Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Our Annual Halloween Contest!

    Small Dog’s annual “Halloween contest”:https://www.flickr.com/photos/smalldog/sets/72157637162155146 is just a few weeks away and we need your help! We take Halloween seriously around here, and every year we encourage staff to dress up in their Halloween finest. We will be posting pictures to our website on Friday October 30th for our customers to cast votes for the best dressed Small Dog Employee! One of our favorite parts of the Halloween contest is our creativity applied to those whom fail to come to work in a costume. Last year Rob Amon failed to come to work in costume so we decided on his costume for him!

  • Are you ready for El Capitan?

    El Capitan has arrived! But before making the leap to the latest operating system **we recommend a full back up** of your machine before you install OS X El Capitan. Apple makes it easy to back up your Mac using Time Machine, and it is important to create a “**Time Machine**”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250 backup before installing OS X El Capitan.

    Once you have completed your Time Machine backup, you’ll want to run any existing updates on your computer, including third party software. You can check for updates for any Apple software on your machine by simply clicking the Apple symbol in the upper left hand corner of your computer. If there are updates to run they will appear next to the App Store in the drop down menu. Finally, double check that your computer meets the “**system requirements**”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201475 for El Capitan. Generally speaking if your already running 10.9 or 10.10 it’s likely you will have no issues with your machine upgrading, but it’s always good practice to just double check. When reviewing your computer’s system requirements one detail that is often overlooked is hard drive space, El Capitan is going to need about 6GB of hard drive space for the installation, so double checking that your computer has enough free hard drive space is essential. You will want to not only ensure there is enough space on the drive, but that the space remaining after the installation is also sufficient. We have seen over the years many customers who have ensured they have the recommended hard drive space free on their machine, but neglected to ensure that once the installation was complete there would still be plenty of hard drive space. The recommendation is to never have any less than 10% of your hard drive free to prevent data corruption. If your down to just 10 or 15 gigabytes of free hard drive space before installation we strongly recommend you take the time to either just delete or transfer non critical files to an external hard drive.

    Once you have followed the steps above your ready to download El Capitan! Simply visit the **App Store** on your machine, search for El Capitan and select download. Depending on your internet connection this could take an hour or it could take several hours, so be patient! If you are updating your laptop it’s critical to remember to plug it into a power source during the download and update to prevent any unexpected errors along the way.

    Have more questions about this download and update? E-mail “support@smalldog.com”:mailto:support@smalldog.com or visit the Apple support communities, they are incredible resources to all kinds of questions about your Mac!

  • iPad Mini 4

    It’s not often that an Apple product release completely underwhelms me, but that’s how I felt when the iPad mini 3 was introduced. Given how I use my iPad, 16GB Wifi only, I would have been paying $100 for Touch ID! Not a great value in my opinion, and my mini 2 was still doing the trick.

    With that in mind, it was not a surprise that Apple fairly quickly replaced the mini 3, but kept the mini 2 as its entry level option with the introduction of the “**iPad mini 4**”:http://www.apple.com/ipad-mini-4/specs/. The new iPad mini 4 gives us what I expect to see in a new product release! A improved processor with the A8 Chip, an eight megapixel iSight camera, and a new anti reflective screen to reduce glare. With the release of iOS 9, it’s nice knowing that the iPad mini 4 is going to have the horsepower to run my apps like a champ for a long time. Add in that it is now thinner and lighter than ever before, and you’ve got the best go anywhere do anything tablet on the market and I think it’s time for me to finally upgrade from the iPad mini 2!

  • Fall is Here!

    We are excited here at Small Dog to officially announce fall is here. Down here in Key West we don’t get the chance to enjoy the amazing fall colors so we are really enjoying the pictures being shared by our Vermont team.

    To celebrate we have a great deal in October for the iMac. Buy any new iMac with Applecare **save $50 instantly** plus get a free Chill Pill Speaker! The iMacs are often overlooked but are one of Apple’s top selling computers with plenty of storage, processing power, huge screen size and can come with the 5K display. These machines are especially great for family and office use.

    El Capitan has arrived and while it’s only been publicly available for a few short days we are already loving all the new features. Our favorite feature around the Key West store is new split view feature like that of iOS 9. The Apple TV is expected to come out later this month and we are like kids waiting on Christmas morning here at Smalldog for this next release as well as the new iPad Pro. There is so much to look forward to in the coming weeks from Apple!

    Our annual Halloween Contest is coming later this month and you are invited to help vote on the best costumed Small Dog employee on our website “**www.smalldog.com**”:http://www.smalldog.com. We look forward to this every year as we have some great costumes and anyone that does not have a costume gets photoshopped. That’s always entertaining!

