BestMacs

iPad in Business Webinar

brian — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:41:25 +0000

As part of the iPad in Business series, Apple is hosting free interactive seminars and live Q&A sessions with Apple Business Experts. Learn how the iPad can be a valuable tool to transform your business, whether you are in the office or on the go.

In early February, learn how you can integrate iPad into your company’s existing infrastructure, thanks to the iPad’s built-in support for key industry-standard business technologies. With support for popular protocols and Wi-Fi, employees can readily connect iPad to private corporate networks. There’ll also be a Q&A segment where viewer-solicited questions will be answered by Apple Business Experts.

Best Is Better Than Xserve

brian — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:30:49 +0000

Back in February, Apple stopped making Xserve, their server computer.

Bye, Xserve. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

For many BestMacs clients, this is not a huge deal – you don’t have an Xserve and got a Mini Server instead. But read on: we came up with a way to give you better than what an Xserve delivered and at half the price. For those of you who do have an aging Xserve, we have your upgrade path.

Back around 2006, we touted the Mac Mini as a server before Apple did. But there were many situations where the needs were simply too great and an Xserve was required. Even then, and especially later in as the official Mini Server lowered cost of entry and offered “more than enough” performance, the main appeal of Xserve was in its hardware redundancy.

Two power supplies meant that a burn out didn’t take down the server while people were using it.
Easy access to internal components and spare part kits meant that repairs took just minutes.
Lights Out Management was a way to remotely turn the server on and off, even if the OS had crashed.

All of this was designed to keep the Xserve up and accessible in the event of some kind of failure. The Mini Server (nor the new Mac Pro Server) does not have any of this.

If the Mini’s power supply burns out, you’re down until it’s replaced.
Want to put a new logic board in? Hope you have special tools and a lot of patience.
System is locked up: you’ll need someone to go unplug it.

Not anymore.

You're not seeing double. You're getting double...for half off!

We have a solution. Part of it is obvious: two Minis. But that’s not the whole answer. We found a software technique combined with some proprietary hardware that allows a Mini to automatically failover to a second Mini with no recovery time.

Okay, so your Mini’s logic board burns out. Whatever. Shut it off and reboot the second Mini, you’re up and running in seconds.
Take the broken Mini to get repaired, when it comes back, plug it in and you’re redundant again with no downtime – the live server doesn’t even need a reboot.
The OS locks up and no one is in the office to help unplug it. No biggie, we pull up a web page to control the power supply and reboot it.

How much? This is the best part. To add this on the your existing Mini Server solution, figure on $300-600 for a second Mini to match your current setup (brand new Minis only run Lion but refurb and older models that can run 10.5 or 10.6 are plentiful for cheap – and they don’t need to be the Server model.) And $400 for the extra proprietary hardware that enables the solution. That’s as low as $700.

If you’re starting from scratch, or retiring an old Xserve, two brand new Minis are $600 each (skip the $1000 Server model, we’re doubling up all the hardware not just the hard drives), the proprietary hardware at $400, and Lion Server is only $50. You weren’t getting a new Xserve for $1650. Take storage to another level with a crazy-fast Thunderbolt disk solution (like the Promise Pegasus RAID) and you’ll get huge, fast storage that exceeds Xserve performance (And you’re still under the price of a new Xserve.)

Our labor for a project to get this going will vary based on your existing server storage, but the project cost will likely be less than $1500. Sometimes as low as $800.

If you figure an Xserve gave you hardware redundancy for $3000 more than the cost of a Mini Server – and our solution comes in at well under half that and delivers better protection. No wonder Apple discontinued Xserve: who needs it?

Want to experience the peace of mind that a fault tolerant server provides? Call us today!

Thank You, Steve.

brian — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:05:57 +0000

(October 5 – This is the blog post I wrote in August when SJ resigned the CEO position. It was a harbinger of today’s sadness.)

I’ll never forget the time Steve Jobs came back to Apple. It was 1997, and Apple was in dire straits. To get the foundation for what later became Mac OS X, Apple acquired NeXT, the company that Jobs created when he was ousted from Apple in 1985. SJ came on as a consultant to Apple in the process- but everyone knew he would again lead his company.

