New Magic

Siri is great for resolving trivia disputes, setting reminders and even texting or sending email but Siri is also a talented assistant. Here’s a few of the more non-intuitive tasks Siri can accomplish:

1) Split up that restaurant bill and add a tip

Ask Siri “What’s a 20% tip on a $105 bill split among 3 people and Siri will not only tell you what the total tip would be but also how much each of the 3 owes.

2) Flip a coin

Siri will bail you out if you do not have a coin to flip if you ask her to flip a coin. Or if you are killing time and want to play dice, ask Siri to “throw the dice”.

3) Counting Calories

Siri can help! Ask Siri how many calories are in that Big Mac and Siri will tell you that you are consuming 520 calories.

4) Take a Selfie

Ready to take that selfie and find yourself looking for the camera app? Just tell Siri to take a selfie and boom!, the camera app will open. Siri isn’t smart enough, yet, to ensure you have the front facing camera active so you might have to click that first.

5) Name that Tune

Siri integrates with Shazam to listen to the music. Ask Siri “What is this song?” and with some help from Shazam, Siri will let you know and if you click on the result it will play that song if you are a subscriber to Apple Music.

6) Find your Friends

If you use the Find My Friends app you can ask Siri to find them by asking “Where’s my wife?” and assuming that your wife has agreed to share her location in the Find My Friends app, Siri will let you know where she is.

7) Convert Currency

If you are traveling out of the country you can use Siri to make those currency conversions. Asking Siri “What is 100 euros worth?” today reveals it is worth $112.49.

Are you one of those people who have old iOS devices laying around your house just waiting to be brought to the recyclers or given to a friend in need? I have always kept my old devices as a backup in case I ever need to send my new one out for repair.

For those of you planning on upgrading your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch soon, you might rethink selling or recycling it, and instead, turn it into a home security system. Huh? Yes, you heard me.

With a new app by “*People Power*”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/presence-by-people-power/id618598211?mt=8 you can easily make an old iOS device your new home security system. The system supports the iPad 2 and newer, iPod touch (5th gen.) and newer and iPhone 3GS and newer.

The app is called “*Presence*;”:http://peoplepowerco.com/products/ it’s free and it has some seriously great reviews. All you need to do is download the app on at least two devices, connect over Wi-Fi and set up your device in the desired spot you wish to watch. You can then set up specific alerts for when motion has been detected.

The alerts might be for when your kids get home from school, if someone breaks into your apartment, or maybe you have elderly parents who you’d like to make sure are up and moving that day. Throw a waterproof case on the phone and you can set it up outside and get video clips to see what kind of animal is eating your freshly sprouted blueberries.

People Power will soon have a subscription, allowing you to upgrade to Presence Pro for more storage and added features. Even if you don’t feel the need to monitor any activity going on, it might be fun just to play around with the app since it is free, and who knows, you may just find a cool use for it!

Erich Sullivan – South Burlington Service Writer

The new Apple TV is what really has my attention, I’m already sold on the $200.00 64GB version.
I don’t know what has me most sold, Siri? The App Store and what that will mean? I know that anything we’re thinking today will be dramatically upset with what will come from it. A simple unified search that lets me know if it’s in showtime, HBO, netflix or Hulu or in iTunes is going to be unreal. No more painfully typing in on that arcade style grid keyboard several times to find out no one has it. More time watching TV, less time struggling with an interface and search limitations.

The App Store intends to turn the Apple TV into a casual gaming console, and the new remote gives it a change of being a decent experience.The new remote is exciting, the lightning connector for charging has me pondering things. They could have made it charge through micro USB, or run off batteries, or inductively charge on the top of the Apple TV box, but they went with lighting. It comes with the Lightning Cable to charge your remote, or your other Apple devices with a lightning port.

Another interesting decision was the USB type C on the back of the new Apple TV for restores. Very forward thinking, and just another display that Apple is really pushing for USB type C to be the next ubiquitous connector.

I have said many more things about the new Apple TV, but in short, I’m already sold.

Morgan – Waitsfield IT

I wasn’t all that thrilled about the  Watch additions (I’m still on the fence as to how useful I’d find the watch to be), but the iPad Pro announcement was cool. I know a lot of customers have been eagerly awaiting a larger iPad and—as a heavy iPad user myself—I know how useful they can be for work & play, so with iOS 9’s side-by-side apps support, it’ll be great. It’ll be especially useful for artists with the  Pencil (which itself is a great improvement since stylus support is pretty poor on the iPad) and may turn out to be a strong competitor to the expensive Wacom Cintiq line of drawing tablets with built-in displays. And, can I say one thing about the four speakers on the iPad Pro… FINALLY!

The new  TV looks great & fun, but doesn’t seem entirely groundbreaking, just exactly what the next step of its evolution needed to be. That’s not to say I don’t want one, it definitely looks like a great product, just that it’s what I’d expect a new  TV to be. The remote looks very useful and fun for games, and I think that supporting iPhones & iPod touches as additional controllers is an absolutely brilliant idea.

