Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Apple news, tech tips, and more…

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  • Emily's Gift Recommendations for under $100

    The “**Misfit shine**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002019 is my favorite gift for **$54.99**, it’s a small gift that has a lot to offer! While I am a huge fan of my Apple Watch, there are a few draw back to it that the Shine can offer. The Shine does not need to be charged, it’s water proof , it can track your sleep habits plus all the other great fitness features like heart rate, steps and miles walked. Another great feature to the Misfit Shine is the great color selections available, in addition to being extremely lightweight. I hardly noticed the shine when using it and like the Apple Watch it will automatically sync to its fitness App on the phone whenever it’s near your phone.

    I am a huge fan of camping and being in the outdoors, my phone goes everywhere with me and I often discover that I am running low on power with no easy means of charging my phone. The “**Kodiak Mini Rugged Powerbank**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002017 for **$14.99** is a perfect gift for anyone who uses their phone where power might not be readily available. It’s small, lightweight and gives you the added juice you need. Even if you’re not someone who’s using it in the outdoors, it’s perfect for business trips or just long shopping adventures! It’s a small but thoughtful gift that’s sure to make you a lifesaver!

  • _Dear Friends,_

    All of us at Small Dog Electronics wish you and your family a very Happy Thanksgiving. As we reflect upon all that we are thankful for and eat a huge meal, it is also the time to think about and help those less fortunate and give thanks for our ability to help. As we enter the holiday season which is important to us as a company that sells products, we are also aware that this is a time for family, peace and goodwill.

    At Small Dog Electronics we are thankful for you, our customers new and old. For twenty years, we have strived to serve your needs and show how a company can be a responsible member of our community as well. We are thankful for the opportunities that you have given us. We are thankful for our relationship with Apple. We have grown up with Apple from the time Apple was days away from bankruptcy to now, when Apple is the largest, most successful business on the planet. We are thankful for Vermont, a business-friendly state where entrepreneurial dreams can turn into reality. I am thankful for all of the Small Dog employees from employee #1, Art Hendrickson, to our newest hire. But most of all I am thankful for the community of customers, non-customers, employees and friends that have supported and nurtured the company.

    Happy Thanksgiving to all the Kibbles & Bytes readers!

  • Clean Screen Advice

    I work on quite a few iMacs here at Small Dog and there is nothing more annoying then having a piece of hair, bug, dust, etc. in between your LCD screen and your eyes. In this article I will be discussing iMacs released between 2007 and 2012. Before and after those years a different construction technique was used which does not cause dust interference.

    For those that don’t know, the iMac consists of a thin glass sheet that covers the LCD. Because of this there is a thin air pocket about half an inch or so between the glass panel and LCD display. If there is dust in-between your iMac glass and LCD you have 3 choices: learn to live with it, bring it into Small Dog for us to clean it, or try and tackle it yourself.

    If you choose to do this yourself you will need a few things:

    * Strong suction cups
    * Microfiber cloth and glass cleaner
    * A roller with sticky pads (see picture below)

    !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4591.jpg!

    If you can source these parts, then the first thing to do is stick the suction cups to the glass and slowly pull towards you (refer to the main article image). *WARNING*: Do not do this if you are not OK with potentially cracking the glass. Although this may be easy for me, if it is your first time I would be very careful. The glass is attached to the casing by magnets and only needs a slight pull. Now clean both the LCD and the inside of the glass really well with a microfiber cloth, and some cleaning spray. Next take the sticky sheet and peel back the top, roll the roller on it to get off any dust, and then start rolling it both on the LCD and the inside of the glass. After you are done quickly seal everything back up. Now clean the outside of the glass with a microfiber cloth and spray. Now inspect your work and note any foreign material inside. If there is, repeat the previous steps. If not your now dust free and can enjoy your iMac!

  • Backup 103: Redundancy

    In a recent Tech Tails article I prattled on at length about my backup strategy, but I didn’t mention everything that I do. What I personally do isn’t limited to just having a Time Machine backup on an external HDD that I unplug and leave in a desk drawer most of the time, and another Time Machine backup to a Time Capsule, and some of the more important stuff on a flash drive here and there. After working at Small Dog for a few years and getting scared by the constant horror stories I’m exposed to every day, I’ve come to lose faith in the reliability of my storage devices. Computers fail, or have bad things happen to them (loss, theft, gravity, liquid, etc.) and I’ve seen many permutations of these. While I don’t mean to scare you, I do intend to set realistic expectations that sometimes unfortunate things happen. If your backup drive fails at the same time as your computer fails, or your house gets struck by lightning and it fries your Time Capsule and everything else plugged into the wall, you might find yourself in the same place as having never bothered to do a backup. Other bad things can happen, like local disasters, house fires, giant death ray lasers from some angry alien spaceship that just wipes out an entire neighborhood. So I take a few extra steps.