That day, I was doing my job as a Mac tech, working on a Power Mac 4400 for the first time. I hated it. It represented everything wrong with Apple at the time. It was an overpriced beige PC box – almost identical to an Acer PC that my employers also sold – running the same 3-year-old System 7.5. That same System 7.5 was now on Mac clones too that were cheaper and faster, but overall not much different.

There was nothing special about any of them.

But when CEO Gil Amelio was ousted and SJ became iCEO you could just tell things were getting better. The clones were killed and replaced with very fast Power Mac G3s, the Think Different ad campaign came out, and less than a year later : the first iMac. The iMac was unlike anything we had seen before; the exact opposite of the 4400.

To me, working on a Power Mac 4400, then Steve Jobs returns, and we have iMac the next year… that is a microcosm of what Steve Jobs means to Apple. Innovation, original thinking, careful and thoughtful design. This is what I love about the Mac. It’s what stagnated for years under leaders who didn’t “get it.” It’s what has thrived under Steve Jobs.

I don’t need to list every innovative Apple product of the last 13 years. Odds are you’re using one right now.

Today’s resignation announcement saddens me. Steve Jobs didn’t die of his cancer today. And we all had an idea that this day might be coming, so it’s not a surprise. But seeing him leave Apple’s top position is a step in a direction I hoped we would not see him take.

I’m not too worried about Apple. This is important to those of you who might not be as emotionally (not to mention fiscally) invested in Apple as I am. Apple will be just fine.

Unlike in 1985 when Jobs was forced out, his hand-picked people are running the show. They get it. Corporate culture, especially at a large company like Apple takes years to change. They probably have a bunch of great new products in the pipeline for the next couple years. What will really seal the deal and cement Steve’s legacy is Apple delivering something really new long after he’s left us – something on the magnitude of Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad… and I think Tim Cook and co. can and will deliver. I am mournful that the product won’t be presented in the awesome style of a Jobs keynote.

I’m sorrowful for SJ himself – of course he’s had a fantastic life that many of us could only dream to match. But I can’t imagine how painful it must have been to cede that his health wasn’t going to let him run his business, his company, his mantra anymore. It’s depressing because someone I genuinely admire, even idolize for his unique intellect, wisdom, and passion is going to pass on because he’s as human and frail as anyone else.

Mostly I’m sad in the same way that you might feel at the end of an epic tale where the hero saves the day and everyone is better off for it, but the hero himself is mortally wounded and won’t survive.

And what a great story the history of Apple and Steve Jobs has been – especially in taking mid-90s Apple from worst to first; it’s inspiring. Apple and those of us who use and support their products will be fine. I’m just downhearted that my favorite “character” is in his final chapter.

Thank you, Steve. Your work has changed my life.

Nimbus is Coming

brian — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:55:38 +0000

Why trust your data to a faceless corporation? Get a “cloud” from people you know and trust. Nimbus is coming Q4, 2011. Email us for more info.

Blog: Lion’s Choice

brian — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 04:16:13 +0000

Last night an old friend from high school sent me this on FaceBook:

“Hello Mr. Mac I wish I would have learned more about this before it became cool. You were light years ahead of the rest of us =)can I ask you a Mac question? I didn’t save a document in Pages and the baby managed to shut down my Mac when I stepped away. Is it auto saved anywhere like with Word?? Sorry to bug you… I am missing notes from my AP2 Lab class and am going crazy b/c I forgot to save them.”

To which I replied that yes, I was cool before the rest of the world caught up. Ha! And then I asked if she had upgraded to Lion, yet. Her response: “Lion what?”

Sometimes it’s not immediately obvious to we Mac geeks that the rest of the world is caught up the hype of some new Apple release. If that’s you, I am referring to the new 10.7 version of Mac OS X, continuing the legacy of big cat nicknames, this one is “Lion.”

So unfortunately for Christa, she was still on Snow Leopard 10.6 and thus Pages did not auto-save. I advised her on where to go to get Lion: Apple Menu -> App Store -> Click “Lion” -> Click “Install”. $29 and a 3.5GB download later, she’d be all set.

So we come back to the age old question: to upgrade or not to upgrade. See as easily as I advised Christa to go for it, I told one of my largest clients this week that there was no way that any of their users should upgrade to Lion.

