293: It's A Dream Come True, But Not Without Its Challenges

Topics:

-Jerry gets beat up on social media for his browsing habits

-TidBITS is having a membership drive! Please join us in supporting TidBITS so they can continue to well written, relevant Apple focused content.  https://tidbits.com/membership/benefits/

-Sam had to turn his back on his Mac recently because his 2016 MacBook Pro had to be sent in for repair under the keyboard repair program.  He reported very positive results overall.  A couple of things he missed were related to not syncing Desktop & Documents to iCloud and some websites not displaying as expected in iOS.

-Inevitably, the conversation steers towards Joe’s “janky” 15” MacBook Pro and the built-in cooling vent.  He also talks about the repair performed in office, thanks to tools and guides from iFixIt.

-Jerry comes up with a new Command Control Power drinking games

-Joe specced a new MacBook Air for a client, who had almost 500GB of data. On the MacBook Air, this necessitates a $1000 upgrade to 1.5TB SSD. For comparison, he specced a MacBook Pro 13-inch Touch Bar & Touch ID with 1TB SSD (16GB memory in both) and found that the price was exactly the same: $2599. The MacBook Pro has the Touch Bar and much better performance, but for the same price the MacBook Air has better battery life and portability, more storage as configured and no Touch Bar which might be benefit to some people. So it comes down to trade-offs. See Gruber's take and the video comparison he linked to by Quinn Nelson

-Joe’s tip of the week: earn Apple Gift Cards on the Barclaycard Visa® Signature with Apple Rewards. 3 points per dollar on all purchases made at Apple or iTunes, 2 points per dollar on restaurant purchases, and 1 point per dollar on all other purchases

-Hazel by Noodlesoft is a product recommended by Jerry to create rules for folders.  For instance, Jerry has a folder on his Desktop of his Mac that can do OCR, specifically with PDFs.  He uses that along with PDF Pro from Smile Software.

-Joe gets giddy when talking about Automator and AppleScript.  He talks up using AppleScript to manage his status board at his office, where he posts photos of his adventures with Ashleigh.  Jerry is concerned about how his staff reacts to Joe living the high life while they are at work.

-Joe revisits his clients issue with the Share menu on an iMac Pro: the Share menu would appear, but it would be frozen, and the only way to dismiss would be to quit the app in question. At long last, the problem is solved. Joe shares the exciting conclusion.

-Joe shares the solution to his longtime issue logging into sites with untrusted self-signed certificates. The message would show "This Connection Is Not Private" and you could click Show Details, then click Visit this Website, which would prompt for the login password. However, then it tries to reload the page and the same thing happens (This Connection Is Not Private...). Solution: use Private Browsing. This seems to solve the issue in the future, even when visiting a site in a normal browsing session i.e. without Private Browsing.

-Not to bring the show down, Sam shares two stories of how his company and two separate clients parted ways.  Both for different reasons but it led to a rough start to 2019.  The team discusses the breakups and the benefit of ridding yourself of bad relationships before they bring you further down.

291: There's No School Like The Old School

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Topics:

-Back from the holiday, Joe, Jerry, & Sam had a chance to meet up in the real world

-Jerry can name all three wise men but Joe & Sam draw blanks

-Joe “re-learns” a lesson about taking a red-eye across the country

-Surprisingly, nobody received any tech for the holidays but Jerry purchased a Sonos subwoofer for himself and has a new interest in the Amazon Fire Stick

-Jerry may need to update his TV to match all his audio tech. In that discussion comes about the old remote controls, like the one Sam used growing up…

-New Year’s Resolutions:
Joe - Going back to basics and focus on the fundamentals (ie. billing out as efficiently as possible, migrating more clients to managed services). On the personal side, developing a routine while living nomadically.
Sam - Would like to travel less for both business and personal reasons. On the business end, it makes it difficult to run if he is not always there to attend meetings or give directives. On the personal side, he would like to attend more events for the children.
Jerry - He is interested in growing his business and increasing revenue

-Jerry also has a plan to be organized moving forward and it includes the use of DayOne, an Apple friendly journaling app. DayOne can collect notes, images, audio recordings in journal entries and help organize your life and business.

-Joe shares his thoughts about how malware appears to be a more persistent problem with client devices.

-Jerry talks about using that term and clarifying between various naming conventions (malware, adware, virus, worm, etc.)

-This all leads to an issue Joe was having with a persistent Safari homepage that would not change back. As it turns out, a security feature from Apple disallowing “synthetic clicks” was not allowing Joe to resolve this issue remotely. Thanks to Patrick Fergus (@foigus) on Slack for the assistance.

