Dear Friends,
We said goodbye to Small Dog’s CDIC (Chief Dog in Charge) as Fantail Shrimp passed away after 15 years of tail wagging. We will miss the little black dog. Dogs are so important to all of us at Small Dog Electronics and it is always hard to see one of our love mirrors pass.
“Hey Siri, give me a hint!” The big Apple reveal happened this week in San Francisco as Tim Cook and the Apple team took the stage to take the wraps off the latest goodies designed to improve our digital lives. There were new iPhones, a new iPad Pro, new AppleTV, new Apple Watch colors and bands, a new iPad mini and a lot of features and accessories displayed. I will go into all the new gear below but I did want to give my overall impressions of the announcements. Of course, Apple stock went down because of unrealistic expectations that every Apple announcement has to be ground breaking and so new that it staggers the imagination. That, ‘one more thing’ expectation is unrealistic as digital devices become such an integral part of our lives. While there may be new remarkable innovations and new categories in the future, the changes that Apple’s engineering and innovation teams have given us are very significant. The products, and perhaps more importantly the software, are significant in the evolution of devices that have become so much a part of our daily lives.
Apple also took an important step in changing the paradigm of cell carrier subsidized phones. It has been the norm for many years that if you wanted a cell phone, be it an iPhone or any other, you went to the carrier of your choice, signed up for a 2-year contract and got the phone at a discounted price. The carrier basically charges you for the phone by folding that cost into the cost of service. Carriers have for the past few years been introducing their own finance plans that separate the cost of the phone from the cost of service but now Apple has taken it one step further. Now you can buy an unlocked iPhone from Apple that can be used on any cell carrier service and pay Apple a monthly payment of something like $30-$40 depending upon model. Once you buy the iPhone you can go to the carrier of your choice to get service, often on a month-to-month basis. Apple sweetened the deal considerably by including AppleCare+ which extends the 1-year Apple warranty and 90-days of tech support to two years and also adds accidental damage coverage at $99 per incident. To make it even better, Apple would like you to have a new iPhone every year so you can opt to reset the clock each year and get a new iPhone annually just by continuing to pay that fee. It is essentially a leasing program. The handwriting is on the wall; the cell carrier subsidized model is on its last legs and this is good news for consumers because cell carriers will now have to compete for your service.
This week’s Kibbles & Bytes special is on a fully loaded MacBook Air 13-inch. This features the Intel i7 processor, 8 GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. This is the same as my super reliable MacBook Air and with the big SSD drive it should serve even the most demanding user. I am bundling a few things with this MacBook Air this week. I highly recommend AppleCare and we will include it as it takes that 1-year Apple warranty and extends it to 3-years but also extends the 90-days of free technical support from Apple to 3-years as well. We will add SafeWare accidental damage coverage for the 3-years, too. Oh, and one more thing…I will bundle a Seagate Backup Plus Slim Portable 1TB drive just because I want your data always to be backed up and safe. So to review you get:
- MacBook Air 13in 1.7GHz i7 8GB/512GB Apple Certified Refurbished
- AppleCare Protection Plan
- Safeware Accidental Damage Coverage
- Seagate 1TB backup drive