There’s only two reasons you should ever consider spending money (even $29) on a major software upgrade like this:

1.) Because you want the new features and are willing to put up with cost to get them.

2.) Because you must do so for compatibility reasons.

In Christa’s case, the fact that one of her kids closing down her Mac before she saved her work is big motivation to get Lion’s new auto-save and document versioning features. (Frankly, I’m still wrapping my brain around how awesome these are.)

Now before I go on, let me tell you that if you want to know everything new in Lion, you have plenty of reading material. The Cliff’s Notes version of what’s new is on Apple.com. Macworld’s review is probably a good place to start. If you want a deep dive, nobody beats John Siracusa’s Ars Technica reviews. Lord knows I have plenty of reading to do myself.

I learn by doing so I am running Lion on my Air and experiencing all the subtleties that it brings to the table. There’s a lot I like (digital delivery, Mission Control, autosave). There’s a lot I’ve already turned off. (“natural scrolling”, window animations).

So, desire for new features notwithstanding, the only other reason to upgrade to Lion is compatibility. As far as I know, the only forced compatibility at this point is if you ran out and bought one of the new MacBook Airs and Mac Minis released last week. They will only run Lion. This is typical: the lowest MacOS a new Mac can run is the shipping version. The Airs and Minis are awesome hardware for the price point, so I recommend them highly.

In absence of positive motivation for upgrade, Lion also carries one big negative to dissuade someone from upgrading. Apple finally cut ties with the PowerPC platform. This has been coming for sometime now, with each previous version of Mac OS X pushing it further away:

2005 10.4 “Tiger” – 10.4.5 in 2006 was the first to run on Intel hardware. PowerPC apps ran with a compatibility layer called “Rosetta” – this is an important detail, hang on.

2007 10.5 “Leopard” – the first to discontinue “Classic” Mac OS 9 apps from running.

2009 10.6 “Snow Leopard” – the first to require Intel hardware.

2011 10.7 “Lion” – the first to discontinue Rosetta compatibility with PowerPC OS X apps.

This makes sense because there’s a significant development cost in backwards compatibility. And I find that we have better success with technology when all the components are the same age. When you try to pair an old printer with a new computer for example, it could be a problem. When you run an old version of Quicken on a new Mac, it could be a problem.

I use these as examples because these are two scenarios where problems will develop with the Lion upgrade, and thus the loss of Rosetta compatibility. Only the newest Quicken (that isn’t really Quicken) will run. Quicken 2009 and earlier all require Rosetta. So do apps like Adobe CS2. Office 2004. Sometimes it’s not a whole app – but certain functions that needed Rosetta and will no longer work.

For my client, none of their high-end printer/copiers would print under Lion. The print driver software needs Rosetta. Or more accurately, the print driver needs an upgrade.

That’s kind of the point. Apple is saying to vendors that they need to get on board with Mac OS X technologies that have been in place since 2006. It’s a lot easier for Apple to say that now than it was back then.

But that means you need to watch out. There’s a great database at RoaringApps.com that you can search. Or call us and we can check for you.

And as always, it might be better to let trailblazers take the arrows. Rumor has it that version 10.7.2 is already in testing to fix some issues that didn’t show up before Lion’s release.

Bottom line, much like its namesake, Lion is not something to take lightly.

Client Spotlight: DVRG

brian — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 03:28:18 +0000

Recently, our own Jamie Davis got on the phone with one of our favorite people, Diane St.Louis of DVRG, a small business in the KC Metro area that is on the cutting edge of the plastic card printing industry. Whether it is in the form of a photo ID card, gift card, debit card or membership card, DVRG provides you the best customer service and the highest attention to detail of any plastic card printer.

Jamie asked Diane about her experiences in working with BestMacs. You can listen to the conversation here:

Or here’s some of the highlights:

On BNO monitoring: “…the sense of trust and that the guys will bring things to my attention before I know that they’ve gone wrong or before they’ve even gone wrong.”

On BestMacs response times and leveraging BOM: “…the ability to just enter a ticket online and know that somebody is responding to it. The people who have done our IT stuff prior to BestMacs had an online program where you entered the ticket, but you didn’t get any follow up until they kinda felt like it. So, you never really knew if anybody was working on something. I think that was part of the attraction being able to go in, look at a ticket and see whose been assigned to work it, what’s going on with it, most of the time I don’t really have to utilize that because it’s get to taken care of pretty quickly. But if there’s something that I wanna check on. It’s also good as a point of reference because I can search the tickets by the date or the type of problem, you know, I can go back and look at past problems and say, oh that’s right.”