As usual, the iPhone 6S & 6S+ look like excellent upgrades to an already great phone. Bringing Force Touch to the iPhone will be a nice addition and I can’t help but geeking out about how they implemented it (Apple is really becoming quite ingenious on their technical solutions to difficult problems which actually make a bigger difference than most people think). And, they just keep making an excellent camera even better (the Live Photos are neat, esp. if they really don’t increase the photo size by much).

Jim Overman – Waitsfield Phone Sales

Siri On The Apple TV!

There are many new exciting features to the Apple TV which make me think that it is time for an upgrade, but my favorite has to be the addition of Siri. In fact, the whole remote is pretty darn cool. It features a new glass touch surface remote that allows for easy maneuvering around the screen, just like an an iPhone or iPad. Back to Siri though, Siri is now able to do universal searches across iTunes, Netflix, Hulu and more for you favorite actor, director or genre. My very favorite part though is that if you ask Siri ‘What did they say?’, the Apple TV will automatically scroll back fifteen seconds and turn on closed captioning. I am particulary excited because when I watch Doctor Who I am doing this manually myself at least six or seven times per episode. No joke. It will be nice to just be able to ‘ask and receive’ as they say. The new Apple TV will actually come with two sizes of built-in storage, there will be a 32GB model for $149.99 and a 64GB for $199.99. Apple plans to start shipping in late October. I would say it is going to be on my holiday wish list but I am not sure I can I hold out that long!

Joe Lytton – Key West Store Manager

Just as we expected, Apple announced the next versions of its best-selling smartphones, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus at its annual launch event in San Francisco. Also as we expected, the iPhone 6S looks identical to last year’s 4.7-inch iPhone 6S, reserving its most important changes for the hardware interior.
True, there is a new color now, called rose gold (it basically looks like a blush pink, same as the new Apple Watch color option that the company announced). But as far as looks go, this extra shade is the extent of the the changes you’ll be able to visually detect between this year’s and last year’s phones.

Apple says that its phone may look the same as last year’s model, but its iPhone 6S duo has achieved more inner strength. This time it uses a different grade of aluminum for its chassis, one that’s also used in the aerospace industry. They call it Series 7,000, and it’s the same aluminum alloy Apple puts into its Apple Watch Sport.
A new type of chemically strengthened glass also tops the iPhone 6S, though the company hasn’t confirmed if this is cover material from Corning’s Gorilla Glass line or not.

Apple has included a variation of Force Touch, which you find in different capacities on the Apple Watch and on some Mac trackpads. Called 3D Touch here, the iPhone 6S phones will adopt the same pressure-sensitive capability that calls up secondary menus and actions when you press and hold the screen. Press down and you can pull up context-sensitive menus, switch apps, or examine photos. But it’s a subtle riff on what already exists on iPhones: tapping and holding. Another use is to access shortcuts from the home screen for your most frequent actions, say messaging a friend. And if you’re in your email inbox, applying fingertip pressure to an element in the message will surface more information, like maybe the flight number on an emailed travel itinerary, for instance. (Apple called this concept “peeking in” during the live demo.) Pressing harder on an app will likewise generate more options, like viewing all the photos of a contact’s Instagram photo stream. In the context of a game, pressing harder could zoom you in to get closer to the action.

A 12-megapixel camera is a huge jump for Apple, which has been holding onto its 8-megapixel sensors in its iPhone for years. Autofocus will pick up the pace, according to Apple, and color accuracy is a point of pride.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera now brings the iPhone 6S on par with a lot of today’s competing handsets. Of course, it includes the company’s proprietary voice chat feature, FaceTime video. Here’s something wildly different, though. Instead of including a dedicated flash for the front-facing camera, which only a few phones do, Apple is using the home screen to light up instead. This is meant to increase the brightness of those selfies even in low-light situations.

A new feature you’ll see in the camera, Live Photos is a default mode that turns stills into a video or GIF, basically, images that move. It’s an automatic thing; all you have to do is take the picture like normal. When we took some shots, it seamlessly added Live Photo motion and sound. The Live Photo motion came out more like stop-motion or time lapse, however, than true video. It’s also important to note that one Live Photo is about twice the file size as a regular photo. Couple that with the 4K video capabilities (more on that later), and you’ll definitely need more storage space to accommodate.

Apple also announced 4K video recording, at 3,840×2,160-pixel resolution. You’ll be able to take 8-megapixel camera photos while recording at this ultrahigh resolution. (The immediate benefit of shooting 4K video would be watching them later on a 4K TV.) Just like last year’s phones, the iPhone 6S Plus is the only model here with optical image stabilization, which helps correct blur from shaking hands.

Under the hood, we have an upgraded, proprietary A9 processor that continues Apple’s theme of mystery when it comes to exactly what’s going on in there. Though it’s impossible to appreciate during our quick demo, what we do know is that this is Apple’s third-generation 64-bit chip. Apple claims that the A9 is 70 percent faster than last year’s A8 when it comes to the usual computing tasks (like opening an app, for example), and 90 percent faster at graphical tasks, like gaming.

