511: Interview With Jon Brown, VP Of Technology & Cybersecurity at Interlaced.io

Topics:

-This week we welcome back long time supporter of the show, Jon Brown.

-Jon is Vice President of Technology and Cybersecurity at Interlaced.io and owner of Grove Technologies.

-He recently completely a merger with Interlaced.

-Last time Jon was on the show, he was still evaluating options for his direction of growth.

-He discusses how difficult it was finding the right fit as some companies wanted to “acqui-hire” him.

-More emphasis was placed on his specific value rather than he company.

-As Tom Bridge told Jon, owner/operators tend to be bad employees.

-Jon is still running the day to day operations of Grove Technologies.

-Grove is acquisition #2 for Interlaced.

-Merging tools and systems is proving to be a challenge.

-Business models differ during acquistions as well, which can also complicate things.

-Jon speaks about the stages of a merger and compares his to varying stages of greif.

-Learning to work as a team means having to let go of some of you thoughts of how to get things done.

-As Jon joined Interlaced, he rediscovered his passion for the actual technology side of things. Some of that was lost in being an owner/operator of a business.

-Joe wants to know more about using Apple Business Chat.

-Grove uses a tool called Heymarket for business text messaging.

-Group SMS is a feature PsiMac is looking for as well.

-Sam has ongoing concerns about chat features creating more of an immediate response expectation.

-Jon talks about rules and auto responders to account for some of those concerns.

-Interlaced adds a 24/7 support team for after hours support of Grove customers.

-We debate the differences/similarities of Apple Business Messages and Slack.

449: Making More & Doing Less

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Topics:

-PsiMac was closed for the holiday break but Joe needed to be available for customers. He has to deal with a client billing issue. 

-Joe takes copious notes not only for his own team but for the benefit of the clients.

-With the amount of effort that goes into preparing some detailed quotes and projects, should the client be billed? Multiple options are kicked around. 

-Jerry comes up with an effective method that Sam will promptly take and make his own.

-“We have to respect our own time, even if our clients don’t.”

-It’s always tough handling billing for multiple quick emails from a customer.

-An old topic of billing for things like managed backups can be financially beneficial for a consultancy and technically beneficial for the customer. 

-Mike Bombich of Carbon Copy Cloner puts out a great product but also is a great help to the Mac community. 

-Jerry reached out for support with a drive that wouldn’t boot. A product that was kicked around and worked for Jerry, although not officially endorsed, is iBoySoft. Jerry’s situation had a positive outcome reviving an unmountable disk.

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316: Wi-Fi On A Stick

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Topics:

-Sam has a first run working with the ”Wi-Fi on a stick” method of mapping out Wi-Fi. He uses a product from wifistand.com and NetSpot to create a map":
https://wifistand.com

-Joe brings up a great tool called Magic Plan to create floor plans on iOS:
https://www.magicplan.app/en/

-The nanoHD is a particular Ubiquiti model that same used and likes to deploy

-Joe warns of things to be aware of when scouting out an environment for Wi-Fi

-Another new monthly service that Sam is offering is hosting a UniFi controller in his environment to manage firmware updates and alerts. Joe weighs the responsibilities that comes with such an offering.

-Joe throws Sam a curve ball explaining how he has a singular login for his clients

-Another issue in the long line of networking troubles that Sam has experienced: finding incompatibility between a SonicWall and WAN connection at a NYC client. The fix? A dumb switch!

-That story rings a bell for Joe who has a similar story to tell about a Zywall and WAN connection that turned out to be a multi pronged problem.

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307: Don't Get Too Comfortable With This iPad

Topics:

-Joe starts off the show with some follow up and a PSA

-Long time friend of the show, Dave Provine helps clear up information regarding /private/var/db/fpsd/dvp.  Dave explains that those folders are in reference to the fairplay streaming daemon.

-Joe provides a PSA to the team about accessing a computer remotely when Apple Remote Desktop is running.  A simple checkbox in the preferences will allow this functionality.

-Joe shares some of the settings he enables for ARD for security, including storing credentials in keychain and encrypting network data.