    As always we are here by your side and welcome you to come check us out at any of our Small Dog Electronics locations to find out more.

    Joe Lytton
    “joel@smalldog.com”:mailto:Joel@smalldog.com

  • October Specials!

    We have great deals running all month long in our retail stores and “online!”:smalldog.com/fallsavings

    Looking to get the most for your computer purchase? All month long “**save $50 instantly and get a free Chill Pill speaker**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001966/special-save-20-on-twelve-south-hirise-for-imac with the purchase of any new iMac with Applecare!

    Buy any iPad mini 2 or 3 and get either a **free Hammerhead Capo case or Folio case**

    New to iPad? All month long buy any **iPad mini 4 and receive $10 off a 30 minute in store lesson** Appointments can be made in any of our retails stores and often times the same day that you buy your new iPad!

  • Welcome Ben!

    We have a lot of new faces in South Burlington this fall. One of which is Ben Ryan, our newest addition to the Service Department. Ben has a background in PC repair, specifically Dell hardware. In his spare time, Ben enjoys gaming on his PC, staying in shape, and watching movies. He is joining our Service Department and has already started his training to become a technician. We can’t wait to see him succeed! Make sure to say hi to Ben at the service counter next time you’re in South Burlington.

  • Looks like a wet weekend. I am going through boxes and carousels of old slides and selecting a bunch to get digitized before they all fade. I know there are a lot of digitizing services and it seems that the results vary. Anyone have a good recommendation?

    Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Dean, Scott_

  • Fall Foliage Instagram Giveaway

    Calling all leaf peepers! We are giving away a vintage Apple Think Different poster from Don’s personal collection as part of an Instagram giveaway contest. The rules are simple: 1. Follow @hellosmalldog on Instagram 2. Tag three Apple enthusiast friends in our contest announcement post 3. Tag us in your best Fall foliage photo. Contest starts today and runs until 10/16. Happy peeping!

  • iPad Air 2 and iOS 9 – The Best ADD Toy Ever!

    I like to think that I’m not someone who’s attached to my iPhone, but let’s be honest: I’m addicted. I have joined the generation that has a horrible case of screen ADD. I can’t have enough screens on: Apple TV, iPad is in my lap, and my iPhone is out as I look through Instagram. A few years ago I was happy with just one screen, but those days have long since passed.

    With iOS 9 on the iPad Air 2 Apple added multitasking and picture in picture. That’s right, I can now browse the internet, watch Hulu, and message my friends all on one screen. It’s the greatest update Apple’s ever given me. It’s glorious! I’m actually such a fan, a part of me is disappointed that it’s not coming to El Captain. PIP is something I’ve always dreamed of, be it on the big screen, my iPad or my Laptop. I’ve at least got the iPad now so bring on the OS X update next time around.

    There are of course many other great features that came to iOS 9, the news iPad App is my other favorite. It of course works great with the multitasking side by side feature. Especially browsing through the news and sending links to friends to check out. For work I enjoy having Mail open next to the updated version of notes while I create my daily check-list. However you use the new iOS 9 update it’s either made some of us more efficient in our everyday task or for me furthered my screen ADD as I try and watch, browse, and chat at the same time. Enjoy!

  • My Top 5 El Capitan Features

    You can download El Capitan right now and discover all of the new features and performance improvements. I have had the privilege of playing with El Capitan since its first beta and some of the new features have become second nature to me but I thought I would go over my choice of the top 5 of the new features that I actually use on a daily basis.

    h4. It’s a 3-Finger Drag!

    This is sort of a hidden trackpad gesture that has been re-introduced in El Capitan. If you look for 3-finger dragging in the Trackpad System Preferences, where it used to reside, you won’t find it or a little cute video of how it works. But if you look at Accessibility you will find the toggle to activate 3-finger dragging. The path to get there is System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options. Click on the box that says “Enable Dragging” and select 3-finger dragging. Now, why is this handy? I mean we have one finger, two finger, pinching, swiping and tapping. Well, if you are like me and do cutting and pasting from documents you might also be tired of clicking on one part of a document, and shift clicking on another to select it.

    To drag with three fingers simply rest three fingers on the trackpad and drag to select text, move windows, files or tabs. Check it out, you will probably wonder how you ever lived without it!

    !{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4533.png!

    h4. Take a Note

    The Notes App has been significantly improved and is much more useful now with El Capitan. I used Notes occasionally before El Capitan but it I was making most of my notes in Stickies or in Mail. With the new improvements to Notes, I am using it a lot more often and find Notes to be a very useful tool. In the past, it was pretty much just a free form note taking app but now you can not only take notes you can add photos and videos, sketches, maps, websites, audio and whole documents.

