K&B SPECIALS | 07/30/10 – 8/08/10

_Dear Friends,_

I got caught in some rain riding home from Burlington last night, but with the warm temperatures it was not too bad. I was at the S. Burlington store which was jumping all day. I was very proud of our team as they handled the big volume of customers despite the glitches we had that day with our database.

It has been a great season for blueberries and my breakfast these days has been a bowl of berries, which is a great start for the day!

I went down to the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor Vermont on Saturday to check out the New England BBQ championships and to watch Hapy compete in the Strongman competition. It was a beautiful ride and the place was jammed with 50 or more BBQ vendors, a huge Harpoon beer tent, some live music and big guys that made Hapy look small doing fetes of strength. I was amazed at how much Hapy could dead lift, but the larger guys were lifting over 700 pounds.

There were some great new products coming out of Cupertino this week that are covered here in Kibbles & Bytes. I am very excited about the new offerings and will be moving to try out the Magic Trackpad as soon as we get one in. With less fanfare, Apple upgraded Safari this week and implemented the extensions gallery that will allow you to install and uninstall extensions easily to the browser. I have started playing with various extensions on the gallery and have found some that improve my surfing right away. Hapy is debating whether he will move to the new 27-inch iMac with a second 27-inch LED Cinema display or the ridiculously awesome 12-core Mac Pro.

I am leaving on Wednesday to head to South Dakota for the Sturgis rally. Grace, Tony and I have decided that we will take up to a 100 mile detour to see oddball roadside attractions. I downloaded a couple of apps for my iPhone and iPad to find these for us. Our route is going through Canada to Michigan UP, through Wisconsin and Minnesota and then to SD. Tony will ride with us on the way out but Grace and I will stop in Chicago on the way back for our annual Cubs pilgrimage to Wrigley Field.

I’ll be staying in touch with my iPhone 4 and my iPad and I’ll carry a Bluetooth keyboard for late-night writing. I found that I can type faster and more accurately with the BT keyboard and that makes the iPad the perfect compact platform for me–that and the eight pages of apps I have now!

Things are really picking up on the construction of the Manchester, NH store. I’m heading over on Tuesday to do some final interviews for new members of our Small Dog team. We have a lot of steps to complete, but it is an exciting and heady time as we create a new store.

I really am going to pick up my Norton this week and will leave pictures with Kali so that they can be in the next issue of Kibbles & Bytes.

Here are my favorite iPhone and iPad apps for my upcoming trip:
*iPhone 4:* Skype, MLB, iWant, Radar, Starbucks, Roadside and of course, DoodleJump.
*iPad:* IM+, iBooks, skobbler, Helsing’s Fire, Desktop and Moto Minder.

Let me know your favorites!

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
_Don, Kali, Ed & Ben_

This week we wanted to bring to your attention some of the great prices we have on closeout “iMacs”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|iMac, “MacBooks”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|MacBook “13-inch MacBook Pros,”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|MacBook_Pro_13in “15-inch MacBook Pros”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|MacBook_Pro_15in and “17-inch MacBook Pros.”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|MacBook_Pro_17in

With the introduction of the new iMacs, it’s now possible to save *$100 – $200* on brand-new, just discontinued iMacs. All of these qualify for our special offer where you get a *FREE $50 or $100 gift card* when you purchase any Mac with AppleCare.

Likewise, we have some fantastic prices on closeout “13-inch MacBooks Pros”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|MacBook_Pro_13in where you can save up to $320 with closeout pricing and still qualify for the $50 or $100 free gift card.

We have a couple of different closeout “15-inch MacBook Pros”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|MacBook_Pro_15in in stock. For example, we’re currently offering a brand-new, factory-sealed closeout model with a matte display instead of the glossy display. If you’re someone who really dislikes the glossy Apple display and you want a 15-inch display, consider this “model for $220 off original pricing.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76560/macbook-pro-15in-2-53ghz-4gb-250gb-antiglare

With virtually no fanfare (save for the persistent rumors), Apple announced new Mac Pros on Tuesday, much to the delight of creative professionals everywhere.

The updated Mac Pro now features up to 12 processing cores and “up to 50% greater performance than the previous generation,” Apple states. The latest quad-core and 6-core Intel Xeon processors can be found inside the new machines, giving them a long-awaited boost of power.

The Mac Pros also include all-new ATI graphics and an option for up to four 512GB solid state drives (pricey, but worthwhile to have the choice, yes?). There are also options to upgrade the graphics to a pair of video cards or to go all out with a 1GB HD 5870 card as “Engadget”:http://www.engadget.com/ puts it, “if you’re keen on maxing out those frame rates.”

The enclosure looks to be almost identical to the end-user, since Apple has found a way to make expansion easy and look incredibly sleek (though you might want to bulk up before you plan on moving it around). The hard drive bays are still located in the same section of the tower, and are expandable to 8TB (yep, terabytes), by the way.

The Mac Pro has also expanded its display options. There are now two Mini DisplayPorts and one dual-link DVI port located on the back. The addition of the second Mini DisplayPort output allows customers to connect two LED Cinema Displays without an additional graphics card or adapter. The dual-link DVI port supports legacy DVI-based displays with a resolution up to 2560 x 1600 pixels. 

