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

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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

402: Never Lose Your Trash Again!

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Topics:

Happy 400th episode!….2 episodes late.

• Joe dropped his iPhone 11 Pro Max. He ends up replacing it with a new iPhone 12 pro which leads into a group discussion about iPhone repairs and carriers

• He talks about the difficulties he had and the time it took when trying to get two carriers on his new phone. eSIM and physical SIM setup order is important!

• Sam sets up three separate Genius Bar appointments for his iPhone 11, Apple Watch series 3, and AirPod Pro issues. This leads into a second unexpected event that causes him to be locked out of his car.

• Pop quiz - What did Sam forget when he restored his iCloud backup to a new phone?

• The group speaks about being treated as a normal consumer when purchasing technology or speaking with customer service.

• Sam reveals his oversight with Google Authenticator.

• iCloud Drive presents a challenge to Jerry in an experience he had with a client losing a very important file in iCloud drive.

• Joe piggybacks off of Jerry’s story and talks about his client also losing data.

• Should you use the trash to store files? PsiMac may have an offering for you!

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396: FileVault Incrimination

Topics:

-Sam shares with us that he has been vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine.

-He volunteers with the local Emergency Response Team and was given the opportunity for early vaccination.

-Going back to tech, Joe has an issue related to his passwords in Safari hanging up the process. As he digs into the problem, he discovers an issue with his Keychain.

-Howard Oakley from one of our favorite sites, Eclectic Light Company (https://eclecticlight.co), guides him through the process of correcting issues with your Login Keychain.

-Sam shares a great little tidbit he learned from colleague Steve Leebove of Mac Rescue (https://macrescue.com). Holding down the Option key while clicking the Advanced button in Network Preferences reveals additional fields like Hidden or Shareable. But what are the grayed out networks that can only be seen while holding down Option?

-Another good one that Sam found was when attempting to access a backup DMG on a Synology and receives the message “resource temporarily unavailable”. Using the Synology widget for Connected Users, he was able to remove the sessions for that user and mount the DMG after that.

-And oldie but goodie. Joe talks about using Migration Assistant after Setup Assistant and configuring a user as opposed to doing it during. In addition, when going through Migration Assistant, wait for all the folder sizes to be calculated before proceeding with migration. He has a recent engagement with a client where this proved to still be the correct method.

-Sam’s last tip involves KEXT user approvals. When Turbo Boost Switcher Pro was not functioning properly in macOS Big Sur, he had to find a way to re-allow it. Here is the syntax pulled from https://www.rugarciap.com/faqs/: kmutil trigger-panic-medic --volume-root /Volumes/<YourVolumeName>.

-Joe talks about the Staged Extensions folder where these kernel extensions could live prior to approval.

-What is FileVault Disk incrimination?

328: I am Not My Brothers Printer

Topics:

-The band is back together!  

-Jerry discusses upgrading from the iPhone 7 Plus to the iPhone 11.  He is “whelmed”

-Sam & Joe still haven’t pulled the trigger on upgrades

-A little time is spent talking about the latest product releases.  The Always On feature of the watch isn’t blowing our socks off.

-Jerry’s 2015 MacBook Pro went sideways and he had to put his skills to work on his own hardware

-An old issue that Jerry experienced before was related to Automated Device Enrollment at Setup Assistant

-Sam ran into an intriguing conundrum with blog posts created by our friends at the TidBITS Content Network
https://tcn.tidbits.com

-Joe realizes that marketing is a part of his business that he needs to incorporate more

-The practice of sending using breached password combinations to gain access to secure information is called “Credential Stuffing”.  Jerry thinks Joe is talking about Thanksgiving

-Clients sending passwords via email is nothing new but Joe reveals how it can also lead to the client paying for time to have their consultant now change their credentials.  He also discusses how you as the consultant can be tied to this bad practice.

-Jerry shows up to a client site to do a hard drive upgrade on a Mac mini.  He heads into trouble when a keyboard he brings with him does not allow him to boot in to Target Disk Mode.

-He has another story at a client site where he was troubleshooting the wrong Brother printer

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287: Have You Tried Restarting?

Topics:

-A big thank you to Jonathan Mann for writing the new theme song for Command Control Power!
-A little bit about Jonathan Mann: A little bit about Jonathan Mann:
https://www.jonathanmann.net/
-Jonathan Mann writes a song a day. He holds the Guinness World Record for Most Consecutive Days Writing A Song.
Jonathan Mann, Song A Day - XOXO Festival (2014) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM4fGsyyWF0

-Joe has some follow up about clients trying to circumvent his company’s normal channels of communication

-The conversation diverges into the topic of managing your customers (and your employees)

-Cocktail party consulting

-Sam is able to keep a client but gives up the networking piece due to a situation of “too many cooks” working in conjunction with their A/V team

-It becomes a tricky game to play working with confused clients or those who can’t grasp the answers you give them

-A quick PSA from Sam about updating the Small Cubed Mail Act-On Plug-In for Apple Mail and messages in the Outbox that are scheduled for a future date

-TeamViewer versioning causes some grief as Joe is attempting to work with a client remotely

-Joe tries to avoid accidental eye contact at the random coffee shops he works out of. Jerry goes on a rant about Starbucks wait times and poor ventilation, not to mention the “boint” coffee. The rant calls to mind the days of Jackie Mason.

-Joe poses a question about secure erasing SSDs. It drives the conversation towards security, computers with T2 chips, and the concept of wiping in general. Apple has made a white paper available about the T2 Security Chip:
https://www.apple.com/mac/docs/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overview.pdf

284: When In Doubt, Whack The Plist

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Topics:

-Sam is at the Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) 2018. He discusses his time there and MDM concepts as a whole.

-While at JNUC, Sam spots a CCP shirt on a listener. Big shoutout to Chris Stout of Stout Computer Services

-Joe is Southeast of Sacramento, CA in Bakersfield. On the road, laundry is a luxury!

-Sam had the opportunity to watch a live recording the 100th episode of the Mac Admins Podcast

-To get into technical topics, Joe brings up a nagging issue he has been having with TeamViewer. After his own trials and tribulations, he has come up with a solution that should help others.

-The team also discusses other remote access tools like Bomgar, Splash Desktop, and Addigy

-An issue related to iTunes showing a phantom update when connecting an iOS device creates a head scratcher that didn’t appear to have an obvious fix

-Amongst the many issues Sam has had with his 2016 MacBook Pro, he finally has a resolution to his network lags when switching networks. HINT: go to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration

-Jerry is very happy with his Series 3 Watch with cellular and has some tips for using it without your iPhone nearby: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205547

-Joe seems to be alone with his phantom Time Machine alerts. Jerry and Sam consider taking him home.

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