Fody Personal Weather Station: A Review

Along with the new iMacs Apple also introduced the Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard and the Magic Trackpad 2. The Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Keyboard 2 come standard with the iMac.

The first thing you might notice about these new input devices is that they no longer require disposable batteries, but rather have built-in lithium-ion batteries and a lightning port to charge your device. It will require a little change in habits because you don’t want to be right in the middle of important work and find that your battery is dead. Fortunately, they charge up fast and will give you plenty of warning with the battery is low. As an example, a two-hour charge on the Magic Keyboard will last about a month.

The other important thing to note about these new input devices is that they REQUIRE OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Magic Keyboard

With the same technology used in the MacBook’s keyboard the new Magic Keyboard features a lower profile design that delivers full sized keyboard function while taking up 13% less space. The back of the keyboard features a Lightning port, and on/off switch and the Bluetooth antenna window. The Magic Keyboard and all of these new input devices feature “automatic pairing”. Basically this means that you plug in the included lightning cable to the USB port on your Mac and you are paired. No more typing codes or putting the device in discoverable mode.

You can charge the Magic Keyboard by plugging it into your Mac and continue to use the keyboard as a wired keyboard until it is charged, too. Unplug it and it automatically switches over to Bluetooth.

The Magic Keyboard is $99.

Magic Mouse 2

The major improvement to the Magic Mouse is the built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. There is now a lightning port on the bottom of the mouse to charge the Magic Mouse 2. Fortunately, the Magic Mouse 2 fully charges in about 2 hours but if you are in a bind you can plug it in for just 2 minutes or so and get a full day’s use from the Magic Mouse 2.

There are numerous internal improvements with fewer moving parts. The newly shaped feet should give the Magic Mouse 2 superior gliding and tracking.

The Magic Mouse 2 sells for $79

Magic Trackpad 2

The Magic Trackpad 2 has had the most changes of these input devices. It also features a built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery that fully charges in about 2 hours and will provide about a month of typical use. It features a 29% larger surface area than the original Magic Trackpad.

Most importantly, Force Touch is now available! Force sensors detect how hard you press and then tell your Mac what to do based upon these subtle differences in pressure. The Magic Trackpad 2 incorporates the Taptic Engine that provides you with tactile feedback when you activate Force Touch. Force Touch also lets you click anywhere on the trackpad with equal sensitivity.

Force Touch is being supported by more and more Apps and you can use it to find word definitions, Force click on a date in email or messages and Calendar will pop up so you can create a new event. Force click on an address in that same email and up pops Maps to show you how to get there.

The back of the Magic Trackpad 2 has an on/off switch, Lightning port and Bluetooth antenna window.

I am really looking forward to giving this new Magic Trackpad a work out and will report back to Kibbles & Bytes readers.

The Magic Trackpad 2 sells for $129

If the sadness and shock of the terrorist attacks in Paris were not enough, I was in shock this week as Islamaphobia and fear overwhelmed politicians and citizens. Some politicians were tripping over themselves to stoke the flames of fear by turning on the Syrian refugees. I don’t know about you but if I lived in Syria and there was a war in my neighborhood with madmen from both sides going berserk, I’d be a refugee, too. Oh, by the way, did you know that Steve Jobs father was a Syrian refugee?

This was seemingly fueled by what turns out to be a very sketchy report that one of the terrorists posed as a refugee. That has since been discredited but the conclusion jumping was already in full swing. Some politicians tried even to separate their distain for refugees by religion but there is no religion that makes terrorism its creed and there have been terrorist from many religions. It is when hypocritical fanatics of any religion feel that they can impose their will upon others that conflicts arise.

Way back when the USA was young, our friends in France sent us a gift. The Statue of Liberty proudly stands by our shores with the inscription that defines who we are as a nation:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to be free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

When we succumb to the fear the terrorists win. When we change who we are, the terrorists have won. When we let prejudice trump common sense, the terrorists have won. We must lead by example and the example of shunning refugees is the wrong one. In the height of the worst terror since WWII, President Hollande of France recommitted to taking Syrian refugees saying “We have to reinforce our borders while remaining true to our values.”

We cannot change who we are – unless you are a native American, you are a descendant of refugees and immigrants. This anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-refugee wave of fear is unAmerican and is born of ignorance and hate.

How do you feel about this trend towards exclusion of refugees and immigrants? Share your opinion at our blog – blog.smalldog.com

End Soapbox

I’ve been a gamer for going on 20 years. I’ve played everything from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Entertainment System to the…

Erich Sullivan – South Burlington Service Writer

The new Apple TV is what really has my attention, I’m already sold on the $200.00 64GB version.
I don’t know what has me most sold, Siri? The App Store and what that will mean? I know that anything we’re thinking today will be dramatically upset with what will come from it. A simple unified search that lets me know if it’s in showtime, HBO, netflix or Hulu or in iTunes is going to be unreal. No more painfully typing in on that arcade style grid keyboard several times to find out no one has it. More time watching TV, less time struggling with an interface and search limitations.