Of course, Apple has continued to accelerate their environmental efforts as well. The Mac Pro is BFR-free (brominated flame retardant-free) and all internal cables are PVC-free. Again, the enclosure has stayed solid aluminum, which is highly recyclable. It is rated EPEAT Gold and standard configurations meet ENERGY STAR 5.0 requirements.*

With all of these changes, the Mac Pro becomes the solid winner as a pro machine again, as the name should imply. The iMac kept coming so close in recent years that for the money, many people chose that instead. No more. The Mac Pro, with all of its expandability, power and connectivity features, is the Mac to choose for longevity and demanding professional work.

*Quad-Core Mac Pro: from $2499.99*
*8-Core Mac Pro: from $3299.99*

12-Core Mac Pros look to start at $4999.99.

“Click here to view all Mac Pros!”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|Mac_Pro

__*Only Mac Pros configured with a Mac Pro RAID Card or Fibre Channel card do not meet ENERGY STAR and EPEAT requirements.__

Do you enjoy using Multi-Touch gestures on your iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad to scroll, swipe, pinch, and zoom through photos, songs, documents and other content? Like the idea of a Multi-Touch trackpad for your desktop Mac, similar to the trackpad used on the MacBook and MacBook Pro? Do you enjoy the Magic Mouse but wish it supported more Multi-Touch gestures? Well, your moment has arrived in the form of the brand-new (and much rumored) Magic Trackpad.

Introduced early Tuesday morning, the Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. It’s also the largest Multi-Touch trackpad ever, nearly 80 percent larger than the built-in trackpad on the MacBook Pro. Its large size provides plenty of room to perform gestures. Speaking of gestures, Magic Trackpad supports a full set of them, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen. Swiping through pages online is reputed to feel just like flipping through pages in a book or magazine. Inertial scrolling makes moving up and down a page more natural than ever. Because the entire surface of Magic Trackpad is a button, you can click on objects just as you would using a traditional mouse.

Magic Trackpad connects to your Mac via Bluetooth wireless technology, and can be used in place of a mouse or in conjunction with one. Go from typing to gesturing in one motion, or do both at the same time. Magic Trackpad sits at the same height and angle as the Apple Wireless Keyboard, so you can go from trackpad to keyboard in one seamless motion.

I was at Macworld when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007. I remember how people were already hoping that the then revolutionary Multi-Touch gestures would somehow make their way to notebook and desktop Macs. They day is now here. Not quite to the level of the iPhone–with on-screen gestures–but close.

Magic Trackpad requires a Mac with Bluetooth wireless technology (most Macs shipping since 2005 have this), Mac OS X v10.6.4 or later, and Latest Magic Trackpad software update. It requires two AA batteries (included) to operate. Apple recommends using rechargeable AA batteries, and is actually now offering a Apple Battery Charger for this purpose. For more on that, “click here to read the info on the blog, Barkings!”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/new-apple-battery-charger/

This Tuesday, Apple released significant updates to the iMac line. Largely performance oriented, the update introduced Intel Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7, processors across the line. Previously reserved for the highest tiered 27-in iMac as well as CTO machines, the standard inclusion of “Core i” processors will undoubtedly give all of the machines a well deserved speed boost.

The second most significant enhancement is the addition of discreet graphics to every iMac. While the base model 21.5-in machine previously relied on the integrated 9400M graphics card, all models have now been upgraded with dedicated ATI Radeon cards. At the base level, the 21.5-in machine includes the ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB GDDR3 SDRAM. The mid-range 21.5-in and 27-in machines feature the Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB GDDR3, and the highest end 27-in features the blazing fast HD 5750 with a whopping *1GB of GDDR5 SDRAM!* These discreet cards have more than enough horsepower to drive the latest creative software and 3D games, and are optimized to deliver crisp and vivid HD video playback.

Although more minor in stature, Apple has touched on many of the other components of the iMac as well. The LED backlit displays feature IPS technology to deliver an unprecedented viewing angle, and the SD card reader now supports the *SDXC* format which enables compatibility with the highest-capacity SD cards. Apple has also included the option for a secondary solid state drive in the 27-in machines. Users can select a *256GB SSD* as their primary drive, or they can supplement it with a high capacity SATA drive. Among the many benefits of a SSD are better reliability and faster startup/application launch times.

Though all four standard configurations of the iMac still include Apple’s revolutionary Magic Mouse and Bluetooth Keyboard, for an additional $69 users can add on the brand new “Magic Trackpad.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76695/apple-magic-trackpad/at_kb This new product brings the gesture based functionality that notebook Mac users have enjoyed since late 2008 to the desktop realm.

While the new iMac models preserve the same design introduced in October of last year, their updated components bring a welcome refresh to the line. With dual-core and quad-core configurations available, the iMac continues to blur the lines in between a consumer and professional workstation. For those on the fence deciding if an iMac would meet their professional needs, today’s update makes the ultra stylish all-in-one a more viable solution than ever.

“*iMac 21.5in 3.06GHz i3 – $1199.99*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76691/at_kb
“*iMac 21.5in 3.20GHz i3 – $1499.99*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76692/at_kb
“*iMac 27in 3.20GHz i3 – $1699.99*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76693/at_kb
“*iMac 27in 2.8GHz i5 – $1999.99*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76694/at_kb

“See all iMacs here!”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|iMac