LaCie itsaKey Flash Key Review

*Purchase any Mac with AppleCare between 4/27/09 and 6/21/09 and get a Canon MP190 Multifunction printer FREE after rebate!*

This is an in-house rebate process, meaning you only have to deal with Small Dog Electronics to claim your rebate. You can submit your rebate online, rather than having to mail it in. This is faster and easier than the traditional rebate process, and you’ll get your money returned faster, too.

You can read more about the rebate “by clicking here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/sderebate/

We kicked off this promo in time for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and 2009 graduation, but it’s available to everyone.

The Canon MP190 features a very high quality printer, copier, and scanner. It’s easy to use, fast, and both energy and ink efficient. “Click here to read about the MP190.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/72260

iTunes makes it fairly straightforward to maintain a large library of music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, album art, and other media. It’s easy to keep your iTunes library on an external hard drive (“click here to read how to do this”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449). It’s also easy to create multiple, seperate iTunes libraries by holding down the *Option* key while launching iTunes (“click here to read more about how to do this”:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesMac/8.0/en/15499.html).

It’s less obvious how to split an existing iTunes library, so that some files are stored on one hard drive, while other files are stored on a second hard drive.

By default, when you add a file to iTunes, iTunes copies that file into your iTunes library. This is part of what makes iTunes so easy to use and manage. However, you can prevent iTunes from copying files into its library in by de-selecting *Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library* in iTunes Preferences. Unfortunately, when I did that in the past, my iTunes media collection quickly became disorganized.

I work around this with a simple keyboard shortcut: I *simply hold down the Option key while dragging files into iTunes, making iTunes link to the original file without actually copying it into my iTunes library.*

This allows me to store my music, iPhone backups, and podcasts on my MacBook Pro’s hard drive, while I keep all movies and TV shows on an external hard drive. Movies and TV shows take up a lot of megabytes; this helps save space on my MacBook Pro’s hard drive. With the Option-key shortcut described above, iTunes thinks I only have one library while I actually have two.

This does involve a couple of extra steps for movies and TV shows I automatically download from the iTunes store, since I have to move that media to the external drive, and then move it back into iTunes. To do this:

1. In iTunes, find the real location of the media file you want to move by right clicking (or control-clicking) on it and choosing “Show in Finder.”

2. Move this file to your external drive, preferably in a well-named folder such as “iTunes Movies”.

3. After the file has copied over, delete the original file in iTunes.

4. Now drag the file from the external drive into iTunes while holding down the Option key.

You should confirm the file is copied to the external by repeating step one and choosing “Show in Finder”.

From now on, as long as the external drive is connected, you’ll be able to play back the file. You can even sync it to your iPhone or iPod, or stream to Apple TV!

President Obama just marked his 100th day in office this week, so I thought we’d take a look back to when Apple’s own Steve Jobs returned to Apple to run the show. Like Obama, Jobs had a huge task at hand–Apple was struggling in 1997, and Jobs was rehired to take Apple into a new creative direction (and away from financial ruin).

It’s natural for people to want to assess progress within a certain time period and use that to determine success, and the retern of Steve was no different! He was rehired back at Apple on February 7, 1997 when Apple purchased Jobs’ company, NeXT. Apple’s stock was low (a sharp contrast to their most recent numbers), and the company needed an overhaul.

Apple needed innovation and vision, and Steve Jobs had it. Simply put, Jobs shook things up. Among the highlights of his first 100 days, Jobs:

* Discontinued the Newton
* Eliminated the Apple clone project
* Announced that Apple would begin selling computers directly from their website
* Introduced a partnership with Microsoft that included their $150 million investment in Apple

It’s worth a mention that Jobs’ first keynote upon his return was not met with overwhelming acceptance. He was even booed several times during his presentation. Things looked bleak, but as my husband likes to say, “change is inherently very uncomfortable” and we all know what’s happened since then…

To wit:

* The iMac, the all-in-one Mac that changed everything (“She comes in colors…”)
* Apple retail stores
* OS X and iLife
* MacBooks and MacBook Pros
* iPhone

Congratulations to Obama on his first 100 days and to Apple’s continued success. Most of all, here’s to CHANGE!

Other fun reads:

* Apple’s list of discontinued products
* Wikipedia’s history of Apple
* “Watch Steve Jobs’ keynote from Macword 1997”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHNrqPkefI

__Sources:__
Cnet, “Apple after Jobs’s first 100 days”:http://news.cnet.com/Apple-after-Jobss-first-100-days/2100-1001_3-206360.html 12/15/97;
ArsTechnica, “10 years: Steve, welcome back”:http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/02/6890.ars 2/4/07

Next week is conference week for me, starting with the Annual Spring Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility conference at the Hilton in Burlington. I will be moderating a panel discussion with representatives from Senator Sanders and Leahy’s office and from Congressman Welch’s office. It should be an interesting discussion of health care reform, economic recovery and energy policy.

Right after that panel, I hop on a plane (with a surgical mask?) and head to New Orleans for the annual Apple Specialist Marketing Cooperative meeting. There should be some excellent presentations and a lot of opportunity to network with other Apple Specialists. I’ll be leaving the Kibbles & Bytes duty to Kali and Ed next week.

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Kali & Ed_

Dear Friends,

Artie Hendrickson is our most senior employee. He has held just about every position in the company and is currently our senior purchasing manager. We established a tradition when we first hired him where we would hold his annual review on a new (to us) golf course every spring near his anniversary date. We always say that he needs to play well because his golfing skill could have a serious impact on his review and salary. There is a big bonus for a hole-in-one, a moderate increase if his drive hits the fairway and a subtraction from his bonus if he three-putts. We were out doing his review yesterday, and I’ll report the results on Twitter or Facebook!

I seldom buy extended warranties but I want to make the case to you that Apple’s AppleCare is an exception to that rule and an outstanding value. The computer business is a competitive marketplace and it would certainly be nice if manufacturers standardized on longer warranties. However, in the name of cost competitiveness, the standard is a one-year warranty. Macs and iPods are the most reliable computer products manufactured, but they also only have a one-year warranty. Adding AppleCare gives you an extra two years and thus puts your coverage in sync with the reliability of the hardware.

The bonus of AppleCare for Macs is that it not only extends the one-year hardware warranty to three years, but it also extends Apple’s excellent technical support from an included 90 days to a full three years (after the 90 days you are asked to provide a credit card for help). This is an outstanding value. Almost anything that might fail on your computer in the first three years will cost you more than the cost of AppleCare! Plus, how do you put a price on the convenience of calling Apple directly to receive technical support when you are in the middle of a project and are stuck?

AppleCare is clearly not just an extended warranty; it provides real tools to keep you productive and makes the first three years of your Mac ownership stress-free so you can just use the awesome tool of the Macintosh.