Apple says it’ll have the fastest forms of LTE Advanced, if that’s supported where you live, and will also include support for the latest, greatest Wi-Fi networks.

The two new iPhones will run on iOS 9, mining all of those software enhancements, like a smarter Siri and up to three hours longer battery life, plus a new Low Power Mode. The updated operating system, which is currently in public beta, will arrive for phones on September 16.

I was at a customer’s office the other day helping to set up their new Mac system. It was a busy construction company and they needed help getting wireless scanning operational. I noticed that they were using Adobe Reader for their PDF files, so I introduced them to “*Preview*”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201740. Once I set the Finder to open PDF files with Preview instead of Reader, I showed them how to access the scanner to scan documents right from Preview.

As I had them practice this, I noticed that much of their scanning needs were for documents that they would print out, sign, scan and then email to clients. When I showed them how to use the “signature” function in Preview they immediately saw the value and time saved. So, I know many of you already know how to use this tool, but I thought I would go over it so you too can use your electronic signature.

Preview is used to view and edit PDFs and images, import images from a camera, import documents and images from a scanner, add pages to a PDF and also to take screen shots. When you have a PDF that needs your signature, the old way of doing this would be to print out the PDF, sign it, scan it and send it back. With Preview you can skip some of that work. You can capture your signature using your trackpad or better yet, using your camera on your Mac.

! Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures*. When you select *Create Signature* you have a choice of trackpad or camera. While signing on your trackpad is okay, I prefer the camera method. Here you take a white piece of paper and sign it. Then click on *Camera* as the means of capturing your signature and hold up that piece of paper to the camera on your Mac. Once you align the signature on the blue line you can hit *Done* and your signature is stored. If you don’t like the first try, click *Clear* and do over.

To add your signature to a PDF document click on the *Sign* button !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4295.png! or use the path *Tools > Annotate > Signature* to select the signature. Once it has been placed on the document you can drag it to where you want it, then use the handles to adjust its size. Save the document and you can include it in an email with your signature. Remember that the *Save As* command is sort of hidden now but to get to it simply hold down the *Option key* when you select *File.*

When a customer buys a new Mac, there’s often a question of what to do about the old data. All that old data is all that stuff that made your old machine yours: it’s the settings, the pictures, saved web page bookmarks, documents, spreadsheets…all that stuff.

Frequently a Mac-to-Mac data transfer can be done without any special equipment or advanced knowledge. The easiest way is to use Apple’s Migration Assistant which is a program built into OS X, and is on every new Mac. When setting up a new Mac (or any Mac that’s been reset to factory settings, generally from the disk being wiped and the OS being reinstalled) it’ll prompt you to make a decision.

The top option is to transfer data from a start up disk or Time Machine backup. If you’re already doing a Time Machine backup to an external HDD this is the best option, just make sure your backup is completely up to date. If it’s behind, any changes you’ve made won’t show up on your new machine when the transfer completes. Once you’ve identified the drive you want the data to come from it goes through and calculates the sizes of everything on that older drive. You’ve got a little control of what comes over, like whether or not you want the entire Applications folder, but nothing more specific than that. It’ll also tell you how much available space will be left over, or if there’s more data on the source drive than the destination.

I recommend using a Time Machine backup drive (any external HDD that has a Time Machine backup on it) because it’ll be useful for backups on the new machine. It’ll even see that it’s a new machine that has all the same data and ask if you want to keep using the same Time Machine backup; this is call inheriting.

Alternatively, you can put the source machine into Target Disk Mode by pressing the T key when the machine is booting and having it connected to the destination machine through Thunderbolt or FireWire. Target disk mode only works through Thunderbolt and FireWire, don’t bother trying anything else. I’ve wasted enough time for us all: it’s not supported. If you’re transferring data from a machine with FireWire but no Thunderbolt to a new Mac that only has Thunderbolt you can get a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, but that’ll run you $30 and you might not have another use for it after the data migration. You could also use a Thunderbolt cable, but that’ll also run you at least $30, and again, you might not have another use for it, that’s why I recommend an external HDD. If you’re not doing a backup, it’s worth the peace of mind, and simplifies data transfers.

Working at the Service Check-in Counter, I often have customers asking me how to get out of Zoom and/or Voiceover on their iOS devices. While most people have Zoom and Voiceover disabled, it still shows up now and again.

If you have used Zoom, the image to the right may seem familiar. If this happens, you can try to enter your passcode and navigate to Settings to turn off Zoom but this can be difficult. An easier way out is a simple 3 finger tap twice which will Zoom you back out.

If you have seen the image above, then you also must have experienced Voiceover. Instead of using your finger to select individual apps, the screen is sectioned into rectangles, and you select that shape as whole. It is very hard to navigate, and the whole time a voice is instructing your movement. Voiceover is helpful for the visually impaired, but can be a hinderance if turned on. You must navigate back to Settings > Accessibility and turn Voiceover off if you do not wish to use it. If you have the shortcut enabled, you can try triple clicking the home button. This will turn off Voiceover. I would recommend turning off both Zoom and Voiceover, unless of course you need them and are familiar with their commands.