Reactive repair is costly and impossible to budget.  You just never know when something is going to break, how long it’s going to be offline when it breaks, and how much it’s going to cost to fix it.

Mac users have been conditioned to try and fix problems themselves because they get no help, even from well-trained and skilled Windows IT departments.  How much time are your employees not doing their jobs because they are trying to fix the tools they need?  How much is that costing your company?!

Say NO more!

We developed BNO to be the ultimate answer to these problems:

Proactive monitoring with our custom built BNO software means that we will spot and fix most problems before they become productivity killers like downed computers.

Our planning and advice means we’ll work with you to setup the most fault-tolerant and redundant systems we can, ahead of time so when things immediately break, it’s easier to handle.

Your users won’t need to fix problems themselves – they call us and get a prompt, guaranteed response time from a well-trained and skilled Mac expert at BestMacs.

And the Best part: you don’t need to worry about how much any of this costs because you get the software, proactive planning, and unlimited remote help desk with your BNO subscription.  It’s already in your budget!

On a BNO subscription, your company’s IT needs are met and dealt with ahead of time.  You can focus on running your business, not your network.

We want you to say “Yes” to NO!  Call us today to setup a free 12-point Business and Technology Assessment, and get your customized BNO plan!

Say NO to worrying about productivity loss, knowing your systems are monitored 24/7/365.

In late 2009, we searched high and low for the right software to monitor our clients’ Macs and there are great packages, but they don’t scale to small and medium businesses: the size of most BestMacs clients.  And none of them gave us the feedback we were looking for. So, we wrote our own software; it’s the cornerstone of the BNO offering.

From urgent, actionable items like failing backups or dying hard drives, to productivity killers like low RAM and high CPU usage, our software quietly watches in the background and alerts us, and if necessary alerts you by directly creating a BOM ticket in your name.

As long as we were building monitoring, we made the software perform regularly scheduled maintenance, including permission repairs and anti-virus scans.  And the maintenance routines are monitored so if they fail, we’ll know.

With the software, we send BNO subscribers a daily summary email notifying you of any conditions we are watching, and the last time each maintenance routine was performed.

We want you to say “Yes” to NO!  Call us today to setup a free 12-point Business and Technology Assessment, and get your customized BNO plan!

Are you a Mac reseller, service provider, or consultant?  Contact us about using BNO SaaS with your own branding and pricing, so you can provide our unique monitoring and maintenance solution to your clients.

BestMacs is Kansas City and Northeast Kansas’ first choice for Mac OS X Server, Xserve, Mac Mini Server, and iPhone/iPad mobility solutions.

Why?  Because we make it about you first.  Where others will quote a huge enterprise deployment, we recognize the needs of small and medium Mac-based businesses.  And we learn about your existing setup before making wholesale changes. Sometimes a well equipped $8000 Xserve is the answer, but sometimes, a couple of $1000 Mac Mini Servers are the answer.

We specialize in all that makes Mac OS X Server great: collaboration services like shared Address Book, shared iCal calendars, file sharing through typical desktop sharing services, and through wiki-based websites;  secure communication of email and instant messages between your employees and the world; and secure remote access to all of the above from your mobile Macs, iPhones, and iPads wherever you are.  We call it “building your own cloud.”

In the same philosophy as our BNO suite of services, we bill new solution projects not hourly like most IT providers, but as a firm, flat cost.  That makes it easy for you to budget the solution without fear of overruns.  And then with BNO, we make sure it stays running just like the day we install it through 24/7 monitoring and maintenance and unlimited remote help desk for your employees.

Watch this space on August 16th. We’ll have plenty to talk about then.

