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416: Interview With Annie Chen VP Of Product At Splashtop Inc

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Topics:

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  • This week we are joined by Annie Chen, the VP of product management at Splashtop.

  • Splashtop is a Silicon Valley company founded in 2006 that started off as a browser based product.

  • Today they focus on remote access to your devices, working closely with GPU manufacturers to optimize and leverage hardware encoding to achieve high performance.

  • Jerry commends Splashtop on the feature parity and he talks about how Mac had seemed to always receive the short end of the stick with other remote access products.

  • Splashtop has three major offerings: Splashtop Business Access, Splashtop Remote Support - useful for MSPs looking to replace their RMM products, and Splashtop SOS for quick remote access.

  • It is easy to try out and adjust to Splashtop, which Jerry found really helpful.

  • Sam recently tried to use SOS with a customer and ran up against macOS security settings but was able to deal with it by blindly typing in admin credentials on a Mac

  • Annie explains how the Safe Reboot feature works, which will help you reboot a computer remotely without losing access.

  • Jerry likes how the screens that Splashtop SOS presents to the clients because it makes it easier for them to know what to do.

  • Joe has been really happy with the consumer side of Splashtop as well.

  • With Splashtop’s next version release, Mac Streamer will support native hardware encoding.

  • They have recently formalized their MSP support group and an advisory panel.

  • Splashtop is also working on having a specific build for M1 that they hope will be a universal binary and installed on Mac as a whole.

  • They have just launches a monthly subscription plan for Splashtop’s remote support product.

  • With Splashtop your subscription can grow as your business does.

  • The group is impressed with Splashtop’s feature set in general.

  • Jerry mentioned how Splashtop’s competitor would show advertisements even though you paid for the product.

  • Focusing on security and protection, Splashtop has set up a security advisory counsel as well.

  • Annie says the remote support and SOS products are really great for MSPs and service class teams.

  • Visit Splashtop.com to set up a free trial and see what all the fuss is about.

253: Interview with Justin Maxwell of Smith.ai & Keypad

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Justin Maxwell of Smith.ai and Keypad joins us for an incredibly informative and in depth interview.  Most recently the design lead for Google’s Android Auto, Justin has designed products and built teams for Google, Apple, Mint (Intuit), Sony, and plenty of startups along the way.  Here are two of Justin's offerings that we discuss on Command Control Power:

-Smith.ai is a superior call answering & intake service for small & solo businesses. Their live, U.S.-based virtual receptionists capture & qualify leads, book new clients, and build better relationships with your existing clients.

-Keypad is the most advanced & affordable cloud phone system for small businesses.  Keypad offers call routing, call analytics, and many customizations to help you track your performance, and convert more leads.

-Justin takes us through not only the story of how he brought these businesses to life but his life at Apple as an interaction designer for Apple.com

-As we talk Smith.ai, Justin describes the look and feel of the site and how it relates to their customers

-Smith.ai acts as your virtual receptionist, to provide a layer between customers and your business.  At the same time, they are able to weed out all of the spam or unnecessary calls.

-Justin was mint.com's first UX hire and gave him good perspective on small businesses and their needs

-Their team essentially followed around small businesses over the course of a Summer to figure out what their needs were and what they found was that phone calls were the biggest pain point

-Instead of being a brick & mortar company, they utilized VoIP technology and highly skilled employees working from their locations

-"It all starts with a phone call"

-Jerry can't imagine running his business without Smith.ai at this point.  Even just not having to answer calls at client sites to try and make a sale

-Smith.ai's system uses machine learning to help the receptionists make the right decisions over the course of a call and provide the correct answers, versus reading from a script

-Joe & Justin discuss their easy to understand pricing as opposed to minute based pricing

-Keypad is an excellent complement to the Smith.ai service.  Instead of using services like Ring Central, Google Voice or Grasshopper, which can add latency to a call, they developed Keypad.

-You can sign up for the beta of Keypad here

-Simplicity is a focus of Keypad because of feedback the team has received about similar service offerings

-Justin discusses analytics to understand when volume is high or knowing when you need additional support

-Jerry mentions a possible higher tier offering for VIP support and how to tie it in to our monthly services plans

-Joe signs up right here on the show!

