Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Sometimes people will ask me, “Hadley, does your apartment have air conditioning?” Even my mom, year after year will ask me, “Why don’t you put in an air conditioner?” I don’t have air conditioning at my apartment. Mostly because I have casement windows, and I don’t want to use one of those bulky indoor units. Besides, it’s Vermont, and I live up in the mountains. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen it hit 90 at my apartment since moving there. I can tough it out for the few days of the year where it’s oppressively hot. Usually I just remind myself that in 6 months, it’ll be -10F again.

But when I’m sitting at home on my MacBook Air, I’m usually on my couch all curled up. You’d think it would be hot, but with a fan on me, and the window open, it’s not bad. One thing I have noticed though is that my Mac does get pretty hot. Like so hot I can feel it through the keyboard as I’m typing. It’s kind of uncomfortable.

It’s not overheating though. I use “**iStat Menus**”:https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ to monitor my machine. I keep the CPU temperature displayed in the menu bar at all times. Even when I can feel the heat through the keyboard, the CPU temperature is hovering somewhere between 70C and 80C which is perfect for Intel CPUs. What’s going on here?

Because the MacBook cases are made of aluminum, they use that to passively dissipate heat in addition to active cooling by fans. The large surface area of the aluminum case allows the machine to dump heat to it, which is then transferred to the ambient environment. In my case, the “ambient environment” is my hands. The new 12-inch MacBooks don’t even have any fans at all. They’re cooled completely passively.

So are you doomed to hot fingers and a hot machine when the weather heats up? Not if you have a Mac with active cooling. iStat Menus doesn’t just monitor your system, it also has settings to control the fans. Normally the fans on your Mac run as slowly as possible to conserve power and reduce noise. They only spin up to max speed if they absolutely have to because the machine is working really hard. If you override that control and lock them into max speed with software like iStat Menus, they will cool your machine down further than normal. When I have the fan on my MacBook Air at max RPM, the CPU temperature drops to the mid 40s C. The case gets substantially cooler, and I’m comfortable again!

Of course, the trade off is that doing this will make your machine pretty loud. You can also choose to set the fans to never fall below a certain RPM. This can help compromise between noise and coolness. Stay cool!

iPhones and other electronic devices are not meant to be kept in extreme temperatures. As the summer temperatures rise it’s important to remember that our iPhones can’t perform well in extreme temperatures. iPhones have ideal operating temperatures and work best between 32 and 95 degree Fahrenheit. Leaving your iPhone in your car on a hot day or in direct sunlight can cause your phone to overheat. In addition to being in direct sunlight or in a car on a hot day, your phone can also overheat on warm days if it’s running something graphically intense or using GPS.

If your phone is overheating you will likely notice anomalies in its performance or even an alert on the phone itself. In extreme heat your phone may stop charging, it could have a very dim display or any number of other performance issues. When you’re using an app such as navigation you might even experience that the phone goes to a black screen and seems unresponsive yet the directions are still audible as you drive along.

Should your phone stop working because it’s overheating, it’s also likely to be very warm to the touch as well. What your phone needs it to simply cool down. I have overheated my phones in warm weather a few times, and just like in extreme cold, when your phone shuts down due to extreme operating temperatures it’s simply a matter of time before it comes back to life. This process could be just a few minutes or it might take an hour, but your phone should come back to life. If your phone does not come back on after some period of time a hard “**reset**”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201559 of your phone might be necessary to help jumpstart your phone back to its previous performance level.

I have written this same article several times over the last 20 years of writing Kibbles & Bytes but now more than ever AppleCare makes sense for your Mac. When I go to a store to buy an appliance or new electronics gear I am always asked at check-out if I want the extended warranty. I always say no. EXCEPT for AppleCare.

AppleCare is not your typical extended warranty. Yes, it does extend that 1-year Apple warranty that you get with your new or Apple factory certified refurbished Mac but it does more. First, we should be very clear, many so-called extended warranties are from third-parties and carry a whole bunch of tiny print exceptions. AppleCare is direct from Apple so you can take your Mac to any authorized Apple Service Provider, anywhere in the world and you will get expert repairs with genuine Apple parts.

With Apple shrinking the components in our Macs, repairs have become much more specialized and nearly anything that goes wrong with your Mac will cost you more to have repaired than the cost of AppleCare. Unless, of course, you purchased an AppleCare Protection Plan at the time of purchase of your Mac or within the first year of ownership.

Okay, you now have insurance against bad screens, drives, etc, but what about that question you have about the latest Mac OS on your machine? With every new or Apple refurbished Mac you get 90-days of free toll-free technical support from Apple’s award-winning support staff. On day 91, you will be asked for a credit card number to get that help. Unless, of course, you have an AppleCare Protection Plan, in which case you get a full 3-years of support from Apple.

What about that AirPort Time Capsule and USB Superdrive that you bought with your Mac? They are covered, too! In fact, if you purchased that AirPort Time Capsule up to two-years before you bought your new Mac, it is covered.

Yes, Apple products lead the industry in reliability but take it from me, things do go wrong. We wouldn’t have a bunch of employees doing Apple warranty repair if this were not the case. We often tell our AppleCare customers just how much they saved by having AppleCare on their Mac and the smiles tell it all! Get AppleCare!

_Dear Friends,_

I found my new best friend. Vermont has two great Apple resources. There is Small Dog here in the north with stores in Waitsfield, Rutland and S. Burlington but if you are in southern Vermont, Brown Computer Solutions is your Apple resource with stores in Brattleboro, Bennington and Keene, NH. We have worked with Patrick Brown for a long time but Patrick and I have a further connection which is our love of bulldogs. So, after Hammerhead passed away, I exchanged emails with him and he recommended a breeder where he had gotten one of his two bulldogs. I texted the guy and within minutes had pictures and video of the male that I will be picking up at the end of the month. I promise pictures soon but Grace and I are debating names with Pirate and Wrigley being the top two so far.

The blueberries are almost ready and it looks like a banner year for berries up on Prickly Mountain. There is a wild blueberry area in the Green Mountain National forest where you can go pick berries. We used to go there to get our berries but with the bushes we have at our house there has been no need lately. I think we still have blueberries from last year in our freezer.

From time to time, Small Dog Electronics needs to “pivot” our business to emphasize a particular market or channel. We moved from being a mostly internet-based business to retail stores with our “clicks-to-bricks” strategy, we launched a very successful government and corporate sales division and we built our Chill Pill Audio and Hammerhead brands. Now, we are looking at two emerging markets, smart home technology and assistive technology.

We have talked about home automation before but we are taking action by signing up new vendors and educating our staff. This has been one of my hobbies ever since I installed motion-sensing lights just about everywhere in my house. Now, between Siri, Alexa and other HomeKit gear I can control lighting, heating and cooling. I control my AV system, Sonos speakers and even the charging of my Chevy Volt. We will be continuing to add more products and expertise.

Accessibility is another area that is very important to us. We were the first company to get iPads approved as a medical device under Medicaid and are now offering a nice selection of accessibility gear including mounts, switches and software. “Check out our offerings.”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Assistive_Technology

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive is an “**iPad Air 2 bundled**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002305 with a Speck iGuy case. These two products go perfectly together for anyone needing a better grip on an iPad or just wanting a fun way to keep their iPad safe! These two items together normally sell for $539.98 but our Kibbles & Bytes readers this week you can save $50 and get them both for “**$489.98**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002305