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Amidst the chaos of office design, packing, logistics, and ultimately moving into a new office space, don’t forget to plan for IT. Mac Aid, as your IT provider can play a pivotal role in this process, but we can’t do it alone. To help us make it a smooth process and minimize downtime during an office move, consider these planning steps.
The key to a successful office move is to start planning well in advance. This gives us ample time to prepare and execute a seamless move. 90 days would be ideal, but loop us in as soon as you are deciding to move, even if your new office isn’t definite yet. You would be surprised how many Mac Aid clients phone us for help with their office move on the day of the move, or even afterwards.
Before moving, assess the infrastructure of your new office space to ensure it meets the technical requirements of your IT environment. This may involve checking power outlets, network cabling, and the availability of high-speed internet connections. If any upgrades or installations are needed, arrange for them well in advance.
Allow plenty of time to establish an internet connection at the new site. Be alert to the fact that you may have ongoing contractual agreements with your current internet service provider or hefty relocation fees. If you are connecting with the same provider at your new site, they may be flexible, but some types of internet connection may still have expensive relocation fees. All of this applies to telephone systems too.
Many Mac Aid clients have wifi setups in their offices that have organically grown over the years, as their dependance on them has increased. Moving office is a great time to stop and assess your needs and do wifi properly for your new space. Your staff and visiting clients will thank you for implementing a good spec, modern wifi network. Depending on your workflow, a good wifi network could even replace ethernet in your new office.
Even though you likely have a lot of detail and expense to consider for your move, it is also a sensible time to evaluate the performance of your IT infrastructure for the new office. Discuss your long-term IT strategies with Mac Aid to optimize and upgrade your IT systems for the new environment.
Data loss during an office move can be catastrophic. So this is another time so stop and consider whether your backup strategy is adequate. Your backup strategy should include both on-site and off-site backups to mitigate the risk of data loss during the transition.
If you have a large printer under contract with a provider, it may be stipulated that you have them do the move. Moving printers is a big task, and things can go wrong. Printers generally need recalibration after a move as well. If your printer provider does the move you will have the best chance of your printer arriving at the new office in good working condition.
While we will be aiming to minimize downtime, it’s essential to plan for some disruption during the move. Communicate with your team and clients to manage expectations. Have contingency plans in place for critical functions that may be temporarily impacted.
Label all computers and peripherals like mice, keyboards and monitors meticulously. All mice and keyboards look alike, so don’t make your moving day more chaotic by having to spend hours working out which mouse belonged to who. This will make it much easier to get things up and running in the new office.
During the move, your IT equipment is vulnerable to damage or theft. Ensure that your equipment is securely packed, transported, and protected. Use proper packing materials and consider insuring valuable items. Major IT items like servers and networking switches and the like may be best left to Mac Aid to move, given that they need to be uninstalled at your old office, and reinstalled at your new office, with minimal down time.
Don’t forget to update your contact information with your IT providers and vendors. This ensures that everyone knows how to reach you at your new location and that you receive essential updates and support.
If your new office setup includes changes to the technology infrastructure, provide training and support to your employees. Ensure they are familiar with any new equipment or software to maximize productivity in the new space.
Moving your office can be a complex undertaking, and your IT infrastructure is a vital part of it. By starting early, communicating effectively, and following these planning steps, you can help Mac Aid as your IT provider help to ensure a smooth transition.
It’s common these days for many Mac Aid clients to have internet connections of 1,000Mbps, which was unimaginable in the old ADSL days.
1,000Mbps is often suitable for a general business with a handful of staff, but increasingly in the current “cloud first” world, creative businesses in particular are finding even this a bottleneck that impacts productivity.
They may be needing to transfer large image or video assets, run site-to-site or cloud syncs or backups, or be serving content to clients, the web or other services.
Recently some carriers began to offer 10Gbps connections (10 times the speed) as the next somewhat affordable step up from 1,000Mbps.
Whilst 10Gbps connections are now affordable for many businesses, the hardware requirements to implement them can still be prohibitively expensive.
So we were very excited when our internet partner TPG released their new Fast Fibre product with additional speed tiers of 2Gbps and 5Gbps.
Their 2Gbps, 5Gbps product can be implemented for considerably less than a 10Gbps connection. This will make a considerable impact by improving the ability to move large amounts of data around – fast.
“TPG FAST Fibre product is a new generation TPG Ethernet access service, delivered over the new TPG’s carrier grade Ethernet network (known as HAN) and the NBN Network access types.” Devang Soni from TPG said.
“Multiple data and voice products can be delivered on this new service. TPG Telecom FAST Fibre represents a breakthrough in cost-effective yet flexible fibre-optic connectivity for business.”
“FAST Fibre offers symmetric 250Mbps, 400Mbps, 1000Mbps, 2Gbps, 5Gbps and 10Gbps fibre-optic connectivity across thousands of TPG On-Net and Off-Net buildings nationally over the TPG national business backbone with enterprise-grade capability.”
