Celebrating 20 Years

_Dear Friends,_

More snow in Vermont and the Small Dog team (with the exception of Artie) seems to be getting really tired of waking up to snow covered roads and porches. I am getting tired of all the pictures of snow-covered decks on Facebook, too. It has been a hard, cold, and long winter but warmer temperatures, spring flowers, and mud season are surely coming soon!

This week we have some recollections from our first employee, Art Hendrickson. I remember the long debate that Hapy and I had when we considered hiring Art 19 years ago. We questioned whether we had enough work but eventually decided to take the risk. Boy am I glad we did! Artie has pretty much done every job in the company and has been a leader using his example of hard work and focus to push the company forward. In the early days, we would hold our management meetings in the hot tub on my deck and then Art would climb into the Chevy Blazer to ferry Macs up Prickly Mountain in mud season. Art now manages our warehouse, buildings, and grounds and is responsible for inventory control but he has been a shipper, a salesperson, a technician, a truck driver, a purchaser and many times a good intentioned gadfly. Thanks for an awesome 19 years, Art!

This coming week Apple will start taking orders for the Apple Watch, which I hear will be available initially exclusively online and at the Apple Store. Unfortunately, at this time Small Dog Electronics will not be offering the watch but I’ll be one of those ordering one today to see if I will like wearing a watch for the first time since I was about 12 years old.

Also this week, Apple will release and begin shipment of the new Macbook. We have been told that we will be receiving very limited stock and the new Macbook will be in very short supply initially. We can take your order and have your Macbook delivered right from Apple as the fastest way to get this new product. We are sourcing new USB-C accessories and should have demos of the new Macbook in our retail stores very soon.

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes special is one of our 20th Anniversary special values. If you are like me ,you spend a lot of time in your car and having a good charging solution can give your iPhone or iPad that boost it needs to last more than an 10-hour day of heavy use. We are bundling the Hammerhead 17-watt 2-port USB Auto Charger with a Hammerhead USB to Lightning 1-meter Braided cable with MFI license for only $38.97. That’s $20 off our normal price and we will ship it to you for free, too!

“*Check it out here!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001804

One of the primary things that originally attracted Don and Hapy to the Apple Macintosh platform when Small Dog Electronics came into being in 1995 was the usefulness and empowerment one attains when making the leap into the digital age with a device bearing the Apple logo. At the time, the Apple world was still very much a cult following of users, with a rainbow-colored logo and a rather small percentage of overall install base. Regardless, it was clear to them that Apple’s intuitive operating system would bear fruit as people became more accepting of something other than a PC running MS-DOS emulating Windows NT. I used to cherish the tee-shirt obtained at the San Francisco MacWorld Expo: “Dude, you’re gettin’ a Dell!”, while visiting the West Coast for the then famous Apple event. Some people were buying their very first personal computers from Small Dog!

I was asked to join the company a year later as Don’s skill at spending money on inventory and interest in trying new platforms (remember Mac clones?!) outpaced his ability to sell and process the orders. With Don’s infectious enthusiasm, and Hapy as the financial brains and technical mindset behind most of it all, I jumped in with both feet wondering how long it could last. My motivations, akin to theirs, were also in helping people get into this Mac computer cult, and prove that anything is possible with the right tools. Having known Hapy since elementary school as teammates in Little League and as a friend of his two sisters in high school, I was exposed to Apple gear at Don’s house for quite some time before Small Dog started. Something as simple as using Apple’s early MacPaint software programs really turned me on to how powerful a personal computer could be, even if the Mac SE only had a nine-inch black and white screen!

Some of my first tasks at the company were not only to process and ship orders, but also to monitor the classified section of America Online pertaining to computer memory (one of our first sales outlets online!) as well as mass-install two-piece internal modems into all the many PowerBook 520c refurbs Don secured (I was able to get it down to 20 minutes!). I soon became Apple Service Certified, and found myself elbows deep inside the computers and printers, too.

