Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Thunderstruck: AC/DC

    I feel like I’m definitely on a roll with these articles about electricity, and I think people have found them very informative. So until I run out of topics that can be discussed in a short format, I think I’ll keep going. One thing that came up in my first three articles was that I was mostly talking about things from the perspective of direct current (abbreviated DC). Most people are (or should be) pretty familiar with DC since it’s what powers all of our little electronic gizmos. iPhones, MacBooks, WiFi access point hardware and more…it all runs on DC.

    This of course is in contrast to alternating current (abbreviated AC). We’re more familiar with AC in our homes where it powers pretty much everything including refrigerators, fans, toasters, most lights and much more. When we need to charge a device like an iPhone or MacBook, we always need to convert the AC from the wall into the DC that’s used by the device. To do that, two things need to happen. First, we have to drop the voltage from 120VAC to the 5VDC that’s used by most small portable electronics that charge via USB (MacBooks will take more). Second, we need to make the alternating current direct. This is accomplished most commonly by transformers and rectifiers.

    But why do we even use AC at all? First of all, for most power generation techniques that use motion (steam turbines, hydro turbines, etc) the current they generate will be alternating by definition. The mechanics of this are sort of complicated but it’s based on the fact that the generator is spinning. Couldn’t we simply generate as AC and then convert to DC before sending it off to homes for use? We could, and in the early days of electricity generation and transmission, that was a big debate. We don’t do that though, and there’s a very good reason why.

    As we’ve learned I = V / R. Power transmission over distances is not exempt from this rule. Even wires used for transmission have some resistance, and over long distances, that resistance can be substantial. At this point I have to introduce the equation P = I*V. This means that power (usually measured in watts) is equal to the current times the voltage. What this means is that the same amount of power can be delivered at a lower current if we increase the voltage. Less current flowing in the transmission lines will mean less voltage drop from resistance when the power gets to its destination.

    Still with me? The key thing here is that using a higher voltage to transmit the power means voltage will have to be stepped up and down during the transmission process. Changing DC voltage is very difficult and often not very efficient. Changing AC voltage is almost trivial using transformers. Transformers have an input and an output, usually called primary and secondary windings. The windings are connected by some type of metal core but do not actually touch each other. When an alternating current is passed through the primary winding, this creates a changing magnetic field that is captured and concentrated by the core. This changing magnetic field is then carried via the core to the secondary winding where it induces a current. How much the voltage is stepped up or down depends on how many times the windings wrap around the core. It was a popular “hack” on the internet a while ago to disassemble microwaves and rewire their transformers. By rewinding the secondary winding with thick, heavy gauge wire, you can create very high currents (with very little volts) from regular 120VAC household power.

    It’s because AC voltage is so easy to transform that we use it for power transmission. Though I should note that more recently, technology has improved such that high voltage DC transmission (HVDC) is sometimes a viable solution. This of course requires a complicated facility on either end to step the voltage up and down. I hope you’ll join me again next week. As you can see, discussing AC significantly complicates things, but I haven’t even gotten into the basics about phases, sine waves and root-means squares. Hopefully I’ll be able to condense some of that stuff out and make it accessible.

  • _Dear Friends,_

    Here we are at the 1000th issue of Kibbles & Bytes! It is hard to believe that we have written that many issues of what started out as a faxed price list of our products. We launched Kibbles & Bytes in October of 1996 a few months before our first web site. We were selling Mac clones from Umax & Power Computing, a 2GB hard drive went for $500 and a PowerMac 9500 went for about $5500.

    One thousand issues later, we still create content on Thursday and publish the newsletter on Friday and it goes out to about 20,000 subscribers each week. We get some great content from our friends over at Tidbits, Adam and Tonya Engst, that we personalize and pass along. Did you know that our connection to Tidbits goes way back to before our first issue? Adam and Tonya who have been publishing Tidbits since the dinosaurs roamed the earth published another electronic newsletter called DealBITs and we were a sponsor and contributor. When they decided to concentrate primarily on Tidbits we launched Kibbles & Bytes.

