Kibbles & Bytes Blog

While you are reading this Grace and I with Max and Pirate are speeding down I-95 heading south. We will celebrate our 49th (!) wedding anniversary someplace along the way. Hopefully, I will find a nice place to take her out to dinner that is not just road food. Nevertheless, it is a pretty amazing journey with my life-partner. We usually get ourselves something that both of us can enjoy to celebrate this date. This year it is kayaks once we get down to Key West. Hopefully, we will actually use them!

I am growing my “playoff” beard. With my Cubbies down 2-1 at this writing, I am hoping that I do not have to shave it off prematurely!

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes team,

_Don, Emily, Hadley & Amy_

I knew if I just kept writing about electromagnetism, eventually I’d have enough foundation to talk about something really neat lots of people probably wonder about. I think my article on AC induction motors last week may have ??induced?? several readers to write me asking about wireless charging. I knew there were some cool topics related to induction but somehow wireless charging slipped my mind completely.

It’s true that wireless charging is often referred to as inductive charging because that is the principle behind operation. Several smartphone manufacturers over the past decade or so have offered phones that can be wirelessly charged. Palm’s Pre back in the late 2000s shipped with a heavy magnetic dock that the Pre would stick to while it charged without wires. I actually have a Pre2 and the wireless charging is very cool. It takes about the same amount of time to charge as with a cable. Apple still hasn’t released an iPhone capable of wireless charging…yet, but I suspect it’s on their radar.

Ok, on to the science behind wireless charging. First, the technical term for this type of power transmission is **resonant inductive coupling**. The operation is actually very simple. As always with anything where induction is involved, we need to have an oscillating power source like AC. The standard smartphone/small electronic device power chain is all DC, so somewhere in the charging process, some type of oscillating current will be present, though it need not necessarily be standard AC per se. In a basic inductive coupling setup, you’ll have two coils that will be tuned so that they oscillate (or resonate) at the same frequency. That’s where the resonant coupling plays in. The transmitter coil will be powered by the power source and a current will be induced in the receiving coil. This induced current can then go on to power whatever you’d like including charging a phone.

The current in the receiving coil is induced because of the changing magnetic field created by the changing current in the transmitter coil. When the transmitter coil is energized it creates a magnetic field around itself that looks like a donut. The receiving coil, when placed in close proximity to the transmitter coil, essentially shares in that magnetic field as though it were its own. That’s the coupling. It’s actually very, very simple. The only complicated parts are the drawbacks and limitations.

Why aren’t we transmitting power wirelessly all the time, everywhere? The magnetic field that is created in the transmitter coil is not very big and the most dense area of magnetic flux lines (needed to induce current) are located closest to the coil. So proximity of the receiver coil plays a ??huge?? part in both the amount of power that can be transmitted and the efficiency of doing so. In fact, the strength of the magnetic field decreases exponentially with distance (depending on the exact shape of the field). In the case of wireless charging, the coils are coupled by nothing but the air in between them. This works, but air doesn’t concentrate the magnetic flux in any way. It’s free to explode out unrestricted in its natural pattern. If you were to couple the coils using an iron core (for example) the magnetic flux would be concentrated in the core and could be transmitted (via the core) to the receiving coil at a much higher efficiency. Of course at that point, it’s no longer a wireless setup and actually resembles more of a transformer. It should be no surprise then that transformers are often extremely efficient at delivering power from their transmitter coil to their receiving coil.

Even given the drawbacks and limitations, resonant inductive coupling has a number of important advantages that allow it to excel in certain applications. Have you ever used an RFID chip card to enter a building? That process uses resonant inductive coupling. The RFID chip in the card has no power source. It’s idle circuitry. The base station on the door lock has a transmitter coil that couples to the receiving coil embedded in the card. This transmits enough power to energize the chip circuitry and transmit a radio signal back to the base station to unlock the door. That’s just a tiny, tiny amount of power used by the RFID chip. To power or charge a smartphone requires a lot more power and strong coupling. This can be achieved, but the advantages to doing so are minimal. You have the convenience of not having to plug the phone in, and there’s no cord or port to damage. I suspect many phone manufacturers therefore see it as a sort of novelty, though it’ll be interesting to see if Apple ever decides to incorporate it in any of their products.