    One of my favorite new features is the Checklist button. Many times I use notes to remember a bunch of things to do for this project or that project. If you select those items in Notes now and hit the Checklist button, little checkboxes are put before each item. Easy checklists that are now available on your Mac or any of your devices from the Notes App.

    Let’s say you were planning a trip and needed that checklist but also need directions, a picture of your destination and the website for the hotel. You can add all of that to your note so you have all your information for the trip in one place. As I head south for the winter, I will put the website for dog-friendly hotels, a map with my selected route and of course, my checklist all in that note. I can access all of that from my iPhone or iPad on the road, too.

    You can add audio files that will play right from the Notes App so if your friend gave you verbal directions you can listen to them right there. Adding information is easier now, too, as the Share button now includes Notes in Safari, Photos, Maps and other Apps.

    You can organize your notes into folders now, too, which makes it even more handy! I think you are going to love the new Notes App in both El Capitan and iOS 9.

    !{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4535.png!

    h4. Pin it and Shut up!

    Safari gets some nice new features with El Capitan which I use every day now. My favorite is the mute button. How many times have you had a number of tabs open in Safari with several websites open and suddenly some automatic audio file starts playing some cheesy music or some talking head is trying to sell you something. With El Capitan you can now shut them down! You have the ability to silence all tabs, a single tab or every tab but one.

    Muting all tabs is as simple as opening a new tab that is not playing sound and clicking on the Mute All Tabs button in the address bar. Don’t forget to un-mute all tabs if you want to listen to something. To mute a single tab you simply click on the sound tab in the address bar for that tab. If you want to listen to one tab and mute all the others you click and hold on the sound icon of the tab you wish to listen to and a menu will appear that gives you the choice of muting that tab or muting all the other tabs.

    Pinned tabs are nothing new. Chrome has had them for some time but pinned tabs come to Safari with El Capitan. You can right click, control click to pin a tab but I just drag it to the left of the tab bar and it is pinned. You can also drag it to the right in the tab bar to unpin a tab. Pinned tabs are persistent on all Safari windows even when you quit.

    !{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4536.png!

    h4. Do the Splits

    You have always had the option to have multiple windows open and copy and paste between apps but El Capitan goes one step further and allows you to easily put two apps side by side on your screen. That way you can easily jump from one app to the other like if you are working on a Pages document but need information from that Numbers spreadsheet.

    There are at least a couple ways to activate split screen. The first is to click and hold on the “full page” button on the top of the window. That will create a blue hue on half your screen that you can fill with that app. The other half of your screen will display thumbnails of your remaining open apps. Simply click on one of those and bingo you have two apps in full screen mode side-by-side. You can even adjust the dividing line so you can go to 60/40 or any other size for the two apps.

    The second way is to use Mission Control which has had some changes with El Capitan. You can access Mission Control any number of ways but my favorite is to swipe up with four fingers (you can set that gesture in Trackpad options to be 3 or 4 fingers). Once you are in Mission Control, if you have one app running in full screen mode it will show up as a desktop and you simply drag the other app that is compatible with spit screen (not all apps are) onto that desktop and you are good to go.

    To exit from Split View you can simply hit the Escape key or click on the expand button.

    !{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4537.png!

    h4. Spotlight Gets Brighter

    I still do not understand why Apple has not brought Siri to Macs but with enhanced dictation activated you might be able to simulate Siri. Nevertheless, Spotlight got a bigger brain with El Capitan. There is a lot more information available from sports scores, stock quotes, video search and more. The results come up really quickly with more information in the results. They fixed the one most annoying feature of Spotlight – the fixed position of the search window. While clicking on the magnifying glass will bring up the search box in the middle of your screen, you can now move it out of the way. You can also ask questions in natural language, like “Show me documents I worked on yesterday”.

    You can still use Spotlight for currency conversion, simple math, finding the weather or finding that missing file on your desktop.

  • Watch Out for WiFi Assist!

    Way, way at the bottom of the Cellular Data settings on your iPhone or cellular iPad is a check box for wifi-assist. If this box is active, your iPhone will use cellular data whenever you have a spotty wifi signal. While this could be handy and not cost you much if you have an unlimited data plan with your cell carrier, if you do not have unlimited data you could suddenly find yourself eating through your data plan.

    My recommendation if you are not on an unlimited data plan is to de-activate wifi-assist unless you really need it and then only turn it on temporarily.