Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Apple news, tech tips, and more…

KB Dog

  • BlueAnt Mini Wireless

    No, not some new invasive species, but rather some really cool wireless headphones! BlueAnt audio is one of our newest headphone lines that we have begun to carry here at Small Dog. The “Pump Mini”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/87884/blueant-pump-mini-wireless-hd-audio-sport-buds-purple Wireless HD Audio Sports Buds have become my latest must have! These are lightweight, hold a great charge and come in several colors.

    When I first saw these headphones I was a little skeptical. I actually hadn’t ventured into wireless earbuds before trying these headphones and had heard customer complaints in the stores about different varieties over the last year or so. The biggest issue that I had heard was comfort and how well they stayed in your ears, so I had no idea what I about to experience! I charged up the headphones and tested them out on some morning runs before work and was very pleased with them. I easily connected the headphones to my iPhone and enjoyed great sound out of them. They were comfortable and stayed in my ears easily. I was even able to take phone calls with them and those I was talking to could easily hear me. I also connected them to my Apple Watch and as you might guess, preferred this over carrying my iPhone with me.

    I’ve begun using these earbuds in the office as well with my MacBook Air. I unfortunately have to wear glasses, so I find that many over the ear headphones (and I’ve used countless ones!) inevitably give me a headache from the pressure the headphones put on my glasses behind my ears. Contacts aren’t an option for me so I have found these headphones have begun to serve a truly universal role!

  • What to do with 4K

    It seems crazy but the number of 4K video recording devices available to the average person has increased dramatically only over the past year or so. “**GoPro**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=GoPro makes 4K cameras, there’s a 4K Sony ActionCam (I’ve got one), and even current generation smartphones like the iPhone 6s/6s Plus are offering 4K video recording at this point. It’s pretty amazing that we can have this kind of video recording ability so casually, but are we putting the cart before the horse here?

    I’ve got two 4K-capable recording devices (my iPhone and my ActionCam, both relatively easily acquired) but I can’t actually watch that 4K footage anywhere in full resolution. For that I’d need a 4K TV or one of the 4K or 5K iMacs, and none of those options are particularly cheap yet, especially since having a big nice TV isn’t a priority for me. Though if it’s a must for you, I think the 5K “**iMacs**”:http://www.smalldog.com/Macs/iMac are the best deal. You’re getting a complete computer attached to that display and it’s 5K versus the far more common 4K TV-only displays.

    Even if you have a display capable of showing the 4K video, are you really going to watch video clips shot with your iPhone that way? Chances are you’ll want to share them online via Youtube or some other video-sharing site. Youtube has had 4K streaming for a while but it’s far from ubiquitous. I don’t know that I’ve ever come across a 4K video on youtube without specifically searching for one. If you’re like me and have a Vimeo pro subscription, they’ve been offering 4K streaming since August 2015, and hopefully to free users soon. But again, even streaming 4K video from Vimeo or Youtube will still require a 4K-capable display to actually see it.

    So why have this admittedly cool feature if I’m unable to take full advantage of it? For me, it provides some very important and neat advantages. To understand them, it helps to explicitly explain what 4K is. With “4K” the video has a horizontal resolution of about 4000 pixels (hence the 4K moniker, ‘K’ being the abbreviation of the ‘kilo’ prefix).

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4675.png!

    Having this space means you can do some really cool stuff with your videos in post-production. 4K is essentially twice as wide and twice as tall as 1080p HD. This means that if you have a 4K video, you can create a “viewport” that is of 1080p resolution and move it all around the clip. When you render the final video (only what was in the 1080p viewport) you’re still getting a 1080p movie which is pretty good. So with editing, a 4K video allows you to make mistakes while you’re recording and then clean them up in post-production. If you don’t mind exporting to 720p, you can have even more space to play around. Even if you don’t edit anything and simply “down mix” a 4K video to 1080p, it’s still probably going to look better than a native 1080p video.

