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  • Adding Utility to Live Photos

    When I was in high school I used to make movies with my friends. In one of the movies my friend asked if he could just rant in front of a camera for a few minutes. It’s been a while, so I don’t remember everything he ranted about, but one of the things was definitely Apple. It was more than a little ironic given that we were using an iMac and Final Cut Pro to edit and master the movie.

    Without dating myself, it’s been a while since I was in high school, but my friend and I still keep in touch, and he still complains about Apple a lot. I got quite the earful when I told him I got my first iPhone back in January. He was telling me how much he liked his Samsung Galaxy and all of the ways in which it was a superior device to my iPhone.

    I did laugh quite a bit when he texted me recently to say even he was getting an iPhone now because his company was deploying them. Now I’ve been trying to show him how to do things and occasionally get him riled up by waxing poetic about how great Apple is in an over-the-top, comical way.

    Having friends with a different kinds of smartphones can be a little lame, because of all of the features you can’t take advantage of in Messages and other apps. Heck, even my friend with the iPhone refuses to use iMessage and just forces his phone to send via plain SMS. Google apparently wanted to remedy at least a piece of the incompatibility when it comes to sharing live photos from iOS to other places by creating an app. The app, called Motion Stills, taps into your photos library and lets you convert a live photo to an animated GIF. You can even stitch several live photos together to make one long GIF. These can then be shared with any device that can play animated GIFs (pretty much everything at this point). You can even email them, save them, post them on social media, whatever you want! Heads up though that GIFs can become HUGE really quickly. I used an online GIF optimizer tool to help reduce the size of the images in this article.

    I’ll admit that at first, I thought live photos were kind of gimmicky, and I was sure I’d just end up turning the feature off. I did for a while, but now I like having it as an option. For the most part, all I ever care about is the static picture I took, but I like the depth it adds to see it moving. I recently took a picture of myself on a mountain top, and I like how I can see how windy it was with everything blowing around in the live photo. It’s very cool to see third-party apps like Motion Stills stepping in to add to the utility of live photos. Now I can share them with all of my non-iPhone friends.

  • Flying with Devices

    A lot of people hit the road or the skies during the summer for vacation getaways. With your iPhone, iPad, your kid’s iPad and maybe an Apple Watch, too, how do you handle your digital devices in the air? Since 2013, we’ve been able to use handheld electronic devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and Kindle at pretty much all times during airplane flights, including takeoff and landing. That was a big change from previous FAA policy, which banned the use of personal electronic devices below 10,000 feet, forcing passengers to occupy themselves with books and magazines at the start and end of flights.

    But now flight attendants ask us to put our devices into “airplane mode.” You probably know how to do this on your iOS device, but if not, here’s how. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up Control Center, and tap the Airplane Mode button at the top left. Or open the Settings app and enable the Airplane Mode switch that’s the very first option. When you land, use the same controls to turn it off again.

    What does airplane mode do? It disables the wireless features of your device to comply with airline regulations. Specifically, it turns off the cellular voice and data features of your iPhone or iPad, and on all iOS devices it turns off both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. However, only the cellular features are important to your airline—you can re-enable both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth at any time. That might be useful if you want to use the airplane’s really expensive Wi-Fi network for internet access or Bluetooth to play music over wireless headphones.

    To turn these wireless features back on, tap the grayed-out Wi-Fi and Bluetooth buttons in Control Center, or flip their switches in Settings > Wi-Fi and Settings > Bluetooth. Don’t bother turning them on unless you’re going to use them, though, since you’ll save a little battery life by leaving them off for the duration of a long flight.

    Why do the airlines care about cellular? It has little to do with airplane safety; the prohibition on their use comes from the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, not the Federal Aviation Administration. The reason is that fast-moving cell phones used high in the air may light up many cell towers at once, which can confuse the mobile phone network.

    The technical solution is akin to what the airlines do to provide Internet access now; a device called a “picocell” would be installed on the airplane to provide connectivity with the phone network, and cell phones on the plane would communicate with it instead of individual cell towers on the ground below. Will it happen, though?