Talk to Mac Aid if you would like to look at options for faster internet for your business and to assess whether these connections are available for your building.
All of our lives have been made a lot easier by PDF. We take for granted the ability to share compact documents, fill out forms, comment, or edit. And all with type, design and images intact.
“PDF” stands for Portable Document Format, it is an Adobe file format that combines all the elements of a document into an optimised compact format that retains the original design, including fonts and linked graphics or images. In many cases, the original versions of these documents and all their associated files and fonts would be unmanageably large, and hard to distribute. But by using the right settings when you create a PDF, you can create a perfect, printable version of that file, at a fraction of the original file size. And pretty much any device anywhere is going to be able to open it.
Because of this, many of us are Acrobat Pro users. It’s the premium fully featured app for viewing, printing and editing PDFs, but for some use cases it can be overkill. Many of us only need to add comments, move or delete pages, or fill in forms. And to do all of that, you don’t necessarily need Acrobat Pro.
If you are a user of Adobe Creative Cloud, this doesn’t matter, because you have the use of Acrobat Pro as part of that bundle. But for users who are only licensing Acrobat Pro, it may not be a great deal. Acrobat Pro as a single license will set you back $29.00 per month ($348 for 12 months).
So perhaps it’s a good time to consider what you are using Acrobat Pro for, and whether you could achieve the same result with other cheaper, or free, PDF editors.
If your needs are basic, the Preview app that you already have for free as part of macOS might be all you need for handling PDFs. We looked at this in a previous Mac Aid Newsletter article:
https://www.macaid.com.au/2021/07/04/preview-it-probably-does-much-more-than-you-realise/
Using Preview, you can delete or reorder pages, crop, fill in (some) forms, add your signature, add comments and edit text.
If you mostly use Acrobat for viewing, printing and commenting on PDFs and filling in forms, Adobe Acrobat Reader might be all that you need. And it’s free. Some secure forms are only compatible with an official Adobe Acrobat app, so Acrobat Reader is a great way to handle those. If you choose to move to an Acrobat alternative for your general PDF handling, you should also keep Adobe Acrobat Reader installed for those times you need to deal with secure forms.
PDF Expert is a great, full featured alternative PDF editor for macOS and iOS, and we use it at Mac Aid. It’s a sleek, modern, lightweight app that will even play well on older Macs. PDF Expert is easy to use, with an elegant, intuitive “Mac like” interface. It’s arguably a better Mac app than Acrobat Pro is itself. And PDF Expert is under active development, so new features are continually being added, like the recent AI summary, keywords and hashtag and OCR tools.
PDF Expert is a great deal at A$10.00 per month (billed yearly at A$119.99), a third of the price of Acrobat Pro!
PDFElement is a great choice if you need to deploy to macOS, Windows and iOS. It’s not quite as elegant as PDFExpert, but still a serviceable, capable PDF editor for most use cases.
macOS (or Windows) and iOS $129.00 yearly subscription.
If you want complete editing control of PDFs, you’ll need a graphics app. A common choice would be Adobe Illustrator, but as that’s more expensive than Acrobat Pro, you won’t be any better off if you have no other use for it. But like Acrobat Pro, there are alternatives to Adobe Illustrator, that are cheaper and arguably better.
One of our favourites is Affinity Designer. Affinity makes a great suite of macOS, iPadOS and Windows apps that are capable, modern replacements for the main Adobe design suite. They don’t have a product that is a PDF editor specifically, but Affinity Designer is a sophisticated all round graphic design app, that can open PDFs, edit them freely and then export out to PDF format again.
AU$119.99 one off payment, perpetual license for V2.
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/
For some situations, you really do need Acrobat Pro, and in those cases, it isn’t a bad deal because you will be using it to its full potential. If you are dealing with highly secured or custom forms, authoring interactive PDFs, or in a design or pre-press workflow, Acrobat Pro is probably still your best choice.
If you want to work out whether an alternative PDF app might work for your particular use case, give Mac Aid a call.
Apple pleasantly surprised us by announcing all of the rumoured new Macs at WWDC23, the 15 inch MacBook Air with M2, Mac Studio with M2 Max and M2 Ultra and even the long awaited Apple Silicon Mac Pro with M2 Ultra. The rumoured Vision Pro AR glasses were previewed too.
The 15 inch M2 MacBook Air is a brand new model. In most respects, it’s identical to its little brother, apart from its 15.3 inch 2,880 by 1,564 pixel display, bigger battery and slightly upgraded speakers.
This is an interesting option for those who might have bought a 16 inch MacBook pro in the past, largely because they wanted a bigger screen. The 15 inch M2 MacBook Air will give you a 15 inch screen, but in a thin and light laptop with 18 hours of battery life. And at a substantially lower price. It’s available in the same colours as the 13 inch MacBook Air: Midnight, Space Grey, Silver and Champagne.
