272: This Week In Home Improvement - TWIHI

Topics:

-The band is back together.   Joe, Jerry, and Sam align their schedules to play some of their hits.

-T2 and security discussions brew about the latest hardware changes

-Data recovery is of a concern, especially for the scores of home users that still don’t backup

-Jerry gives us an update on his home renovations as he broadcasts from his lap

-He is very keen on Sonos 2 equipment with Amazon Echo and AirPlay 2 integration

-Joe shares some of his frustrations working with a Sonos system recently

-Friend of the show, “Super Remie” has some follow up for Joe about his Safari issue when clicking on links will open in a minimized window

-Sharing in Jerry’s home improvement woes, Joe talks about working with a contractor to paint his condo. He draws parallels with our business models in the hourly vs project based pricing. 

-Within the same story line, he has a hard time with quality work from a highly rated contractor. Let’s just say that writing in ball point pen on a wall is probably not a good practice. 

-All of this leads to documenting specifics when creating a quote for work or monthly MSP

-Not to be outdone, Jerry has a story of a recent dishwasher installation that didn’t go exactly as planned

271: If You Think I Am Done, I Am Not

Topics:

-In a rarity, Joe and Sam are recording without Jerry

-Joe is in the state of Washington and they discuss the possibility of meeting up on the west coast

-With all of the security features and changes with new hardware, the guys discuss the need to get your hands on current hardware to make sure you as a consultant are familiar with changes in behavior.

-Sam has a saga to share about issues related to his own computer.  He spins a yarn to take listeners through every gory detail, including:

• Reinstall from recovery

• Using dscl to create users

• Recreating/deleting .AppleSetupDone

• Choosing Spanish as the language

• Recreating the user account

• Changed UID back to 501

• Deleted /var/folders/zz

-Sam wonders if Joe has realized that he had forgotten something in preparation for his trip

Patience is a virtue.  Or at least it's a learned skill in our business.  End users don't always know when to "wait it out" and let a process complete.

-Joe was having an issue importing contacts for a client and fields that were not supported in Exchange.  Another issue was making a contact listed by company instead of First Name/Last Name.

270: iMac Pro & T2 Madness

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Topics:

-Joe made it to Portland, Oregon and had the chance to hang out with friend of the show Kevin Ginger.  Sam is in Wakesha, WI

-As the show start time approaches, Sam runs into issues on his own computer. Joe wonders if it’s /var/folders. Why is this directory such a mystery to us?

-An iMac Pro comes to Joe’s workbench with strange problems with the Share menu. One method of troubleshooting was using the Recovery Partition and he ran into Secure Boot features:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208330

After attempting Apple Configurator 2 and not having success, Joe’s team contacted Apple. The suggestion was made for a full unit replacement. 

*Joe can see the future about future Mac computers with the T2 chip as this show was recorded prior to the recent 2018 MacBook Pro announcements
-Joe & Sam go down memory lane about the various models and how troubleshooting has changed

-Does Joe miss Touch ID on his MacBook Pro? Yes however he still had “Unlock with Apple Watch”. That is, until his Apple Watch decided to self destruct. 

-One of Sam’s clients had a need to change their default domain within Google’s G-Suite and he discusses the pitfalls of making those changes
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2622985?hl=en

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269: Waltzing Ma-tilde'

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up about his favorite keyboard shortcut, Command+Tab.  Jerry and Sam recall some of their favorites.

-As Jerry talks about using the Clipboard manager feature of one of his favorite apps, Alfred, Joe goes to his tin foil hat korner.  Sam realizes how terribly inefficient he is at times.

-Jerry amuses the group about how some clients will bang away on their keyboard or mouse thinking that more force will make the computer respond better

-As Jerry talks about a client invading his personal space, Sam is reminded of a Seinfeld episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGVSIkEi3mM

-Sam has a gripe of his own in working with Jamf Now recently and an app deployment taking an unexpected turn

-After the recent announcement of Apple's keyboard service program for certain models, Joe suggests QA testing in more realistic, dusty environments.

