Dear Friends,

The leaves are falling and this morning when I took Pirate out for a walk he couldn’t resist diving into piles of leaves and burrowing. He was having so much fun that I just had to stand and watch him enjoy autumn. If it is October it is MLB playoffs and a couple of late nights as I watched my Cubbies beat the Giants to advance to the National League Championship series.

I am growing my playoff beard and will not shave until the Cubs win or are eliminated. Last time I had a beard it was dark black. It seems to be a lot whiter this time around. We have a number of baseball themed specials running this month for the boys of October and boy oh boy if the Cubs should happen to win the World Series we will have to do something really special.

Apple and Samsung are locked in a battle before the Supreme Court regarding Apple’s design patent but Apple has been enjoying some unexpected benefit from Samsung as their Galaxy Note 7 phones can’t seem to stop exploding. This will certainly increase Apple’s market share. And it should because the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7+ are really state-of-the-art handheld computers. It seems a bit inappropriate to call them phones anymore. I would say that use as a telephone is about 20% of my use of my iPhone 7+. From alarm clock to calendar, to Siri and Maps the iPhone is a digital companion more than a phone.

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features an Apple Factory Certified Refurbished CTO 12-inch MacBook. This Space Gray unit has an upgraded 1.3 GHz processor, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB drive. It carries the same 1-year Apple warranty as new Apple products and we are bundling it for Kibbles & Bytes readers with the AppleCare protection plan that not only extends the normal 1-year Apple warranty to 3 years but also extends the 90 days of free Apple technical support to 3 years as well. This week only for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can buy this MacBook and get AppleCare for free! Get the MacBook with AppleCare for only $1385.99!