-Sam brings back the MDM conversation when talking about how Apple is providing ways to be more preventative from a security standpoint.

-Joe & Jerry have similar issues with built in applications not running correctly on older operating systems

-Sam shares a new beta feature from Slack shared to him by Patreon sponsor Chad Swarthout. Slack gives you the ability to federate between multiple Slack teams:
https://slackhq.com/introducing-shared-channels-where-you-can-work-with-anyone-in-slack

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!

290: Gary Crimble & Merry Rudolph

289: Deep Thoughts

Topics:

-Sam shares his thoughts on seeing a fellow customer at a local diner and what his business and life might be like

-Sam’s story reminds Joe of a time when the two of them used to get together for their breakfast meetings

-After being around a long time, old clients seem to find their way back around

-What kind of stance should be taken when clients don’t follow your recommendations?

-A possible client that Sam is negotiating with is being severely under-billed by their current tech company. This causes a challenge for HCS to quote the job.

-As Joe says, we compete on value not price. And Sam loves when potential clients are shopping around and don’t go with him at first. Then they come back around after dealing with a “cheaper” solution.

-Sam shares deep thoughts about chance meetings, life decisions, and how the show has changed his life and his business.

-”I should have known this”: Sam sheepishly shares how he was not aware of being able to easily move the cursor on the screen on an iOS device

-At a network installation for a client, Joe notices a distance issue with PoE access points and how the speeds vary.

-After dealing with a variety of Ubiquiti products, Joe has a good deal of information to share. Within that same discussion, billing for managing alerts, updates, etc. for this equipment has come front of mind for Sam.

-Adam Karneboge of macOS Support Essentials fame, reminds Sam that the name of the show violates Apple’s Style Guide

288: Shoehorns, Straight Jackets & Ducktape

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Topics:

-Jerry gets Joe to talk about the challenges of working remotely and the fun of TeamViewer

-Presentation is everything: Joe also discusses how to relay his time away to a client

-Listener Tim Hannon wrote in to present some good use cases for the new Mac Mini

-Post show, Sam shares a link about the secret world of the Mac Mini: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/the-secret-world-of-mac-mini/

-One of Jerry’s clients has a frustrating time with an iMac that would spontaneously reboot

-Going down memory lane, the crew shares old and odd client stories

-More feedback from listener Tim Hannon in response to Joe’s issue - Time Machine reporting unable to backup but upon remote session, the next attempt completes. Tim references eclecticlight.co:
https://eclecticlight.co/tag/consolation/ - unified log in Mojave and earlier
https://eclecticlightdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/runt2m2.zip - RunT2M2 – runs T2M2 as root to enable assessment of Time Machine when in normal user mode

-Jerry has a peeve, a tip, and a case to be made:

-Jerry’s peeve: Mobile data list on iOS not alphabetized (Joe provides the answer - it is based on data consumption)

-Jerry’s tip: Using TidBITS Content Network for social media

-Jerry’s case to be made: Using texting in your business for efficiency (business number, not cell phone). Joe counters because replying on the business line is not as simple.

Thank you to all of our Patreon sponsors!

287: Have You Tried Restarting?

Topics:

-A big thank you to Jonathan Mann for writing the new theme song for Command Control Power!
-A little bit about Jonathan Mann: A little bit about Jonathan Mann:
https://www.jonathanmann.net/
-Jonathan Mann writes a song a day. He holds the Guinness World Record for Most Consecutive Days Writing A Song.
Jonathan Mann, Song A Day - XOXO Festival (2014) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM4fGsyyWF0

-Joe has some follow up about clients trying to circumvent his company’s normal channels of communication

-The conversation diverges into the topic of managing your customers (and your employees)

-Cocktail party consulting

-Sam is able to keep a client but gives up the networking piece due to a situation of “too many cooks” working in conjunction with their A/V team

-It becomes a tricky game to play working with confused clients or those who can’t grasp the answers you give them

-A quick PSA from Sam about updating the Small Cubed Mail Act-On Plug-In for Apple Mail and messages in the Outbox that are scheduled for a future date

-TeamViewer versioning causes some grief as Joe is attempting to work with a client remotely

-Joe tries to avoid accidental eye contact at the random coffee shops he works out of. Jerry goes on a rant about Starbucks wait times and poor ventilation, not to mention the “boint” coffee. The rant calls to mind the days of Jackie Mason.

-Joe poses a question about secure erasing SSDs. It drives the conversation towards security, computers with T2 chips, and the concept of wiping in general. Apple has made a white paper available about the T2 Security Chip:
https://www.apple.com/mac/docs/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overview.pdf