🔒 Patreon Special

IT Pros: exclusive shows await you on Patreon, focusing on the more challenging aspects of running your practice and working with clients and employees.


207: "Live" Updating Your Credit Card At The Apple Store

Topics:

Patreon sponsorship is changing

Jerry comes up with a new way for the show to raise money

Our next live show will be at ACEs 2017

Joe has some follow up about Circle with Disney

A discussion brews about virtual & live answering services:
Call Ruby

Sam proctored the Support Essentials exam for Joe & his employees. How did they all do?

We learn even more about Joe's extensive staff

Sam describes an odd permissions issue with Microsoft Office 2016 and an SMB share on macOS Server

Joe has seen some issues with Sophos Home that have affected his client's web browsing experiences

Some follow up for Sam who had strange DNS entries on his computer

Jerry had recent interactions with the always supportive staff at Carbon Copy Cloner

Synology had an issue recently with DSM Update that caused issues for some of their NAS devices

An unfortunate miscommunication caused a mixup for one of Sam's clients 

Remote support isn't all its cracked up to be, as Joe reminds us

Elevation Lab created the Battery Pro, a combo iPhone & Apple Watch charger

Thanks to all of our Patrons!

204: PSI Tools & NAS Storage With Kevin Ginger

Topics:

Joe talks up his PsiTool and the benefits of keeping up to date external volumes as a diagnostics drive.  He also discusses his use of SoftRAID

To no surprise, Carbon Copy Cloner comes up in the methods of creating the PsiTools partitions
https://bombich.com

Highly recommended: SanDisk SDCZ880-256G-G46 Extreme PRO 256GB USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive
http://amzn.to/2oonKjm

Jerry gives us a run down of Volitans Software, used by Watchman Monitoring: https://www.volitans-software.com

We get the history behind Joe's company name!

Kevin Ginger (@kginger_cons) joins us for the second half of the show!

Diving right in, the group discusses Kevin's recommendations on QNAP & Synology

QNAP, Inc. - Network Attached Storage (NAS)
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/model.php?II=233
-TVS-1282T :: QNAP
-TVS-x82T Thunderbolt 2 NAS supports tiered storage, application-based partitioning and network traffic distribution, provides DAS/NAS/ iSCSI SAN triple solution, and enables 4K 60 fps video transfer and display.

Kevin also had the opportunity to speak at MacTech Pro Seattle in March.  Command Control Sponsor is a proud media sponsor of MacTech Pro Events.  Look for it at a city near you:
http://pro.mactech.com/go/ccp/

Sharing a war story, Kevin goes into what happens when your main storage device fails

If nothing more it provides opportunity to tell other clients what can happen if you don't plan for the worst

Kevin will be returning to Aces Conference this year, where we will be holding our special live show.  There is still time to join us and be a part of it!  Click the link below to find out more and register:

 

200: Not So - Off The Rails!

Topics:

-PsiMac is hiring! Judy offers up details about a full time consulting position at their Norwalk, CT office.

-Jerry, Joe & Sam get together for a rare in person show to celebrate 200 episodes and it goes...well it goes ok. We would like to thank our good friend Tom Bridge for putting us in touch with James Smith.  James was instrumental in making the show sound listenable after a very rough recording (it gets better about 20 minutes in).

-Jerry serenades the group and the audience at the opening of the show

-The team discusses a pre-show Google Hangout experience with some of our dedicated listeners

-A little reminiscing and trips down memory lane about the show's humble beginnings

-Down to business, Jerry goes in to a story about Gmail and Outlook 2011 security settings

-A dialogue opens up about cellular carriers and their plans.  And how to avoid higher chargers.

IMG_8947.jpg

-Sam's daughter helps the CCP crew ring in show 200 with a batch of cupcakes

-Don't forget to join us at Aces Conference this year, where we will hold a very special live show!
www.acesconf.com

-Sam got hot under the collar dealing with a client's poor planning and working with another vendor

-One of Joe's show ideas, "Residential Roundtable" gets a conversation going

-After Joe brings up another show idea, Sam's back on the couch to talk about the need for office space.  Joe offers up some of his experiences in his years in his own space.

-Admin or no admin? That topic comes up again as a point of focus for the next hire in a small business.

-Access to our back catalog will now only be available to our Patreon sponsors.  Please take a moment to visit our Patreon site and consider contributing to the show.  Thanks for listening!

 

197: Free Cheese, Aces Conference & Dogs

Topics:

-Sam leads off with some very exciting news about his business

-Office or no office.  Joe poses the question and reviews some of the pitfalls as well.

-Some follow up from Sam regarding a client resistant to monthly billing

-"The router guy" reaches back out and Sam sees an opportunity for a Ubiquiti solution

-Join us for ACES Conference in May of this year.  Use the coupon code "command" to receive 10% off the current ticket price!

-Consider a VIP session with Mike Michalowicz to learn how to deal with client reluctance to give referrals, the "cringe factor" when your phone rings, working with other vendors.

-The ongoing dilemma of dealing with clients that don't pay on time

-Some follow up from Joe about changing the email address for an Apple ID.  Jimmy Obomsawin (@jimmymacsupport) gives a tip about how to work through the issue if you are stuck with a device using the old address.

-Sam has his moment to use his Apple expertise to assist a traveler on line with a digital boarding pass issue.

-Friend of the show, Matthew Waples (@waples) graciously hosts Sam at a local watering hole in Dallas.

-Extra credit: Some amusing client dog stories get kicked around.

196: Phil Schilmer Calls Apple Support

- We're sponsored this week by:

Watchman Monitoring, a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

You can visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show! 

Topics:

-Jerry records an encounter with an organization claiming to be Apple support.  "Phil Schilmer" takes the bait.

-After receiving a routing call to setup Windows in Bootcamp, Jerry has some hurdles.
Set up a Windows partition on your Mac: 

-Joe puts a call out to non-ACN listeners to hear your story.  Email or tweet us!

-Sam has a client struggling to understand the value of his MSP model.

-Needing to provide employee monitoring for a client, Jerry researches and reports on ActivTrak

-Services like CrashPlan provide cloud based backup, but what about when it's time to restore?  Jerry has to suffer through that slow process.

-Why do end users close the TeamViewer Quick Support window after giving credentials?

-The CCP crew discusses the pros and cons of selling used equipment on eBay.  Jerry tries to organize a tech tag sale.

-Jerry and Sam work together over the weekend to correct an issue with Rumpus running on macOS Server 5. 
http://www.maxum.com/Rumpus/Blog/OSXServer5Conflicts.html

-Refer back to Episode 079 to hear all about Rumpus from its creator, John O'Fallon of Maxum Development.

193: Uncle Jimmy's Search Bar & Selfie Of Ulysses

Are there any CCP listeners out there that are not a members of the Apple Consultants Network? We would love to hear from you. Tell us your story!

Topics:

Joe gets a juicy emergency support job and shares the details with us.  It brings about a discussion on surcharges and fees.

Friend of the show David Sparks comes up in conversation as the guys kick around details of contract agreements with clients.

The age old MSP & billing discussion gets kicked around, as it does on occasion.  

While on the topic of the MSP model, we all chime in about an incredible product to manage your fleet of Macs, Addigy.  Give it a test drive by visiting http://www.addigy.com/cmd-ctrl-pwr

Sam brings up a "break/fix" client that wants immediate responses but doesn't want the commitment.

Sam shares an almost unbelievable story of a client that had random photos appear in her Photos library only to find that someone had been signing in to an iPhone using her Apple ID (photo below).