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_Hello Friends,_

The big winter storm called Jonas is heading for the east coast and Vermonters are hoping that it tracks north of the current projections but it looks like it might miss northern New England and hit the coastal areas. The lack of snow in Vermont and the unusually high temperatures have hit the Vermont ski areas and local merchants pretty hard. Here it is the end of January and no significant snow in Vermont. Well for all the skiers and especially for the businesses I hope that those areas that can’t really handle snow get bypassed and Vermont gets the big dump because Vermonters are ready.

Down here in Key West it has been sort of cool meaning I have to wear long pants and shoes, although if it was this warm in Vermont everyone would be in shorts. Down here when it gets below 65 you see people with down coats. NOAA reported this week that 2015 was the warmest year in recorded history breaking the record from 2014 by far.

Apple honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on its home page on the national holiday on Monday with Dr. King’s quotation “Life’s most persistent and urgent questions is, What are you doing for others”. Tim Cook tweeted his respects, too. I had the honor of marching with Dr. King and share this respect, he was truly one of the great Americans of all time

We always advertise our “Celebrate Diversity” slogan during this time of the year. We strongly feel that you gain strength through diversity whether it is race, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. I remember a long time ago we had a series of Celebrate Diversity web banners that created a lot of controversy with some sites refusing to run them. Diversity is much more mainstream now despite some candidates for President attempting to divide us.

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive is weather related with $20 off the “**Tempus Pro Bluetooth Weather Stations.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002127/special-save-20-on-tempus-pro-bluetooth-weather-station This was one of the most popular gifts this holiday season and is a great way to keep track of the weather in your microclimate. This complete weather station includes indoor and outdoor sensors that measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind and barometric pressure. Complete with mounting hardware it is simple to install and once you download the App you can monitor the weather on your iPhone or iPad. Read a Small Dogger review of the Tempus Pro “**here.**”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/fody-weather-station/ Normally, $159.99 this week Kibbles & Bytes readers can get the Tempus Pro Weather Station for only **$139.99**

For more than half a century, Riley B. King – better known as B.B. King – defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released over fifty albums, many of them classics. He was born September 16, 1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN to pursue his music career. Memphis was where every important musician of The South gravitated, and it supported a large musical community where every style of African American music could be found. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most celebrated blues performers of his time, who schooled B.B. further in the art of the blues.

B.B.’s first big break came in 1948 when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio program on KWEM out of West Memphis. This led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis, and later to a ten-minute spot on black-staffed and managed Memphis radio station WDIA. “King’s Spot,” became so popular, it was expanded and became the “Sepia Swing Club.” Soon B.B. needed a catchy radio name. What started out as Beale Street Blues Boy was shortened to Blues Boy King, and eventually B.B. King.

In the mid-1950s, while B.B. was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, a few fans became unruly. Two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall. B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, then realized that he left his beloved $30 acoustic guitar inside, so he rushed back inside the burning building to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death. When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give the name to his guitar to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman. Ever since, each one of B.B.’s trademark Gibson guitars has been called Lucille.

B.B. was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He received NARAS’ Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1987, and has received honorary doctorates from Tougaloo(MS) College in 1973; Yale University in 1977; Berklee College of Music in 1982; Rhodes College of Memphis in 1990; Mississippi Valley State University in 2002 and Brown University in 2007. In 1992, he received the National Award of Distinction from the University of Mississippi.

B.B. King came to Vermont many times and I had the pleasure of being at several of his concerts. He died last year at the age of 90 and was performing to sold out crowds right up until he died. B.B. King is gone but the –The Thrill is Gone- lives forever.

I remember only a couple years ago when drones were new and cutting edge technology. Now, there are huge sections of the show devoted to drones of all sorts: fighting drones, mini drones, paper airplane drones and dancing drones. I don’t know if it is the Star Wars influence but droids were everywhere, including “laundroids” for folding your laundry, grill cleaning droids, window washing droids and all kinds of robots.

3D printers were new and unique and again whole sections of the show were devoted to “replicators” making everything from iPhone cases to clothing to spare body parts. Several companies were there just to show their filaments for these 3D printers.

