492: Lightening! Not the Connector

Topics:

-As a tree on Jerry’s property gets hit by lightening, he ends up down a rabbit hole of technical troubleshooting.

-He goes through various replacement equipment and testing. Two products he recommends:
Coaxial surge protector
Ethernet surge protector

-He quickly finds that even basic things like turning on/off lights is difficult without internet.

-A handy surge filter turns out to be a great, low cost option to protect from future lighting strikes.

-Good advice from Dave Provine about proper grounding.

-YouTube TV increases Joe’s monthly subscription cost. Except he finds that paying through Apple turns out to be the additional cost factor.

-Sam expresses his frustration at increasing streaming costs.

-After experiencing some client losses, Sam looks to manage company processes better. He finds his answer in Monday.com.

491: Who Am I?

Topics:

-Jerry deals with some complications when one of his clients opens a satellite office in another company’s space.

-Confusion arises when an A/V vendor Joe works with says his client mentions another “IT guy”.

-Be careful with warranty statuses for Ubiquiti purchases on Amazon.

-One of Sam’s clients receives a FUD newsletter from a competitor looking to solicit business.

-Apple software updates are continually problematic. But Joe talks about Addigy’s beta software update MDM command. He also talks about a GitHub project known as Nudge.

-S.U.P.E.R.M.A.N. is another popular software update Girhub project that has a bright future.

-An employee fired off an aggressive email chain with Sam over the weekend.

-App Updater is a useful tool that Joe has been testing and Jerry has been using for a while. Also discussed on an episode of MacGeekGab.

-Installomator is another incredibly useful GitHub app install tool by friend of the show, Armin Briegel of Scripting OS X.

-As Joe talks Ventura features, Jerry talks about the dangers of iCloud Shared Photo Library.

490: The Bicycle Thief

Topics:

-Sam has follow to his UniFi G4 Doorbell. Even after some great advice from Jerry and additional research, his answer was embarrassingly easy.

-Joe laments how the promise of the smart home in the 90’s still haven’t been met.

-He is also considering a doorbell camera for his complex that multiple neighbors could access.

-A client of Joe’s turned away cloud storage but instead has a 15 minute paid technically conversation.

-We talk about cloud solutions for personal and business use.

-Sam talks about Microsoft Sharepoint storage plans and how confusing it is. Joe has similar experiences.

-Jerry talks about Synology Drive as a cloud service.

-Follow up from an earlier conversation between Joe & Jerry about scrambling the jets every time a security update is announced.

-In a recent Scripting OS X newsletter, Joe talks about Rapid Security Responses, which are an interesting new security feature of macOS.

-We get into the little annoyances of how our customers operate their computers.

-Joe’s wish - a way for macOS to have a proactive restart when a system is overly taxed.

489: Status Clone

Topics:

-Sam talk more about is trip off the grid.

-On Joe’s recommendation, he got himself the Garmin InReach satellite phone.

-He talks about his quest for all 50 states.

-Joe brings up a major delay in voicemails coming through on iPhone. Sam is elated to hear it because it’s been happening to him for a long time. Jerry has seen this as well. They are all on AT&T…

-Helping friends and family with basic issues can be tricky at times.

-Joe recommends Omni Disk Sweeper to help find large files taking up space. Jerry talks of running as root to access otherwise inaccessible files.

-Jerry also mentions Grand Perspective. A big point he mentions is allowing Full Disk Access.

-One of Joe’s client found her Carbon Copy Cloner external volume and accidentally began working on the clone.

-Carbon Copy Cloner has some automation features that Jerry uses with his Synology. He especially loves running clones while recording the show.

-Joe talks about using a simple script with the tmutil command to resolve Time Machine issues. He also uses Addigy to deploy this to problematic computers.

-Jerry has a client that falls for the typical phishing scam, this time pretending to be Best Buy with the intent of giving her money.

488: Mouseposé

Topics:

-Joe recommends https://photosautomation.com for a multitude of automations, including voice control.

-He also created a series of AppleScript automator workflows to manage multiple Photos libraries.

-Managing multiple display screensavers - http://www.cs.uni-bremen.de/~zach/software/ArtSaver/index.html

-A great tip is the MonitorControl project to manage your external displays. Sam is very grateful.

-An external display that Joe likes is the DELL U2720Q which works over USB-C as well as an Apple TV screen on a second input using HDMI, with HomePod mini for audio.

-One last item is a great keyboard customizer for macOS: Karabiner-Elements. Joe used it to remap his F6 key.

-Sam recommends Miro to create visual collaboration tools. He used it to create a powerful presentation for a client.

-TextSniper is Jerry’s go-to tool to capture text. It’s incredibly useful and simpler than using the built in functionality of the OS to capture text.

-Sam had a troubling issue with a Synology connected to Active Directory. DNS servers were changed without alerting their team and the Synology could no longer display file share data since all permissions were tied to Active Directory.

-One of Joe’s clients calls him AFTER making changes to their VOiP system and needing emergency support.

-Joe received good feedback from Sam and others about using an M2 in clamshell mode. He can now make a more informed decision for a client.

-When setting up a new iPhone, Joe uses John Gruber’s tip to use the device to device transfer instead of iCloud backup. An important factor for this is porting over credentials stored in Keychain.

Best Of CCP- 059: Interview with Rich Trouton 2014