    Did you catch the new product announcements from Apple this week? We will take you through the details but the new iPhones and new Series 2 Apple Watch are fantastic and I’ll be getting new toys soon! And I will be able to swim with my watch on, too. I have been playing around with iOS 10 for some time and I think that these new iPhones with iOS 10 are going to be a huge hit.

    The way iPhones are sold has really changed with many being on some sort financing program as opposed to the carrier subsidy model that has been so prevalent. It makes upgrading easier and removes a lot of the hocus-pocus of the carriers.

    This being the 1000th issue of Kibbles & Bytes, Emily has come up with some fantastic anniversary deals that are exclusive for Kibbles & Bytes but here is one more. Because we care about you we want you to have AppleCare for your Mac, this week only and “**exclusively for Kibbles & Bytes readers**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002372? you can buy AppleCare for your Mac (**must be AppleCare eligible!**) for “**25% off!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002372?

  • New Product Announcements – Going Way Back

    Here’s a repeat of an article from Kibbles & Bytes #59! Hard to believe we are on issue #998. We will have to do something special for issue #1000 in a couple weeks. Anyone have any ideas?

    Way back in 1998 Apple made some product intros….cue wavy screen, eerie music and the whirling time disk….

    Apple’s new product announcements were exciting this week. I was able to get away to go down to Boston for the dealer briefing the day before the announcements and got some details on the new G3 PowerBook but even at that briefing they did not mention the new iMac. Steve Job’s announcement of the iMac reminded me a lot of the introduction of the Mac Plus. In fact if you take away all the power of the G3 and the cutting edge technology what you have is a Mac Plus on steroids. And one powerhouse of a Mac it is with 233MHz G3 processor and a built-in 15” display. This is the first Mac to come standard without a floppy drive and to utilize the new USB (universal serial bus) ports in place of ADB and serial ports. It is bundled with the new Apple USB keyboard and mouse. USB will be the standard for both Mac and PCs within a very short time. With Apple’s version of USB you get hot swappable serial ports that are automatically configured each time a device is connected (bet it’s Windows 2010 before wintel gets that one right!). At $1299 retail it will be a trend setting machine when it is released this fall. The all-in-one design has translucent plastics reminiscent of the eMate.

    The iMac is squarely aimed at the consumer market and was key in no small part to bringing Intuit back into the Apple camp in terms of development of future versions of Quicken. When Apple discontinued the Performa line sales of the bundled Quicken program dropped dramatically and Intuit decided to stop development until they were shown the iMac. They then became one of the software packages to be bundled with the new machine. Apple’s consumer strategy assumes that end-users will not want to upgrade the processor on their internet machine as the processor is not upgradeable and there are no PCI slots. On the other hand just the same as with that old Mac Plus I am sure people will figure out a way to do things with this machine that Apple never envisioned.

    The news of this machine saw Apple’s stock shoot up over 30 for the first time in a while and is already having an impact on the prices of other Macs. Along this line we have made some deep cuts in the pricing of the entire UMAX product line and you will see some price reductions in Apple’s refurbs as well.

    The other announcement that almost got lost in the excitement over the iMac was the new G3 PowerBooks. These are some very interesting products. Without a doubt they are the fastest laptops available. PERIOD. There is no other portable computer that is as fast as these PowerBooks. That’s a pretty impressive statement. The new Apple advertising campaign “This new PowerBook eats the Pentium II for lunch” is hot! With the top of the line machine sporting a 14.1 inch active matrix display the line between a desktop and portable is also blurring a bit. The fastest of these PowerBook benchmarks out at around 1100 making it as fast as the fastest desktop G3s. Again hidden in the details are some interesting technological advances. These PowerBooks have S-Video input and support DVD drives (not the ones that will show movies!). They also have improved the case design and the keyboard. The lowest-end model features a SVGA (dual scan) color display and a G3 processor without backside cache. That model sells for around $2299 but still benches out near 500.

    It is that time of year again for new Apple gear and you can stay informed right here in Kibbles & Bytes!

