Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Apple news, tech tips, and more…

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  • QardioArm

    Over the Holidays I purchased the “**Qardio Arm**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/86560/qardio-qardioarm-blood-pressure-monitor-white for my mom. She’s been struggling with blood pressure issues over the last several months and working closer with her doctors to help manage this. She is also a recent adopter to the iPhone, so I admit, another reason for the purchase was to get her to use her phone more to see all that it’s capable of doing for her!

    It took just five minutes to set up the blood pressure cuff and download the App. With the tap of the phone to the cuff the unit quickly came to life and good it’s first reading then the information was quickly sent to your iPhone. Once the first reading is taken all you need to do is launch the App, tap “measurement” and then the green start button. One of the great features and why I purchased the product is that it easily keeps your history. No more bringing a sheet of paper or notebook to the doctor’s office. You can simply open up the App and show it to your doctor, the iPhone can provide location information, providing you with detailed information on your health. A simple yet convenient feature about this product is it runs off AAA batteries making it easy to keep up and running no matter where you are. Additionally, you can have multiple users utilizing the cuff and it even has the ability to share the information with others. Lastly it works with Apple HealthKit allowing you to fully track your fitness and health history on one convenient device.

    It’s amazing the technology that we can fit into our pockets these days, even more amazing is how useful and easy to use so much of it is.

  • Crystal Ball Gazing

    Here’s my predictions from last year, let’s see how I did:

    h3. The Apple Watch will be huge hit with over 10 million sold in 2015

    bq. __The Apple Watch has been a hit and while the final numbers are not in for the holidays, Apple expanded distribution channels and most predict about 15 million were sold in 2015. I know I still wear mine everyday and find new uses for it all the time. One right for Don and Apple.__

    h3. Apple Pay will become the de facto standard for mobile payments

    bq. __Well, Apple Pay is the most predominate mobile payment standard with more and more locations accepting Apple Pay but there are some huge holes where Apple Pay is not accepted and there are still some competing standards. I’m giving this one a toss-up because it is the most successful but I can’t call it the de facto standard quite yet.__

    h3. Apple will become the first $1 trillion company

    bq. __Miss. Apple stock has taken a hit in 2015 regardless of the great new products, record setting sales and earnings and a huge cash stockpile.__

    h3. Okay, this year we will have undisputed evidence of extraterrestrial life

    bq. __Hmm, I thought we were really close when NASA held that press conference to announce an astounding Mars discovery but it was just confirmed evidence of water. Soon.__

    h3. Cubbies will make the playoffs

    bq. __The did but got beat by the arch-enemy Cards.__

    h3. The Patriots will not win the Super Bowl

    bq. __Rob was doing his little victory dance – yeah, the New England team won.__

    h3. There will be 11 vetoes by President Obama

    bq. __Not even close, despite the gridlock in Congress, President Obama has only use the veto 5 times in his Presidency.__

    h3. The Dallas Mavericks will win the NBA Championship

    bq. __Wrong again, the Warriors are just too good!__

    h3. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Chris Christie will run for President

    bq. __Got those five right and there are a bunch more, too! Feel the Bern!__

    h3. Apple will make one surprising acquisition

    bq. __Nothing too spectacular here, I mean they didn’t buy Sony, GoPro, Tesla or anyone huge.__

    h2. Sapphire Ball Gazing

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4630.jpg!

    I have traded in my crystal ball for the much tougher Sapphire Ball and hope that I do better this year.

    * Cubbies will win the World Series – THIS IS THE YEAR
    * Warriors will repeat for the NBA title but the Celtics will get by the first-round
    * Patriots will lose in the Super Bowl
    * Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic nomination
    * Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination to a lot of people’s dismay
    * Bernie Sanders will beat Trump for the Presidency
    * 2016 will be the warmest ever recorded
    * Spring will come to Vermont early
    * Apple stock will recover to record highs
    * There will be evidence of extra-terrestrial life
    * Marijuana will be legal in 7 states
    * Democrats will re-take the Senate
    * Apple will make that surprising large acquisition this year

    Whether my new Sapphire Ball is accurate or not, 2016 is going to be a great year!

  • _Dear Friends_,

    Happy 2016! Most Mondays, I change my chat status from “available” to “A Fresh New Week”. Well, here we go on a fresh new year and I am full of anticipation for a great year. There were some great new products from Apple in 2015 and I am sure that we will see some more innovation and tools coming for Apple again during this year. And for further entertainment, we have the presidential elections which should provide some thought provoking conversations, too.

    I am heading off to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show next week and I am sure that there will be a lot of new gadgets. Last year there was a whole section devoted to drones, there might be a whole hall this year. I am going to be looking for new products that would be useful to you, our customers. Last year, I found the “**Tempus Pro weather station**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/87362/tempus-pro-bluetooth-weather-station that has been a big hit. Who knows what I will discover this year. It is a great way to get a picture of the products of tomorrow in between meetings with vendors of the products of today.