    The FCC has proposed that it would allow cell phone use on properly equipped planes; however, the thought of fellow passengers having phone conversations during flight makes me want to walk instead! Many lawmakers in the United States oppose allowing passengers to make and receive phone calls during flight, citing concerns about cabin safety, a worry echoed by the flight attendants union. Even FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has acknowledged this, saying “I get it. I don’t want the person in the seat next to me yapping at 35,000 feet any more than anyone else.” So, thankfully, I don’t expect that rule to change. Remember the phones that were in seat backs for years on planes? Hapy and I had a company rule that if any employees called from an airplane they would be immediately fired. It CAN wait.

    If you’re allowed to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, why do the airlines make me stow my MacBook Air during takeoff and landing? It has nothing to do with the technology—the airlines ban laptops during times when there could be an emergency landing because they could, like carry-on luggage or lowered tray tables, impede evacuation.

  • Dear Friends,

    Art has switched his messages tag line back to “the days are getting shorter and I hope it snows soon.” I have tried to sanction him for this depressing message but he is persistent. Independence Day is over and the Warren 4th of July Parade was action-packed. Prickly Mountain built a gigantic yellow submarine and an even more gigantic octopus. As usual, my position was under the float, this time raising and lowering the octopus head as marine life danced around the float. Right before the parade started, Vermont’s own Bernie Sanders stopped by our float to chat just as he has done for decades. It was great to see Bernie in the parade.

    About half way through the parade route the guys on the outside of the float started shouting – “back-up, back-up”. Now, our floats are pretty much carefully engineered to make it by people power the length of the parade route. We don’t know back-up. Well, there was only minor damage as we got out of the way of the fire truck that had to quickly put out a fire in one of the floats in front of us.

    It looks like a great year for blueberries as my bushes are loaded! Could be some blueberry pies, pancakes and muffins in my future.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the Apple Certified Refurbished 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display and powered by the 3.5GHz Intel i5 processor. It has 8GB of RAM and a 1TB fusion drive and the M290X graphics card. This iMac was refurbished by Apple and carries the same 1-year warranty as new iMacs. We are bundling it with AppleCare which extends that 1-year warranty to 3 years and also extends the 90 days of free Apple tech support to 3 years. If you are looking for a desktop Mac this is a great opportunity to get a 5k 27-inch iMac. $150 off for Kibbles & Bytes readers, this iMac with AppleCare can by yours for only $1789.99.

  • Grace and I are getting ready for our annual 4th of July party. Got to get the strawberries for the daiquiris which is my role. Running dual blenders almost non-stop. The Warren, VT Independence Day parade is an amazing event as tens of thousands descend upon our small town for the annual celebration.

    I’ll be thinking of Hammerhead a bunch as this was his holiday but mostly I will drink to the fond memories of the clown of a dog that touched me so deeply.

    Have a wonderful and safe Independence Day! Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    Don, Emily, Hadley

  • So Many Options!

    There is a mountain of information out there about cloud storage verses cloud backups verses physical drives. In order to be able to selct the right solution you need to have a basic understanding of what the differences are between the options. There is iCloud, Google drive, wireless drives like the Lacie Fuel, Seagate Personal Cloud, tradition plug in USB drives. What makes learning about and weighing options even harder is that each option available, depending on what you’re reading, makes it sound as though that particular backup option is superior to all other solutions out there. 

    To try and make it a little easier on yourself, here’s a general outline of the pros and cons of the different solutions out there. It is very important that as you read through information and consider different options that you think about what best suites your needs. Some of us at Small Dog swear by wireless back up solutions and others of us stick to good old physical drives and Time Machine.

    iCloud is free for all users, but it’s only free for the first 5GB, so if you are looking to utilize iCloud for backing up an iPad, iPhone or documents from your computer you may want to purchase additional storage. It’s just $0.99/month for 50GB of storage (you can get up to 1TB) so I strongly encourage upgrading to a higher storage option even if it’s just for secondary backup of your photos. When using iCloud it’s important to log into your iCloud account from time to time to make sure that the information you want backed up is being backed up, especially the photos. I have talked with several customers over the years who thought they were backing up photos to the cloud and because they never logged into their online account, never knew the backup was not happening correctly. It’s also important to know that iCloud is not backing up programs, it’s just the files. Thankfully with Apple purchased apps you can easily download anything you might have purchased through your iTunes account in the app store, but this will not help you for third party programs. Finally, it’s also important to know that you will need to continue to pay for the service, if you stop paying for it, you will lose files. 

