Dear Friends,

We are in the midst of a spring heat wave and a solar storm today, though the weather report calls for cloudy skies so we are unlikely to catch any Aurora Borealis caused by the massive solar flare. I think one of Vermont’s famous “shoulder” seasons—mud season—will be early this year.

Of course the big news this week was Apple’s Media Event, which brought the new iPad and Apple TV announcements. Kali and Dawn will review these announcements in detail, however, I do want to comment on how Apple has once again set the bar quite high for any competitor in the tablet market. As Apple continues to enhance the iPad, Tim Cook is right that we are entering a new era in computing appliances. The Retina display, faster processor, improved camera, and 4G LTE networking are all features that will make this new iPad a huge success. While I am a bit disappointed that Apple did not bring Siri to the iPad, the voice dictation feature is going to be a hit if it works as well as Siri on the iPhone 4s.

I was also very pleased to see that Apple has retained the iPad 2 in its base 16GB configuration at a new price of $399. That is great for entry-level users but also gives us plenty of time to sell our Hammerhead products for the iPad 2. Apple has changed the naming conventions for the iPad, just calling it the iPad rather than the speculation that had it named “iPad 2s” or “iPad 3” or “iPad HD.” This is consistent with how they have named iPods and makes a lot of sense. We will use the qualifier of 3rd Generation to distinguish this latest iPad version on our website and in stores.

This week also marks the first 1-hour radio show for Small Dog Electronics on WDEV, Radio Vermont or as station owner Ken Squire puts it, “Radio Flea Vermont.” Rebecca and Dawn will join me on the call-in show from 1-2 on Thursdays to discuss Macs, iPads, PCs, dogs, dog friends or just about anything that the listeners want to discuss. We are going to have some fun on the Apple products version of Car Talk. We haven’t officially named the show but it is going to be community radio at its best with an award-winning radio station that really understands the need for local programming rather than syndicated packages. Check out WDEV’s website here.