Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Apple news, tech tips, and more…

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  • Trade in and Trade up!

    Is your old Mac starting to get a case of the winter blues? Is it just not as fast as it was four years ago when you bought it? Did you think you would dabble only a little in video editing with iMovie when you got your Mac a few years ago but now find your working in “Final Cut Pro X?”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/App_Store/Apple?page=2 Take advantage of our trade in program! We will give you a store credit for any iPad or Mac that we accept through our trade in program.

    Our “**trade in**”:http://www.smalldog.com/tradein/small-dog-trade-in-program program is a great way to save some money on a new Mac. You can use your store credit to go towards the purchase of a new Mac or iPad. Don’t want a new iPad or Mac, no problem! Our store credit through the trade in program that can used for anything we sell in our stores.

  • Now is a great time to think about a new Mac, especially if your thinking about trading in an older machine! We have “**special financing**”:http://www.smalldog.com/finance/affordable-financing-options available everyday in our stores!

  • Best in Showroom is Back!

    A lot has been going on around Small Dog Electronics the last few months and during that time we felt it was best to put on hold our monthly retail newsletter while we sent out shorter email communications during the holidays. We don’t want to crowd your inbox too much! With the new year finally underway we’re back at it with the same great Best in Showroom newsletter content you love. Did you know we also have several other great newsletters? If you are not signed up for our “**Deal Retriever**”:http://www.smalldog.com/newsletters/subscribe-to-our-fun-informative-newsletters e-mail, we encourage you to do so so that you don’t miss what’s going in our stores no matter the time of year or event we might be promoting.

    Get too much email but want to make sure you don’t miss out on the very best of our special announcements, sales and events? If you subscribe to our General Communications newsletter we’ll make sure you get all that info. Subscribing to this newsletter also allows us to send infrequent, customized information to you based on your orders. We don’t spam and we’ll never sell or trade your email address. Ever.

    Throughout February we have great deals going on in honor of “**Presidents’ Day**”:http://www.smalldog.com/presidentsday/presidents-day-sales so visit any of our retail stores or shop online!

    Emily Dolloff
    “emily@smalldog.com”:mailto:emily@smalldog.com
    General Manager

  • I hear they are having a big football game on my birthday this year. I might catch some of it just for the commercials but will probably just go out to dinner with Grace to toast another year on this blue planet. Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team

    Don, Dean, Emily & Scott

  • Black History Month – Thurgood Marshall

    Way before Barack Obama broke the color barrier to become president of the USA, Thurgood Marshall broke that barrier for another of the most powerful and important positions in the country, that of Supreme Court Justice. After graduating from high school with honors he applied to the University of Maryland law school where he was not accepted because he was black. Instead, he went to Howard University and received his law degree in 1933.

    Before being appointed Supreme Court Justice, he had a stellar career from 1934 to 1961 as a lawyer for the NAACP where he won landmark civil rights cases. Beginning in 1940, Marshall won 29 of 323 US Supreme Court cases. One of his first big cases was Smith vs. Allwrite in 1944 which overthrew the South’s “White Primary”. The White Primary was a practice of excluding African Americans from the Democratic Party. It was most common in a state where that party controlled the state government.

    In 1954 Marshall achieved a landmark victory with the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. This Supreme Court decision demolished the legal basis for segregation in the USA. It also made state-enforced racial segregation in public schools invalid.

    In 1961 he was appointed the the US Court of Appeals by President Kennedy. He was the first African American on the Court of Appeals and went on to be appointed to the Second Court of Appeals. President Johnson made him the Solicitor General in 1965 and later in 1967 President Johnson nominated him for the Supreme Court.

    On the Supreme Court he was a steadfast supporter of positive gender and racial action policies and in his 24 years on the court he became a vocal liberal on a conservative-dominated court. He was an ardent supporter of Constitutional protection of individual rights, in particular the rights of criminal suspect versus the government. Marshall’s backing of Affirmative Action led to his strong dissent in the Regents of the University of California vs. Blake in 1978. Justice William Brennan was Marshall’s most reliable confederate who voted with him against the death penalty.

    Citing poor health, Thurgood Marshall stepped down from the court in 1991 and remained a vocal critic of the court until his death in 1993 at the age of 84.

  • App Review: Colin McRae Rally

    When I was a kid, my favorite video games were always flight simulators and racing simulators. I never really liked games where you were controlling a character. I guess I thought it was inherently unrealistic. At least with racing and flight simulators they were based off real-life models and physics.

