How to Display Contacts with Last Names First

My daughter Autumn and her husband Ismael are coming to visit next week which should be fun. Then we pack up and head back to Vermont. Hopefully the weather will cooperate but it seems like warmer weather is in the forecast for the Green Mountains.

Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

_Don, Emily, Hadley & Amy_

I have tried a lot of apps over the years for keeping ideas organized, assigning tasks or just keeping track of my goals. The problem I’ve found with many of the organizational applications is that I don’t find them easy to access. If you’re not on your phone or at your computer, often these applications can’t be utilized easily or have widely varied interfaces depending on which device your using.

“**Trello**”:https://trello.com/ has become my new favorite go-to app for keeping ideas and tasks organized. Trello is a free app with the ability to also pay for upgraded features for minimal fees. Why do I love Trello so much? It’s simple, I can easily use it on my computer, my iPhone or my iPad. There is an app for all three of my devices, and each version works seamlessly with the others. Working with several staff members in different departments here at Small Dog can make keeping track of tasks and to-do lists a bit of a challenge, but this simple application has really helped to streamline things.

I easily and quickly create what they call “boards”, each board then allows you to create individual categories to which you can then add individual tasks. Within my lists I can upload photos, files, web links, assign due dates and add notes. Once I have created a board, I can also easily share that board with co-workers or whomever I choose to share them with. Anyone I have shared a board with can also be granted access to update and add to the boards, add notes or more files.

A feature many of us have come to really rely on are the updates that you get from Trello notifying you that someone has made a change. I have found just one complaint thus far about the application. There appears to be no feature to mark a task as completed while still leaving it on your board. You can easily archive tasks and even entire boards, but I prefer to still be able to see those tasks while clearly seeming them marked as completed. However, all in all, I find this to be an invaluable app and one that I utilize all of the time. I have tried and do use google docs and google drive, and I’ve installed those on my devices as well, but for me nothing beats the ease and convenience of Trello.

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!

This week I’ve been testing out some of the new features on the Apple TV and a bit on the new watchOS. You can now get an Apple Watch for $299.99. The release of watchOS 2.2 was a minor bump in improvements, including the ability to pair more than one Apple Watch to one iPhone, additional browsing options in Maps, improvements to tracking your pulse and a few other minor updates. Unlike past revisions and improvements to the watchOS this one has left me feeling a little underwhelmed. While the software updates weren’t particularly robust, I was excited to see that the Apple Watch now has even more watch bands to choose from. I’ve had my watch for about six months now and have noticed its getting a bit dingy, so now might be a good time to get another band! There are new sport band colors to choose from including a bold new yellow and a new woven nylon option. For those seeking a more traditional style band, the woven nylon might be just what you are looking for, this band features a standard watch buckle style clasp.

Apple TV got some updates this week and just in time for the NCAA Championship. With the latest software release for Apple TV you can now get the latest NCAA games with an added feature of having two games display on your TV side by side! In addition to being able to watch the latest games, you now have approximately 5000 apps to choose from, including new workout apps. Siri now works better when searching for content, even in the App Store, and you can access your iCloud Photo library. Starting to feel like your apps are getting too cluttered? Easily create folders by dropping app icons onto of each other just like you do on your iPhone or iPad. Dictation, another added feature that can really speak up your search process. Rather than typing through letters one at a time when searching for something specific, you can now use dictation by selecting the Siri button in the search field. I will note, you do have to be in the specific search field, you can’t just use it from the home screen. My favorite updates, one of which works with both the Apple TV and the Apple watch, is the remote app. You can now use your Apple watch to navigate through the options on the Apple TV, a feature that might seem silly to some, but with a small and easily misplaced remote this is bound to be an incredibly valuable new feature. Think the watch is too small to use for a remote? Hook up your Apple bluetooth keyboard! That’s right, you can now use your standard sized keyboard as well.

I should note, that some of these updates, like the NCAA games, do have additional fees. More and more of us are swaying away from traditional TV and with more options coming to the Apple TV and choosing your content, we are getting closer and closer to paying for only what we want.