    The first Kibbles & Bytes exclusive for the new year will be a bundle with my wife’s favorite Mac, the 11-inch MacBook Air. This Mac is super compact and yet powerful enough to run all your apps. We have a limited number of Apple Factory Reconditioned 11-inch MacBook Airs with the 1.4GHz i5 processor, 4GB of ram and a 256GB SSD drive. These have been brought back to as-new condition by Apple and carry Apple’s 1 year warranty. “**I am bundling this MacBook Air with Applecare that will extend that 1-year warranty to 3 years and the 90 days of free Apple tech support to 3 years as well**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002111. To complete the bundle because YOUR New Year’s Resolution should be to always have a data back-up, I will include the Seagate Backup Plus Slim portable 1 TB drive. Kibbles & Bytes readers can buy this bundle, while supplies last for only $1065! That is over $100 off.  I think we only have about 5 units available so first come, first served.

  • Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Dean_

  • _Dear Friends,_

    Merry Christmas to all! From our family to you and your family, the Small Dog Electronics team sends our very sincere wishes for a joyful and happy Christmas! We appreciate the support and your business for the past 20 years! The holiday message of Peace on Earth and Goodwill can be more than a dream. Please take a moment and do something nice for a stranger this year.

    Kibbles & Bytes will be back next week in a brand new year!

  • Mini DisplayPort vs Thunderbolt Port

    There are two different (but similar) ports that appear on different Macs that often get confused. They are the Mini DisplayPort and the Thunderbolt port. Please take a look at the picture on the right to refresh your memory as to what they look like.

    As you can see the plug is exactly the same but the icon that is beside each is different. The Thunderbolt port is on the left and the Mini DisplayPort on the right. In the past, the Mini DisplayPort was used as an audio/video output port which was used to hook up your Mac to an external display or monitor. The new Thunderbolt still does this and is backwards compatible with Mini DisplayPort adapters. The main difference between the two is that Thunderbolt can also transfer data (backing up or transferring files, for example) by using adapters to USB, Ethernet, FireWire or directly to another Thunderbolt device. This means you can have a working connection when plugging in a Mini DisplayPort peripheral to a Thunderbolt port but not vice versa. See the image below for a better understanding.

    !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4628.png!

  • Export your Photos Library to an External Drive

    For a lot of people, pictures are the things that eat up space on their internal hard drives. Add in the more frequent use of solid state drives with relatively small capacities on the new MacBooks and this leaves people needing external or cloud storage for their photos. I personally recommend exporting your entire iPhoto or Photos library to a external hard drive. The major upside is you have more internal storage for apps, documents, and other media. The downside is you need the external hard drive to access the library.

    To do this the first thing you need to do is purchase the drive you want to use. If it is not already formatted for Mac, you will need to reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in Disk Utility. Then you select the current iPhoto/Photo library and drag it to the external drive. When you next open up the Photos app you hold down the option key. You will be able to choose the newly created library for the app to refer to by navigating to the external drive. I highly suggest you use the application and check to make sure all your files are there. After testing the library, and backing up via Time Machine (or other methods) to a different drive, you are free to trash the original and free up internal hard drive space.

  • Restoring From a Time Machine Backup

    We talk a lot about how to make a Time Machine backup and how important it is, but we don’t often talk about how to restore or transfer your data using a Time Machine backup. There’s a couple of ways to get data off the Time Machine backup, the easiest of which is to transfer everything from the backup to a new Mac. Sometimes this doesn’t work though, as older machines with Hard Drives (HDDs) frequently have more space, and potentially more user content to be transferred than the new Solid State Drives (SSDs) that new new Apple notebooks ship with which means there might be an issue with space. It’s always good to check if you’re getting the right amount of storage space. There are many ways to do this, but that’s another topic altogether.

    Migration Assistant is an app that you can find in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder on your Mac that will allow you to restore data from a Time Machine backup. If it’s a brand new machine (or restored to factory settings with a clean install) you’ll have three options for transferring data during the initial setup: transfer your data from a Windows PC; create a new account; or transfer your data from a Mac, Time Machine Backup or Startup Disk.

    The one with Time Machine Backup in its description is the one we want. Before you start transferring everything (after you’ve clicked through a few relatively self-explanatory screens) you’ll be able to select what user accounts you want to transfer and whether or not you want to transfer the contents of the Applications folder. You get a little bit of granular control here, but not too much. It’s simple, but doesn’t give you complete and total control. If it does move a bunch of stuff that you don’t want, it’s always an option to delete it from the new machine to free up space.

    In most cases I recommend just checking everything and just transferring everything. It’ll set up your new Mac more or less as closely as possible to the settings of the old one, and for most people, that’s exactly what they want.

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    I want to assure you right here at the top that this week’s edition of Tech Tails will NOT contain any Star Wars: The Force Awakens spoilers. Despite being firmly in the Star Trek camp of the great sci-fi divide (see picture at left for proof), I am also a huge Star Wars fan and have seen the movie twice already with plans in place for a third viewing in the theater, and likely many viewings at home once it is legally available. If you are planning on trying to obtain a pirated copy of this movie, I would like to strongly discourage you. First of all, this is quite illegal. It also a pretty good way to get malware on your device as one can never be sure what one is actually downloading from the murkier parts of the web.

    While none of them are energetic enough to power a lightsaber, we do have three great specials this week on portable power devices. Make sure that the Force is always with you and your devices by buying one of these. You don’t want your device to turn to the Dark Side, do you?

    We also have some great articles from our team this week. Erich continues his ongoing backup saga, Vincent helps you free up space by moving your Photos library, and Kevin helps you identify your ports.

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