Introducing Mike Burl!

ByMike Moffit

Mike B., or “Boots” as we call him (for no other reason than that Dawn threw it out there one day), has joined the Marketing Department! A long-time sales associate and Apple Sales Professional in the S. Burlington store, he has come over to the south side (not The Dark Side, mind you) to help us connect with our customers and use his product and sales expertise for new endeavors!

Here are some facts about Mike:

  • Originally from upstate NY, so “Go, Yankees!” (Editor’s Note: Ugh) 😉
  • Has a Pomeranian named Wesley
  • Favorite color: White

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re getting to know him here in Waitsfield a little better, too, and we’re very excited to have him join us. He’ll be a regular contributor to Kibbles & Bytes, so if you’re so inclined, feel free to send him a hearty welcome email at michaelb@smalldog.com.

Read more about Mike here!

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  • _Dear Friends,_

    I was out in Cupertino last week for meetings at Apple headquarters. As Kali reported last week in Kibbles, we created a video that is now up on YouTube that introduces Small Dog Electronics.

    “*View the high-res version here.*”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQBHzsCM1Q8&list=UUCNZJP3OsbZwD5nCh0eBK8Q&index=1&feature=plcp

    It is always exciting to be on the Apple campus, and this time — more than ever — I have seen a real beehive of activity. I stayed at a hotel just across the road from Apple and I could see the night lights burning over at One Infinity Loop. One of the hidden stories of Apple’s success is how they have managed for their growth. It is not an easy task to grow a company from $5 billion in sales to over $100 billion in sales, and we have often talked about this part of Apple’s success.

    However, the harder task is managing for the growth in sales, growth in sheer number of employees, the growth in the numbers of components that need to be coordinated in the supply chain, and the growth in customers. Amazingly, Apple still maintains the highest marks for both customer satisfaction and technical support despite this enormous growth. It is a real testament to Tim Cook and his management team that Apple has kept up with this rapid growth as well as they have.

    We know this ourselves at Small Dog Electronics. Our growth has not been quite as spectacular as Apple’s, but we have doubled our sales in the last few years. In what seems like a blink of an eye to me, we have expanded our staff from 20 Small Doggers to over 70 currently. Our own Tim Cook is Hapy, who designs our systems and procedures and as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operational Officer, has his finger on the pulse of our growth. Hapy’s real title here is “Information Retrieval” (named in jest after the bureaucracy in the cult classic movie “*Brazil*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_%28film%29), and the hub of the company is right at Hapy’s desk.

    While Hapy manages from that hub, the rest of our management team is on their game managing our business: Rebecca Kraemer manages our IT and Consulting business (and serves as my co-host on our weekly radio show, “*Small Dog Speaks!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks), Art Hendrickson manages our inventory control and warehouse operations and is also our go-to guy on buildings and grounds, Jen Mayer is our district manager and has responsibility for our expanding retail operations, Rob Amon is our corporate sales guru but also has the added title of Company Jester, and Dawn D’Angelillo is not only our marketing director but also manages our retail merchandising and PR.

    We have a pair of Jasons, too: Jason Wu manages our Hammerhead/Chill Pill division and Jason Lewantowicz manages our services division and is the guy who makes sure your Mac or iPhone gets repaired right the first time. Matt Curran is our assistant controller and Hapy’s right hand man, and Kerry Westhelle — in addition to being my awesome assistant — manages our HR functions. I couldn’t be prouder of my management team here at Small Dog!

  • iOS 6 Maps App. Flop or Not?

    It has been just over a week since Apple released iOS6, which has given me some time to play around with the “*new features.*”:http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/ So far, I really love the changes, but I have heard the scuttlebutt about the new Maps app. For those of you that haven’t heard or haven’t experienced it yet, the new Maps app can in some cases be dramatically incorrect. While I can brush off some cases as just being user ignorance — like asking where London is and getting a result for London, Ontario rather than London England — if you aren’t specific, don’t get mad when you don’t get exactly what you want.

    I have seen pictures on a tumblr feed entitled “*The Amazing iOS 6 Maps*”:http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com that show graphical errors like the green grass textures where a parking lot should be and other errors that show landmarks miles away from their actual location. Yes, this annoying and unlike Apple to ship a product that isn’t perfect, but it does have some nice features that you didn’t get with the old Maps app.