Scooters were everywhere. You know, the ones in the news that have the batteries that blow up. Well, literally dozens of companies were showing their versions and the original Segway had a booth, too. Some one-wheel scooters were there as well as shoes with wheels that zipped you around.

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Self-driving cars and technology for self driving cars dominated the North Hall and some concept cars were shown, too. My favorite was the Faraday electric car that looked like a single seat batmobile.

USB-C made its debut at the show with hubs, cables and some USB display port displays, too. I think we will see a lot of USB-C stuff coming up!

Less prevalent this year was the huge variety of iPhone and iPad cases. There were huge sections last time but while there were several companies showing cases it was toned way down. In their place, power banks of all sorts were being shown in every imaginable shape and size. The Apple battery case, aka the hump, was universally panned but several companies had slim battery cases for the iPhone.

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I did walk through the TV section but it was not as notable as in past years. The 3D fad has sort of expired and 4K displays are common. I still love the OLED displays, though.

Other areas that were huge were health care and fitness with a lot of wearable fitness devices and health monitors or all sorts from implantable blood glucose devices to blood pressure cuffs, thermometers and scales. The home automation section was larger than previous years and there were some new HomeKit compatible devices. I liked the NoLok offering of bluetooth compatible padlocks and bike locks that work similar to the Kevo system.

It was a quick trip out to Vegas but it was certainly worthwhile. I will follow up next week with a bit more.

Apple posted record earnings and profit for the holiday quarter disappointing those analysts that predicted less than stellar results. Of course, the realistic guidance for the next quarter sent Apple stock plummeting while those same analysts maintain a price target that is $40-50 higher than the current price of the stock. Okay, so Apple’s profit and revenue were all time records for the company but the remarkable tidbit is that no public corporation ever has posted that much profit in a single quarter. Let’s see how Apple did that.

First of all, Apple sold 74.8 million iPhones in the quarter. Not too shabby and that revenue is nearly 70% of Apple’s total. The average sales price (ASP) for the iPhone was up to $691 which also led to slightly higher gross margin. To put that is some perspective that is an average of 34,000 iPhones sold per hour 24/7 for 13 weeks.

They finished the quarter with about $215 billion in cash which represents about $39/share. Macs sales were down a bit at 5.3 million units and the iPad continues to do moderate in sales with sales dropping year on year from 21.4 million units to 16.1 million units.

Currency “headwinds” have caused some of these results to be muted. With the exceptionally strong dollar it is more difficult to export US goods and sales suffer a bit. The Euro and British Pound were down double digits and the Canadian and Australian dollars were down 20% or more. It gets worse. The Russian Ruble is down by 50% and Brazilian Real is down 40%. Apple estimated that if it were not for these global currency fluctuations that their revenue would have been over $80 billion representing an 8% increase. But despite those headwinds, Apple posted their best quarter ever.

Other high points were service revenue which was the highest ever at over $6 billion. Wow, $6 billion in just iTunes, App store and a few other things. That is more revenue that quite a few well known companies and a 24% growth year over year. Other products which include the Apple TV, Beats and Apple Watch also were strong with $4.5 Billion in sales.

In another milestone that just points to the success of the services side of Apple’s business Tim Cook announced that they now calculate that there are more than 1 billion Apple devices in use worldwide which is up 25% year over year. That is simply incredible considering that there are only 7.4 billion people on the planet!

What sent Apple stock down was Apple’s realistic prediction that iPhones sales in their 2nd fiscal quarter would decline year over year by as much as 15-20%. Last year’s 2nd quarter was strong because of supply issues that moved some revenue from the 1st to 2nd quarter and the impact of the global currency situation has caused some price adjustments. Apple remains very bullish on the iPhone market and pointed to the fact that in China over 50% of the iPhones sold were to people buying their first iPhone. Apple pointed out that the growth of the middle class in China is unprecedented with the middle class comprising about 50 million people in 2010 and now it is projected to be $500,000,000 by 2020.

Even if Apple sells “only” the 40-45 million iPhones in this quarter that would still be more revenue that most companies earn overall in a single quarter. To put this in perspective, Apple books more revenue at strong margins, than Amazon, Facebook, Google or Microsoft generate from all of their operations.

All in all the financial results that Apple announced were an incredible testament to the quality and innovation of Apple products and of a company doing things right. Congratulations to the entire Apple team!