  • FROM THE ARCHIVES: iPad in Space

    Believe it or not, just six short years ago the iPad was a brand new device and no one knew how Earth changing it would be. But it didn’t just change the Earth; it has changed space as well. Read on for a blast from the past..all the way from 2011…

    In the Star Trek universe, one of the most common devices in use by Starfleet is the “*PADD*”:http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD, a handheld touch-screen device that serves a variety of purposes. Many people have noted the similarity in appearance and function of this device and the iPad. Now the devices will have something else in common: space travel. The “*Progress M-13M*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_M-13M unmanned supply mission to the “*International Space Station*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station (ISS), which successfully docked on November 2nd, included a pair of iPad 2s.

    Even though Apple claims that no matter the task “there’s an app for that,” the iPads will be used for entertainment purposes only and not for any mission-related functions. It will, however, probably not be too long before the iPad is used for more important tasks (not that entertainment isn’t important when one is trapped inside only 388 cubic meters of habitable space for months on end). The iPad has already been approved by the “*Federal Aviation Administration*”:http://www.faa.gov/ for use as an “*electronic flight bag*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_flight_bag, replacing the traditional paper manual, which consisted of up to 12,000 pages and weighed up to 38 pounds, with a device weighing just 1.33 pounds. I can definitely envision the iPad fulfilling a similar function for the astronauts in the ISS.

    Someday, once Siri is integrated into the iPad, the entire ISS could be controlled through voice commands and the ISS Remote Control app. Hopefully, Siri has more in common with the Enterprise computer than “*HAL*”:http://youtu.be/nHJkAYdT7qo.

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    As you have probably heard by now, Apple hosted an event today. At this event they announced the new iPhone 7, the Apple Watch 2, updates to the iWork suite which allow for real-time collaboration on documents via the internet (similar to Google Docs or Office 365) and perhaps most importantly that Nintendo is now making iPhone apps. I am sure I will be “*downloading Mario Run*”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-mario-run/id1145275343?mt=8&at=11lb7k as soon as it is released. Look for a more detailed update in this Friday’s “*Kibbles & Bytes,*”:http://www.smalldog.com/newsletters/subscribe-to-our-fun-informative-newsletters our flagship newsletter.

    Despite this exciting set of announcements, the biggest event of the week is this Thursday. On September 8, 1966 Star Trek aired on American TV for the first time making this the 50th anniversary. Since the traditional gift for this is gold, I am accepting any and all gold figurines. Just send them to Small Dog to my attention. I promise to cherish them, play with them regularly and not just trade them in at Cash4Gold.

    Since time travel was a frequent plot device on Star Trek, I am going to take you into the past with two great articles from the archives. The first, appropriately enough, is about the Mac backup program Time Machine. The second is a hard hitting journalistic piece by a (then) young up-and-comer about iPad in space.

    -Mike
    “michaeld@smalldog.com”:mailto:michaeld@smalldog.com

  • Labor Day weekend is here and all of our stores and offices will be closed on Monday. We will be back on Tuesday for the unofficial start of autumn. I already have spotted some of the sugar maples changing color as I drive around the Green Mountains. Yesterday on the way to work I spotted a lot of wildlife, passing a flock of geese making an early break for the south, some wild turkeys, a large buck, a Guinea hen and a fox crossing the road.

    If the weather cooperates, I’ll be out on my motorcycle this weekend and if not, I’ll be watching the Cubs! Whatever you have in store for this holiday weekend, I hope it is fun and safe!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_

  • Drift off to Music or Books

    Ever want to drift off to your latest audio book or maybe even some music that’s on your iOS device? There’s a somewhat hidden feature in iOS that allows you to use a sleep timer, perfect for those who might not have a docking station or speaker system with a built in sleep timer or while traveling.

    iBooks in iOS has a built-in sleep timer that can automatically pause playback after a specified amount of time, perfect for listening to an audiobook as you drift off to sleep, just tap the Moon button below the volume slider. What if you prefer listening to content that’s not in iBooks? No problem! To set a sleep timer that works for Music, iTunes or any other audio app, open the Clock app and tap the Timer button. Next, tap ‘when timer ends’ (iPhone) or the selected sound (iPad), scroll to the end of the list of sounds, and select ‘stop’ playing. When your ready to listen as you drift off to sleep, start the timer just before or immediately after you press play.

    Now, no matter where you are, you can easily set a timer at any time to listen to your favorite audio bytes!

