Recently Apple announced its new music streaming service called Apple Music. Apple Music is the “new iTunes” according to some, while others just see it as an extension of iTunes. Either way, Apple Music gives you access to stream any song from the iTunes Store, at any time, any number of times. Apple Music doesn’t only give you the best streaming flexibility, but it also gives you access to Beats 1 Radio, the only Radio Station that is on 24/7 all around the world. With DJs located in LA, NYC, and London, there is always someone there either interviewing artists, taking calls from listeners, and most importantly, playing some of the world’s greatest music.

Apple has always been knee deep in the music industry for years, but they are taking the plunge with Apple Music. Apple has always sold music from the iTunes Store and has supported iTunes Radio, a radio service very similar to Pandora and Songza, however they have always steered away from streaming services such as those similar to Spotify and Google Play Music. With today’s technology people are buying devices with less and less internal storage capacity, and more and more data to support their devices, so a music streaming service is not only key if you want to have access to all of your music, but also the most convenient option if you are always connected to wifi or a data network. I have been a Spotify user for several years now, and it has always been my favorite way to stream music simply because of the convenience and the availability of different and new music. However, with the release of Apple Music I have discovered that it is both more convenient and has a greater selection of music and radio stations.

The main thing that sold me on Apple Music was the interface, and how seamless it is on all my devices. As you probably know, all of my devices are Apple devices. Therefore I have iTunes on EVERYTHING, whereas Spotify is something that I have to install on everything. Even then, there are some devices, such as the Apple TV, that don’t support Spotify. So the fact that I can effortlessly have all my favorite music on all of my devices is simply AWESOME! I can simply add music to my iTunes library directly from Apple Music, and it will show up with all my other music that I have purchased in the past, thus allowing me to sync my iPhone or iPad and have access to all the new music offline if need be (ideal for long road trips and for those flights that don’t have wifi). All in all, Apple has once again had a major influence on the music industry!

_Dear Friends,_

The rainiest June on record continued into July as summer is still MIA. But then again the forecast is looking good for the big Independence Day party on Saturday. I’ll be at the Warren, VT parade as usual and then hosting our annual strawberry daiquiri party up at my house. Hard to believe that half of the year is already in the books.  

Apple Music launched with their free 90-day trial this week and Bronson is going to run that down for you. I’ve been listening to Beats 1 some and maybe I’m just too old but I don’t like all the talk and prefer just to listen to music. I grew up with DJs on WLS radio in Chicago and the format really hasn’t changed.  

My latest verdict on the “killer app” for the Apple Watch is Apple Pay. I love going into the grocery store and just holding my watch up to the terminal to pay and the check-out clerks being awed. I have even gotten into the habit of not taking my wallet with me since I have my e-wallet with me all the time.  

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the Apple Certified Refurbished MacBook Air 13-inch. With 4GB ram, 256GB SSD drive and a 1-year Apple warranty, this is a great buy at our normal price of $889.99 but this week I am bundling it with AppleCare which extends that warranty from 1-year to 3-years and extends the normal 90-days of technical support also to 3-years. Better yet, we are including Safeware accidental damage coverage for that three years, too, so if you drop your MacBook Air or spill water on it you can get it repaired or replaced for only $250! So, this bundle includes the MacBook Air, AppleCare and Safeware and would normally cost you $1239 but for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can snag this bundle for only $1179! “*Click Here*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001885/ to claim your bundle today!

Click, point, drag, scroll. That’s about the extent of most trackpad users’ experience with their trackpad other than wiping it off when you touch it with sticky fingers. But the Apple Trackpad built-in to Apple laptops and available as an external device (which I use at the office) has much more to offer. And that’s not even talking about the new Force Touch trackpad on the MacBooks and MacBook Pro. I will go over those new features in a follow-up article but I do not have much 1st hand experience with that, yet.

*Click*

* *One*
The one that we all know about is taking one finger and clicking on the trackpad surface. It is simple and is your primary tool for selecting content, etc. Click once to place your cursor, click twice to select and highlight a word or to launch an App, click three times to select the whole paragraph.

* *Two*
But there is more than one finger clicking. Two finger clicks act like the right-click of that other mouse. It brings up your contextual menu which allows you to cut, copy, paste, check your spelling, change fonts, share, etc. If you see this contextual menu popping up you are probably clicking with two fingers instead of one. Once you master the two finger click you might not only find this menu to be handy but you are ready for the more complex three-finger click.

* *Three*
Okay, now you can try clicking with three fingers and it activates Apple’s Look Up & Data Detectors. What are data detectors? Well, they are a little something extra that is in the Mac OS that you won’t find elsewhere. Mac programs like Mail can recognize commonly used bits of information that may appear in your text: a physical address, a phone number, a date and time, etc. You may have noticed “Look up” in the contextual menu, well, three fingers makes a shortcut to get there. A three finger click on a phone number will look it up in your contacts or allow you to make a new contact, and a three finger click on a word will open the dictionary and much more. Play around with three finger tapping!

*Scroll*

You use two fingers to scroll and your content follows your fingers. Swipe your two fingers to up and the content moves up, swipe left and it moves left. Flick your fingers at the end of your scroll and you will create some momentum with the scroll.

*Zoom*

Using two fingers you can “pinch” to zoom in and out. Or double tap with two fingers and you activate smart zoom.

*Rotate*

Use those same two fingers to rotate an image.

*Swipe*

If you swipe left or right with two fingers you can scroll between pages in Safari, for example. Or use four fingers and swipe between open full-screen Apps!

Put those two fingers all the way right and swipe left to activate the Notification Center. Swipe up from the bottom with four fingers to activate Mission Control or swipe down with those four fingers and you activate Exposé.

*Pinch*

This one is a bit complex but very useful. Pinch with your thumb and three fingers and you activate Launchpad. Do you use Launchpad? This is the easy way to get there. Reverse that, i.e. spread instead of pinch, and you show the desktop, also a handy feature.

In Safari, if you have multiple tabs open you can pinch with two fingers to show all open tabs with live content. Spread those two fingers and it is back to tabs.