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214: Hiding In The Server Room or Where The Buffalo Roam

Topics:

Jerry shares a story about working on an older MacBook Air that takes an interesting turn

Old tricks for retrieving data from dead hard drives are discussed. Do you risk it or go right to Drive Savers?

Sam makes an attempt to restore a file for a client and takes some time to hide out in the server room when he can't find it

Jerry goes through a scare with a Buffalo NAS when at a client site and comes up with a creative solution:
Buffalo LinkStation Pro Duo 2-Bay 2 TB (2 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage LS-W2.0TGL/R1 https://www.amazon.com/Technology-LinkStation-Attached-LS-W2-0TGL-R1/dp/B001696ZXA

Paragon - ExtFS for Mac 11 - https://www.paragon-software.com/ufsdhome/extfs-mac/

ReclaiMe File Recovery Ultimate
to recover Windows and Linux PCs, Macs, and NASes - - http://www.reclaime.com

Working with multiple versions of software presents its challenges

Liquid spills and freezer tricks lead to a recent Apple development:

AppleCare+ for Mac now available:
MacBook Pro 13-inch: $269.00 (vs. $249 before?)
MacBook Pro 15-inch: $379.00
iMac: $169.00 (same as before!)
Get up to 3 years of accidental damage coverage and 24/7 expert telephone technical support from Apple, the people who know your Mac best.

The guys all have Late 2016 MacBook Pros and kick around the idea of upgrading to the latest model with Apple's hardware announcements

Use Etrecheck to search for legacy items that might be affecting your computer's performance:
https://www.etrecheck.com/

072: One-Factor Authentication

Recorded live on October 14, 2014

Many thanks to our sponsor this week, Watchman Monitoring. We're all big fans and very happy users of Watchman Monitoring. Sign up for your free trial: watchmanmonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

- thanks again to Thomas Reed of AdwareMedic for last week's interview!

- listener questions; @myklreinhart: "I'd love to hear your annoyances about 6+ before I go buy one. For example, one handed typing— is it as tough as made out?"

- Jerry reports on his everyday use of iPhone 6 Plus; points out one-handed keyboard for iOS 8

- the future of input methods: qwerty keyboards vs. whispering into cupped hands; or T9 predictive texting vs. QuickType; or how about purely predictive (Google Now)?

- death of Macworld/iWorld Conference & Expo; Jerry's beige PowerComputing box; recent end of Macworld print magazine

- Dropbox "breach" prompts another security discussion; reminder: Dropbox offers two factor authentication

BoxCryptor: folder-level or file-level encryption for your Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or OneDrive

- cursory "private cloud" discussion of options including Synology CloudStationCode42 SharePlanKerio SamePage, vs. Apple Snow Leopard Mavericks Server

- new Mac mini coming soon? it's been 721 days...

- Jerry gives us FLAC

 

067: Watch Me Do

Recorded live on September 9, 2014

This week, we're thrilled to be sponsored by Watchman Monitoring.  Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues.  When you sign up (and we know you will), be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to let us know and support the show!

Topics:

- Which Watch?

- iPhone 6 vs. iPhone 6 Plus? compare sizes to iPhone 5

- back pocket vs. front pocket?

- Sam's story of a client unplugging the backup hard drive from the server because they thought it was slowing the system down – should have had Watchman Monitoring installed, which can let you know if a drive is unmounted

- Joe moves his Drobo disk pack from old Drobo Gen 2 into new Drobo Gen 3 and realizes huge speed increase: 123.7 MB/s write & 171.9 MB/s read vs. 27 MB/s write & 24.6 MB/s read; Sam is already using his new Drobo Gen 3 as primary storage on his home server

- Software Update prompts to upgrade the Mac OS on a Server, which kills the Server: we consider this a bug!

- something goes wrong, end user flails, copies and pastes from forums, then finally calls you, the professional

Bender from Forget Computers automatically backs up server settings

 

060: Server, Services, and Such

Recorded on July 8, 2014, aired on July 22, 2014

Sponsored by Smile. Check out Smilesoftware.com for a great screencast from David Sparks about PDFPen for Mac, and to learn why you should use and recommend Smile's awesome software to your clients.

Still boots!

Topics

- MacBook Air torqued

- creative client interpretations of rates and service offerings

- Managed Services discussion; revisiting Easing into Managed Services

- Jerry recommends AJA System Test with the following settings: "MBytes/sec", File I/O API: Unix, "Round frame sizes to 4 KB", "Enable network volumes", Test: Disk Read/Write, Video Frame Size: 1920x1080 10-bit RGB, File Size: 1GB, "Disable file system cache"

- Jerry's legal firm successfully replaced Mac mini Server with Synology

- "working off the server" vs. copying files locally for editing and then copying back to server

- scheduled server restart to work around SMB service interruption? Sam suggests scheduling a launchd job to stop and then start SMB using serveradmin command

- Jerry recommends TP-LINK TL-WR710N 150Mbps Wireless N Mini Pocket Router with USB port for storage for streaming movies to iPad when traveling

056: A Bitcoin mine hiding in your server rack?

Recorded live on June 24, 2014

Sponsored by Smile, makers of PDFpen for iPad – a great way to grab a client's signature and finish a meeting with a signed contract, right on your iPad. Plus, it now has Transporter integration (along with Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and Box), so you can pick up the signed contract on your cloud of choice when you get back to your office. Listen to the show for a special offer for ACN members!

Show Notes

Thadd Weil, Public Relations Manager for Synology joins us for a live interview to discuss vulnerabilities in older versions of Synology's DiskStation Manager software, which were patched last year by Synology but made the news recently

Check out the ACN Alumni list at Google Groups, for current and former members of the Apple Consultants Network

Sam and Joe made a guest appearance on Thank You For Calling along with Peter Cohen and Stephen Hackett, hosted by Moisés Chiullan

Followup

Joe posted his Automator workflow to Export VPN Configurations