  • A Primer on Electricity (Part III)

    Last week I put together volts, amps and resistance to explain with a bit more clarity the dangers of electricity. Towards the end of the article, I mentioned that there are situations where you have high voltage and low resistance, but there is little or no danger. We actually experience these scenarios regularly without even thinking about it.

    To explain this, it’ll help to give our understanding of volts a bit more nuance. At the core a voltage represents a potential. Commonly, it represents a potential for charge to flow (amps), but charge need not necessarily be flowing for a voltage to be present. If you have voltage potential without any flow of charge, we call that voltage “static”. Static voltages surround us all the time, every day. As everyone knows, sometimes these charges make their presence known (sometimes painfully) in the form of a static shock. That’s a bit of a misnomer though, because when the shock happens, the voltage (or more specifically the charge) is no longer static. It moved, likely from your hand to a door knob or possibly to another person.

    What many people don’t understand is that even these benign, common, static charges and shocks we feel often represent tens of thousands of volts. As I discussed last week, at very high voltages like that, not even the normal resistance of your body will protect you, so how are these voltages so harmless? Once again, it comes down to flow of charge (amps). A static voltage potential may have the pressure of tens of thousands of volts behind it, but the actual charge available to be transferred is incredibly small. For example, when simulating static discharge that might be experienced by a human touching a circuit board, engineers might use a capacitor storing 100 picofarads of charge at a potential of 10000-40000 volts. Wait, but what’s a picofarad? A farad is a unit of ability to store charge. Whereas amperes represent charge in motion, a farad is simply some amount of charge that can be stored. One farad can be represented as one coulomb of charge across a potential difference of one volt. I mentioned coulombs in my first article, but for reference, one coulomb is a lot of charge. We almost always talk about farads in fractions. 100 picofarads is 100 trillionths of a farad.

    Still with me? Let’s put this together. When you have a static charge, even if it’s thousands of volts, when the potential is neutralized (in the form of a discharge) there are very few coulombs of charge that will be moving. As we’ve learned, charges moving = amps. Less charges moving = less amps. This is why everyday static charges don’t hurt us. There just isn’t enough flow of charges.

    Static charges can be created in several different ways. In the case of the barbecue lighter I mentioned last week, the charge is created by a piezoelectric element (read more about piezoelectrics here!). Everyday static charges are created when electrons become stripped from their orbits on atoms in materials. This happens on a huge scale with lightning. This is why lightning is so dangerous. Despite being the same kind of static charge that shocks us when we rub our feet on a carpet and touch a door knob, in the case of lightning, there is much, much more charge available when the discharge happens. So we aren’t talking about a few picofarads, and fractions of amperes. We’re talking about thousands of amperes. At that point, the current doesn’t matter, because it’ll be the superheating of material (including your body) that will be the cause of death.

    When working with sensitive electronics even a small static discharge delivered by a human can be enough to destroy components. Electronics (unlike humans) are directly sensitive to high voltage potentials. A high voltage discharge (regardless of amps delivered) can cause insulation breakdown in the very delicate and thin insulation between components. Damaging this insulation may cause a short circuit resulting in component failure. This is why when working on exposed electronics, technicians use a wrist strap that is grounded. Grounding allows any charge to flow easily and safely from the technician into a table, or other metal structure, rather than into the sensitive electronics.

    I had really only intended this series to be a very brief introduction to electricity and only had three pieces planned. Is there more you’d like to know about? Any specific question you’ve always had? Let me know and I’ll do my best to explain in the next issue!

  • _Dear Friends,_

    This week we lost an extraordinary employee, Jim Overman, who died suddenly. Jim was a long-time Small Dog Employee and many of you may have had the pleasure of talking to Jim on the phone or by email as he was our “first on the phone” and handled our web sales, customer service and fraud protection. Jim worked with us here in Waitsfield for several years before he moved to Florida to be closer to his family. Jim was that unique worker that I had supreme confidence in his integrity, work ethic and judgement. Because of that we were able set Jim up as a remote employee. He truly cared about our customers and we cared about Jim and will miss him dearly.

