iPhone 5 Case Options

This week, our “Meet the Small Dogger” segment goes out to lucky contestant and “young gun” Jonny Wanser. Jonny came on as a Small Dog sales associate back in July. So why are we featuring him now?

Jonny was recently promoted to Assistant Manger in our South Burlington location because of his stellar performance and superior customer service skills! That may sound like a quick jump up the corporate ladder, but it doesn’t come without some serious retail experience.

Before coming to Small Dog he spent about three years at American Apparel, Forever 21 and Ace Hardware (there’s some diversity).

And now for the best part — here are some things you might not know about Jonny:

When Jonny is not rockin’ the Small Dog floor, he’s busy working full time on a rock opera. Yes, that’s right — a Rock. Opera. For a few years, he kept busy moving from Seattle to San Francisco trying to make connections to help him craft his rock opera, before he found himself settling back in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont. Since he’s been back, he’s been focusing most of his down time on recording and organizing it with some of his closest friends.

He also runs an internet-famous blog and does audio engineering for himself and others who need it. This mostly entails sitting in on recording sessions or making songs/beats for others.

Jonny might sound like a busy guy, but when he’s not focusing on his beats he can most likely be found in his basement in his own personal studio writing sad songs and eating chips.

If any of you Kibbles readers are visiting our South Burlington location and need advice on anything related to audio engineering (or anything technology-related, really), seek out Jonny. He’ll be your guy!

Grace is off learning Spanish in Costa Rica, so it is just me and the three dogs at home. When I got home, as I listened to the messages on my voicemail, I glanced over at the sugar bowl and saw a chubby mouse in the bowl chowing down. It is that time of the year when the mice want to come inside, but this one was brazen and I found myself wishing I had a cat!

I am hoping that the weather cooperates a little bit this weekend so I can get some fall riding in before it snows. We are into one of Vermont’s “shoulder” seasons — stick season. The leaf peepers have pretty much gone home and things get pretty slow here in the ski areas until the snow and holidays come.

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Kali, Mike & Steph_

_Dear Friends,_

I got back from China on Wednesday night and my body is still quite confused about which time zone it is in. Even though the seats recline to a bed, I have never been able to sleep on airplanes, so I read a few books, answered email and watched a movie on the long 15-hour flight. It was over 24 hours of traveling from my hotel in Hong Kong to my home, so I got my sleep patterns totally confused.

You would have thought that the iPad mini that is rumored had already been released with all of the accessories that were being shown. I even got a sample of an iPad mini case that had a very realistic mock-up of the iPad mini with it. I attended two trade shows in Hong Kong and then traveled to Dongguan and Shenzhen to visit our manufacturing partners and to talk about new products.

There were a few companies showing Lightning connectors but when I asked, none of them had acquired Apple licenses for the products (although they were all hopeful). It is my understanding that Apple will not actually license the design, but will require these manufacturers to purchase the connector from Apple suppliers. For this reason — aside from the few companies that had the pirated cables — there were no Lightning accessories at the show.

There was a huge selection of iPhone cases, iPad cases, speakers and other peripherals. It is a little like finding a needle in a haystack, however, because many companies have the same products and it takes some time to determine whether the company is a manufacturer or a trading agent. Nevertheless, I came back with a bag full of brochures and samples that may lay the groundwork for new Hammerhead and Chill Pill products.

I noted that while I was gone we were able to acquire a bunch more of the “*Apple Certified Refurbished 17-inch MacBook Pros.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple/MacBook_Pro/17in These all carry the standard Apple 1-year warranty and are eligible for “*AppleCare Protection Plan,*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/78291/applecare-protection-plan-macbook-pro-15in-and-17in/at_kb too. This is the last of the 17-inch MacBook Pros so if you are looking for a laptop with a big screen, this could be the best opportunity to get one at a highly discounted price (they start at $1349.99!).

Here at Small Dog, we sell a sweet little cable that will connect your MacBook Pro to your HDTV. It’s called the “*Hammerhead Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Cable.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76263/hammerhead-mini-displayport-to-hdmi-cable-6ft/at_kb I purchased one of these as soon as I got my Mac, brought it home and plugged it into my computer and TV. It was as simple as that to get video from my Mac to my TV.

The problem came up when I tried to play a movie — sound was coming out of my Mac, but not my TV. Luckily, it is rather easy, and makes logical sense as to why it wasn’t working. Macs are so powerful that they let __you__ determine how you want you sound to be played — whether it be through the computer speakers or through external ones.

All you have to do is go to *System Preferences* and click on the *Sound* category. This changes the window to the Sound menu. Along the top of the window you should see three tabs labeled *Sound Effects*, *Output*, and *Input*. Select *Output* and then from the list below select the Output with the *type* of *HDMI*. This will tell your computer to send the audio data through the Mini DisplayPort to your TV. That is it — From here, you should be listening to audio from your TV’s speakers instead of your Mac’s.

Of course, these instructions have a few caveats. First, my machine is a 2011 MacBook Pro running OS 10.7. Your setup might be different and the Mini DisplayPort only started supporting audio out on the 2010 (and later) machines. The next important thing to ask is: Does your TV have an HDMI port in it? It’s also handy if your TV has speakers either built-in or connected to it.