344: No Worries

Topics:

-Joe cracks one open to start the show

-Jerry & Joe discuss business at the start of the new year

-As a follow up to Joe’s recent client security issues, they talk about various pieces of advice that clients may or may not follow

-As things change, it does create work for our consultancies

-With Catalina, Migration Assistant has proven challenging as it can misreport successful migrations

-As Joe goes deeper into some Catalina war stories, Mail data loss becomes a bit of a nightmare

-The battle rages on over upgrading early and challenges persist

-Joe & Jerry take a stroll down memory lane in Mac history

-Joe reveals that Tim Nyberg, of The Mac Guys+ & patron of the show sent him a Macintosh SE30 to add to his Mac Museum

-Jerry has rave reviews about a product called Turbo Boot Switcher, recommended by Marco Arment.  He says it has done wonders to improve battery life on his MacBook Pro: https://www.rugarciap.com/turbo-boost-switcher-for-os-x/

-Mac Updater will scan your system to tell you which apps need updating: http://www.corecode.io

-As Jerry keeps the recommendations rolling, he talks about some great apps from Patrick Wardle, including knockknock & lulu: https://objective-see.com

-Jerry’s latest peeve is when clients respond with “no worries”

343: It Doggles The Mind

Topics:

-The boys are back in town (spread the word)

-Joe gives Jerry credit for an old Time Machine reference to turn off low priority throttle for a speedy backup 
http://osxdaily.com/2016/04/17/speed-up-time-machine-by-removing-low-process-priority-throttling/

-Joe has two clients in a short span that were victims of “hacking”

-In one instance, an Apple ID was stolen. In another, a transfer of 20k was almost completed by an evil doer 

-The common factor between the two was the user’s cellular number

-With SIM hijacking, an attacker can port your SIM to a new device or even to switch carriers

-Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter) was a victim of SIM hijacking https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/technology/sim-swap-jack-dorsey-hack.html

-The crew laments over all of these security concerns that surround us, and are astonished that people still don’t get it

-Joe’s other client, lost access to their business phone number. His carrier first required a police report 

-Joe has a theory that these events were planned during Apple’s holiday shutdown, since resources are thin 

-An incredibly important recommendation is to create a PIN for your cellular carrier as another layer of protection 

-Another tip is to not use your cellular phone as your two factor authentication. Rather use an Authenticator app o Google voice number.

-Samsung Pass’ presentation included icons from that were complete rip offs of Face ID & Touch ID
https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-copied-apple-face-id-touch-id-icon-ces-keynote-2020-1

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342: Armin Briegel of Scripting OS X - Moving To zsh

Topics:

-Armin Briegel from Scripting OS X https://scriptingosx.com joins us on Command Control Power!

-Armin is promoting his new book called “Moving to zsh”

-He recently presented at MacSysAdmin https://www.macsysadmin.se in Gothenburg, Sweden
You can find Armin’s and other presentation videos here: https://scriptingosx.com/2019/10/macsysadmin-session-videos/

-Armin’s career goes from Germany, to the United States and currently in The Netherlands.  During his career he had the opportunity to work for Apple.

-Before moving back to Europe, Armin was training his replacement when he was asked about books available to learn topics for the Mac.  This was one of the inspirations for writing his first book.

-Before “Moving to zsh, Armin wrote three other books:
Packaging for Apple Administrators: https://scriptingosx.com/packaging-for-apple-administrators/
-PropertyLists, Preferences and Profiles for Apple Administrators: https://scriptingosx.com/pr3-for-apple-administrators/
-macOS Installation: https://scriptingosx.com/macos-installation-for-apple-administrators/

-Upgrading a Mac to Catalina, 10.15 will result in your default shell remaining at bash

-If you create a new user, clean install the OS, or purchase a new computer, your default shell will be Z Shell

-Questions come up related to current commands and scripts and how they are affected by the change

-Sam lets it slip that he is now running Catalina on his production computer

-He discusses an issue with Reminders in Catalina and Joe talks of the Apple Mail data loss issues

-Sam asks Armin if we will see Erase All Contents and Settings in Catalina since we now have separate APFS containers for the OS & data, similar to iOS

-User enrollment is another new feature that is fascinating for features like enterprise wipe

-Erase & Install is a custom app that Armin wrote ((https://bitbucket.org/prowarehouse-nl/erase-install/), which gives the user a user interface that leverages startosinstall to wipe a computer.  In Europe, with GDPR, this provided a confirmation for a user that a business computer was wiped of personal data.

