July 26, 2022

474: My Clients Computer Guy

July 26, 2022/ Jerry Zigmont

For our “cold open,” listen in on our candid chat about the work that goes into producing a weekly show for nine years, how we share the workload, and what we hope to get back from our community.

We discuss the great response to our recent Patreon-only show with Tim Pearson.

Joe recaps some of the recent Patreon-only episodes that supporters have enjoyed recently, including Mistakes and Adventures in Billing, Rates & Service Offerings with Tim Pearson of CreativeTechs (mentioned above), an interview with Richard Wingfield of GObytes and Envision Design about productivity, organization, and time management, and an upcoming episode about client frustrations.

Jerry brings up email hosts and we discuss Microsoft 365 vs. other options like Fastmail, Rackspace, etc.

Joe describes an issue helping a client recover their Microsoft 365 hosted email account when the client-managed admin account was compromised and the recovery email address was changed to a non-existent email address.

Sam shares a personal story about someone near and dear to him being scammed and having funds taken.

How can we help guide clients to evaluate scams accurately?

Business idea that probably already exists: a website to forward your emails to in order to determine if it’s a scam. Could something like that work for phone calls too?

Wouldn’t it be great if we had stories to share with clients to motivate them to care more about their own online security? Send us your stories! We hope to see some of them in an upcoming TidBITS Content Network article. As Adam Engst says, “People respond better to narrative than nagging.”

Speaking of helping people understand the importance of security, Joe wants to remind listeners about honest.security (by our supporter Kolide) and the 5 Tenets of Honest Security.

July 19, 2022

473: Announcing the Mac Admins Foundation with Tom Bridge, Rich Trouton and Chris Dawe

July 19, 2022/ Jerry Zigmont

Congrats to the Mac Admins Foundation on their successful launch!

We were honored to be joined by several board members of the Mac Admins foundation including returning guests Tom Bridge and Rich Trouton, and new voice Chris Dawe.

The Mac Admins Slack workspace currently serves almost 50,000 members, with approximately 5,000 monthly active members. Beyond providing for the use of community tools like the Mac Admins Slack workspace, the mission of the Mac Admins Foundation is to foster connections, share and preserve knowledge, protect the the independence of the community, and maintain broad accessibility to all community resources.

Tom Bridge, Co-Chair

Tom Bridge is the Principal Product Manager for Apple Technologies at JumpCloud. He is also the producer of the Mac Admins Podcast. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Tiffany, their son Charlie, and large cat, Macro. Prior to joining JumpCloud, he was a partner at Technolutionary LLC, where he managed IT operations for more than 60 Mac-focused businesses, including the 9:30 Club, Arcadia, Navanti Group, and more.

Rich Trouton, Treasurer

Rich Trouton has been doing Macintosh system and server administration for over twenty years and has supported Macs in a number of different environments, including university, government, medical research, advertising and enterprise software development. His current position is at SAP, where he works with the rest of the Apple@SAP team to support SAP's Apple community. Rich has also written for Peachpit, Apress and MacTech Magazine on various ways to manage Apple devices.

Chris Dawe, Secretary

Chris Dawe is a consultant specializing in Apple technologies and networking. A partner in Seattle-area consultancy Wheelwrights, Chris manages systems for a variety of businesses, speaks regularly on industry topics such as Wi-Fi and IT management, and helps lead the Shadowy Cabal running the regional meetup group Apple Admins of Seattle and the Great Northwest.

Support Cmd Ctrl Pwr

Command Control Power has reached our 9th anniversary! We have been recording new episodes every week since June of 2013. We are very appreciative of our Patrons and over the next month or so, we are going to do something a little different to show our appreciation.

We will be airing new shows every week on the private Patreon feed. On the public show we will re-air a classic episode from our catalog of almost 500 episodes, along with the occasional new show. Become a Patron today for access to the freshest content, get a peek behind the scenes, and more candid conversations about running our businesses, dealing with clients and fixing tough technical issues.

July 12, 2022

Best Of CCP - 009: Welcome new members - part 1 2013

July 12, 2022/ Joe

Thank you to our VIP sponsors!

An extended water cooler chat with Jerry, Sam, and Joe, discussing issues facing new ACN members, featuring tips from seasoned pros.

Followup:

- Gary Hustwit, director of the Helvetica and Objectified documentaries tweeted that the correct pronunciation of Helvetica Neue is "noya"

- Command-Control-power "Have you tried restarting?" first generation shirts funded!

Topics:

- hybrid Managed Services offerings; Joe's "Tech Checkup", Sam's "Wellness Visits"; Jerry's offering periodic monthly maintenance to check backups, check disks, run updates; discounted rate when paying for six or twelve months in advance

- the advantages of sporting an Apple logo onsite and in public; whether or not to advertise on your car; great sources for logo merchandise aside from the ACN-direct options: Zuse, Queensboro

- Apple Professional Services; operating as an arm of Apple; how to get involved with APS? face time with Apple, building a reputation over time

- Francois Daumard, formerly heading up Mobile Technology Competency at Apple in the Apple Consultants Network, left Apple a couple of weeks ago to join Fiberlink, sellers of MaaS360, a cloud-based Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution

- Apple Remote Desktop frustrations; Jerry coins a phrase for dealing with the black screen of doom: "cleaning the windshield"

Memorable lines:

"There's just these big black chunks of blocks and you have to open up a new Finder window and drag it around to have it clean the windshield." – Jerry

Mentions:

- Passenger

July 05, 2022

Best Of CCP - 008: Live from ACN Advanced Camp in Austin, TX -2013

July 05, 2022/ Jerry Zigmont

Thank you to our VIP sponsors!

Topics:

Featuring Sam Valencia of HCS Technology Group, reporting live from Apple's ACN Advanced Camp in Austin, TX. Sam is joined by Jerry Zigmont of MacWorks and Joe Saponare of PsiMac.

With ACN Advanced Camp well underway, Sam got up early to share his experiences before another 12+ hour day of intensive mobile solutions training.

TOPICS

increase business in 2013 by offering Mobile Solutions
training provides essential experience with third party MDM solutions in addition to Apple's Profile Manager
social aspect of training conferences
partnering with ACN colleagues for real world experience; the strength of the ACN community; cooperating with the competition
cloud hosted MDM solutions vs. self-hosted
value of the Consultants Locator and ticking the Mobility checkbox with MTC Plus
value of the Apple Developer membership; early access to new releases
"lightbulb" moments
importance of wireless infrastructure in mobile device management solutions
MTC training led to a 30% jump in business for some consultants
keeping in touch with vendors
being Client 0
Atlanta beer vs. Austin beer
special considerations for cloud-based solutions
vendor support for third party mobile devices
did Sam spill the beans about secret features of Mavericks Server?

Thanks to everyone who listened to our live broadcast. We're looking forward to doing more of these in the future.

MENTIONS

Mass360 (@maas360), AirWatch (@airwatch), Mobile Iron (@mobileiron), Aerohive (@aerohive), Meraki (@meraki), Aruba (@arubanetworks), Craig Cohen (@ccohen), Arek Dreyer (@arekdreyer), Ben Greisler (@magikben), Allen Hancock (@ahancock), and Kim Manitt (@macdivas).