    There are tons of other online backup and cloud storage options, it’s crucial note that some “cloud storage” options are not actual backups. They’re just a place to store things, so restoring a machine from a cloud backup service is often not possible unless you are paying for that kind of service. Think of many cloud storage solutions as nothing different than just dropping and dragging files to a physical drive. You will have to piece back together your information if you have a complete loss of your data on your computer. For many folks this is absolutely OK. 

    Physical hard drives and using Time Machine often provide a greater sense of security simply because it’s a physical piece of equipment and you can see your information on the drive. If you’re using software like Time Machine, you will have a complete copy of your data along with programs and can, in most cases, quickly restore  data to your computer. A downside is that external drives can and do fail. This would be an example of where a cloud-based option offers some increased security. It’s unlikely data would and could be compromised using cloud services provided you continue to pay for the service. Physical drives have the advantage of a one time fee. When you buy the drive and it’s unlikely that a user would need to pay for anything additional after the initial set up. 

    Lastly are the personal cloud drive and wireless drives. Personal cloud drives like the Seagate Personal Cloud allow you to create your own cloud storage solution and support it completely on your own. This cloud solution works very similarly to other services and allows you to access information from anywhere and anytime just like traditional cloud services. The draw back to personal cloud type setups is they are often for advanced users because they can be more complicated to set up and to maintain. Wireless hard drives like the Lacie Fuel often require that you are within range of that drive and will not work with Time Machine. The benefit to these drives is they allow multiple users to access information and are perfect for sharing media, but like personal cloud type drives they could require a slightly higher level of understanding when it comes to drives and data sharing. 

    Ultimately I am not sure there is one perfect solution and combining wireless with wired options is often a good compromise. I have used iCloud for years for my calendars, my contacts, and I love iCloud keychain. I even have my favorites synced in Safari via the cloud. However, I still utilize a physical hard drive and Time Machine backup on all of my machines.

  • Playing with Cars

    Luke, Emily’s husband, came into the office and said “what’s up with Don – traded his Infiniti for a CHEVY?”. Well, yes I did. I picked up a new Chevy Volt this week. I wanted better gas mileage than the Infiniti hybrid so set the bar at 40mpg. Then again I am fascinated by electric cars and couldn’t think of affording a Tesla so the Volt became more and more interesting. The fact that it had CarPlay and automatic parallel parking didn’t hurt, either.

    This morning after charging all night I had 53 miles of EV range on the battery. It is about 12 miles to the office so I figured I would have about 40 left. Well, it turns out it is all downhill from Prickly Mountain so I actually gained EV range due to regenerative braking and the Volt has 67 miles left on the battery now.

    Yeah, but what about CarPlay? I went to Boston to pick up the car and driving back I was able to play around with CarPlay. I asked Siri some hands-free questions, tuned into MLB to listen to the Cubs, played some Reggae music and used Maps to navigate home. My first CarPlay experience was great!

    As I searched for cars I went to the Apple web site that lists all the CarPlay compatible cars and made it one of the most important criteria. You can check out the current list here. In addition to these equipped cars there are 3rd-party after-market receivers that support CarPlay.

    CarPlay is the smarter, safer way to use your iPhone in the car. CarPlay takes the things you want to do with your iPhone while driving and puts them right on your car’s built-in display. You can get directions, make calls, send and receive messages, ask Siri for the latest Cubs score and listen to music, all in a way that allows you to stay focused on the road.