-Look out for service offerings in the chat space from Justin's team

230: Addigy Update - Jason Dettbarn / Founder & CEO of Addigy - Cloud Based Mac Management Platform

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CCP proudly welcomes back Jason Dettbarn, founder & CEO of Addigy, a Cloud Based Mac Management Platform.  Addigy simplifies and streamlines the IT management of your Macs by providing a comprehensive approach to security & management for macOS.

Jason, discuses recent updates to Addigy and exciting new feature releases. In addition, discussion about Apple's new APFS and how it will affect the Addigy MSP platform in the future.

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Jason also discusses the recent KRACK, the recent WPA2 vulnerability. Read Jason's Blog post here: https://www.addigy.com/top-3-things-about-krack-vulnerability

Sign up for a free trial with Addigy: https://www.addigy.com/ccp

229: Interview wIth Taylor Boyko of SimpleMDM

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October 10, 2017

TOPICS:

INTERVIEW:

SimpleMDM is the Apple iOS and macOS device manager that you've been waiting for. With modern, intuitive functionality, SimpleMDM gives you access to a cloud-hosted platform with advanced functionality usually reserved for convoluted enterprise suites. For instance, macOS native package installation, allowing you to install management tools like Chef, Munki or Puppet without having to install a cumbersome agent first. SimpleMDM provides additional features like location tracking, filevault key escrow, and support for multiple VPP and DEP accounts for integration into your zero-touch deployment workflow.

SimpleMDM sports a robust API, multiple admin users, 2-factor authentication and SAML support to integrate seamlessly with your admin environment.

Start your 30-day free trial today at SimpleMDM and have access to their US-based engineering team without having to deal with an aggressive sales team. Priced simply, with volume discounts, SimpleMDM won't require advanced math to calculate your annual spend. You can sign up to at simplemdm.com/ccp, and be sure to join #simplemdm in the Mac Admins Slack.

https://simplemdm.com/ccp

FOLLOWUP: 

225: Discussions By The Water Cooler

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This episode is sponsored by Kalos Consulting, specialty recruiter and business partner of the Apple Consultants Network.

The Kalos team has over 20 years of combined experience in recruiting, and they made in a big splash in the IT space 18 months ago by becoming the only recruiter specializing in Apple’s FileMaker software. Kalos has since placed 17 developers in full-time roles, mostly with companies in the FileMaker Business Alliance. Good news travels fast, and Kalos was asked to extend its services to members of the Apple Consultants Network.

Their goal is to assist you in growing your business by finding the people you need to make that a reality. If your company specializes in Apple IT and you need help growing your team, or you’re an Apple consultant who wants to learn about new opportunities, give Kalos a call at 630.746.5626 for a free consultation. Find out more at KalosConsultingInc.com.

TOPICS:

- iPhone 6 Plus Replacement - Touch Disease 
http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-6-plus-touch-disease-what-is-it-and-what-can-i-do-2016-10

- Max Headroom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom
https://youtu.be/cYdpOjletnc

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- Apple Magnetic Adapter Patent - USB-C To Magsafe
http://macs.ws/2h6oMAF

- Important changes to the Dropbox public folder
Effective September 1, 2017, Dropbox Plus and Business users can no longer render HTML content, and the Public folder and its sharing functionality have been disabled
https://www.dropbox.com/help/files-folders/public-folder

- Amazon Web Services - S3
https://aws.amazon.com

AWS Free Usage Tier*
As part of the AWS Free Usage Tier, you can get started with Amazon S3 for free. Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon S3 storage in the Standard Storage class, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15 GB of data transfer out each month for one year.

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- Connected Data Transporter Private Cloud File Sync and Share Appliance, Named Computer Technology Review Most Valuable Product (MVP) 2015 Award Winner
http://macs.ws/2h8Gjov

Support for all of the consumer-class Transporters ended on September 01, 2017.
https://helper.nexsansupport.com/tfc_support

Thanks again to Kalos Consulting for sponsoring Command Control Power! 

If your company specializes in Apple IT and you need help growing your team, or you’re an Apple consultant who wants to learn about new opportunities, give Kalos a call at 630.746.5626 for a free consultation. Find out more at KalosConsultingInc.com.