Command Control Power

Apple's New OS Beta Program: Jerry Zigmont Quoted in CRN New Article: Is Apple's Free OS X Beta A Sign Of Big Changes? Watchman Monitoring - https://www.watchmanmonitoring.com Discussion On Watchman Monitoring Mac Monitoring Software - "Watchman Monitoring alerts you when your end-users' computers develop common issues such as failing hard drives and stale backups to more urgent issues ..." Information From Watchman For ACN Members MacTech Conferences - Link To Discounted Events & Free MacTech Subscription "Zendesk is a beautiful, lightweight help desk solution" - http://www.zendesk.com Installing Mini Server Without A Monitor http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5390 LightSpeed issues LightSpeed is the premier next gen retail Point of Sale system for Mac - http://www.lightspeedretail.com The Gambler - Kenny Roger Saying "No" To Clients http://commandcontrolpower.com/podcast/2013/7/18/008-clients-in-the-cloud Find us on Twiiter Command-Control-Power @CmdCtrlpwr Sam Valencia @UID501 Joe Saponare @PsiMacLLC Jerry Zigmont @MacWorksLLC

- Joe discusses his own personal with his iPhone 5 battery drain and the article for troubleshooting by a former Apple Genius - The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain — Overthought Sam has used iFunBox to remove unwanted files from his clients IOS devices. PhoneView from eCamm is recommended and Jerry has used PhoneClean from iMobie. - Creating email signatures and client frustration. Chungwa Soft's - Graffiti Email Signature Plugin for Apple Mail Jerry used Joe Workman's Blog post from a few years ago to create his signature - Joe's Blog Reference to HBO's new series Silicon Valley and a great t-shirt "I Know HTML" - t-shirt - Joe makes progress troubleshooting a clients email issues How to send an email via telnet - blog post by Drew Moris - Mavericks Server Caching Service - Great overview from Krypted A discussion about turning Software Updates on or off - PowerMac G4 to Mac mini - Team Viewer For Mac and PC - Team Viewer Free Option join.me from LogMeIn - what's your fastest SpeedTest? - SpeedOf.Me HTML5 speed test recommended by Kevin Ginger; no Flash or Java required - uninstall Flash Player in Safari for better full screen experience with multi-screen in Mavericks; YouTube's HTML5 player performs better than Flash will less CPU impact; in full screen mode using the Flash Player in Safari on Mavericks - fit-Headless recommended by Michael Reinhart to solve "black screen" issues in screen sharing connections

- Jerry's Heartbleed email response and password changing using 1Password; comparison to Dashlane - Jerry's client with a confusing email address - AOL accounts frequently being compromised lately; AOL servers rejecting some messages temporarily; Joe's anecdote about a client changing his AOL password from a four-letter name to something slightly more secure - Sam's 40-iPad deployment - scripting PDFpen to generate PDFs; see "Imprint All Pages With Text" script included with PDFPen for Mac as a starting point - Sam signed his first Managed Services client! - including proactive monitoring using Watchman Monitoring in a Managed Services agreement; see also: Allen's Sample Agreement - Joe signed his first subscription clients using MoonClerk - 10.9.3 Beta Access - Pebble is finally really good now; Apple's wearable coming soon? - Dyn.com discontinuing free Dynamic DNS service; no-ip offers a replacement service - Joe's SMB Terror: for every machine on the network, configure: Login Items, Dock aliases, Documents aliases, other file/folder aliases (for each find kind:alias in This Mac, show original, show original, check connection, locate file on afp share, fix alias), Finder sidebar favorites, Keychains, Go: Connect to Server recents and server favorites - disable Bonjour service advertisements on the Mavericks server using this command: defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder ProgramArguments -array "/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder" "-launchd" "-NoMulticastAdvertisements" see also: Apple's KB article - disable SMB on shares not accessed from Windows machines

- Heartbleed; more resources: Heartbleed Hit List, Bruce Schneier, Ars Technica, CloudFlare, NetCraft - Windows XP End of Life; Laplink PCmover ($60) can help migrate from Windows XP; to keep XP machines running or not? - referring clients to the Apple Store and asking them to drop your name; providing written recommendations for clients to take into the store; introducing a client to a representative in the store - iNet, great network scanning utility recommended by Joe

- ARQ recommended by Jerry for backing up to Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier - ZyWALL USG50 recommended by Joe for site-to-site VPN tunnels, very stable router - “cool” clients - dealing with semi-technical “inside guys” at clients: “don’t open the box”; work from a checklist; “ don’t touch the server” and “don’t touch the network” - Ubiquiti PicoStation recommended by Jerry for extending wireless networks outdoors or to another building - Migration Assistant woes: Plan A, Migration Assistant, hung with less than a minute remaining; Plan B, Carbon Copy Cloner, detected I/O errors; Plan C, restore from Time Machine backup, worked like a charm - Jerry called it: Migration Assistant was failing due to bad blocks on the source machine - recommendation before starting Migration Assistant: fully update source machine, verify disk partition map and file system, rebuild disk directory, and check for bad blocks

044: Tales from Decrypt

Topics: - Ryan’s comparison of Mac mini w/Thunderbolt RAID storage vs. Synology 1513+: Part 1 & Part 2 - How to set up CrashPlan Cloud Backup headless on a Synology NAS - CloudStation - Plex - complications from Apple changing default connection method for Mac servers to SMB when using Bonjour - MineCraft server - DHCP, DNS, VPN services - Surveillance Station - how to find the "Performa 600" among Synology’s huge product lineup - live demo of DSM 5.0 - cleaning up after non-certified fly-by-nights (“Anger Work”)