    Activating CarPlay was simple in the Volt. It was merely a matter of plugging my iPhone into the USB port in the car and I was ready to go. I could dictate messages, listen to a wide variety of content in addition to my music library. CarPlay Apps include Spotify, Pandora, Tunein Radio, Audible, Slacker, etc. More and more are coming as Apple opens CarPlay for developers, too. You install CarPlay apps on your iPhone and they will automatically be reflected on your CarPlay screen.

    When I left the dealership I told Siri to take me home. Maps launched immediately and I was given turn-by-turn directions to Prickly Mountain. I am sure that more and more car manufacturers will be incorporating CarPlay and with all the attention to cars these days, I am pretty sure we will see a lot more features coming. But for right now, it is very handy and a great safety feature to keep the iPhone in the cup holder and be able to use so much of it eyes-free in the car.

    It is not perfect though. I want wireless CarPlay because I do not want to even take my iPhone out of my pocket. It would be nice if Mail was a supported app. Let’s say you are waiting for that important eMail about a new job. You are going to be tempted to take your eyes off the road and fiddle around with your iPhone but if Mail was supported on CarPlay you could have Siri read that mail to you and you could dictate your response. Find my Friends would be another handy one so you can meet your buds at the right watering hole. While my car has weather from Sirius XM it would be handy if Apple’s Weather app came on CarPlay or Darksky.

    Hmm…what else is on my wish list. Movie listings, Stocks, Open Table, Calculator, The Score — all would be great to have on CarPlay. So far, I am giving Apple CarPlay high marks and for this Apple fanboy it was an important consideration in buying my car.

  • Dear Friends,

    I am very sad to report the passing of my companion for the past 12 years. This week we said goodbye to Hammerhead. He was truly a love-mirror and I loved him so. He was seldom more than a couple feet from my side and liked to “ham” it up. He was a star of the Warren, VT 4th of July parade when he rode in my sidecar (which I bought just for him) and I am sure he thought the parade was just for him. It was hard to let my buddy go and there is a huge hole in my life, but a lot more room in my bed.

    Hammerhead lives on not only in my memories but also as a brand we named for him. We manufacture cables, chargers and cases under the Hammerhead brand. Dogs have always been such an important part of Small Dog and my life. After all, I tell people I am 2/3 dog — you know D O n. So many great memories and so much love. We miss you Hammerhead.

    Our stores and offices will be closed on Monday so our employees can celebrate the 4th of July. We will open as usual on Tuesday the 5th.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive is a Hammerhead special. We will include a Hammerhead USB 2-port wall charger, a Hammerhead 2-port car charger and 2 MFI USB Lightning Cables all at a special price of only $21.99! And we will also toss in a free Hammerhead neoprene iPad case for you to carry all this stuff around in.

  • macOS Sierra

    I used to live in the foothills of the Sierras in a little town called Challenge. We rented what was an old stage coach stop right in the hills that were part of the gold rush of the nineteenth century. Did you know that the nickname for Californians – the 49ers – came from the huge influx of gold miners in 1849?

    Apple hopes that macOS Sierra will bring in a rush to the Mac, too. First off, we should note that the name has changed (to protect the innocent?) from OS X 10.12 to macOS Sierra. I like the name change but it certainly pales next to the improvements in the operating system for Mac.

    If you have a Mac that is older than 2009 you might want to turn out, or better yet come in for an upgrade because macOS Sierra will only run on late 2009 Macs or newer. It will be free when it comes out this fall and there will be a public beta program in July that you can sign up for at beta.apple.com.

    Hello Siri!

    What’s new? Let’s start with Siri. Siri finally comes to the Mac! Ask Siri to send messages, search the web, find files, adjust settings, and more. You can also drag and drop, copy, or pin Siri results. Siri will even turn down your Mac’s fan when activated to minimize microphone interference. I have just started to play with Siri on the Mac but it is a little weird talking to my Mac in the middle of our open office. I feel a little bit like Scotty in Star Trek talking to the mouse of a Mac Plus.

    Universal Clipboard

    Have you ever found an interesting article or picture on your iPad and wanted to include it in something you are working on your Mac? Well, that just got a lot easier with Universal Clipboard. Copy and paste now works across your devices when they’re near each other. There are no special instructions, just copy images, video, or text from an app on one device. Then paste into another app on a different device.

