453: The Case Of The Weeping Wall Wart

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Topics:

-After attempting some remote upgrades, Joe found himself in a difficult situation. Thanks to an article from Mr. Macintosh, he was able to get out of a jam.

-Addigy has a fix in their community scripts to correct this issue before upgrades are performed.

-As Sam contemplates a fully remote support solution, Jerry talks about the pain points of doing so.

-One of Sam’s clients encounters a strange copy/paste issue and he quizzes the crew.

-Long time friend of the show, Tim Nyberg talks about how removing excess files in /var/folders can actually improve computer performance as well.

-Sam remotely onboards a new customer and finds a user with a non-standard setup. He had to come up with a creative way to resolve the situation.

-An OG client of Sam’s has a “media cabinet” with some pretty old school equipment.

-Jerry had a “wall wart” that needed mounting in a basement. He uses some heavy duty velcro to keep it up on the wall.

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452: VPN For Clients

Topics:

-Jerry wants to know everyone’s take on VPNs. 

-iCloud Private Relay is another option that Joe will start to recommend as it comes out of beta. 

-One of Sam’s approaches is to suggest verbiage in employee agreements as opposed to enforcing technology. 

-More about iCloud Private Relay: About iCloud Private Relay - Apple Support

-Joe brings up valid concerns about using the office firewall as a VPN solution as it may not be scalable.

-Sam’s third party VPN of choice is NordVPN but he has some concerns about it now being in the App Store.

-Jerry wants everyone to use his affiliate links.

-As Sam’s daughter is applying to colleges, he is concerned about one institution’s practice in handling secure documents.

-As Jerry looks to migrate a client’s mail data, he finds that their current provider wont’ provide admin access, likely because they have multiple customers in the same portal.

-Password management and “credential stuffing” is an ongoing process for Joe’s customers. 

-It’s astonishing that some providers allow very insecure passwords.

-Props for TidBITS Content Network for providing incredibly useful content to provide to our customers for topics like password security.

-Keychain Password Manager “memorable” password feature is gone because it was a 32-bit function.

451: Blue Chip Mail Migrations

Topics:

-Jerry talks about using Rackspace for Microsoft 365 hosting. Somehow they don’t offer two factor authentication. 

-Jerry had a struggle migrating a family tenant of Microsoft to a business license. He used Power BI to get it done. 

-Joe ran into a gotcha with a migration and claiming a domain. 

-PowerShell is a knowledge that is a necessity at times. 

-Allowing users to be Global Admins could be dangerous due to how flippant they are with their own passwords. 

-There is a danger to managing a service if that service has issues. 

-Moving to new devices can cause an issue with Authenticator apps. 

-Google Chrome has an extension for scanning QR codes for two factor. 

-Joe talks browser recommendations and password management. 

-Safari has a nice password import feature. 

-CCP loves 1Password but there have been some hiccups in recent versions. 

450: Low Hanging Fruit & Slow Paying Clients

This week on Command Control Power, we are featuring a patron only show for our supporters. If you are already subscribed on Patreon, you will find this show in your private podcast feed. To sign up and get instant access to special features like this one and several other Patreon only episodes, visit us at our Patreon support page and become a patron. For our general audience, we are featuring a classic episode from our catalog of nearly 500 episodes. We hope you enjoy it.

449: Making More & Doing Less

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Topics:

-PsiMac was closed for the holiday break but Joe needed to be available for customers. He has to deal with a client billing issue. 

-Joe takes copious notes not only for his own team but for the benefit of the clients.

-With the amount of effort that goes into preparing some detailed quotes and projects, should the client be billed? Multiple options are kicked around. 

-Jerry comes up with an effective method that Sam will promptly take and make his own.

-“We have to respect our own time, even if our clients don’t.”

-It’s always tough handling billing for multiple quick emails from a customer.

-An old topic of billing for things like managed backups can be financially beneficial for a consultancy and technically beneficial for the customer. 

-Mike Bombich of Carbon Copy Cloner puts out a great product but also is a great help to the Mac community. 

-Jerry reached out for support with a drive that wouldn’t boot. A product that was kicked around and worked for Jerry, although not officially endorsed, is iBoySoft. Jerry’s situation had a positive outcome reviving an unmountable disk.

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448: Carving A Piece Of Marble With A Blunt Instrument

Topics:

-Joe talks about how log4j affected things like Backblaze and UniFi. 

-Sam shares how his UniFi Mac mini died and forced him to review his backup process. 

-Command Control Power has a new sponsor: We welcome Kolide! Visit kolide.com and honest.security to learn more. 

-A classic UniFi/Sonos issue plagued Joe at a particular client. 

-In Jerry’s Sonos situation, he first replaced the old Sonos Bridge products with the newer Sonos Amps. 

-Jerry opens a debate about iPad vs Mac as a main workstation. 

-A scary moment for Joe’s client turns into an easy win for Joe. Undo to the rescue. 

-A hug thank you to our newest community members! Thank you for your contributions to the show!