Hopefully this article was informative on this very interesting subject. I don’t have any plans for next week’s article yet, but if you have any ideas, please write and let me know!

Since I am heading south like a snow bird and new Macs are probably right around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to talk about how you can easily move your life from one computer to another or migrate.

Fortunately, Apple makes it easy with Migration Assistant. Migration Assistant copies all your files from one Mac to another or from a PC to a Mac so you do not have to do that manually. If you are migrating from a PC or to a new MacBook some of the steps are a bit different and we will talk about those, too.

**Upgrade Your OS**

The first step is to make sure that both Macs have the current operating system and have installed any available updates. Your old Mac will need Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) or later.

Does your Mac have a name? Go to System Preference ->Sharing and make sure your Mac has a name. If it doesn’t, take a few hours to debate the appropriate name and enter it.

It should go without saying, but I will say it anyway – make sure both Macs are plugged in with their power adapters.

**Make your Macs talk to each other**

There are basically three ways to make sure that your Macs are able to talk to each other:

* Connect both computers to the same local Wi-Fi or Ethernet network.
* Connect both computers directly using a Thunderbolt, FireWire, or Ethernet cable.
* Connect your new Mac to a Time Capsule or external drive that has a Time Machine backup of your old Mac.

My preference in terms of speed and reliability is the last. If you have a Time Capsule or external drive with your Time Machine back-up on it this is the fastest and best way to migrate your data.

**Use Migration Assistant**

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If you are connecting by cable (this is the “old” way) you need to connect by FireWire or Thunderbolt cable and put the old Mac into target disk mode. To start up in target disk mode, turn off your old Mac and restart while holding down the “T” key.

If you are not using a cable to connect, i.e. using Wi-Fi, Time Capsule or external drive, just start up the old Mac as usual.

On your new Mac you need to launch Migration Assistant which is in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder. Once you launch Migration Assistant you will be asked how you want to transfer the data. Your choices are:

* From a Mac, Time Machine backup, or start-up disk
* From a Windows PC
* To another Mac

If you are migrating from Time Machine or a backup drive or are connected by cable in target disk mode you are all set to start. But for others, you will need to open Migration Assistant on the old Mac, click continue and choose “To another Mac” from the Migration Assistant window.

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On your new Mac you will be asked to choose select a Time Machine backup or start-up disk. Click continue. At this point you might see a security code. Keep that handy to enter onto your old Mac if requested.

Now you are ready to actually migrate. On you new Mac, if you are migrating from a Time Machine backup (you all have that, right?!) you will see a list of backups organized by date. Choose the one you want (usually the latest).

Select the information to transfer and click Continue and get a cup of coffee, take a long walk, take a nap because this might take awhile.

Once the migration is complete, before you give your old Mac to your niece, check to see that all your files are there one your new Mac and then you can wipe the old Mac.

If you are a “switcher” there are some special instructions. I won’t go into all the details here but complete instructions can be found “**here**”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204087

You will need to download either Windows Migration Assistant for Mac OS Sierra or Windows Migration Assistant for Mac OS X El Capitan or earlier. Running that on your PC will allow the Mac to scan the drives on your PC to build a list of files to migrate. From there you select the files you want to move to your Mac and hit Continue.

Email, contacts, calendar information will be moved as well as bookmarks, iTunes content, Pictures and other files.

If you have a new MacBook it is just a little different. The best way to do this would be to have a USB-C adapter that will allow you to connect your Time Capsule or back-up drive to your MacBook. If you want to do this over Wi-Fi you have to make sure that both your old Mac and the new MacBook are on the same network. Open Migration Assistant on both Macs and follow the instructions.

You can also do this with an ethernet cable but that requires adapters on both Macs in all likelihood and you can do it with a USB-C to USB-C cable if you are migrating between two MacBooks.