    Optimized Storage

    Are you reaching the limits of your storage? With all the rich media, apps, pictures and music this is a pretty common issue. We recommend that you leave 10-20% of your storage space clear but finding what to delete is always a challenge. Apple has now addressed that with Optimized Storage. Optimized Storage helps you make more room on your Mac. When space is low, it automatically stores old files, photos, movies, and email attachments in the cloud and makes them available on demand. Files you recently created and optimized photos stay on your Mac so they’re there when you need them. You can also easily find and remove files or apps. I am running the beta of macOS Sierra and my free space went up from about 25GB to over 150GB once my storage was optimized

    Auto Unlock

    How many times have you found yourself logging into your Mac and accidentally had the caps lock on and had to re-enter your password? Well, if you have an Apple Watch you will never have THAT problem again. When you walk up to your Mac while wearing your Apple Watch, you’ll be automatically logged in to your desktop. Because you authenticate your Apple Watch when you put it on, there’s no need to type in a password if you’re nearby.

    Shop with Apple Pay

    Apple Pay gives you an easier and more secure way to pay when shopping online in Safari. When you see the Apple Pay button on participating websites, simply click it at checkout on your Mac, then securely complete your purchase using your iPhone or Apple Watch.

    Keep Tabs

    I know that not everyone uses tabs in Safari or Chrome but most of you do. It is a great way to have multiple web sites open at once without cluttering your desktop. macOS Sierra brings tabs to other apps now. It works in Pages and a few other apps now but should be pretty universal by the time macOS Sierra comes out in the fall. I was a bit baffled at how to access it but then I noticed a new command under the “Window” menu item – Merge All Windows.

    Picture-in-Picture

    This time of the year I like to watch the Cubs day games while I am working. That’s the thing about watching baseball, you don’t have to pay too close attention. At any rate, with macOS Sierra I can now have a floating PIP window with the game while I work on spreadsheets or in our K9 database. You can float a video window from Safari or iTunes over your desktop or a full-screen app. Play the video in any corner of your desktop, and resize the window to see more or less of what’s behind it. It currently only works with some video sources (and unfortunately not with MLB Team Pass) but more will certainly be added.

    iCloud Drive

    Ever been in a meeting and needed that document from your Mac but you just have your iPad with you? With the new enhancements to iCloud Drive in macOS Sierra it will be no problem. Now you can store your Documents folder and Desktop in iCloud Drive and access all your files from your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC and on iCloud.com. So you can save files where you normally do and they’re automatically uploaded, with no need to drag them into iCloud Drive first.

    And MORE!

    Photos has been upgraded with new organization and search capabilities, iTunes has been upgraded including lyrics in the mini player, new Emojis and fun stuff in Messages and much more that we will talk about in Kibbles as we discover more of the features.

  • My granddaughter, Khadija, is bringing some of her friends over for a sleep-out tonight. There have been a lot of reports of bears in the neighborhood (but I won’t mention that…or will I?) and the other night I was driving home and a huge moose meandered across the road. Some nights I like to sit on the porch and listen to the coyotes and foxes making noise. Lots of wildlife in the Green Mountains!

    I’ll have to work on my strawberry daiquiri recipe in anticipation of my big 4th of July party. I watched the movie Independence Day last night with Grace and she asked me when it first came out. I was surprised to see it was 20 years ago! Yikes, time flies when you are having fun. I think the new Independence Day movie is in my plans sometime this weekend.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily, Hadley, Mike & Amy_

  • Dreaming of Tablets

    I have to admit that I was a little bit disappointed there were no new hardware announcements at or around WWDC. I didn’t really expect any at the actual conference itself, but I was hoping the MacBook Pro would get their expected refresh in the month of June. As much as I love it, I’m looking to get a little bit more horsepower for video editing than my 2014 MacBook Air can provide. I’m sure we’ll see the MacBook Pro refresh at some point over the next few months, so I guess I can wait.