- offering clients "self service" options through CasperSuite or RobotCloud - building a "book of service" to work toward an exit plan for your consultancy; building something of value; getting acquired - the benefits of talking about your service offerings to get comfortable pitching them to clients - the fact is, servers should be managed proactively to ensure reliability, and Managed Services is a natural way to provide proactive services, billed automatically on a monthly basis consistent with the way services are rendered - with Mission Critical services, the consultant takes on a psychological burden to ensure that the services keep working; Managed Services makes it equitable for the consultant

- using half-day and full-day rates to discourage "tire-kickers" and very infrequent break-fix clients, helping to position Managed Services as a better alternative - should a Managed Services Provider include Help Desk services? end-user training? value-adds vs. just keeping the systems running - transitioning from "one-man-show" to managed services consultancy; see also: CCP 013: Easing into Managed Services with Allen Hancock and 010: Managed Services discussion with Luis Giraldo - developing systems for consistency, standardization to improve efficiency - Quantifying the Value of Managed Services blog post by Luis - "first 15 minutes free for $_/mo" is a good first step; relieves burden bulk hours - business clients are more efficient billing-wise, and from the perspective of delivering value - residential clients are higher-maintenance, higher-touch, more-demanding, and less efficient - yet, Allen points out that residential clients can be more satisfying to work with, and when charging hourly it doesn't matter because they all pay the same rate - enforcing the use of a help desk ticketing system - user training: why should users use your ticketing system? - reminding clients to restart

- timing vacations as extended weekends instead of full weeks to minimize downtime - teaming up with local consultants for backup coverage; filtering incoming requests in your absence - away messages and advance notice for clients; why shake the hornet's nest? - SendLater plugin - going off the grid for a day... or nine… I took nine. - subcontractor rates; professional courtesies - SIMporium.com - representing the contracting company, or generically Apple, or explaining the coverage arrangement between the consultants to the client - sharing secure notes with trusted partner consultants; e.g. MonkeyBox.com - monitoring client machines with Watchman Monitoring - the importance of comprehensive documentation

- Joe asks and answers: what is the "J" that appears in some emails? (J is a smiley face in the WingDings font) - Joe wonders why some people include an extra "P" at the bottom of some emails, i.e. "P Please consider the environment before printing this email" (the P is supposed to be a nice forest scene in the WebDings font) - Jerry reports being able to receive email using Mail.app in Mavericks version 10.9.2. - Apple's Goto Fail SSL bug: strategies for proactively notifying clients; timing of updates; test your system at gotofail.com - Sam's Mavericks 101 class "aha moments" - Sam recommends Revise IT training app by Amsys - security concerns about Target Disk Mode and resetpassword utility on Recovery partition - Jerry, Sam, and our live listeners offer Joe some ideas about what to do when Time Capsule fills up - Joe offers a tip: temporarily "promote" clients to VIP in order to receive notifications when they email you back about something pertinent, for example when coordinating a time to meet, or if you want to know immediately when a client confirms you should proceed with some work

- Jerry receives a call from the brother of Samantha West - Joe recommends the SanDisk Extreme 64 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive for diagnostic drives because it's extremely fast and reliable; SanDisk finally announced a fast 128 GB version: SanDisk Extreme PRO® USB 3.0 Flash Drive; some non-spammy reviews from Tom's Hardware and The Wirecutter - use FileWave Lightning to automate creating our diagnostic partitions? - Sam recommends the Skooba Design Cable Stable DLX, originally recommended by Ryan Powell in the chat - Sam explores TeenSafe for iOS security and parental controls; see also OpenDNS, Intego Family Protector, and SpectorSoft

- recurring payment processing options: Ryan said, "jotform.com for cheap forms with Stripe recurring payments" and Allen said "keep the card with Merchant Warehouse; stripe will do this on its own; or recurly.com" - serving on the ACN Advisory Council as a way to get more involved and give back to the community - Printers going off-line and needing to be power cycled - why kernel_task sometimes pegs the CPU at 100% or more: seems to be related to throttling CPU intensive tasks to cool the system down when it's too warm by prioritizing simpler system tasks - re: recent discussion on Accidental Tech Podcast about pitfalls in modern technology that our kids will think were crazy: no one mentioned passwords!

- testing Mavericks server; being client 0 - using Profile Manager to easily configure CalDAV, CardDAV, VPN services; Sam's trick to save a profile without a user name - the trial and error of troubleshooting a server leads to uncertainty - using authrestart to bypass FileVault 2 on next restart; installing software updates that require a restart now does this automatically - force quitting fsck to allow mounting a drive that was failing to mount, even read-only, after letting fsck complete - using the "security" command to read the contents of the user's keychain

Intro: - Sam's friend's lost iPhone - 1Password's great security audit feature - Mat Honan's epic hack - solving the password problem - MonkeyBox - Apple's two-step verification -- Topics: - Robot Cloud is built on JAMF Software Casper Suite, customized for multi-tenant use, designed for Mac/iOS management; working closely with JAMF since early 2007 - Robot Cloud has been available as a product since 2013 and is designed for 1-100 seats - Forget Computers employs 13 people, 10 full time, all but two are technical - DeviceScout is offered as an add-on for consultants who already have a JSS (JAMF Software Server) - Inventory & Alerts (JAMF "recon" + added alerting and ZenDesk integration via Support Menu app) @ $5/month/device - Policies (automated patching, advanced troubleshooting) @ $10/month/device - Ben's background in consulting: worked as a creative at an ad agency, de facto IT person there; started as a team of 1 in 1998 as Digital Logic, then rebranded as Forget Computers; ACN since 2001; merged with another company in 2005, and attempted to integrate the two companies without success; left with two other consultants at the end of 2005, rebirth of Forget Computers, based in Chicago - more about Security, Certificates, Network Requirements, etc.