    Ok, so maybe I’ve done well at explaining some cool things you can do with 4K footage even if you can’t view it, but how do you make those edits? Won’t it require a powerful machine? I certainly would’ve thought so, but the reality is more fuzzy. I edit my 4K footage using iMovie on my 2014 Macbook Air without any real problems. Is it ideal? No. Is it as smooth as editing 1080p or less? No. But it is completely usable, and that’s pretty much the low end of what will work. A Macbook Pro should have no problem at all editing 4K footage, to say nothing of an iMac or Mac Pro. Depending on your camera, you may also be able to lower the data bitrate of the video to help make it smaller and easier to edit.

    Which reminds me…that’s really the only thing about 4K video that might require new or different hardware; the video files are __huge__. If you’re recording to an SD card or micro SD, definitely get one that’s in excess of 32GB. I’ve done quick 5-10 minute shoots and ended up with files several gigabytes or more in size. So you may want to consider a beefy hard drive, preferably with a good transfer bus like Thunderbolt in order to mange the files themselves.

    Other than that, 4K video is nothing to be afraid of and it’s a lot easier to use than you might think. Consider giving it a try if you like shooting video.

  • Do you use iCloud for Safari?

    With all the news surrounding the government’s attempt to force Apple to write software that doesn’t exist to crack an iPhone, iCloud has been in the news, too! Do you use iCloud? Apple has some huge server farms to support this amazing technology and I thought it would be good to do a brief review of some of the features as they relate to Safari.

    iCloud has sort of settled to the back of my mind because it just does its thing in the background and serves up features that I take for granted. But this week, I ran into a dilemma that puzzled me for some time. I noticed that I had accidentally deleted one of my folders in my Safari favorites bar. These were important bookmarks and I needed them back. Well, like a good boy, I have a Time Machine backup and quickly went back in time and restored my Safari bookmarks from a time before I had deleted them. Good stuff, but when I went to look the next morning, the folder was gone again. This happened a few times with me going back in time to get the .plist file. Then I figured it out – I had Safari active in iCloud so my bookmarks were being synced in the cloud. So, every time I restored it, it would eventually be overwritten by iCloud. The solution? Really sort of simple, I turned off Safari in iCloud preferences and turned it back on, problem solved.

    Activating Safari in iCloud gives you some great tools. You can start browsing on your iPad and pick up seamlessly from your Mac or you iPhone. It syncs your bookmarks and tabs and if you also use iCloud Keychain it will remember all those passwords for the websites you visit. If you use the reading list function of Safari it will also keep those current across your devices.

    As with the other features of iCloud, the features only work if you are signed on with the same Apple ID on all of your devices. It won’t know that you are signed onto one AppleID with your Mac and another with your iPhone. Most common issues with iCloud come down to this simple issue. Apple has not made it easy to merge Apple IDs so at least for iCloud you should be consistently using the same Apple ID. Open the iCloud System Preference on your Mac and choose Safari to activate iCloud on your Mac or go to the iCloud Setting on your iPhone or iPad to activate.

    You can also access the Safari tabs that you have open on your Mac on your iPhone or iPad. It is a bit different looking on the iPhone or iPad. Open Safari on your iPhone or iPad and then tap the tabs icon. You will see all of your open Safari windows but if you scroll down at the bottom will be all the tabs open on your Mac and you can click on any of those to make it active.

  • _Dear Friends,_

    I had a great trip up to Jasper, GA to pick up the 2003 Victory motorcycle. I took almost all two-lane roads and the weather cooperated although it was a bit chilly in the mornings. It got busier as I headed south in Florida but all in all it was a great way to spend the weekend.

    Small Dog Electronics is finishing up our 20th year in business and we are going to be changing out the 20-year anniversary banners and signs. Now that we are going to be 21 we are renewing our commitment to walking the walk as a socially responsible business. We feel that how we treat people, customers, employees, vendors or strangers is an equal measure of our success as to how we treat the planet and the profit we hope to make. Did you know that 100% of the electrical power for our S. Burlington store and about 85% of the power for our Waitsfield headquarters is generated from solar energy?