In the meantime, here’s some random Apple thoughts from the past few weeks:

• iOS 4 is an excellent upgrade.  Apple just nailed multi-tasking: they did it in such a way that you get all the functionality but also prevents background apps from killing your battery and crashing the OS.
• The iPhone 4 antenna is way better than its predecessor, provided you don’t hold that spot.
• Even then, “antennagate” is way overblown.
• At least I got a free case out of the deal.
• Apple’s phone testing lab makes me think they know where all the mutants are.
• The new Mac Mini is a great update of the design. Installing a RAM upgrade went from royal pain to stupid simple.
• It was brilliant to release the new Mini on the same day they started taking pre-orders for the iPhone 4.  Talk about candy at the checkout lane.
• The HDMI port on the new Mini is great on my HDTV, but watching all of our shows on the computer isn’t quite as good as a standard DVR yet.  Buffering stinks.
• The Facetime ads make me a little weepy.
• Facetime video calling is really easy and slick.  If this tech takes hold on the computer and/or over the air without Wi-Fi, look out.
• Yes, I called 866-FACETIME.
• We finally have Address Book Server working on the iPhone, thanks to iOS4.  Very nice to have a secure, shared contact list among my team and I on the phone.
• I sold my iPad.  It just wasn’t right for me – I’d rather have my MacBook Air, and when I can’t use it, I usually can’t use my iPad either.
• I promptly got a lot of grief from wife and son.  Wife, who approved the sale but didn’t know what she had until it was gone.  Son, who asks for “iPad” – yes, he actually says it – and has to be handed my old first-model iPhone instead.
• There are a ton of people who really love the iPad, and I still think it is a great device.  I’m not its target audience.  Given the above, I sense there will be another one in my home before year end.
• Snow Leopard Server’s mail service is soooooo much better than Leopard or previous.  This isn’t really news but we did an upgrade and a couple of failover tests recently, and if you’re running Mail service on Leopard Server, I’ll be talking to you about an upgrade.
• The Mac Mini Server got 4.5 out of 5 stars and an Editor’s Choice designation from PC Magazine.  Yes, you read that right.
• Forget iDevices; Apple sold 3.47 million Macs last quarter – the most ever in a single quarter.
• I love it that Apple’s market capitalization is now greater than Microsoft.  For someone who was in this business, rooting for the underdog when it wasn’t even close, that is pretty cool to see.

Thanks for hanging in there with us.  We’ll still be a little quiet between now and August 16, but watch this space.

I’ll be talking to you very soon.

The "accessory" is your car. It causes a lot of "interference." Just tap YES.

(If you’re expecting some info on the new iPhone 4 and the stuff going on at WWDC, don’t worry, it’s on the way.)

Have you ever been aggravated at being stuck behind someone who was clearly more interested in talking on their phone than driving their car? Yeah, that may have been me. I took it to a whole new level. Phone calls, sure. Texting, yeah. Emails, you know it. I’ve even repaired clients’ computers from my iPhone while in the car.

Since about 2007, I’ve done all of the above with the iPhone cradled in a heads-up dash-mounted holder from ProClip along with a device that plugs it directly into the car audio for music and charging. You can see from the picture below that the holder puts the iPhone within reach of the fingers on my right hand while I’m holding the wheel. That, in tandem with my Bluetooth speaker phone mounted on the visor, always made me feel like I was safer than the average driver who talks and texts. The fact that I never had an “incident” just bolstered my confidence.

My iPhone dash mount

For better part of the past year, my loving wife has been trying to convince me that my perceived safety was in fact a false sense of invincibility that was going to vanish the first time something really bad happened. I saw the videos on TV and the Internet: like the bus driver who rammed the back of a car on the interstate because he was texting – “but he was looking down at his phone; I have heads-up!” – and the countless studies and PSAs that showed that drivers talking on the phone in the car are as dangerous as drunk drivers – “but they’re holding the phone with one hand; I have a speakerphone” and Dr. Phil talking about how in just one second a car going 30mph moves from one side of his stage to the other – “but even when I’m looking at an email I can see the road!“

Right about the time that Kansas passed its “no texting while driving” law, our DVR snagged an episode of the Oprah show about the perils of texting and driving. And the Queen B said “you are sitting down and watching this whole thing.” I made it through about 15 minutes. Hearing a mother who lost her 9-year old daughter because a distracted driver ran her down with an SUV… and then hearing the grief of a father who lost his 18-year-old son because said son dropped his phone and slammed into a tree while bending over to pick it back up… Well, that lead to firing up the iPad and doing some more research to completely defeat my illusions.

