_Dear Friends,_
The leaves are changing colors, and while we have had a nice warm week, the temperatures are expected to dip to more seasonable autumn highs and lows this weekend. Grace has been making applesauce from the apples in our yard and from the apples we picked at the Shelburne Orchard with the grandkids. I am thinking of pruning my trees, including the one here at the office that seems to be getting too big.
Most of the main roads have reopened here in Vermont after Hurricane Irene knocked the Green Mountain state for a loop. There is an awful lot of road and bridge work yet to do, and so many businesses and home owners are working hard to get their places back in shape before the onset of winter.
It is no secret that Apple is holding an iPhone event next week, and we are excited to see the newest members of the iPhone family. I have a call with AT&T to talk about the new iPhone next week, too. We are an AT&T dealer and offer the iPhone, as well as other AT&T products, in all of our retail locations. I’ll report on the new phone next week before I head back out on the road to Miami and China.
Amazon announced new Kindle e-readers this week, and their seven-inch tablets are an interesting new entry into the tablet market. One thing is very clear: they are not iPads and not much competition for the iPad. The iPad maintains such a head start in terms of design, features and performance that it is going to be tough for anyone to really catch up. It is great to have some cheap imitations on the low end of the market so that the iPad can stand alone as the true tablet computing platform. More than almost any other feature of the iPad, it is the integration with iTunes and the App Store that make the iPad such a useful tool. I do not see the demise of the personal computer, but I do see a proliferation of many smart devices that will be tools for our lives. It is hard to remember the days before iPhone; already, it is such a critical part of my life. Science fiction becomes reality in so many ways as we see the progression of technology.
We say a fond goodbye to Katie Wilhite this week as she leaves Small Dog Electronics to pursue the next steps in her career. Katie has been one of the rising stars at Small Dog since the day about 5 years ago that I hired her as a retail staffer for our new S. Burlington store. She rose quickly to be the assistant manager and later the manager of that store. Last year when we decided to open the Manchester, NH store, it was a “no-brainer” to choose Katie to head up that task. She built a beautiful store for us and hired an awesome team for our first store outside of Vermont. Katie would always greet every customer with a big smile and a welcome and went beyond the ordinary to set the standard for extraordinary customer service that is the mission of Small Dog Electronics. We wish Katie the very best in her next adventure–we are gonna miss her.