    When you form a “corporation”, if you tear down the word to its Latin base, it means to “form a body”. My high school latin teacher would be proud. As a body in society, a business has a bigger footprint than any individual. We have buildings, we consume resources, we generate waste and we have a huge impact on peoples lives. With that larger footprint comes a larger responsibility and that is the basis for our commitment to always measure our success by the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the iPad mini 4. This model in Space Gray includes 64GB of storage and cellular capability. With the Retina display and Touch ID this incredibly thin and light iPad could be a complete solution. Because this model has cellular capability (cell contract required) you can use it anywhere where there is Wi-Fi or Cellular coverage. The iPad Mini 4 is my iPad of choice. I like the way it fits in one hand and is perfect for reading. It feels like you are holding a paperback book. This week, exclusively for Kibbles & Bytes readers we are offering the “iPad Mini 4 in Space Gray with AppleCare Plus”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002167 for a special price. AppleCare Plus for the iPad extends the 1-year warranty to 2-years and also provides for coverage for accidental damage (i.e. broken screen, etc.) for up to two incidents for a $49 deductible. It also extends the 90-days of free Apple technical support to 2-years. Normally, this bundle is $729.98 but we are giving Kibbles & Bytes readers the opportunity to save $40 on this bundle. You get the iPad mini 4 64GB Cellular model with AppleCare Plus for only “**$689.98!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002167

  • The For Loop

    For many programmers the *for loop* is a necessity for most programs out there. It is one of the first statements any programmer learns and usually never forgets. This article is to show how this code works, and to get a general understating of it.

    In short the for loop takes a value, sometimes an integer, and then iterates it over a range of values until a certain condition is met, usually exceeding a numerical value. It is important to note my code is in the Java programming language. Please see the example below:

    class For {
    public static void main(String[] args){
    for(int i=1; i<6; i++){ System.out.println("Current Value: " + i); } } } As you can see the integer *i* has the value 1 to start off. The next statement compares i to the value 6, and if it is less than 6, it continues through the for loop. At the end if i is less than 6, it adds 1 to i which is what i++ means. And finally it prints out what is in " ", Current Value: i. After it prints i, it re-enters the for loop, until i>6, in which case it exits the for loop and proceeds to the next line in your code. So if we were to run this For Loop it would output the following text:

    Current Value: 1
    Current Value: 2
    Current Value: 3
    Current Value: 4
    Current Value: 5

    Now you can see and understand how a basic function of a programming language works. There are many statements and loops that can be used and I will go over more of these in future articles. Stay tuned!

  • Importance of iOS Backups

    As iPhones and iPads replace notebooks and desktop Macs for users, backing up those devices become more and more important. Many iOS users have stated that they have an iCloud backup to me. Yet after having to restore their device they find out that they didn’t have a complete backup.

    iCloud backs up a large amount of data from iOS devices but is limited to the iCloud plan the users has. Each iCloud account has 5GB of free storage and a user may purchase additional storage. The additional storage plans are $0.99 a month for 50GB, $2.99 a month for 200GB, and $9.99 a month for the 1TB plan.

    Even with a large iCloud storage plan, the user must set up which 3rd-party apps they are backing up. Some apps may default to backing up while others don’t. You can control this by going to *Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage.* From this menu you can look at your current backups and see the size of your next backup. iCloud does automatic backups if and only if it is plugged into power and is in sleep mode and is connected to wifi.

    Another option users have is to back up their device to iTunes. All you need to do to backup your device to iTunes is plug in your iOS device to your computer running a compatible version of iTunes. Then select the iOS device icon and scroll down the page and select to backup the device using iTunes.

    I personally suggest using both iCloud and iTunes. I recently had a customer who lost a very important document on their iPhone. With iCloud’s automatic backups it had already backed up over that document and the only way we were able to recover it was from an iTunes backup.

    “*See more information here.*”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977

  • Hard Drives vs. Solid-State Drives

    If you have been using computers for longer than a couple of years, it’s likely that you have experienced a hard drive failure at one point or another. Hard drives are by far the most common point of failure in a computer, and here at Small Dog, we see multiple computers with failing hard drives every day.

    Hard drives are so failure-prone because of the way that they are built. If you imagine a record player, spinning thousands of times per minute and packed into the space of a couple of inches, you have a good idea of what the inside of a hard drive looks like. Modern hard drives also have multiple disks and read/write arms stacked on top of one another, to increase storage capacity.