On BestMacs capability to learn a business environment: “I found [the BestMacs team] to be very knowledgeable about Mac and all the different software. We have a lot of software issues related to what we do … I really feel like everybody has educated themselves on [unique] stuff that we use … And I feel confident that they would do that again.”

How BNO has benefitted Diane the most: “…the consistency of service and the fact that I no longer have to spend … 60% of a day, most days a week trying to track down why we’re not getting e-mails, why we cannot connect to our server, why clients can’t upload stuff to our website. Prior to that, that’s literally where I was at. I was spending so much time on IT related issues, everytime an employee had an issue, they would come to me with it. Now, they can just go and enter a ticket themselves and interact with whoever they need to interact with. So, the reporting and the ability to utilize that has been great and the service, the follow up, you know, the response has been outstanding.”

Why Diane would recommend BestMacs for your Mac-powered business: “…generally for all the reasons that I have stated as far as the service level. It’s competitively priced. Even though I was a custom to paying virtually nothing for the service I was getting – you get what you pay for. So it’s a good value. I have not had any problems or issues. I’d definitely recommend to anybody on Mac.”

BestMacs Network Overseer

admin — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:15:55 +0000

(Want to hear about BNO straight from our founder and CEO? Tune in to BNO TV!)

Two years of planning, eight months of software development and testing, and now a great year of proactive support for our clients! You’ve never seen anything like this from a Mac-based IT services organization.

We call it BestMacs Network Overseer. You’ll call it awesome!

But most importantly we want you to say “Yes” to NO.

Say NO to worrying about whether or not your Mac’s hard drive is quietly dying
Say NO to spending hours on the phone with your internet provider or copier vendor
Say NO to data loss because a backup wasn’t working
Say NO to productivity lost because your users are spending time fixing their own problems

BestMacs answers NO to all of this with BNO: our comprehensive suite of Mac IT services.

Each BNO subscription is custom tailored to your organization’s specific IT needs. For a flat, easy to budget monthly fee you get:

24/7 Monitoring – Our 100% custom built monitoring software along with third-party monitoring services examine every part of your Macs and network and tells us what’s going on. From RAM usage to hard drives, to a spiked processor, kernel panics, security vulnerabilities… If a crucial system goes down, we’ll likely know about it before you do. And before it does, the software will examine backup logs so we know your data is safe!
Scheduled Maintenance - Our custom software also runs maintenance routines, many of them hourly and daily, including directory verification, permission repair, antivirus updates/checks. And monthly, we’ll get all available software updates including third party updates and install them. Since it’s automated, it’s also monitored – we’ll examine it every day and send you a daily report via email on how everything is going.
Management, Advice, and Planning - We’ll find the problem areas in your setup, and we’ll recommend ways to fix them. We make sure you aren’t at risk for license violations. We’ll add or delete users from the system. We’ll put together backup strategies, business continuity plans, disaster recovery plans, fault tolerance strategies, acceptable use policies, bids, shopping, ordering, even some basic training. And we’ll meet with you quarterly to set goals and review progress.
Vendor Management - Think about how much time you spend calling the Internet people, and the copier people, and this software company, and that service vendor. Now imagine if you handed it off to us like any other work ticket. We call them on your behalf. We speak their language. They can’t get away with the “blame game” with us. Now imagine what you’re going to do with all the extra time not managing this stuff.
Unlimited Remote Help Desk - Yes, you’re reading that right: all you can eat. One of your employees has a computer question, we remotely observe their computer and get their problem fixed. It gives you the fastest turnaround we can give. Got someone in office who does this in addition to their own job? They’re going to get a lot more work done.

We can’t do everything remotely so we also include some onsite hours into each plan, with overages at a discount off our non-BNO rate.

Having your company on a BNO subscription gives you the following:

Increased operational efficiency
Guaranteed response times and improved resolution times
The ability to budget and save on IT costs
Mitigated risks of data loss, downtime
A “Virtual IT Department” of Professionals that operate as a team
Peace of mind knowing your environment is monitored 24/7/365
Allows you to run 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!