    Just for giggles, I did think a little bit this morning about whether or not I could feasibly replace my laptop with a tablet. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is very impressive. The screen is about the same size as my 13-inch Air, but with Retina, the resolution is much higher. Combine a quality keyboard (either Apple’s own or one of the many 3rd-party options) with the Apple Pencil, and I almost think I could do it.

    On my laptop, I’m always multitasking. I’ve got Safari open with dozens of tabs. I have a few terminal windows open. I probably have a few instances of Skype running. Messages, Photos, and any number of other apps are all available for me in an instant. This would’ve been the deal breaker for a tablet previously, but with the split screen and Picture-in-Picture options in the latest versions of iOS, I think I might be able to deal. Switching between running apps that aren’t in split-view is pretty smooth too.

    Another big annoyance I have with tablets is the lack of trackpad and keyboard. A few months ago I put a keyboard case on my trusty iPad Air and I don’t know how I lived without it for so long. I do a lot of writing so a keyboard that’s functional massively increases the usefulness of a device for me. I tend to use my iPad a lot more now, and the small size means I can carry it all over the place and be much more productive wherever I end up with it. The lack of a trackpad mostly affects how I select, drag, etc. I think iOS has gotten a lot better at those types of actions, and with the addition of an Apple Pencil, there are further options even beyond what a trackpad can do. Might I find myself doing more handwritten diagrams and writing on an iPad Pro?

    Sadly, I think I’ll still be holding out for the new MacBook Pro, but I was very surprised how close a tablet was to working for me. I guess if the new MacBook Pro live up to some rumors I’m not crazy about, like the new butterfly-hinge keyboards found on the Macbook line, I might have a really tough decision to make. Sure I could always get the previous generation MacBook Pro, but if I’m getting new hardware, I like to future-proof as much as possible. We shall see. Would a tablet really work for me and my work style?

  • tvOS

    Last week at WWDC a new version of tvOS was announced which is set to come out sometime this fall. Apple has been promoting the app experience heavily since the latest Apple TV hit the shelves last fall and many of the upgrades to tvOS make it even easier to enjoy those apps. Here are some of the updates to look forward to in the Fall.

    **Siri** will now specifically look for content in a specific app. You have been able to search content generically using Siri and it automatically does a general search. I will say my one complaint is that it does seem to prefer pulling content from the iTunes store. I was excited to see that you can now specify, for example, Netflix or YouTube when you’re looking for content with Siri. I’ll be excited to see how well Siri will be able to search specific apps for the content that I am looking for. Overall I have found that the Siri function on the Apple TV works extremely well.

    **App badging** is finally coming to Apple TV, but what is it? Those little red dots that appear next to your apps on your iPad or iPhone letting you know there is something is new about the app will now appear next to the app. Additionally **automatic app downloads** are also going to be available with the new tvOS. When you download a universal app or game on your iPhone or iPad, it will automatically send it to your Apple TV.

    **Single sign-on** is another new feature in the upcoming tvOS. For those with supported cable or satellite providers you’ll now just need to enter your provider’s information once and you’ll have automatic access to any supported apps. Currently you have to enter your information for each individual app you wish to use, so this feature is going to save users a lot of time and allow for faster access to content. As a bonus, this feature will also be available in iOS 10 so you’ll only have to sign on once for each of your devices.

    **Light or dark** will be a new feature to tvOS and one that I admit I think I need to see and use to gain an appreciation for it. Similar to features you can turn on in iBooks and Night Shift in iOS, you’ll be able to set your Apple TV background to light or dark depending on your viewing environment. This will allow you to optimize your view of different apps within Apple TV. This flexibility is great when using my iOS devices but I admit I can’t just yet wrap my head around the advantages when I am watching TV.

    **HomeKit** makes its Apple TV debut in the new tvOS and continues to make it even easier to access and control HomeKit compatible devices like your lights, the temperature in your house or lock the downstairs door before heading off to bed. Other improvements were also announced in Apple Music and in Photos allowing users to access their favorite media in new ways and faster than before.

    Now if only fall was here so we can all try this out! OK, I won’t rush summer; it never lasts long enough as it is.