Dear Friends,
We have had a heat wave here in Vermont with unseasonably hot and muggy weather. We are also seeing the first tinges of color in the leaves as the days grow shorter and it seems that the Canada geese are already looking for their southern route as they stop by in the farmer’s field and fly in formation down the valley. Sweet corn season is about done and apple picking has started early. Schools have started and my ride to work now includes kids waiting for the bus and school buses driving on my normally nearly vacant route. I like to say that I see more cows than cars on my commute.
Apple held their annual Music Event this week and we will talk about the new iPods and the new Apple TV later in this issue of Kibbles & Bytes. There were three major changes in the products that really show that Apple is “in tune” with their customers. The iPod shuffle returns to the slightly larger version with navigation buttons. This shuffle design was the most popular and when we had them in stock, they easily out-sold the last shuffle design.
The second big change was the iPod nano. The new smaller nano no longer has the video camera or playback capabilities of the now discontinued version. Again, I think that most folks that bought an iPod nano bought it for the music and not for video. I know I put a nano on my Victory for music and thought that it would be convenient to have the video camera just in case I happened onto “alien first contact” but I never used it. (Since I carry an iPhone 4, I am all set for my encounter with ET.)
The third area where Apple demonstrated that they were “in touch” was the Apple TV. The new Apple TV is a rental-only model and that fits the vast majority of uses for this device. It was funny when Steve put up the list of what people wanted in the Apple TV and one of the criteria was that it should be “cool”–and he was truly speaking of temperature because the old Apple TV was one hot running device! Rentals are where the action is; most people do not want to buy a movie, they just want to watch it. I have a couple of bookcases full of DVD movies that I seldom watch.
Small Dog Electronics is very proud to announce that we are now an AT&T dealer and, in our Waitsfield and South Burlington stores, we now have the iPhone in stock and ready for sale! We can get you set up with the iPhone 4 or the iPhone 3GS and an AT&T voice and data plan to suit your needs. We are very excited at this new development that we have been working on with AT&T and Apple for almost two years. You can now come to Small Dog Electronics for ALL of you Apple product needs! We hope to have our new store in Manchester, NH set up for the iPhone soon after we open.
We have chiseled our *GRAND OPENING* date for our Manchester store in digital stone. We will have our gala grand opening beginning on October 9th. We have a lot of work to do to get ready, employees to hire and train and shelves to stock, but we have an awesome team to get this done. I could not be more excited about this new store.
The weather has been great so I’ve been able to do the slightly over two hour drive on my motorcycle a few times. I’ve found that I can carry about a dozen MacBooks at a time on the bike. We will be putting out a more formal announcement of the grand opening and of course, all of our loyal Kibbles & Bytes readers are welcome to attend!
