Grace and I are getting ready for our annual 4th of July party. Got to get the strawberries for the daiquiris which is my role. Running dual blenders almost non-stop. The Warren, VT Independence Day parade is an amazing event as tens of thousands descend upon our small town for the annual celebration.

I’ll be thinking of Hammerhead a bunch as this was his holiday but mostly I will drink to the fond memories of the clown of a dog that touched me so deeply.

Have a wonderful and safe Independence Day! Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

Don, Emily, Hadley

There is a mountain of information out there about cloud storage verses cloud backups verses physical drives. In order to be able to selct the right solution you need to have a basic understanding of what the differences are between the options. There is iCloud, Google drive, wireless drives like the Lacie Fuel, Seagate Personal Cloud, tradition plug in USB drives. What makes learning about and weighing options even harder is that each option available, depending on what you’re reading, makes it sound as though that particular backup option is superior to all other solutions out there. 

To try and make it a little easier on yourself, here’s a general outline of the pros and cons of the different solutions out there. It is very important that as you read through information and consider different options that you think about what best suites your needs. Some of us at Small Dog swear by wireless back up solutions and others of us stick to good old physical drives and Time Machine.

iCloud is free for all users, but it’s only free for the first 5GB, so if you are looking to utilize iCloud for backing up an iPad, iPhone or documents from your computer you may want to purchase additional storage. It’s just $0.99/month for 50GB of storage (you can get up to 1TB) so I strongly encourage upgrading to a higher storage option even if it’s just for secondary backup of your photos. When using iCloud it’s important to log into your iCloud account from time to time to make sure that the information you want backed up is being backed up, especially the photos. I have talked with several customers over the years who thought they were backing up photos to the cloud and because they never logged into their online account, never knew the backup was not happening correctly. It’s also important to know that iCloud is not backing up programs, it’s just the files. Thankfully with Apple purchased apps you can easily download anything you might have purchased through your iTunes account in the app store, but this will not help you for third party programs. Finally, it’s also important to know that you will need to continue to pay for the service, if you stop paying for it, you will lose files. 

There are tons of other online backup and cloud storage options, it’s crucial note that some “cloud storage” options are not actual backups. They’re just a place to store things, so restoring a machine from a cloud backup service is often not possible unless you are paying for that kind of service. Think of many cloud storage solutions as nothing different than just dropping and dragging files to a physical drive. You will have to piece back together your information if you have a complete loss of your data on your computer. For many folks this is absolutely OK. 

Physical hard drives and using Time Machine often provide a greater sense of security simply because it’s a physical piece of equipment and you can see your information on the drive. If you’re using software like Time Machine, you will have a complete copy of your data along with programs and can, in most cases, quickly restore  data to your computer. A downside is that external drives can and do fail. This would be an example of where a cloud-based option offers some increased security. It’s unlikely data would and could be compromised using cloud services provided you continue to pay for the service. Physical drives have the advantage of a one time fee. When you buy the drive and it’s unlikely that a user would need to pay for anything additional after the initial set up. 

Lastly are the personal cloud drive and wireless drives. Personal cloud drives like the Seagate Personal Cloud allow you to create your own cloud storage solution and support it completely on your own. This cloud solution works very similarly to other services and allows you to access information from anywhere and anytime just like traditional cloud services. The draw back to personal cloud type setups is they are often for advanced users because they can be more complicated to set up and to maintain. Wireless hard drives like the Lacie Fuel often require that you are within range of that drive and will not work with Time Machine. The benefit to these drives is they allow multiple users to access information and are perfect for sharing media, but like personal cloud type drives they could require a slightly higher level of understanding when it comes to drives and data sharing. 

Ultimately I am not sure there is one perfect solution and combining wireless with wired options is often a good compromise. I have used iCloud for years for my calendars, my contacts, and I love iCloud keychain. I even have my favorites synced in Safari via the cloud. However, I still utilize a physical hard drive and Time Machine backup on all of my machines.

Luke, Emily’s husband, came into the office and said “what’s up with Don – traded his Infiniti for a CHEVY?”. Well, yes I did. I picked up a new Chevy Volt this week. I wanted better gas mileage than the Infiniti hybrid so set the bar at 40mpg. Then again I am fascinated by electric cars and couldn’t think of affording a Tesla so the Volt became more and more interesting. The fact that it had CarPlay and automatic parallel parking didn’t hurt, either.

This morning after charging all night I had 53 miles of EV range on the battery. It is about 12 miles to the office so I figured I would have about 40 left. Well, it turns out it is all downhill from Prickly Mountain so I actually gained EV range due to regenerative braking and the Volt has 67 miles left on the battery now.

Yeah, but what about CarPlay? I went to Boston to pick up the car and driving back I was able to play around with CarPlay. I asked Siri some hands-free questions, tuned into MLB to listen to the Cubs, played some Reggae music and used Maps to navigate home. My first CarPlay experience was great!

As I searched for cars I went to the Apple web site that lists all the CarPlay compatible cars and made it one of the most important criteria. You can check out the current list here. In addition to these equipped cars there are 3rd-party after-market receivers that support CarPlay.

CarPlay is the smarter, safer way to use your iPhone in the car. CarPlay takes the things you want to do with your iPhone while driving and puts them right on your car’s built-in display. You can get directions, make calls, send and receive messages, ask Siri for the latest Cubs score and listen to music, all in a way that allows you to stay focused on the road.

Activating CarPlay was simple in the Volt. It was merely a matter of plugging my iPhone into the USB port in the car and I was ready to go. I could dictate messages, listen to a wide variety of content in addition to my music library. CarPlay Apps include Spotify, Pandora, Tunein Radio, Audible, Slacker, etc. More and more are coming as Apple opens CarPlay for developers, too. You install CarPlay apps on your iPhone and they will automatically be reflected on your CarPlay screen.

When I left the dealership I told Siri to take me home. Maps launched immediately and I was given turn-by-turn directions to Prickly Mountain. I am sure that more and more car manufacturers will be incorporating CarPlay and with all the attention to cars these days, I am pretty sure we will see a lot more features coming. But for right now, it is very handy and a great safety feature to keep the iPhone in the cup holder and be able to use so much of it eyes-free in the car.

It is not perfect though. I want wireless CarPlay because I do not want to even take my iPhone out of my pocket. It would be nice if Mail was a supported app. Let’s say you are waiting for that important eMail about a new job. You are going to be tempted to take your eyes off the road and fiddle around with your iPhone but if Mail was supported on CarPlay you could have Siri read that mail to you and you could dictate your response. Find my Friends would be another handy one so you can meet your buds at the right watering hole. While my car has weather from Sirius XM it would be handy if Apple’s Weather app came on CarPlay or Darksky.

Hmm…what else is on my wish list. Movie listings, Stocks, Open Table, Calculator, The Score — all would be great to have on CarPlay. So far, I am giving Apple CarPlay high marks and for this Apple fanboy it was an important consideration in buying my car.