierra 10.13.3 was released today, which makes sense as Joe just updated his PsiTool drives yesterday. Also released were iOS 11.2.5, Safari updates for 10.11, 10.12, 10.13, and Security Update 2018-001. Note that security updates are padded to three digits... At the rate we're going, might Apple hit 100 security updates this year? That's one every three days!

- If you want to get emails from Apple about product security when updates are released, subscribe to the Security-announce list

-Jerry came to the rescue of a client who wanted to clean up her inbox.  He found that Google provides a URL to request missing emails:
https://support.google.com/mail/contact/missingemails

-Sam has been experiencing an issue where replying to a selected message in Apple Mail actually creates a reply to the incorrect message.  A similar issue has occurred to him in voicemails.  At this point Jerry thinks Sam needs to have his eyes checked.

-Jerry gives us an update on his virtual receptionists, Smith.ai as Sam is exploring similar options.  A natural progression would be a service that can not only answer calls, but support your clients like our recent sponsor, FLEXdesk

-In a recent support call with a client, Jerry finds that their MacBook Air had a failed SSD module. These situations can lead to having to explain the "why" to customers.  Sometimes hardware simply fails.

-New MacTech Pro events and cities have been announced!
http://pro.mactech.com/go/ccp/

-Sam has follow up on using Daylite with his business and finds some functionality that he wasn't aware of
http://www.daylitemac.com

-CCP Theater!  Jerry and Joe role play what you might encounter with new client calls

-Joe gives us an update on his new/used 2015 MacBook Pro.  He recounts an issue where the battery reports that it needs to be serviced and then changes to a "good" condition.  He reports an uptime of 31 ā€“ nay, 33 days. Joe and Sam remark that they don't recall having had more than 10 days of uptime with their MacBook Pro 2016 models, although Sam has had better stability lately.

-Joe also follows up about having used Migration Assistant to switch to his new, used (and apparently slightly bruised) MacBook Pro 15-inch 2015, and notes that Safari Extensions needed to be reinstalled, surprisingly. But at least VPN configurations were not an issue, unlike back in the days of Mavericks (and Yosemite too?)

-Jerry is very excited about an iOS app called Drafts, a note taking app with impressive functionality.  Drafts is $4.99 in the App Store
https://agiletortoise.com/drafts/

244: Victory From The Jaws Of Defeat

Topics:

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-This week we are proud to be sponsored by FLEXdesk, an offering from our friends at Rooted Consulting.  FLEXdesk - Help Desk support that grows with you

-Sam shares a story where a client has some confusion with hardware

-Social media and clients.  Do they mix? 

-Joe shares a story about a client calling and saying the keyboards were not working at their retail store so they couldn't check out customers. We walked through looking for a battery compartment or a way to plug them in, but they didn't seem to have any way to change batteries or charge them. Then Joe remembered that the Logitech keyboards are solar powered and wonders if something changed in the environment. Client said they recently replaced all the lights with energy efficient LEDs! Apparently the new LED lights are so efficient, they don't have any spare light to charge the keyboards (or more likely, they aren't the right wavelength of light to work with the solar panels).

-Sam talks about voice recognition when meeting someone in person

-After upgrading a hard drive on a 27" iMac, Sam realizes he needed to fix the hinge.  He found an excellent option from The Mac Hack. As it turns out, a site that Joe knows well.

-Joe investigates a situation where sent mail doesn't show in the client's Sent mailbox. Mail.app was configured to BCC the client on all emails, and Gmail was deleting the copy from his Sent when the copy in the Inbox was deleted.

-Sam recounts being at JFK Airport in New York City when the emergency alert system was used to warn of a water main break in the next terminal and wonders if iBeacon was used to alert only people in the airport.

Hawaii warning.jpg

-We discuss the recent false alarm in Hawaii which also used the emergency alert system, and while Joe can't help but introduce a conspiratorial angle, it was likely due to bad design. Perhaps Heinlein's Razor (or Hanlon's Razor) ā€“ "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" ā€“ applies here.

