Apple Product Announcements

Tim Cook mentioned in “yesterday’s keynote”:http://www.apple.com/apple-events/2014-oct-event/ that the “iPad mini with Retina Display”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple/iPad/iPad_mini has 100% customer satisfaction. That is absolutely amazing for any product! Having owned one myself since January, I have to agree completely and admit that I’m still impressed with it on a daily basis. I don’t think I could come up with anything that is a negative, but the one wishlist item I have is now covered in the newly announced iPad mini 3: Touch ID.

I am a strong believer in preserving older technology and getting as much use out of my gear as possible. As some already know, or maybe you have heard quips from Don about it on our “Small Dog Speaks radio show”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks, I am an avid “Apple Newton”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad user. I still carry my MessagePad 2100, the last of Apple’s groundbreaking PDAs from the ’90s, around with me every day–fully kitted out with WiFi, Bluetooth, and even GPS–but it now has a smaller, faster, and far more modern companion. My first new Apple product in a number of years, in fact.

Last fall, as I transitioned from nearly a decade in our IT department as a server admin & developer to also managing the department, it became clear that–no matter how comfortable I had grown to being on-call for emergencies–there is a big difference between being on-call and managing a department. The former means bringing a MacBook Pro with you everywhere so you can fix down servers or services ASAP when an important phone call or text message comes in. The latter means not just dealing with emergencies, but also being able to quickly fire off emails, pull up documentation, and update reports anywhere & any time. The MacBook Pro was already too cumbersome to always carry with me, but it definitely isn’t conducive to pulling out to quickly read or respond to email, or update my to-do lists. With a MacBook Pro, you really need to sit down and ultimately tend to get sucked into it. I like the full size iPad, but really wanted something smaller & lighter (you know, the size of my Newton, but __thinner__ & lighter).

The iPad mini with Retina Display fit the bill perfectly. It has roughly the same size front face as my MessagePad, but is significantly thinner, half the weight, has an immeasurably nicer display, and is extremely modern, with a vibrant apps marketplace and excellent connectivity options with WiFi, Bluetooth, and the Lightning connector. At times I wish I had picked up the cellular model so it’d have built-in GPS and Internet anywhere, but it’s easily paired with my iPhone 5 so the thought quickly slips away.

It’s hard to compete with the Newton’s battery life which is generally measured in weeks, not days, but the iPad keeps surprising me with its power efficiency. A few weeks ago, while working on the refurbishment of my Land Rover Series III (old Apple gear isn’t my only obsession), my iPad was cranking out music for over 7 hours and still had 88% battery left. After streaming the entire Apple keynote over WiFi, 92% battery remaining. I easily meet and usually exceed Apple’s 10 hour battery life estimate, and can extend it by carefully managing when I enable or disable WiFi or Bluetooth.

We’re big into dogfooding (using the products we sell) so Small Dog runs on Apple’s servers, apps, and Google for Work (née Google Apps for Business; you knew “we are a reseller”:http://www.smalldog.com/b2b-googleapps/business-solutions-google-apps specializing in deployment & migration, right?). Apple’s “Pages”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pages/id361309726?mt=8, “Numbers”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/numbers/id361304891?mt=8, and “Keynote”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keynote/id361285480?mt=8, as well as Google’s, “Drive”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-drive-free-online-storage/id507874739?mt=8, “Docs”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-docs/id842842640?mt=8, “Sheets”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-sheets/id842849113?mt=8, and “Slides”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-slides/id879478102?mt=8 are all so easy to pop open, do a little work, then go back to whatever I was doing. The two apps that are always open and get the most use are Google’s “Gmail”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gmail-email-from-google/id422689480?mt=8 and Yaniv Katan’s “gTasks HD Pro”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gtasks-hd-pro-google-tasks/id672241079?mt=8 for my to-do lists (it syncs through Gmail’s “tasks”, so they’re in Gmail in any web browser). Plus, iOS 8 has greatly improved the sharing of data between apps, making multitasking that much easier and more powerful.

For the server admin side of my job, I couldn’t be happier leaving the MacBook Pro at home on my desk. I can actually manage, troubleshoot, and fix our infrastructure using Panic’s excellent “Prompt”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prompt-2/id917437289?mt=8 terminal emulator, “VNC Viewer”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vnc-viewer/id352019548?mt=8 for remote control, and “AirPort Utility”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/airport-utility/id427276530?mt=8 for managing WiFi devices. Add in “1Password”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1password-password-manager/id568903335?mt=8 for managing passwords and I’m am one happy server geek. More importantly, the weight off my shoulders–literal and figurative–has less me far less stressed.

Would I upgrade to the iPad mini 3 to get Touch ID? Considering how security conscious I need to be and how much time it’d save, it is extremely likely. That said, I absolutely love my iPad mini with Retina Display as it is. I’m proud to be part of that 100% customer satisfaction rate.

P.S. For those fellow Newton users out there, I still maintain “a small list”:http://www.smalldog.com/newton/ of products that pair well with our green friend.