-Sign up for the Scripting OS X newsletter here: https://tinyletter.com/scriptingosx

341: Have A Mindful New Year

Topics:

-Joe has taken to using a journal, largely inspired by his epic road trip.  Joe uses the Day One app https://dayoneapp.com

-Sam agrees with the practice and talks of his long term journaling goals

-Sam Harris’ meditation app, Waking Up is another recommendation from Joe: https://wakingup.com

-We at Command Control Power wish everyone a happy. healthy (and mindful) new year!

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!

340: Scrooge McDuck Meets Marley's Ghost

Topics:

-A merry crimble to everyone!

-Jerry calls Sam Scrooge McDuck

-Alrhough timing is tough, Sam has to let an employee go

-A topic that is born out of this experience is “offboarding”

-Joe has some experience in this arena. He talks about some of the logistics and difficulties that comes with that. 

-that experience also caused Joe to tighten up his onboarding process 

-One of the concerns of releasing an employee is unemployment benefits 

-Does timing really matter that much?

-Business and friendship do not mix 

-Access for services and devices, while considered, needed to be re-evaluated 

-Sam has one thing to say about Joe’s shared contacts issue: DayliteMac.com

-Replacing the most employee is not on the immediate radar for HCS as of right now 

-Since answering calls was one part of Sam’s for employee’s job, he might now look at a virtual assistant service like smith.ai

-Subcontractors can be a good resource to fill company needs with less of a burden

-Data loss is a major topic that is a point of pride for the crew

-The team gets chummy about the support they have for each other

339: Client Gift Giving & More

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up about the HEViC files wreaking havoc and his photo screensaver.  After changing the screensaver, the files are no longer taking up a lot of space

-Sam & Jerry both use the Brooklyn screensaver from Github: https://github.com/pedrommcarrasco/Brooklyn

-Jerry wants to know what the guys are doing for client gifts for the holidays.  Joe & Sam’s answers: nada.

-What Jerry has been doing over the years is to send gift baskets to key people within his most valuable clients

-An important point that Jerry brings up is that once you start, it is very difficult to stop giving gifts each year.  Sam has a vendor story that is right along those lines.

-Getting back to tech, Joe has a client with intermittent wake from sleep issues.  His team did some bench testing to reproduce the issues, and they found this thread.  All 3 had people use the extension cord solution and it seemed to work for everyone:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/167291/suddenly-apple-wired-keyboard-not-working
https://www.zigpress.com/2014/12/30/has-your-apple-mac-external-usb-keyboard-stopped-working/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5470234

-Jerry has a story about a 21.5” iMac upgrade gone wrong and he gets salty when describing the details.  He was able to perform a repair offsite and save the day!

-Joe has some positive information to share about TeamViewer and how it handles modifier keys

-Sam was excited about TeamViewer coming to Synology and quickly installed the app, only to find that remote access is only available for TeamViewer for Windows:
https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/TeamViewer-IoT-Labs/IoT-Remote-AppControl-solution-and-Synology-NAS-boxes/td-p/33052
Please note that there are some known issues:

• Connections are currently only possible from TeamViewer 13.1 running on Windows.

• macOS, Linux or mobile clients are not supported.

-Joe talks about Sophos being upgraded to Sophos Home.  Jerry also has experience with ESET antivirus.

-To keep our Ubiquiti streak going, Joe discusses changing the wireless mesh uplink priority and how it can greatly improve the stability of a mesh network:
https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002262328-UniFi-UAP-Configuring-Wireless-Uplink#5

-On the flip side, Sam learned from Ubiquiti support that disabling wireless uplink should improve the stability of wired access points