    In the mid 2000s one of my favorite games was “**RalliSport Challenge**”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RalliSport_Challenge. I believe originally it was written for Xbox in 2002, but it was a Microsoft Game Studios game, so there was also a Windows port. I didn’t have an Xbox, so I played the Windows version. I **loved** RalliSport Challenge. The racing aspect was so fun and hearing the co-driver call out pace notes to you as you flew through icy, snowy or gravel road courses. It felt just like you were racing in the WRC (“**World Rally Championship**”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Rally_Championship) which I was very into at the time.

    Of course now, that game looks dated. When I got my iPad Air I was excited about the prospect of playing really nice games. I’d seen lots of demos of how well the 3D engines ran on iOS and it seemed like a perfectly capable gaming platform to me. Sadly though, I never really found any games, especially racing games, that I genuinely enjoyed. Too many of them seemed to be of the free variety with micro transactions and in-app purchases to get upgrades. I don’t like that model. I’ll happily pay for a game if it’s good and fun to play.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4653.png!

    So last week I took to the app store with a simple $5 budget looking for a game that would be fun to play, and maybe take me back to my teenage years playing RalliSport Challenge. I was quite surprised to come across a title called “**Colin McRae Rally**”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colin-mcrae-rally/id566286915?mt=8. Back in the mid 2000s, there was a PC game called Colin McRae Rally. It was really cool and far more realistic than RalliSport Challenge. But this game in the app store couldn’t possibly compare to that, right? I looked at the extra details. It was created by The Codemasters Software Company…the same company that created the original Colin McRae Rally game. I checked out the screenshots and the videos. It seemed to be the real deal and at only $3 it was under my $5 budget. No in-app purchases. Just racing.

    What’s my verdict? Really, really cool! The graphics look great, the cars look great, the physics are very realistic and even the rally gameplay is very true to life. Each rally is composed of several stages. After every two stages, you are given a time budget to repair your car. If you don’t repair it, believe me, it drives noticeably worse. If you can keep the car together and beat the clock through enough of the stages, you’ll win the rally.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4654.png!

    Like many racing games, you’re only allowed one car choice, and one rally at first. In Colin McRae Rally it’s the Ford Focus and the Australia Outback rally, respectively. Once you come in first place in a rally, you are given another car choice, and ability to enter other rallies. Cars available in the game include the aforementioned Ford Focus, Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, and even a Group 4 (the precursor to the infamous Group B) relic, the Lancia Stratos.

    The controls are pretty good but the realistic physics take some time to get used to. This isn’t an arcade-style racer where you can just lay on the throttle and never use the brake. When I play it on my iPhone, I prefer the accelerometer tilt-to-steer controls. On my iPad, I like the onscreen left/right buttons. Regardless of steering method, you also have onscreen controls for the throttle, brake and handbrake.

    Overall, I’m really happy to see such a realistic and fun game being offered in app store after being so disappointed with so many others. If you’ve ever been interested in a nice, worth-the-money game in the app store, I’d have no hesitation recommending Colin McRae Rally.

  • _Hello Friends_,

    It is hard to believe that it is February already. There is almost no snow up in Vermont and Artie is reporting that farmers are already gathering sap from the maple trees to make syrup. The Iowa caucuses have come and gone and on Tuesday the first in the nation primary is next door in New Hampshire. Being a leap year my granddaughter, Gracie, will have her 4th real birthday on the 29th. She was recently chosen as guest composer on Vermont Public Radio. You can hear her interview and one of her “**compositions**”:http://digital.vpr.net/post/student-composer-showcase-gracie-bangoura#stream/0 online. 

    February is also Black History month and each week in Kibbles and on our “**blog**”:http://blog.smalldog.com we will be honoring Black History. It is fun researching and writing these little bios of Black American heroes and heroines.  

    Florida’s governor declared a state of emergency in four counties regarding the horrible tragedy unfolding in Brazil with the Zika virus. One thing that is not being widely reported is the apparent link to genetically modified mosquitos and the microcephaly disaster. Apparently, Brazil was the site of a massive experiment with genetically modified mosquitos that were released into the wild. They were proposing a similar release for here in the Florida Keys but it has not happened. The Zika virus has been around since 1947 and this is the first big outbreak of microcephaly. You can “**read more about it,**”:http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987024/pandoras_box_how_gm_mosquitos_could_have_caused_brazils_microcephaly_diasaster.html regardless of whether that analysis is true, I think releasing genetic mosquitos is a bad idea.