The App Store intends to turn the Apple TV into a casual gaming console, and the new remote gives it a change of being a decent experience.The new remote is exciting, the lightning connector for charging has me pondering things. They could have made it charge through micro USB, or run off batteries, or inductively charge on the top of the Apple TV box, but they went with lighting. It comes with the Lightning Cable to charge your remote, or your other Apple devices with a lightning port.

Another interesting decision was the USB type C on the back of the new Apple TV for restores. Very forward thinking, and just another display that Apple is really pushing for USB type C to be the next ubiquitous connector.

I have said many more things about the new Apple TV, but in short, I’m already sold.

Morgan – Waitsfield IT

I wasn’t all that thrilled about the  Watch additions (I’m still on the fence as to how useful I’d find the watch to be), but the iPad Pro announcement was cool. I know a lot of customers have been eagerly awaiting a larger iPad and—as a heavy iPad user myself—I know how useful they can be for work & play, so with iOS 9’s side-by-side apps support, it’ll be great. It’ll be especially useful for artists with the  Pencil (which itself is a great improvement since stylus support is pretty poor on the iPad) and may turn out to be a strong competitor to the expensive Wacom Cintiq line of drawing tablets with built-in displays. And, can I say one thing about the four speakers on the iPad Pro… FINALLY!

The new  TV looks great & fun, but doesn’t seem entirely groundbreaking, just exactly what the next step of its evolution needed to be. That’s not to say I don’t want one, it definitely looks like a great product, just that it’s what I’d expect a new  TV to be. The remote looks very useful and fun for games, and I think that supporting iPhones & iPod touches as additional controllers is an absolutely brilliant idea.

As usual, the iPhone 6S & 6S+ look like excellent upgrades to an already great phone. Bringing Force Touch to the iPhone will be a nice addition and I can’t help but geeking out about how they implemented it (Apple is really becoming quite ingenious on their technical solutions to difficult problems which actually make a bigger difference than most people think). And, they just keep making an excellent camera even better (the Live Photos are neat, esp. if they really don’t increase the photo size by much).

Jim Overman – Waitsfield Phone Sales

Siri On The Apple TV!

There are many new exciting features to the Apple TV which make me think that it is time for an upgrade, but my favorite has to be the addition of Siri. In fact, the whole remote is pretty darn cool. It features a new glass touch surface remote that allows for easy maneuvering around the screen, just like an an iPhone or iPad. Back to Siri though, Siri is now able to do universal searches across iTunes, Netflix, Hulu and more for you favorite actor, director or genre. My very favorite part though is that if you ask Siri ‘What did they say?’, the Apple TV will automatically scroll back fifteen seconds and turn on closed captioning. I am particulary excited because when I watch Doctor Who I am doing this manually myself at least six or seven times per episode. No joke. It will be nice to just be able to ‘ask and receive’ as they say. The new Apple TV will actually come with two sizes of built-in storage, there will be a 32GB model for $149.99 and a 64GB for $199.99. Apple plans to start shipping in late October. I would say it is going to be on my holiday wish list but I am not sure I can I hold out that long!

Joe Lytton – Key West Store Manager

Just as we expected, Apple announced the next versions of its best-selling smartphones, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus at its annual launch event in San Francisco. Also as we expected, the iPhone 6S looks identical to last year’s 4.7-inch iPhone 6S, reserving its most important changes for the hardware interior.
True, there is a new color now, called rose gold (it basically looks like a blush pink, same as the new Apple Watch color option that the company announced). But as far as looks go, this extra shade is the extent of the the changes you’ll be able to visually detect between this year’s and last year’s phones.

Apple says that its phone may look the same as last year’s model, but its iPhone 6S duo has achieved more inner strength. This time it uses a different grade of aluminum for its chassis, one that’s also used in the aerospace industry. They call it Series 7,000, and it’s the same aluminum alloy Apple puts into its Apple Watch Sport.
A new type of chemically strengthened glass also tops the iPhone 6S, though the company hasn’t confirmed if this is cover material from Corning’s Gorilla Glass line or not.

Apple has included a variation of Force Touch, which you find in different capacities on the Apple Watch and on some Mac trackpads. Called 3D Touch here, the iPhone 6S phones will adopt the same pressure-sensitive capability that calls up secondary menus and actions when you press and hold the screen. Press down and you can pull up context-sensitive menus, switch apps, or examine photos. But it’s a subtle riff on what already exists on iPhones: tapping and holding. Another use is to access shortcuts from the home screen for your most frequent actions, say messaging a friend. And if you’re in your email inbox, applying fingertip pressure to an element in the message will surface more information, like maybe the flight number on an emailed travel itinerary, for instance. (Apple called this concept “peeking in” during the live demo.) Pressing harder on an app will likewise generate more options, like viewing all the photos of a contact’s Instagram photo stream. In the context of a game, pressing harder could zoom you in to get closer to the action.

