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553: The Mac at 40 With Chris Hawver, Tim Pearson, Ted Freitas & Steve Sorbo

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Celebrate 40 years of the Mac with Sam Valencia, Jerry Zigmont, and Joe Saponare, seasoned Apple Consultants Network members. These tech experts share 20+ years of experience through discussions on: solving tech support mysteries, hilarious client stories, and the Mac's impact on technology and culture. Joining them are Chris Hawver, Tim Pearson, Ted Freitas, and Steve Sorbo for a nostalgic journey.

552: Exploring Installomator with Isaac Ordonez of Mann Consulting

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Topics:

-Today we will cover Installomator - an excellent Github project originally designed by Armin Briegel, creator of scriptingosx.com and friend of the show.

-To help further that discussion, we welcome Isaac Ordonez, Director of Technology at Mann Consulting.

-Isaac handles a number of different instances and has a lot of experience in Installomator.

-He gives us the breakdown of how Installomator can benefit your fleet. Namely by helping to manage updates.

-Starting out in high school, Isaac has been managing Mac computers for a number of years.

-The days of imaging long behind him, he knew he needed an updated approach to package management and updating applications.

-Isaac talks about “recipes” and how Installomator finds application versions and can help deliver using an MDM.

-The benefit of running from something like Jamf is that the script doesn’t have to be at rest on the client workstation.

-The Installomator channel in the MacAdmins Slack is an incredible resource for support that Isaac contributes to.

-Big shout out to Adam Codega and SĂłren Theilgaard!

-Installomator has a print log function. Isaac takes advantage of that by writing all of his instances to a central log.

-They write their logs to Data Dog.

-Sam talks about how he leaned on SĂłren to assist with his first Installomator deployment.

-Jerry wants to know more about Swift Dialog.

-Forcing updates for App Store apps is unmanageable. When there are packaged versions, it helps to go that route with something like Installomator.

-If you need assistance getting Installomator off the ground and/or managing, reach out to Isaac’s team at Mann Consulting.

551: Triumphs, Twists, and Unexpected Joys

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Topics:

-We have recently completed our rates survey. Stay tuned for more information.

-Jerry wants to know what has changed about our businesses for the better.

-Recurring fees have been a tremendous change for him.

-He also purchases a 2023 Mac Mini to filter out his spam emails. He uses SpamSieve to filter out junk mail.

-MacAdmins Slack has a for sale channel.

-Jerry also uses the new Mac mini for home automation.

-Joe & Sam discuss their automations as well.

-For 2024, Sam has been leaning into automation (no reference to the above). Using tools like Setup Your Mac, coupled with a setup guide, has made new user setup virtually hands off for IT.

-Another great open source tool called SYM Helper has made the script configuration much, much easier.

-Joe has some excellent points about certain features that would be great to be a function of MDM and not things we have to find open source solutions for.

-Because of confusion of updates vs full version upgrades, Joe & Sam had to disable their Nudge update prompts.

-Sam had a real problem with AWS VPN on Sonoma that he could not sort out. Once he did, he packaged up the solution and placed it in Self Service for users to correct themselves.

-Joe mentions how he permanently closed his office.

-Joe uses a recovery company called Data Savers, which Jerry has never heard of.

-Both Jerry & Joe have affiliate sites for some of their partner programs. Sam needs to purchase some domains…