At the time Small Dog started in the mid-nineties, Apple’s PowerBook Duo 2300c and Performa series of computers were becoming the hot commodities. IBM’s PowerPC CPU chip architecture was branded all over the packaging as Apple strove to become more mainstream. Apple’s factory reconditioned product was made available at public auctions which Don regularly attended, and in the end, we were buying these direct. More marketing became necessary as the inventory required faster turnaround, and smalldoggy.com was born. Don suddenly had an even better platform to share our product listings and sound off on all things technical or otherwise.

It was in November of 1996 that Don sent out a request to our rapidly growing email list for help in naming this newsletter (from SmallDogE@aol.com!!). Soon after came the news of “We have a name…..Kibbles & Bytes”. Here’s a special shoutout today to Richard Taylor, then at Marquette University, for helping us name this “puppy”. Before long, I was also contributing to the newsletters, forcing me to open my knowledge base further as I wrote articles for TechTails, our more tech-centric newsletter, which followed a bit later on. Before long, the company was growing quickly in scope, not only as an early and very successful e-commerce website, but also expanding into bricks and mortar retail store locations, meeting with our customers face-to-face everyday. The spigot of sales we had built online was on and has not waned since.

I feel very much the same as I did then: Small Dog Electronics stands by your side in providing the hardware and software support needed to put these great digital devices to use. It’s more than just selling Apple’s digital lifestyle, but also in making sure you are comfortable with your purchase after the sale. Everyone at Small Dog is dedicated to learning what computers, phones, and tablets can and can’t do, so that you don’t make a poor decision when making your purchase. We remain proud to be in the very elite Apple Specialist Reseller Channel, and hope that you can all visit one of our great stores in person soon to see what new tools exist now to make your life better. We’re here to help!

Thank you for being a subscriber to Kibbles & Bytes!

Apple released free updates to both the Mac OS and iOS this week. iOS 8.3 adds a lot of Emoji faces with better organization, skin tone modifiers, and a bunch of flag, phone, computer, and watch Emoji. The evolution of the smiley face emoticon continues… 🙂

Other changes in iOS 8.3 include dozens of bug fixes and some new features. Wireless CarPlay is one of these and enables the connection of your iPhone to a CarPlay enabled system without attaching a Lightning cable. Siri has gained some new languages plus the ability to make phone calls using the speakerphone.

In Messages, there is now an option that will allow you to separate messages from friends from iMessages from strangers. This update also adds support for Google two-step verification, which is a great step for those heavy Google App users. For Apple Pay users, Passbook now separates Apple Pay credit cards from other Passes. And one of my favorite new features removes the annoying requirement to enter your Apple ID password when you are downloading free apps!

Mac OS 10.10.3 also adds over *300* (!!!) new Emoji characters and a bunch of bug fixes. The most significant update, however, is that 10.10.3 includes the new Photos app. This new app was first shown at the 2014 WWDC (Apple Worldwide Developers Conference) in June of 2014 and is designed to be a replacement for iPhoto and Aperture. I promise a more comprehensive review of the new Photos app once I have had a bit more time to play with it. It does enable iCloud Photo Library, which will allow you to store your entire photo library in your iCloud account but that may also mean you will quickly fill up your free 5GB of storage. The next two options for iCloud storage are $0.99 a month for 20GB or $3.99 for 200GB of storage. I find the organizing and editing tools to be a big improvement over iPhoto and having my library on my iCloud account means I can find that one picture I want to show from any of my devices.

Both updates are free. The iOS update is accessed through the Software Update screen in the General settings and the Mac OS update is available from the App Store. As always, make sure to back up your computer and/or iOS devices prior to installing any updates.

I don’t know whether I am just an Apple Fanboy or whether I am just intrigued by new technology but I know I’ll be placing my order for an Apple Watch Sports Edition this weekend. I want to have it for the trip back to Vermont so I hope that Apple ships pretty promptly but I know I will be one of millions who will be placing an order.

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

_Don, Dean & Mike_