My biggest fallacy in this whole thing was that “talking on a speakerphone is no more dangerous than talking to a passenger in the car.” Research isn’t quite as strong here, but a study at the University of Utah showed that actual passengers are safer because they assist the driver by acting as another set of eyes. In other words, the driving becomes part of the conversation, like “blah blah – oh, there’s your exit.” or “yada yada – stop, stop!“

The next day, I talked with the BestMacs team about it and we all agreed that this was the right decision. I went up and signed the Pledge on O’s website. As of now, no BestMacs employee will send texts, emails, or make phone calls while driving. If we must, we will pull the car over on to a safe shoulder or parking lot.

For many of you who know my phone habits, you know that this will be especially difficult for me. Almost every time I have talked to someone on the phone in the past 3 years, it has been during a long drive between Lawrence and KC and/or between client visits. So, yes, this will be a hindrance to our productivity. We MUST put safety (our own and of others) above our business. If we don’t do that, we’re no better than a certain Big Polluting oil company.

So, I’m going to ask you for two things:

1) Please forgive me and the team if we are a little slower to respond to phone calls or texts than we have been before now. Our average drive time is around 30 minutes so it should only be a short while. Jamie is rarely working from the road, so please call her first at 866-BESTMAC. If it’s urgent, she can get a tech to pull over and call.

2) Please evaluate your own situation. Are you subject to the same false invincibility that I was? It’s real and it’s a very insidious problem. You don’t have to take my word for it; do some research and make your own decision. And if you come to same conclusion that I did, make yourself stop.

They call it OS X OpinionSpy because it bills itself as an add-on program that comes with a free screensaver app that will gather your opinion, like a customer survey. Well, it does waaaay more than that, and once you have it, you’re not getting rid of it very easily.

Fortunately, while the list of what it does looks really frightening, it’s highly unlikely you have this and more unlikely you’ll get it now. You’ll have to have been using a free screensaver by “7art”, or a Flash Video to MP3 converter by “MishInc”. If this sounds even remotely familiar, give us a call. We can remotely scan for the spyware and kill it.

Much like every other piece of Mac malware I’ve seen since the start of Mac OS X (all three or four of them):

1. It’s rare.
2. It requires you to download it and install it with your password.
3. It doesn’t spread itself around.

That’s the good news in all of this; the sky is not falling. This is nothing new that we haven’t seen before. I’ve often told clients that I could write a program in 5 minutes that if you downloaded it and ran it, it could delete all your files.

If you don’t download random bits of software off the web without reading reviews or testimonials from reputable sources, and if you always think twice when your Mac asks you for your password, you’ll be fine.

A client today asked me this question in regards to the recent news that the FTC and Justice Department are digging into Apple’s recent activities.

I’m admittedly biased but I read the courts findings against Microsoft and was paying attention to a lot of what they did when they did it.

One could argue that Apple blocking Flash-based middleware is a going to harm Adobe the same way that Microsoft’s J+ language was developed to kill Java, damaging Sun.

The difference is that Apple did not create HTML5,CSS,Javascript – and those technologies do not lock a user into Apple products.  Therefore, not a monopoly.

Nothing that Apple is doing locks users into their products and stifles competition. That’s the difference.  Are iAd, the App Store, iTunes, and the iPhone OS devices very symbiotic?  Yes, they are a closed system.  But if you don’t like it, you go buy an Android or a Palm Pre or an HP Slate.  Apple is doing nothing to make that more difficult on you.

You want to talk about the next Microsoft?  Look at Adobe’s playbook: get all the best content and sites on Flash so that we can do and charge whatever we want for Flash and forcibly require related Adobe-only tech down the road.

That’s why they blew billions acquiring Macromedia to get Flash.  That’s why they are whining so loudly about the number one mobile web platform screwing up their plans.

This guy sums up my feelings on it pretty well. (NSFW)

Sorry, I feel no pity for Adobe and their crappy little plugin.  Frankly beyond the history, their apps (including Flash) have been driving me nuts in recent years.

This article is an open Letter from Steve Jobs relaying Apple’s official position on flash and how it interacts with their mobile devices:

Thoughts on Flash

While it can be a bit annoying at times not having flash on your iPhone or iPad the mobile web space has shifted away from flash and moved toward the HTML5 standard using open codecs such as H.264. Since most of the major players are on board with the move Adobe’s flash standard appears to have been relegated to the full fledged PCs and Macs of the world.