    With all of these tiny moving parts, functioning at high speed, it’s easy to see why hard drives fail so often. Over time, the moving parts will just wear out until they can no longer spin or are no longer aligned correctly. Hard drives are also extremely sensitive to movement, especially sudden movement. If a hard drive is dropped or impacted, it is likely that the tiny read/write arms will scratch the surface of the disks where the precious data is stored. This can cause data to become unreadable, or the computer to stop working entirely.

    More and more computers are now being built with solid-state drives instead of hard drives. Solid-state drives are a newer technology that requires no moving parts at all, storing all of its information inside electronic circuits. This lack of moving parts causes solid-state drives to be much faster and more reliable than hard drives. Solid-state drives can decrease startup times to a few seconds, and are much less likely to be damaged by sudden impacts than hard drives are.

    The only downside to solid-state drives is the high cost per gigabyte. All new MacBooks, MacBooks Air and MacBooks Pro are built with a solid-state drive installed, starting at 128 gigabytes. I often see people confused by this, because their older computer had a much higher storage capacity than their brand new one. In most cases, the tradeoff for better speed and reliability is worth the capacity downgrade.

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    I know I will sound like an old fuddy-duddy when I say this, but it seems like every day people need things faster and faster. While it was once considered acceptable to wait several minutes to load a website, we now expect to be able to watch video in full HD with no buffering using only a 3G cellular signal. There are things you can do to make your Mac faster: upgrade to a solid-state drive (see Ben’s article below), add more RAM (won’t actually make it faster, but may reduce the amount of beach-balling that you experience), buy a “*brand new state-of-the-art Mac Pro,*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/85260/mac-pro-2-7ghz-12-core-64gb-1tb-flash-d700-6gbvram-cto and so on.

    On the other hand, there is a free way to improve your efficiency: shortcuts. There are “*many, many keyboard shortcuts on the Mac*”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 and you can even customize them by going to *System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.* From there you can press the *+* button and add a shortcut for any existing menu item in any application.

    My best advice is to learn these as you go. In every menu, if there is an existing shortcut, the shortcut is displayed next to the menu item. The next time you go into a menu to do something, take note of the shortcut and instead of clicking, close the menu and use the shortcut instead. In no time at all, you will be flying around your Mac!

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

  • Grace has tired of riding the little Vespa scooter so we are selling it. I bought an almost antique Victory cruiser so we both have bikes down here. I am going to Jasper, GA to pick it up this weekend and riding it back through the back roads of Georgia. It should be a nice little break.

    I am going to miss Johnny Dread and the reggae show down here but I am sure Grace will be there. It is hard to believe that we are heading into March already. My granddaughter, Gracie, is a Feb 29 baby so she is celebrating her 4th birthday as a 12-year old. My other granddaughter, Khadija, was off this week visiting colleges in the Boston area. Sure makes me feel old. I remember announcing Khadija’s birth here in Kibbles with the line “just call me gramps” and they still do!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily, Morgan & Hadley_

  • Apple's Not The Only Game In Town

    I have the pleasure of being able to not only work behind the scenes here at Small Dog, but also on the front line with our customers. This past week while working in our “**Rutland, VT store**”:http://www.smalldog.com/rutland I had two customer interactions that brought an interesting subject light when talking about iPads. We have seen over the last two years or so there has been a slight drop in the number of iPads sales in comparison to when they first hit the market back in in April of 2010 and a lot has changed since then. There are more tablets out there than ever before including ones that run Android, Windows, Kindle and more.

    The draw away from Apple for some customers is that in many cases the same Apps and functions you can do on an iPad can be done on a another device and for less money. It’s easy to be persuaded by these draws and overlook some some other key aspects. What makes Apple stand apart is often pushed aside temporarily when comparing these products. With Apple everything is designed to work together. iCloud can sync all your information across multiples devices, from your iPad to iPhone to your computer. “**Handoff**”:https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18754?locale=en_US allows you to start a project on your iPad and then with a quick tab, pick up that project on your computer. Wanting to show your friends the pictures from your weekend trip to the mountains? With photo stream it doesn’t matter what Apple device you’ve picked up, your photos will be there. Have a great home video of your child or grandchild and just have to show everyone who came to Friday night dinner? No problem. With the Apple TV you can airplay that video and save yourself from passing your phone around the room for everyone to see. Another benefit? Apple devices last a long time! I have been using the original iPad mini for four years now and each week I interact with customers who are also using iPads that are two or three years old with no issues.