    For example, I was zooming in and all of a sudden, I rotated the whole map. Call me easily impressed, but I thought that was the bees knees. Sure, all you had to do before was spin your phone around, but now all the UI elements stay in a readable orientation. Also, now my phone will tell me audibly where I am going so I don’t need to be looking down and playing with my phone to figure out what I’m doing when. Turn-by-turn navigation is a nice safety feature to make the Maps app more like a GPS. (Yes, it might take you to the completely wrong place, but you will get there without having to fiddle with your phone!) Because Google Maps doesn’t allow for turn-by-turn, that was the single-biggest reason for Apple to develop something internally.

    If we take a little stroll down memory lane, I can tell you that “*Google*”:http://www.google.com/about/company/history/#2004 (the original engine of the iOS maps) started development way back in 2004 with Google Local. This eventually was merged into Google Maps and officially launched in 2005. That gave Google 8 years to develop and perfect a system. I would certainly hope that with an 8-year development cycle, you would have a product as perfect as Google Maps. So what if the iOS 6 Maps app has some inconsistencies — have we all become so dependent on technology that we have no more intuition? Frankly, I have never 100% trusted anything, except for the adage that one should never follow anything blindly otherwise you won’t know where you are or how you got there (literally).

    The bottom line is that this app is new to Apple, and it is something that will be fixed. As Jobs said back in 2010 with that whole iPhone 4 antenna issue, “We’re (Apple) not perfect. Phones aren’t perfect. We want to make all our users happy.” We don’t think that Apple is just sticking their head in the sand and ignoring these issues, so I am confident that Apple will have a fix for this and they will launch it when they have it. As “*Mr.Incredible*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Incredibles_characters#Mr._Incredible once said, “We’ll get there when we get there!” In the meantime, if I need to figure out how to get somewhere, I will use the app and take it with a grain of salt — i.e. a paper map in my glove box in case of emergencies.

  • SPECIAL | AirPort Express and 4-Port USB Hub

    Looking for more expandability of your WiFi network and USB connections? Here is it is in one great bundle.

    *Apple AirPort Express Base Station 802.11n Wi-Fi + Targus USB 3.0 Combo Hub (4-Port) for only $142.*

  • Weekly Apple News Recap | 09.28.12

    *iPhone 5 Begins Readily Shipping, Sales Hit 5m in 3 Days*
    Announced on the 12th, iPhone 5 began shipping on Friday, September 21st. Sales of the phone reached over 5 million in just about three days, and quantities are constrained worldwide due to overwhelming demand.

    We’ve received limited supply thus far, but we’ve filled most of the preorders at this point and expect more stock.

    “*Watch Rebecca unbox her new iPhone 5*”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhUy7w4_yEc&feature=autoplay&list=UUCNZJP3OsbZwD5nCh0eBK8Q&playnext=1
    “*Read more on the sales shortage here.*”:http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57518813-501465/apple-iphone-5-sold-out-sales-hit-5-million-in-3-days/

    *Apple Addresses Maps Criticism*
    CNET writes about the recent flap about Apple’s new app, Maps, and its less-than-stellar reception.

    “*Read more here.*”:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57522196-37/apple-ceo-we-are-extremely-sorry-for-maps-flap/

  • Apple Refurbs: What Does That Mean?

    Apple has an amazing refurbishing process — when a product has that Apple Refurbished sticker on it, you can be assured that what you’re getting is as good as new. My 13-in MacBook was refurbished and it is still kicking today — nearly six years later. So be assured that even though these machines are refurbished, you will still get years out of them.

    So what are you really getting by purchasing a refurbished machine? The 17-inch MacBook Pros we have in stock include a quad-core Intel i5 or i7 processor, 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive for storage, an NVIDIA GeForce GT330M with 512MB of video memory, and (here is the kicker) they are eligible for AppleCare. That’s right, unlike a used computer, Apple Refurbs are eligible to have AppleCare applied to them.

    As if that’s not enough, here is the final nail in the coffin (you know, in a good way). Buying a refurbished machine can save you over $1,000. These are Macs that when purchased new at the time of release, ran a machine over $2,500! Our 17-inch MBPs now start at $1,350 (in limited quantity). If you add AppleCare to it, you are sitting pretty at $1,660 and that is still $140 cheaper than a new 15-inch MacBook Pro without AppleCare. If that isn’t the deal of the year, I don’t know what is!