    I rotate between two external HDDs that I do a Time Machine backup to, this is just in case one of those drives fails. Some of them are pretty old, and I’ve had them for a while so they are way outside of their warranty period. They’ve served me well, but they’ve also got all my important stuff on them. Because I know that drive failure is a real possibility I have redundancy (redundant meaning the same thing again) it might seem like a waste, but I’m more concerned about losing all those photos than I am about the 80 bucks or so I spent on that drive.

    I have yet another external HDD that I do a bootable backup to. This bootable backup is an exact clone of my boot volume on my Mac. What’s really awesome about a bootable volume is that I can plug in this external HDD before my Mac boots up, press and hold the option key before that gray Apple logo shows up when I power it on, and I can select this drive instead of the one in my machine! I use a couple of utilities for this: SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner. They’re both great and give me a great deal of flexibility in copying data from one drive to another.

    Cloud-based services are another really great way to back up your stuff, but I use them sparingly just like I do with my flash drives. The major limiting factor in cloud based services is the upload speed. It can take a little while to upload bigger files over the internet, but once you get them there, those big cloud services have tremendous reliability, redundancy and convenience. Dropbox is one of the most popular, and most supported, but they’re far from the only option out there. For example, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, SpiderOak, and Apple’s very own iCloud, just to name the few that I can think of at the moment.

    Redundancy might sound silly at first, but it’s the name of the game when it comes to protecting your data.

  • Battery Myths

    Here at Small Dog, we meet a lot of people who have misconceptions about different ways to preserve the battery life of their laptop, smartphone, or tablet. You may have heard some of these myths yourself.

    Several years ago, the most common type of rechargeable batteries included in electronic devices were nickel-cadmium batteries. One of the drawbacks of these batteries was known as the memory effect. Due to the chemical composition of the batteries, they would tend to “remember” the point that they were discharged to previously, and experience a sudden drop in charge once they reached that point. For this reason, it was often recommended to allow your battery to completely discharge before charging it to 100% again.

    Almost all electronic devices manufactured within the last several years use newer lithium-ion batteries, and not the older nickel-cadmium batteries. Lithium-ion batteries use completely different chemicals and manufacturing processes from nickel-cadmium batteries. There are positives and negatives (no pun intended) to using lithium-ion batteries instead of nickel-cadmium batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are lighter and more environmentally friendly than nickel-cadmium batteries. Lithium-ion batteries have a slightly shorter lifespan than nickel-cadmium batteries, but they do not suffer from the “memory effect.”

    Modern batteries do not suffer from the memory effect, and so you can safely charge your electronic device at any capacity.

  • Happy Holidays from Small Dog Electronics!

    We know you have long lists and are short on time this Holiday season, so we want to do everything we can to help you check off that list and get some great deals at the same time. Shop locally with Small Dog Electronics this Black Friday and get some great savings to kick start your shopping season!

    Friday, *November 27th only*, take *25% off* ALL BEATS by Dre. We will have the entire product line on sale for this *one day only sale*, shop with us early for the best selection.

    !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4595.jpg!

    Get more great Black Friday only deals with *Buy one, Get one FREE* for all Chill Pill speakers. Get one for someone on your list and one for yourself! *50% off* all Hammerhead Lightning cables, make sure everyone has their own cable so that there are no more fights over who gets to charge their phone next.

    We have deals that go beyond accessories, starting Friday November 27th and running through December 31st *save $50 instantly* on a new or refurbished computer with Applecare PLUS get a *free Hammerhead sleeve* with the purchase of a laptop or a *free Chill Pill* and mousepad for all desktop purchases.

    !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4594.jpg!

    Plus great deals from *Outdoor Tech, Speck, Goal Zero* and more through December 31st.