    In addition to all the integration, we’ve seen price drops for the iPads over the last several years as well. No longer do you need to spend $500 or more for an iPad. You can get an “**iPad Mini 2**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/84491/ipad-mini-2-16gb-space-gray starting at **$269** and “**iPad Air**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/86240/ipad-air-16gb-wi-fi-silver for **$399**. So the next time your considering tablet options, take a few moments to consider that while Apple isn’t the only game in town anymore, it’s still the leader of the pack!

  • Compass 2 Stand for iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and Newton MessagePad

    Being an active Apple Newton user and–more recently–an iPad mini user (see my review , I’ve had my eye on “**Twelve South’s**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=Twelve+South Compass product for years. With their “**Compass 2**”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?search=Twelve+South+Compass+2 product line, they brought full support for the iPad mini and I finally got around to picking one up for my iPad & Newton use.

    I’ve gotten pretty fast at typing with two thumbs on my iPad mini while holding it vertically in portrait mode–which means I’m now horrible at typing on my iPhone 5S… c’est la vie–but it’s not comfortable for sustained periods. I’m much faster at typing with the on-screen keyboard with multiple fingers when it’s in landscape mode, but it’s not an ideal viewing angle when flat on a desk and not quite as comfortable to type on.

    Enter the “**Compass 2**”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?search=Twelve+South+Compass+2. It’s built like a drawing compass (hence the name) and expands to function either like a small easel or a wedge to support the iPad. The easel mode is great for watching or displaying the iPad (I keep my to-do list up, but it’s also great for watching movies or playing slideshows) or typing with a Bluetooth keyboard (it raises it up above the keyboard while most cases leave the iPad low behind the keyboard). The wedge mode is far more comfortable for me to type on the iPad when in landscape mode as it raises the typing and screen angle (naturally, it’s still not easy on the neck for seriously long typing sessions as you’re still looking down, but it’s a big improvement). And since it collapses down into a fairly small stand, it’s easy to take anywhere.

    The previous Compass was just a little too wide for the iPad mini, so while you could make it work by not adjusting it out all the way, it was far more unsteady, so the Compass 2 fixes that. With any iPad, I’d be careful about tapping too hard in the top left and right corners when the Compass 2 is in the easel configuration and your iPad is in portrait mode, but it’s still quite stable. It’s too small for the iPad Pro, so we’ll have to wait for a different solution there.

    Now, I mentioned another device, what was it… ah, the Newton! For those not in the know, the Newton “**MessagePad**”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad was Apple’s PDA product line–they actually coined the term “PDA” (portable digital assistant)–from 1993 until its discontinuation in 1997. It was groundbreaking and had very good handwriting recognition by the end (though many complaints were made in the early days, much like the iPhone’s autocorrect), but it was a bit too early and costly to take off like the iPhone and iPad have since.

    I have the MessagePad 2100 which was the last, best model and the most expandable with an optional wired keyboard (via the serial port) and two PCMCIA slots (I have ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS cards I use in mine). It also functions in portrait and landscape orientations, just like the iPad. In fact, while thicker, it’s dimensions are pretty close to that of the iPad mini, so it works just as well on the Compass 2. The Compass 2 makes typing with the external Newton keyboard extremely comfortable and is still stable enough to use the stylus for navigation & selections!

    If you’re a Newton MessagePad 2×00 owner and want to use or display your MessagePad safely, I highly suggest the Compass 2. Oh, and for the iPad too! It comes in “**black**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/85885/, “**silver**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/85516/, or “**red**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/86484/ for $39.99.

    *Bonus Apple history lesson:* I also own an Apple Newton “**eMate 300**”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300, which was a notebook-style Newton produced for the education market and was the first Apple product to use translucent plastic, like the original iMac. Though often misattributed to Jony Ive, it was actually designed by “**Thomas Meyerhoffer**”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Meyerhoffer. Due to its notebook form factor, it doesn’t need a Compass 2.