🔒 Patreon Special

IT Pros: exclusive shows await you on Patreon, focusing on the more challenging aspects of running your practice and working with clients and employees.


462: Balanced Billing & The "Partner Plan" With Richard Wingfield Of Envision Design

Thank you to our VIP sponsors!

Topics:

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.

461: Let your Conscience Be your Guide

Topics:

-Joe is tired of being the help desk when Tim is out. 

-Sam has dreams about removing himself from the help desk ticket queue. 

-Sam’s new hire is working out well. 

-Developing guides for common user tasks has been tremendously helpful for Sam. 

-TextExpander is an invaluable tool that we all use. Joe has used it to create his own instructions for users. 

-In this week’s “I should have known this”, Sam realized that disabling the default account on Synology would break the Cloud Sync connection because the process is owned by that account. 

-Joe uses Backup Radar to stay on top of backup alerts. 

-The group discusses Synology’s C2 built in backup solution.

-Joe has been listening to a podcast by Sam Harris about how society relies on technology and how fragile it is. Bridgefy can be used for offline messaging in a scenario where 

-iPhone will be able to be used with satellite communications for emergency services in the future. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-30/apple-plans-to-add-satellite-features-to-iphones-for-emergencies

460: My Stupidity Makes You Smarter

Topics:

-Sam’s daughter lost her wallet but there was no AirTag or Tile used. 

-Joe talks about Chipolo, a third party vendor that works with the FindMy infrastructure. 

-Sam has a gripe about people that can’t read through an entire email. 

-One of Joe’s clients had a display issue that seemed to persist after a restart. 

-Jerry’s client insists on a visit for something that could have been done remotely. 

-Sam had to coach a fellow consultant on billing what he was worth. 

-Joe tests our knowledge of how to restart HomePod. 

-In this week’s episode of “I should have known this”, Joe talks about a Synology searching issue. 

-Jerry has a mother of “I should have known this” with a Ubiquiti update story. Enter cached updates. 

-Joe insists the Apple Studio Display should have built in Apple TV capabilities or, at least Airplay. Jerry is having none of it. 

459: Got Fiber?

Topics:

-Jerry expresses his frustration with clients at times.

-He also has difficulty chasing down customers who sign up for MSP service and do not make the time to install all of their tools.

-A good old previously mentioned marketing tool is placing a sticker on network equipment that is branded with your company contact information.

-Sam uses small asset tags with contact information that go on all devices.

-rackmount.it is an excellent custom rack mount equipment.

-One of Sam’s clients was unimpressed after his cable management work.

-Joe talks about raising his onsite rates.

-Joe has to do some convincing to get a client to get the right configuration of Synology and UniFi equipment.

-Optimum Online, a local ISP, is now providing fiber with Gigabit symmetrical speeds.

-Jerry also has fiber…

458: Interview with John O'Fallon of Maxum, Makers Of Rumpus

Thank you to our VIP sponsors!

Topics:

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.

457: In A Bit Of A Crisis

Topics:

-Joe discusses some of the new products released by Apple.

-All the latest announcements were immediately discussed in TidBITS Content Network newsletter.

-Josh Centers of TidBITS started a separate site called http://applebuyingadvice.com to help people make decisions on what products to purchase.

-Working with a long standing client where he used to be the “web master”, Joe recommends Squarespace for their updated website.

-One of Joe’s customers has a mac.com email address that did not seem to be able to receive mail any longer to anything but the new icloud.com address.

-Joe is frustrated about attempting to donate to UNICEF via Apple Music. Sam is surprised at making a live donation on air.

-Sam tries using a navigation app with some old friends with little success.

-Windows 365 is a cloud hosted version of Windows. Joe’s experience wasn’t so great.

-Dropbox issues a warning of compatibility with macOS 12.3: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/macos-12-monterey-support

-Sam issues a warning about using a configuration profile to set a password expiration on a local Mac account.

-MDM Live from Addigy get a big thumbs up from Joe.

-In looking into it, Sam sees some very interesting beta features like MDM Live and Flex Policies.

-One of Sam’s clients reaches out at odd hours of the night. This particular issue dealt with a failed upgrade attempt.

-We discuss what defines a crisis and cancellation policies.

-We take a moment to thank Nate Cinal of Scout IT for his thoughtful gifts to the crew.