    Shop online and see more savings at “**http://www.smalldog.com/macthehalls**”:http://www.smalldog.com/macthehalls

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    I am writing this week’s Tech Tails from the great state of Ohio (Go Buckeyes!). For better or for worse, it is easier than ever to stay connected wherever you go. I read and answered a number of emails from my iPhone today and I am composing this on my MacBook Pro. Thanks to VPN (Virtual Private Network) all of the resources that are available to me when I am in the office are available anywhere I have an internet connection.

    While connecting to a corporate network is probably the most familiar use of VPN, it has other uses as well. Because your computer looks like it is in the location where the VPN service originates, it can be used to mask your actual location. This can be used for good (such as political activists circumventing national firewalls), for less noble reasons (such as streaming media that is restricted from your country) or even outright illegal activity (I will not give you any ideas here!).

    Every Mac and iOS device has a built-in VPN client which allows you to connect to VPN services. With the “*Apple Server app*”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-server/id883878097?mt=12&at=11lb7k you can turn any Mac into a VPN server and connect back to your own network securely from anywhere. As an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator, I can assist you with setting this up; just send me an email at the address below for more information and a quote.

    Happy Thanksgiving!

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

  • blackfriday

  • Soapbox: Refugees, Fear and Who We Are

    If the sadness and shock of the terrorist attacks in Paris were not enough, I was in shock this week as Islamaphobia and fear overwhelmed politicians and citizens. Some politicians were tripping over themselves to stoke the flames of fear by turning on the Syrian refugees. I don’t know about you but if I lived in Syria and there was a war in my neighborhood with madmen from both sides going berserk, I’d be a refugee, too. Oh, by the way, did you know that Steve Jobs father was a Syrian refugee?

    This was seemingly fueled by what turns out to be a very sketchy report that one of the terrorists posed as a refugee. That has since been discredited but the conclusion jumping was already in full swing. Some politicians tried even to separate their distain for refugees by religion but there is no religion that makes terrorism its creed and there have been terrorist from many religions. It is when hypocritical fanatics of any religion feel that they can impose their will upon others that conflicts arise.

    Way back when the USA was young, our friends in France sent us a gift. The Statue of Liberty proudly stands by our shores with the inscription that defines who we are as a nation:

    Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses, yearning to be free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
    Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

    When we succumb to the fear the terrorists win. When we change who we are, the terrorists have won. When we let prejudice trump common sense, the terrorists have won. We must lead by example and the example of shunning refugees is the wrong one. In the height of the worst terror since WWII, President Hollande of France recommitted to taking Syrian refugees saying “We have to reinforce our borders while remaining true to our values.”

    We cannot change who we are – unless you are a native American, you are a descendant of refugees and immigrants. This anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-refugee wave of fear is unAmerican and is born of ignorance and hate.

    How do you feel about this trend towards exclusion of refugees and immigrants? Share your opinion at our blog – blog.smalldog.com

    End Soapbox

  • There sure are a lot of geckos down here. I think I am in a Geico commercial. Sometimes as I fix things around the house I will open up an electrical outlet to find pearly gecko eggs that have hatched. Grace says they are our friends but she likes spiders, too.

    Grace and I are going to celebrate Thanksgiving by ourselves this year. We have done that only a couple of times so it is a good time for us to hang out and reminisce. Our first Thanksgiving as a newlywed couple way back when was just us two. Wherever you are it is a great time to give thanks for all that you have. Whenever I feel a bit down I try to think about just how much I have, the opportunities, the family and my accident of birth. What are you thankful for?

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Dean, Scott_

  • Mac the Halls Black Friday Sneak Peek!

    The holidays are just around the corner and Small Dog has gifts for everyone on your list. Take advantage of these Black Friday exclusive deals. When you buy a Chill Pill Mobile Speaker, you get the second one FREE. We are also offering 25% off ALL Beats by Dre headphones and speakers 30% off ALL phone and laptop cases from Speck. When you purchase any new Mac with AppleCare; save $50 instantly. With any new laptop you will receive a FREE Hammerhead case and with a purchase of any new desktop you will receive a FREE pair of Chill Pill mobile speakers. We also have some awesome accessories from some of your favorite brands like Outdoor Tech, Goal Zero and Belkin. Shop online at “**http://www.smalldog.com/macthehalls**”:http://www.smalldog.com/macthehalls/holiday-2015 or visit any of our retail stores in South Burlington, Rutland, Waitsfield or Key West, FL.