    Big Apple announcements coming up this next week on September 7 which also happens to be the birthday of both my spouse and Emily’s. I will let you listen to whatever rumors you want but I know that whatever Apple does announce will be another step in Apple’s mission to bring us extraordinary products that enrich our lives. You know I’ll be getting some new toy out of this, too! We will report on this next week in Kibbles & Bytes.

    This is the last weekend for our “**Back-to-School specials**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002280/back-to-school on iPads and Macs. If you buy any Mac with AppleCare you get a $50 gift card or any iPad with AppleCare+ and you get a $25 gift card.

    Hey, how about them Cubbies?

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive deal with a “**Seagate wireless mobile storage drive.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002364? This is the perfect drive for users with large media libraries such as movies and music. Multiple users can utilize this drive and access the content. Perfect for road trips! This drive normally sells for $99.99 but you can get it this week only for “**$79.99**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002364?

  • Watch This

    I am really surprised that I have taken to the Apple Watch so completely. It is not that I use it as a fitness device although I DO have goals…that I seldom meet. But, I wear it every day even though it was over 50 years since I regularly wore a watch.

    Q: So, what do I use it for?

    A: ApplePay, sports scores, texts, answering my iPhone Dick Tracy-style, weather and a lot of other stuff like checking the time. 🙂

    I was very interested in the latest version of watchOS that was introduced by Apple at WWDC; watchOS 3 has some pretty dramatic changes in store for your Apple Watch. The first, and most noticeable for me, is that the little scribbles that you can send to your friends when you press the side button is gone. Okay, I used that like 4 times to send little drawings to Grace or my hearbeat but pretty useless for that important button. Now, pressing that button will give you a Dock which you can configure with your favorite apps, which I find a lot more convenient than trying to get my big fat finger on that tiny little icon.

    Something you will get used to pretty quickly, but is a huge improvement, is that it is easier and faster to perform common tasks including replying to a message, starting a workout, or skipping a track. Apps launch much faster. Swipe up from the bottom of the watch face to access your important settings in Control Center.

    Apple added new watch faces, too, including Minnie Mouse (I don’t get the fascination with Mickey and Minnie), Activity, or Numerals, and you can customize them with more complications like Music and Workout. Switch faces with just a swipe, so you can have the Activity face for the gym and the Modular face for work. And easily configure your faces in the Apple Watch app on your iPhone. Configuring your watch faces on your iPhone is much easier than on the tiny watch face.

    There are some improvements to the Activity app including some for the more competitive folks. You can share and compete with activity sharing. Send and receive real-time progress updates when friends finish workouts or earn achievements, and reply with encouragement or smack talk. Activity rings are optimized for wheelchair users, there are two wheelchair-specific workouts, and there’s a new Time to Roll notification.

    There was a lot of time spent on the new Breathe app and while I like it and have tried it out a few times it is not as groundbreaking as Apple made it out to be. It must have been someone’s pet idea. The new Breathe app encourages you to take moments in your day to do short, deep-breathing sessions. The beautiful, calming visualization and haptic cues guide you through deep, full breaths in sessions lasting from one to five minutes. And when you’re done, you’ll receive a helpful heart-rate summary. I ended up turning of Breathe notifications after a few sessions.

    You know those squiggly drawings we talked about that were eliminated? Well, they were actually just moved where they belong: into Messages. Set off fireworks or stick a sticker. Share a secret with invisible ink or reply in your own handwriting. You can even draw letters on the display and Apple Watch turns it into text. All your options including larger emoji, sketches, taps, and your heartbeat are in the same place, so you can send and respond to messages faster than ever.

    The new SOS feature is a handy safety item to complement your Medical ID that we talked about a couple weeks ago. Quickly and easily call for help if you’re in a critical situation. Press and hold the side button and your Apple Watch will automatically initiate a call with 911 or other emergency services numbers in other countries. SOS can also send a message to the people you’ve chosen as your emergency contacts, so your family and friends are alerted as quickly as possible.

    The Timer app which I use all the time is revamped and makes it easier to start timing, but best of all is Auto Unlock. While it is not yet implemented in the current betas, Auto Unlock will unlock your Mac when you are wearing your watch. Very, very handy!