Dear Friends,

New data from Piper Jaffray’s teen survey show that Apple is dominating that market at least as far as mobile devices are concerned. They have 71% of the teen market for smart watches and almost 70% for iPhones and 64% for iPad. Another survey has Apple Mac sales showing positive growth while literally the entire PC market is in decline.

I have been playing around with Amazon’s Echo and I have to say that I like it a lot. I wake up each morning and say “Alexa, what’s new?” and I get the news reports from NPR, CNN, Huffington Post and BBC as well as ESPN Sports and the local weather report. During the day, I ask Alexa to “play the blues” or “play some classical music” and while the speaker is not as good as my Sonos system it does fill the room. I can be around the corner or across the room and the Echo can hear me. Apple needs to step it up a bit and get Siri on the Mac or even better yet, integrated into their networking gear. I would love to be able to tell my Sonos app to play my music from my iTunes library!

Speaking of networking here’s a Kibbles & Bytes exclusive! This isn’t for everyone but if you have a big house and your Wi-Fi signal isn’t reaching that far corner of the house this could solve three problems for you! I am bundling the Apple Factory Refurbished 3TB Time Capsule with an Apple Factory Refurbished Airport Express. Both have the same 1-year Apple warranty as new but you can save some bucks. The 3TB Time Capsule gives you the Airport Extreme wireless access point and automatic wireless back-ups to the integrated 3 terabyte drive. The Airport Express allows you to extend that wireless network. Normally this bundle is around $500 new, but this week for Kibbles & Bytes readers, while supplies last you can buy this refurbished bundle for only $325.99!

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  • _Dear Friends,_

    Definitely some weird weather in Vermont. One day it is below 0 F and the next day it is in the 40’s and raining. It makes for some tricky driving as wet pavement can hide some black ice. Hopefully as we enter March there will be some snow because the ski areas and local merchants are suffering from the weird weather. We can take a lot of snow and freezing temperatures but this freeze/thaw cycle is just annoying.

    Apple has very strong hardware sales but their hidden gem may be the recurring revenue streams that they develop. Of course, we know about the 11 million+ subscribers to Apple Music that pay a monthly fee and the iCloud storage fees but there are other much larger streams that provide Apple with consistent revenue. The iPhone is a big one that has two parts to it – on the one hand, people want to upgrade to the latest iPhone and that upgrade business is huge. There is also Apple’s new financing of iPhones that spreads the cost of the iPhone over several months and allows much easier iPhone upgrades. The carriers are also offering these easy upgrade programs which enhances the recurring revenue stream. It is sort of like printing money.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the “**Apple Factory Reconditioned 21.5-inch iMac**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002159 with 2.7GHz i5 processor, 8GB of ram and a big 1TB drive. We are bundling this with the AppleCare Protection Plan which extends Apple’s 1-year warranty to 3-years and extends your 90-days of free technical support from Apple from 90-days to 3-years. To complete this bundle because we always want you to have a backup of your personal data, we are including the Apple Factory Reconditioned 2TB Time Capsule. The Time Capsule is the combination of an Airport Extreme base station and 2TB hard drive. Because you are buying it at the same time as the iMac it is also covered for 3-years by AppleCare! Normally, if you bought this bundle new it would cost $1769, bought normally as Apple Refurbished it would be $1399 but this week for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can get this great deal on an iMac with Time Capsule and AppleCare for only “**$1299.99!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002159

  • My visiting family went out dolphin watching today taking advantage of the sunny day. The dogs and I are hanging out at my home office and I am listening to some Eagles music as I work.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    _Don, Dean, Emily & Scott_