-The remote discussion prompts further griping about TeamViewer

-Offboarding clients with remote access like TeamViewer is not always a challenge

-Sam goes on a rant about Apple IDs in a corporate environment and a lack of understanding on the client side

-Joe’s team has a process for migrations and he talks about the challenges he faces when clients have their own assumptions and expectations

-Migration Assistant has presented problems for Sam’s team so he asks for details on Joe’s method

-Finding Retrospect in a user’s StartupItems further solidifies Joe’s method for migrations

-Joe generously shares some of his procedures for migrating data

303: Guest Host Michael Thomsen of Origin84 with Viktor Glemme, Will O’Neal and Luis Giraldo

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Topics:

-This week we have a special guest host as Michael Thomsen takes the mic. Michael is the Director and Founder of Origin 84 - https://www.origin84.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjthomsen/

-Victor Glemme is a member of the Origin 84 team and he joins Michael in his hosting duties. Victor previously worked at Apple and Jamf and originally hails from Sweden
https://www.linkedin.com/in/glemme/

-Will O’Neal receives a call from Michael and talks about his business and the upcoming ACEs Conference.  Will owns Mid Atlantic Computer Solutions and is on the board of directors for the ACEs Conference - 4macsolutions.com

-ACEs Conference this year will be held in Kansas City, MO June 4-6
http://acesconf.com

-This year at ACEs Conference, they will focus on small groups and less speakers.  This new collaborative and mentoring format will be a welcome and exciting change to an already impactful conference.

-ACEs has its own Slack channel at acesconf.slack.com

-A yoga class will once again be at the start of the conference this year

-Kansas City has been chosen as a 5G test city.  Will and the team will attempt to work with Sprint to provide some demos for participants.

-In a bonus, LuisGiraldo also joins the Origin 74 team on the show
Luis Giraldo on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo/
ITGlue - https://www.itglue.com
Ook Enterprises - https://ook.co

-Luis gives us a quick history of his business life in Ook Enterprises and how he came to be at IT Glue

-Luis talks about meeting with his partners and setting goals for his business

-Monkey Box was developed to “scratch an itch” and he tells the story of how that brought him into the IT Glue family

-What is IT Glue exactly? It provides a structured way to create consistency, efficiency, and scalability by having a centralized IT documentation platform

-Luis gives a shout out to some great members of the Mac Admins community:

Tom Bridge and Chris Dawe on Wireless - http://macadmins.psu.edu/files/2017/07/psumac2017-154-A-System-Administrators-Fundamentals-of-Wi-Fi-or-Arguing-With-Physics-Section1-RF-Wi-Fi-Jargon-rgldvy.pdf
-Rich Trouton - http://derflounder.wordpress.com
-Charles Edge - http://krypted.com

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295: Change Up The Usual

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Topics:

-Jerry has some clients with MacPractice and he has some concerns with their recommendations for Dolly Drive. Joe chimes in on his experiences.

-Since Sam is relatively new to syncing Desktop & Documents to iCloud, he was looking for a way to stop specific subfolders from syncing to iCloud. He found that adding the suffix of .nosync to a folder would remove it from iCloud.

-On the heels of naming conventions discussions, Jerry has a client that named folders with all the special characters that tend to wreak havoc on an OS. He got the old line “it wasn’t a problem before” from the client.

-Sam’s client had what they thought was an issue with a UniFi mesh device. The answer was a lot more simple than expected.

-Whenever a client messes with DNS, it’s a recipe for disaster. And Jerry’s client was no exception.

-A need from one of Jerry’s friends turns into the discovery of a line of products from Ten One Design. He ends up getting his friend the Blockhead, which turns the Apple power brick sideways to the socket. Check them out for a variety of other ingenious products like the Stella or Wifi Porter.

-Listeners of Command Control Power can get a very generous 20% off their order by using the code “Command” at checkout.

-It’s the simple things. Joe shares a feature of the Amazon Prime app on iOS that just makes sense and he wonders why other video streaming apps don’t do this.

-Jerry recommends troypoint.com for use with an Amazon Fire Stick

-Joe has a new segment/corner/pop quiz called “Apple should have told us”. His story starts with a local iPhone encrypted backup with a lost backup password. Apple does have a knowledgeable article on this topic: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205220#help

-His wish for an RSS feed leads him to a lot of dead ends: apple.com/support/rss/intl/body.html, rss.support.apple.com, support.apple.com/rss, and just for fun: www.apple.com/support/home/index.html

-Thanks to Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys for mentioning a tax break for the tax year 2018 that may apply to your business: https://www.mileiq.com/blog/pass-through-tax-deduction/

-On a fun note, Jerry shares a funny ad for the Super Bowl from Stella Artois: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX8TMYRk6_w

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