    I am happy to announce that Small Dog Electronics will be offering GoPro cameras and accessories in our stores this month. We have had lots of requests for these action cameras from our customers and we finally have secured the line for our stores. We will talk more about GoPro as we get them into stock.  

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes special is a “**Hammerhead charging bundle**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002149/special-save-20-on-hammerhead-charging-bundle As you know we manufacture rugged braided lightning cables that are certified by Apple with their MFI “Made for iPhone” designation. This means that our manufacturer has passed all the tests with Apple and use genuine Apple lightning connectors. You do not have to worry about compatibility with MFI designation. This bundle includes two of these braided cables, our Hammerhead 2-port home charger and Hammerhead 2-port car charger. Each of these chargers have the capacity to charge an iPhone and an iPad simultaneously. Sold separately, this bundle would be $72.96 but exclusively for Kibbles & Bytes readers this week you can have this handy bundle for only “**$49.99!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002149/special-save-20-on-hammerhead-charging-bundle 

  • Terminal Tidbits: say command

    Apple’s built in text-to-speech can be a useful tool, or just a lot of fun for pranks. This can be triggered via Terminal. When you go and open Terminal (found in the Applications > Utilities folder) you get a blank screen with a blinking cursor. Type *say “what you want you Mac to say”* and your Mac will speak to you. And you didn’t even have give it a treat!

    The say command has options like change its voice to something different. To see the options available in your OS, navigate to *System Preferences > Dictation & Speech > Text to Speech* and there is a menu with all of the available System Voices. To choose a voice in Terminal type: *say -v “Voice Name” “what you want your Mac to say”*

    You can also export the voice clip as audio file. To do this use *-o* and specify the file path. The command would look like this: *say “Hello World” -o hello recording.aiff*

    For more info type the following command into Terminal: *man say*

  • Life Expectancy

    It is well known that computer have a life expectancy. When I refer to the life expectancy of a computer I’m not referring to how long it will work, I’m referring to how long you can keep it up to date with supported software and get it serviced. Many machines will work for years past their life expectancy. If you are reading this on the model pictured on the right, your machine is definitely past its normal life expectancy.

    There are two terms that Apple uses for machine that they no longer have hardware support: Vintage and Obsolete. Apple usually classifies a machine as vintage once it reaches 5 to 7 years past its initial release and obsolete models are those that are 7 or more years old. Apple doesn’t provide hardware support for vintage and obsolete models, however most models that are vintage can support the latest software and receive updates.

    Once a machine becomes obsolete, however, it usually will no longer will be able to support the newest OS X and security updates. Once a machine has unsupported software the machine starts to be become more susceptible to security breaches. A common security breach comes from exploiting older software that has a known issue. Once your computer can’t accept a supported OS X (which is currently 10.10 Yosemite and 10.11 El Capitan) it reaches the end of its life expectancy because the machine is no longer is repairable by Apple and the machine cannot receive software updates.

  • Locate with the Terminal

    Unlike the Terminal *find* command, *locate* provides indexed search results which is faster than find. Before using locate, you must build a database of system files, which will allow you to search by using the locate command. To build the database type the following command:

    *sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist*

    After the database is built you can run the locate command using the following syntax:

    *locate name*

    Locate does not search the files on your disk, instead it searches for file paths in a database. One downside of locate is that the database must be constantly updated in order for your new files to be included in the search. Now this should be updated automatically in a cron every morning but if it is not, you can manually update the database as a root user using the *updatedb* command. This will ensure your database is current. Please see the example below using locate to search for a particular file:

    !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4655.png!

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    Sometimes it seems like new operating systems appear more and more frequently. In reality, Apple has been on a pretty regular schedule of releasing a new OS once per year. Every time that they do, I get the same set of questions:

    * Should I update my machine?
    * Will my software/hardware be compatible?
    * Is it going to look really different?

    My answers are “maybe,” “maybe,” and “not really..but if you are on an old enough OS now…maybe?” There is no hard and fast rule for this. Of course, the decision may be made for you if your machine is not compatible with the newest OS. To complicate this whole thing, once you upgrade it can be very difficult to revert the machine. There is another way, though.

    You can add a partition to your drive and install the new OS there. This allows you to take it for a test run without upgrading your normal startup disk and its associated user accounts. As with any time that you are going to install a new OS or change your partition scheme, it is essential that you back up first. But assuming nothing goes wrong, and you decide you don’t like the new OS, all you have to do is remove the partition and you are right back to where you were.

    This week our techs bring you articles on using Terminal to locate files, an explanation of Apple’s designations of vintage and obsolete, and a way to get your computer to talk back to you.

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