Your Daily Pismo

brian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:11:28 +0000

Introducing The Pismo! It’s an awesome daily way to catch up on all that’s cool in Mac news and technology, with some local flavor added in. Now you can get your Mac news the same way we do! Please check it out (click here) and let us know what you think!

But what’s a Pismo?! Apple’s product code names are now pretty famous but before the “big cats” became well known for versions of Mac OS X, they were less commonly known for models of Mac hardware.
In 2000, the PowerBook G3 (Firewire) was code-named “Pismo” presumably after Pismo Beach, CA. The PowerBook’s lid had a “clam” like shape and Pismo Beach is famous for its clams. A Pismo was the first brand-new laptop that I bought for BestMacs. I liked it so much that I named my black cat Pismo in tribute.
And really, for our “newspaper” Pismo sounded cooler than the “BestMacs Post-Gazette”.

Pismo Beach, CA

PowerBook G3 (Firewire) "Pismo"

My Cat Pismo

Blog: Change is Good

brian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:10:52 +0000

From the hilarious "Toothpaste for Dinner"

Change is hard.

The last time you got an update from us was back in August when we debuted BestMacs Network Overseer. Our “silence” since then hasn’t been an act of commission. Rather, over the past six months we’ve been learning a lot about how being an outsourced IT provider is different (and better) than being a repairman. Change may be hard, but change is also good. It’s been an intense time, and frankly required complete focus & effort. One other thing we’ve learned: Change is constant. So…

For one, our communication needs to change, and improve. When a BestMacs tech comes to your office, it’s easy to stay in contact since we are right there with you. When we work remotely, as is often the case on a NO plan, it’s more difficult. My team and I are stepping up our responsiveness and our transparency. You are always welcome to call us, but I want us to do the work of staying on top of your computer needs and keeping you informed.

At the same time, too much communication can have a “noise” effect. I have been hard at work revising our BNO software to make sure it doesn’t inundate you with the alerts that we see. Likewise, we want to make sure all manual communication with you is effective and with purpose. We’re making changes to find the right, optimal communication balance; we ask that you help us affect this change by letting us know if we’re anything less than right. How?

The centerpiece of what we do for you is in BOM. If our email volume is getting unruly, try logging into BOM directly at https://bom.bestmacs.com. (you can create your password there if you’ve never been). It has a great interface for seeing your open tickets and all of our notations.

And for those of you who miss all the content that we used to post on BestMacs.com, I haven’t forgotten you. I’m frequently on Twitter and use that to get a lot of my Mac news while on the run. Now I found a great way to share that with you on a daily basis. (Visit The Pismo!) I’ll add my own $0.02 to the mix when i have a contribution.

Change really registered with me last month; I had to fly back to CNY to be with my father in the hospital. I just wanted to take a moment here to thank Jacob, Josh, and Jamie for their great work while I was away. Bet you didn’t even notice I was gone.

One point I don’t communicate nearly enough: thank you for your business. If there’s anything that my team and I should be doing better, please don’t hesitate to let me know. We’re open to change, especially when it benefits you, and your business.

Join Us at LAUG on 10/6

brian — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:14:50 +0000

Mark your iCalendars and join us at 7pm on Wednesday, October 6th at the Lawrence Apple User Group meeting. Our own Brian Best will be bringing along a Snow Leopard Server to show off “all the cool stuff” – iCal and Address Book services, the awesome and easy to use built-in Wiki group collaboration server, secure mobile access for iPhone and iPad, and becoming your own studio with Podcast Producer. And that’s not to mention everything that Server could do *before* the Snow Leopard upgrade!

If this will be your first visit to a LAUG meeting, you’ll find it to be a friendly laid-back atmosphere. Meetings are free and questions are encouraged, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. (In other words, come get some free tech support from the most Mac knowledgable minds in Lawrence!) A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Learn more about the LAUG at http://laugks.org

Here’s a map to the meeting location at Douglas County Senior Services:

View Larger Map

This is a fast, easy, and no obligation way for your Mac-based business to learn what Mac OS X Server, BNO, and BestMacs can do for you! Please grab some dinner in downtown Lawrence then drop in and see us!