You can also choose from a 70 watt charger for fast charging, or a smaller 35 watt charger with two USB-C ports. If you spend a lot of time on the road, this means you can charge your MacBook Air and iPhone (or Apple Watch, or iPad) at the same time.
Our suggested spec for a 15 inch MacBook Air in most cases would be 16GB RAM and at least a 512GB SSD.
It was great to see the Mac Studios updated to M2. This will give a nice performance boost to these potent little workhorses.
Those who have been holding off buying new Macs hoping for an Apple Silicon 27 inch or larger iMac should take note of the fact that Apple have updated Mac Studio, because it likely means that Apple don’t have plans for larger “pro” Apple Silicon iMacs in the near future. This is probably due to engineering issues around heat, given the extensive cooling that the M2 Ultra in particular needs. It’s easy to see that it just won’t work in a slim, 2023 style Apple iMac design.
Mac Studio with M2 Max is a great system for designers, architects, retouchers and video editors. For those still using a 2019 or earlier 27 inch iMac, this would be a very good upgrade option.
The standard spec for Mac Studio with M2 Max is a good starting point for most applications, with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD. But your particular workflow might need additional RAM or SSD.
Mac Studio with M2 Ultra is a great fit for those with heftier workflow needs, like video editing, 3D rendering, animation, compositing or engineering workflows. Those needing a Mac Studio with M2 Ultra are going to have very specific requirements, so talk to Mac Aid about speccing one up to suit your workflow.
And don’t forget about the Mac mini with M2 Pro, which is a very compelling option for mid-level design and architectural workflows, if you are on a budget.
Apple finally released the fabled Apple Silicon Mac Pro. It’s an odd beast in many ways, and most candidates for one of these will be just as well served by a well specced Mac Studio with M2 Ultra. But for those with a need for the expandability that the Mac Pro offers, it is now there as an option.
As expected, Apple previewed their long rumoured VR/AR goggles. They are a very impressive bit of engineering, with a very impressive price to match at $US3,500 when they launch in the US early 2024. It’s far too early to tell whether they will take over the world and become a must have gadget, or be a toy with those who can afford them. But they seem very impressive as a media consumption device, or even for workflows that might suit them. The best place to find out more is the WWDC23 keynote on the Apple website.
Apple also announced the next version of macOS, Sonoma, as well as iOS 17, watchOS 10 and others. More about those in the coming months.
Many Mac Aid clients already have our monitoring and remote help tools installed. But some don’t, and many who do might not be using them to their full potential. Having our remote help tools installed on your systems means that when you do need help from Mac Aid, the process is much faster, smoother and convenient.
One of our most helpful tools is Watchman, a system health monitoring tool. You’ll know that you have Watchman installed if you see our little “+” icon in the top right menu bar on your Mac.
While Watchman is a monitoring tool, it only lets us see technical details about the health of your system. We don’t see your screen, any data, what you are doing or what applications you are using. It gives us no access to your system at all. It reports things like the model and hardware details of your Mac or PC, what version of the OS you are running, how full your hard drive is, whether your Time Machine backup has been running to schedule, and reports crashes your system might have had.
If you have ever battled with trying to explain to us what Mac or PC you are using and what is wrong, Watchman could have saved you considerable stress and effort.
We also pro-actively keep and eye on all of the systems that we monitor in Watchman, so we can warn you if your hard drive is filling up, malware is reported, or your Time Machine backup isn’t running.
The Watchman “+” icon also provides a quick way to launch Mac Aid Remote if you have it installed, find our phone number, or email our support email address.
The Watchman menu can also be customised for your particular site. You could have your own internal IT support email address in there, or links to your file servers, or other services.
And if you are managing a large fleet of Macs or PCs we can give you access to the monitoring portal for Watchman for your site, which is a handy way for you to keep an eye on your own systems and makes it easier for you to lodge support jobs with us.
If you don’t have Watchman installed, give the Mac Aid office a call to arrange it, or remember to enquire next time you need us for IT support.
Our main remote help tool is the Mac Aid Remote Tool. This is a Mac Aid licensed version of Teamviewer. Mac Aid can only access your system via Mac Aid Remote when you launch it and give us your Partner ID and password. And our ability to connect only lasts for that session.
Mac Aid Remote allows us to remotely access and control your system to solve many IT support problems. It’s much faster and more convenient for everyone to do minor support tasks this way.
Having the Mac Aid Remote tool already installed means that you are prepared for when you need it. You can download Mac Aid Remote via this web page.
https://www.macaid.com.au/remote-support/
IT Glue is our IT Documentation system which is where we keep track of all of the details of client systems. If you run a large fleet of Macs or PCs we can give you access to the IT Glue records for your business. So you can look up passwords for your systems and accounts. This might save you many calls to Mac Aid to get passwords or check software licensing.
Give Mac Aid a call if you’d like to set up access to IT Glue for your fleet.