-After years of unprepared clients, Sam encounters a client akin to Superman who performed half of the work he was quoted to do

-Jerry has a PSA about Sandisk memory cards that may fail under intense workloads

-Dropbox seems to be a culprit for high CPU usage

-Joe has a photographer client that was looking to adjust his workflow to RAW and it had negative affects on the memory card

-Sam chuckles to himself as he is directing his staff how to work using the "fuzzy slipper method" that Jerry coined recently

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268: Peaves Or Gripes?

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

Topics:

-Joe has some questions about content caching and working with multiple WAN IP addresses.  Sam makes an attempt at discussing while on the road.

-Sam encounters an issue when attempting to download a full macOS High Sierra installer.  With content caching enabled on another computer, the App Store only downloaded a small 15 MB file.  Only when turning content caching off would it download the full installer.

-Jerry is in the midst of a remodel in his home office so he talks about the struggles of being uprooted and moving equipment

-He recommends theTP-Link PowerLine Adapters as a good alternative to ethernet when that’s not possible:https://amzn.to/2N6vX6P

-After Jerry was talking about how an Apple TV reset worked to correct issues, Joe suggests a change in our motto to “Have you tried resetting it?” 

-Joe recommends these fans he found on Amazon for spot cooling.  He specifically uses the AC Infinity Multifan
S2: https://amzn.to/2NcQhmP
S7: https://amzn.to/2uo5t8U

-Quick tip from Jerry about a client that took their Mac into the Apple Store and were told that it needed a new logic board.  He saves the day by unplugging the battery and the client is ecstatic that it turned on again.

-A reminder from Jerry to have your clients put reviews on Google or Yelp

-Joe has some Safari gripes to talk about.  At times, when clicking on a link in Apple Mail, it will open a new tab in one of his minimized windows in the Dock.  Jerry wonders if it’s more of a peeve than a gripe.

-Another annoyance is making exceptions to invalid certificates in https sites.  He also noticed that the password dialogue box is for the current logged in user’s credentials.  Sam thinks this is because it is placing an exception in the user’s keychain.  Jerry wonders if it’s a router’s config page with an expired certificate.  An older version of Firefox is the workaround.

-Joe attempts to hold Sam to his keychain thought and he cannot verify as he is careening down the highway at high speeds

-A connection to John Gruber and Daring Fireball - he declares the Menu Bar as the Mac’s greatest invention.  Joe says Command+Tab is the greatest keyboard invention.  Sam wonders what came first, Command+Tab or Windows key+Tab?

267: Microsoft Turd Polishing

Topics:

-Jerry mentions Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin's show, Back To Workon the 5by5 network, and we try our take on their "Odds and Sods" concept.

-One of Jerry’s clients, an architect, has issues with Dropbox and syncing symbolic links.  He offers a solution in the form of an application called Dropbox Any: https://www.sebthedev.com/macdropany 

-Jerry also calls out a Dropbox support article that describes performing a manual uninstall: https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/uninstall-dropbox 

-This same client has a debacle with an Aura drive and an experience where the Apple Store wiped the customer data!  

Article on third party SSD compatibility:
https://blog.macsales.com/42466-a-note-on-high-sierra-compatibility-with-third-party-ssds

-Sam has been working closely with a client to develop a proof of concept to roll out iPad Pro devices and finds challenges with the Microsoft Office products for iOS

-He has also had a very positive experience working with the business team and their measured approach when selling products to the customer

-Joe finds it funny that one of Sam’s solutions is to use Web Clips, an idea that Steve Jobs himself described as a “sweet solution” 11 years ago, a fact that John Gruber periodically jokes about

-In our “I should have known this” segment, Joe realizes while attempting to do a backup that he cannot backup using Time Machine to an APFS volume.  He also finds that he cannot encrypt a Time Machine destination after completing an initial backup.

-Jerry has some follow up from the 10,000 Songs on Four Wheels Show and using the “Fuzzy Slipper Method”, coined by Jerry himself.  He talks about needing WAN access when setting up a network for a customer in your office.

-Joe has a straight WAN port in his work bench area so he can truly setup a network for clients using unfiltered access

-Joe calls back to Dan Benjamin & Merlin Mann and how he used to listen to them constantly

-We had the pleasure of sitting in on Jeff Porten’s presentation at ACEs 2018 and he has a new book out in the Take Control Series.  The book is called “Take Control of Your Productivity” 
https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/productivity