A 12-megapixel camera is a huge jump for Apple, which has been holding onto its 8-megapixel sensors in its iPhone for years. Autofocus will pick up the pace, according to Apple, and color accuracy is a point of pride.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera now brings the iPhone 6S on par with a lot of today’s competing handsets. Of course, it includes the company’s proprietary voice chat feature, FaceTime video. Here’s something wildly different, though. Instead of including a dedicated flash for the front-facing camera, which only a few phones do, Apple is using the home screen to light up instead. This is meant to increase the brightness of those selfies even in low-light situations.

A new feature you’ll see in the camera, Live Photos is a default mode that turns stills into a video or GIF, basically, images that move. It’s an automatic thing; all you have to do is take the picture like normal. When we took some shots, it seamlessly added Live Photo motion and sound. The Live Photo motion came out more like stop-motion or time lapse, however, than true video. It’s also important to note that one Live Photo is about twice the file size as a regular photo. Couple that with the 4K video capabilities (more on that later), and you’ll definitely need more storage space to accommodate.

Apple also announced 4K video recording, at 3,840×2,160-pixel resolution. You’ll be able to take 8-megapixel camera photos while recording at this ultrahigh resolution. (The immediate benefit of shooting 4K video would be watching them later on a 4K TV.) Just like last year’s phones, the iPhone 6S Plus is the only model here with optical image stabilization, which helps correct blur from shaking hands.

Under the hood, we have an upgraded, proprietary A9 processor that continues Apple’s theme of mystery when it comes to exactly what’s going on in there. Though it’s impossible to appreciate during our quick demo, what we do know is that this is Apple’s third-generation 64-bit chip. Apple claims that the A9 is 70 percent faster than last year’s A8 when it comes to the usual computing tasks (like opening an app, for example), and 90 percent faster at graphical tasks, like gaming.

Apple says it’ll have the fastest forms of LTE Advanced, if that’s supported where you live, and will also include support for the latest, greatest Wi-Fi networks.

The two new iPhones will run on iOS 9, mining all of those software enhancements, like a smarter Siri and up to three hours longer battery life, plus a new Low Power Mode. The updated operating system, which is currently in public beta, will arrive for phones on September 16.

Are you one of those people who have old iOS devices laying around your house just waiting to be brought to the recyclers or given to a friend in need? I have always kept my old devices as a backup in case I ever need to send my new one out for repair.

For those of you planning on upgrading your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch soon, you might rethink selling or recycling it, and instead, turn it into a home security system. Huh? Yes, you heard me.

With a new app by “*People Power*”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/presence-by-people-power/id618598211?mt=8 you can easily make an old iOS device your new home security system. The system supports the iPad 2 and newer, iPod touch (5th gen.) and newer and iPhone 3GS and newer.

The app is called “*Presence*;”:http://peoplepowerco.com/products/ it’s free and it has some seriously great reviews. All you need to do is download the app on at least two devices, connect over Wi-Fi and set up your device in the desired spot you wish to watch. You can then set up specific alerts for when motion has been detected.

The alerts might be for when your kids get home from school, if someone breaks into your apartment, or maybe you have elderly parents who you’d like to make sure are up and moving that day. Throw a waterproof case on the phone and you can set it up outside and get video clips to see what kind of animal is eating your freshly sprouted blueberries.

People Power will soon have a subscription, allowing you to upgrade to Presence Pro for more storage and added features. Even if you don’t feel the need to monitor any activity going on, it might be fun just to play around with the app since it is free, and who knows, you may just find a cool use for it!

Keyboard shortcuts are handy ways of using simple keyboard commands to handle tasks that might require multiple clicks of your mouse or trackpad. Sometimes using these shortcuts can save time and make your work flow easier. As an example, from time to time I grab screen shots to include in Kibbles or to send to customers. I can launch the Grab app to capture these screen shots but I can also hit ⇧⌘3 (shift/command/3) to capture the screen. Easier yet, if I frequently use that key combination I can customize the keys I use or make one of my function keys do the screen grab. Here’s how you would do that:

# Choose System Preferences -> Keyboard->Shortcuts
# You will see a bunch of shortcuts that are already there
# Select Screen Shots
# Pick the one you want – i.e. Save Picture of screen as a file and select it
# Click on the existing key combination until it is highlighted
# Enter your new key combination

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You will get a warning triangle if you choose a key combination (or function key) that is already in use.

You can also add key combination shortcuts that are specific to an App. Selecting the App Shortcuts will take you there. Unless you have already set up some shortcuts, you will see only the key combination for “Show Help Menu” for all applications. To add a new shortcut to your favorite application you hit the + sign and a dialog box will pop up to allow you to select an app. From there you can set up the new shortcut:

# Choose your App – or select all Apps if you want to set the key combination for the same menu command that appears in many Apps.
# Type in the menu command for which you want to create a shortcut. VERY IMPORTANT – You must type the command exactly as it appears in the Application menu, including ellipses and any other punctuation. To type an ellipse, use three periods without spaces.
# Click in the Keyboard Shortcut box and type the key combination or function key you wish to use and click “Add”.
# Quit and restart any Apps that are open for the new keyboard command to take effect.

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If you assign a shortcut that already exists for another command or another App, your new shortcut will not work and you will have to find the menu command that is using that shortcut and change it.