-followup on Episode 236: MacBook Pro - Turn Back Time re: Temp user can not be deleted. Joe noticed that when migrating to a clean install of 10.13.2, Migration Assistant prompts to re-enter some users' passwords. For non-admin users, it changes passwords to a temporary password (looks like one generated by Keychain Assistant) and then prompts the user to change it upon first login. Could this be related to the root login issue? And/or to Joeā€™s Temp user issue? Note the difference in behavior when using Reset Password vs. Change Password. Joe bets that it's related to the method of storing the password hash ā€“ maybe thereā€™s a less secure format for legacy accounts with longstanding passwords, which Apple has now deprecated?

243: Star Belly & Plain Belly Sneetches

Topics:

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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!

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-Jerry humbly shares a story of formatting the wrong drive while preparing new external installers and things to watch out for in APFS volumes when booted from HFS+

-Joe almost attempted a migration to Sierra from High Sierra when setting up Judy's new computer

sneetches.png

-Jerry compares HFS+ to APFS issues to the Dr. Seuss Sneetches

-Sam shares his latest experience with Daylite and how he has seen the power of the product.  Our own Jerry Zigmont can help!
http://www.daylitemac.com

 

-This leads into a further conversation about Daylite as a product and methods of integration

-Joe has frustrations about Microsoft's auto update.  It provides a perfect opportunity to discuss our friends at Addigy

-Jerry talks about some of his non-public facing websites to try and make things easier for his clients.  But as it turns out, it ends up creating frustration.

-The group compares MSP models and how they all operate slightly differently

-Joe was listening to the mac catalog and has some followup from episode 231: ā€œGrant BigLanik Easy Accessā€ re: Amazon Gift Cards: very annoying, resulted in having to use AirPlane Mode to finish a recipe for Curried Butternut Squash and Pear Soup on AllRecipes.com. (Joe misstated this as SimplyRecipes.com in the podcast. The Editor regrets the mistake.)
 

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242: Goals For 2018 With Weldon Dodd of Rewind Tech - Denver, CO

Topics:

WeldonDodd-sm.jpg

Weldon Dodd of Rewind Technology joins us for another episode
https://rewindtech.com

-Weldon asks the crew about New Year's resolutions and the conversation immediately delves into a discussion on Wi-Fi

-Eero is a recommendation Weldon has been using in a lot of residential environments.  Joe & Jerry have similar positive experiences:
https://eero.com

-Cisco Meraki is what Rewind Tech usually turns to for continued management of a network:
https://meraki.cisco.com

-Weldon discusses his 1, 3, 5, 7 plan (Software - every year, endpoint equipment (laptops) - 3, servers - 5 years, networking equipment - 7 years)

-Sam is starting to evaluate Daylite as a CRM and sees many possibilities for use within his organization.  Still, the discussion of a good old fashioned spreadsheet comes about.
https://daylitemac.com

-Weldon discusses the future of his training and MSP business as well as his role within the organization

-2018 goals for Weldon: creating and utilizing custom DEP deployment solutions since the future of imaging is changing. Ultimately he wants a great experience for the customer.  Here are some of the tools that he is looking into:

The ability to create macOS packages to deploy user accounts
https://github.com/gregneagle/pycreateuserpkg

DEP deployment tools:
https://github.com/Shufflepuck/SplashBuddy 
https://gitlab.com/Mactroll/DEPNotify
https://github.com/erikng/installapplications

-Tim Perfitt from Two Canoes discusses acquiring a new iMac Pro and the changes that come with it: https://twocanoes.com/secureboot-imac-pro/

-Another great resource mentioned from Scripting OS X called NetInstall Is Dead, Too: https://scriptingosx.com/2017/12/netinstall-is-dead-too/

-Weldon takes a few moments and acknowledges the fellow members of the Mac community

-Have a great 2018!