Dear Friends,
Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility is celebrating their 25th year this year. This organization of businesses that ascribe to the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit is the largest socially responsible business organization in the country. That is not even on a per capita basis and for a small state like Vermont it is pretty remarkable. I am proud to serve on their board and have served as chair in the past. Some of the largest and most influential companies in our state such as Ben & Jerry’s, Green Mountain Keurig, Green Mountain Power and Seventh Generation join hundreds of small and medium businesses in networking, educating and public policy. Perhaps it is just the small town nature of our state but VBSR has been influential in a number of important pieces of legislation including health care reform, environmental policy, marriage equality, renewable energy and development issues. Perhaps the best part of VBSR is just the opportunity to rub shoulders and talk with some of the most innovative business leaders.
I am not a big Taylor Swift fan but I appreciate her public stand for musicians that led to Apple changing how their 90-day free trial of the new Apple Music service will be rolled out. I think that in the heat of negotiating contracts for providing streaming music, Apple figured since they were giving out a free trial that they should not have to pay the artists. Well, once Taylor Swift tweeted her opposition while praising Apple, Apple did the right thing and announced they would be paying all the artists even during the free trial period. Attaboys and attagirls all around!
The second round of developer versions of iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan came out this week and as is usually the case I noticed immediate improvements in performance and stability. In particular, the iPhone battery life seems to be vastly improved. My favorite feature, this week, of the upcoming El Capitan operating system is in Safari. I do not like visiting a web site only to have some video start up automatically and start blaring audio content on my Mac. Now, when Safari senses auto content from a web page it indicates it by putting a little speaker icon which you can easily click on to mute the sound. The public beta for El Capitan and iOS 9 is coming up in a couple of weeks and I think you will like them!
This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features a used MacBook. Many people like to have a spare Mac around, whether it is for visitors or simply one that can be used for quick searches or projects. We have acquired several MacBooks that might be just right. These are the white unibody MacBooks that were introduced in May of 2010 and were one of Apple’s most successful laptops. These come with a 2.4GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. We give them a 90-day warranty and they come with OS X Mavericks installed. Small Dog Electronics provides the 90-day warranty on these used MacBooks. Kibbles & Bytes readers can buy them Here in the stock configuration for $20 off at $379 OR Will has put together a great bundle by upgrading the 250GB drive to a 256GB Solid State Drive and bumping the memory up to 8GB. This configuration gives you the reliability of a brand new SSD drive and gives you enough ram to load up Yosemite. This bundle is normally $630 but Kibbles & Bytes readers can grab one for only $549.99! Click Here to claim your bundle.