I clearly remember the days when changing Macs was a long process that never fully worked. Migration Assistant has simplified this process and in my experience it is rock-solid. Now if Apple would just release some new Macs so I can do some migration!

_Dear Friends,_

We have had some really mild weather for this time of the year here in the Green Mountains. The leaves are still on the trees and Vermont’s “shoulder” season – stick season seems weeks away at this point. Nevertheless, Grace and I will be heading down I-95 to Key West today.

I have a great team here in Vermont and I would like to take a moment to introduce my management team to you. We all meet each Monday for a check-in from the various departments. We talk about the accomplishments from the previous week, plans for the new week, obstacles encountered, things each is waiting for and any suggestions to stay true to our mission of measuring our success by the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.

Emily Dolloff, who you know as one of my co-authors here in Kibbles & Bytes and Tech Tails is the General Manager of the company. I originally hired Emily as a shipper many years ago. Since then she has been active in just about every area of the company. She was a top salesperson, she managed our Waitsfield retail store, she managed service, she managed all of retail and now she even has the title of junior assistant IT in addition to managing marketing, HR and basically all aspects of the company.

Rob Amon was also hired as a shipper early on in Small Dog’s history. He moved rapidly to sales and then to managing sales. He was the leader of our corporate sales efforts and now manages that as part of his title of VP of Sales.

Art Hendrickson was our first employee and his tenure is just about as long as the 21 years the company has been in existence. Arty has managed our warehouse, shipping and inventory control for most of his career but he has also had a well-rounded experience in just about every aspect of the company’s operation.

Will Frascella is another Small Dog veteran. I often joke that he has worked for the company since he was nine. He came to us originally as a high school kid helping out after school. He is now in charge of Product Management and is our lead purchaser. He is also our go-to guy for new technology and has a key role in our efforts in home automation.

Hadley Markoski was originally hired as a developer. She has been responsible for vast “under the hood” improvements in our infrastructure and is the author of our Argos service app that has streamlined our service offering. Hadley is now the Director of our IT department which keeps this place running, our website up and operating and has a whole long list of priorities for the company. She has recently completely revamped our telephone system which, if you call, you will find to be a vast improvement.

Michael Duplessis also has had a long history with the company. Starting out in sales, Mike soon became our primary outside consultant, taking on the most complex needs of our customers. Holding advanced certifications from Apple, Mike stepped up and took on the additional responsibility of managing our service department last year in addition to managing our consulting efforts.

Patrick McCormack is the manager of our S. Burlington store. Our flagship store in S. Burlington is responsible for a significant percentage of our retail revenue. Patrick has hired and mentored a great staff in S. Burlington. Many of his employees have advanced to other positions in the company.

Raul de Arriz is our government solutions director and responsible for sales to US Government agencies as well as sate and local governments. Raul came to Small Dog Electronics with a mandate to develop the Government market and he has helped grow federal, state, and Mid-Atlantic sales for Small Dog Electronics by more than 1000% over the last three years. Under Raul, the Government effort has achieved excellent client satisfaction, as evidenced by continued and growing repeat business. With the assistance of Small Dog Electronics’s Outside Sales Team, Raul manages every aspect of client relationships, including face to face, phone, email, database mining, and agency-level events, as well as national government show presence, including Small Dog Electronics’s participation in multiple national government and Mid-Atlantic regional marketing opportunities.

You can see why I feel confident operating with this team even while I am being a snow-bird in Key West. We still have our weekly meetings and use FaceTime to allow me to participate remotely.

We are doing some renovations at our Waitsfield and S. Burlington store over the next couple of weeks. I think that you will like the changes and I hope that you can be patient with any inconveniences as we complete this work as quickly as possible.

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the amazing iPad Pro 9.7-inch 32GB Wi-Fi in gold. We are bundling this “iPad Pro with AppleCare+ and the Apple Pencil.”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002448 Normally this bundle would sell for about $800 but this week only for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can get this bundle for only “**$739.99!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002448