Back in early 19th century England, textile artisans concerned about their labor being replaced by newly developed machines protested by destroying some of the machinery. These people were known as Luddites. The word is often used to this day to refer to someone who rejects, or is slow to adopt, certain technology or mechanical innovations. I wonder what those artisans of that earlier era would’ve thought about the breakneck speed of technological innovations today. The speed even takes me by surprise sometimes.

I’m only in my mid 20s (so not that old at all), but I can clearly remember using card catalogs at the local and school libraries all the time. They even taught us how to use them. For some reason, when I was about 9-10 years old, they also thought we should learn proper typing skills, as though we were going to be using typewriters. I was never very good at it, but fortunately a few years later AOL Instant Messenger came out, and my typing speed increased many fold. See, AOL wasn’t completely worthless!

I don’t generally consider myself to be of the Luddite persuasion, but I’m also not really a technophile who has to jump on the latest of everything. I was very slow to adopt a tablet, and I’ve actually regressed from a smartphone to a flip phone that can basically make calls and not much else. Computers and technology are an integral part of my life though, both at work and at home. I like to do lots (and I do mean LOTS) of writing using computers for blogs, forums, and that novel I’ve been working on. Typing just feels easier in those situations, and let’s face it, there’s no such thing as an analog blog (editor’s note: perhaps this is the closest thing.)

That said, there are still many situations where I have to have paper, pencils, and pens in my hands. I have a few Moleskine journals that accompany me pretty much everywhere. They’re arguably more important to me than my iPad. They also have battery life that’s unreal. Literally. The reason I rely on them as much as I do is that I know without any doubt that they will be there. What I write in them isn’t going anywhere. My brain is always churning away on something: An idea. An Invention. A project. How can I do this? How can I solve that problem? Wouldn’t it be great if ____ existed?

There has never been a piece of technology that’s worked for me that allows me to quickly get those things out of my head and into physical space. With the journals, I can just flip them open and write or draw, and it’s done. Permanently. There’s nothing between my brain and my hand doing the writing. I don’t have to interact with any device. I don’t have to think about where to move a cursor. I’ve designed many of my projects and things exclusively in those journals. There’s something real, tactile and special about being able to flip back through the pages and see some rudimentary sketch of some project and realize, “hey, that thing actually exists, sitting next to my kitchen table right now!”

Ultimately, the Luddites destroying a few machines didn’t stop the mechanical and industrial revolutions. Avoiding or rejecting technological innovations today isn’t going to stop technology from advancing either. For me though, I’m sticking with my journals. They just work for my process and feel more “real” than any computer or piece of technology ever could. Ok, and maybe I also harbor a hope that I can pull an Emily Dickinson and have people find all this stuff in some future decade and realize my genius posthumously. That’s the beauty of using journals though. They are truly timeless.

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_Hello Friends,_

Emily Dolloff here in Don’s absence. Don is on his way south for the winter so I am doing my best this week to be his surrogate. Thankfully I am avoiding writer’s block as there is certainly no shortage of things to talk about this week!

I told Don I felt he was headed south a little too early this year as the weather has been absolutely gorgeous here in the Green Mountains for October and especially over the last week or so. I am going to hang on tight to the memories of this week sitting in my living room at 10pm and still having windows and doors open throughout my house. There is something different about the warm fall breezes and their ability to make you forget how the cold and the snow are just around the corner! However, there is a chance that in the next few days we could see snow here in Vermont at the higher elevations. How crazy it is to think that in the same week we could see both 80 degrees and snow. I guess this is exactly why we say around here “if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes, it will change”. I will say I have been thankful for all the beautiful weather as it seems the tasks that need to be completed outside before winter comes are never ending and I always feel more inspired to get a few more things done outside the better the weather is out there.

It’s not just the weather has been exciting around the office. Apple made some great product updates yesterday as well! Yosemite, iOS 8.1, new iMacs, updates to the iPads and Mac Mini and more. Apple always does a great job keeping us all in suspense coming up to these announcements and as a result our imaginations tend to run wild. Several of us were talking around the office about a rumored addition of either a 12 inch MacBook Air or a larger 12 inch iPad and the rumor sites only fueled our conversations. Well in the end, rumors turned to be just that, rumors. There was no 12 inch iPad or Macbook Air, but what Apple did announce was still pretty incredible and I am pleased to see that the overlooked Mac Mini finally got an long overdue update. I am not sure I will be adding the new 27 inch iMac with 5K Retina Display to my home office just yet, but it’s very likely my 2007 MacBook (still cranking right along!) could be replaced with the new Mac Mini. I have been debating replacing my MacBook with a Mac Mini for a few years now as my ability to be portable around my home has significantly changed since adding several iPads around the home. I will have to put the new iPad on my Christmas wish list!

A busy week is on tap for me next week: I will be traveling to Denver to the ASMC conference (the major industry event for Apple Specialists like Small Dog) and then I have a late flight home at the end of the week and will be traveling to Massachusetts for a wedding after a quick nap. I anticipate I will be a bit jet lagged when I finally make it back to the office! Next week will be my first experience attending the ASMC conference and I hope to return to Small Dog with fresh ideas and information on some great products as well!

Have a great week everyone and thank you for reading Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

_Emily, Mike, & Don (in absentia)_