Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Apple's iPhone Charger: Worth the Investment

    Why pay $30 for an Apple iPhone charger? This is a question I’ve asked myself a few times, but in the end, I still dropped the cash for the Apple branded charger for my iPhone. Considering it’s something that I know will last me a while, and that the Apple name means quality, I don’t have much of an issue paying this much for something that seems to be so simple (and is cheaper elsewhere).

    While I feel that this is mostly a good justification, techie blogger Ken Shirriff has come up with a much better reason. Recently, he completely tore apart the tiny charger and closely analyzed its components, resulting in quite the unexpected. Apple’s charger is surprisingly more technologically complex than most other third-party chargers.

    He describes each electrical component, in detail, explaining how these components allow Apple’s charger to be efficient and intelligent. One major difference between Apple’s charger and the generic third party charger is Apple’s attention to the reduction EMI interference. This quality allows your iPhone to operate while plugged in exactly the same way as it would while not plugged in. Whereas, while plugged into a third party charger the iPhone may exhibit touchscreen interference.

    Safety is also a factor in Apple’s charger, with a complex circuit that shuts down the charger if it rises above a safe temperature or voltage. Shirriff states that Apple goes “beyond regulation” with with some of the electrical precautions that were taken.

    Needless to say, the next time I need to buy an iPhone charger, I will not be thinking twice about which manufacturer I’m buying it from.

    Please give Ken Shirriff’s very detailed/complex article a read here: “*iPhone Charger Quality.*”:http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html

  • Times They Are a Changin'

    There have been some big changes in Small Dog’s Tech department. Recently, two highly experienced members of the technical department, Jason L. and Liam, have moved on to hopefully greener pastures. They will be missed greatly especially for their technical expertise.

    These changes have forced members like myself who are considered more ‘junior’ techs to step up and help fill the void. We need to make big decisions and can no longer lean on the expertise they provided but must now rely on each other to combine our knowledge in order to tackle everything that comes our way.

    On a brighter note, there are new faces coming into the Tech department. We gained a new employee for the Rutland location who is currently training with us up here in Burlington. He comes straight from Apple with all the repair experience necessary; he is just brushing up on our systems and I guess, style. We will also have a new face in the Waitsfield location next week.

    We are currently keeping up with the workload even being a tech short, however; some of us are pulling extra hours or not taking one of our days off in order to keep up with all repairs. I thank everyone for working extra hard to help the company in this time of staff changes.

    As you’ve probably read, Barry, a tech in our Manchester location, has taken over the Tech Tails routine for us and is very polite when asking us for articles; I imagine that will change the more and more he publishes the newsletter. Everyone wish him luck — I’m sure he will do quite well. Until next time, folks!

  • Hello fellow tech enthusiasts,

    Summer is here in full force and I couldn’t be happier. With that brings a whole new line of phones for Apple to compete with, as well as devices we can get excited about. HTC and Samsung have come out with their newest smartphones in the past month with the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4. These three juggernauts will battle it out for the rest of the year ’til Apple brings its next device to the fray.

    Microsoft has also made the headlines this week with the announcement of their new console, Xbox One. With Sony and Microsoft releasing their consoles this year, it makes you wonder if Apple will ever through its hand into that market. iPlay perhaps?

    We have a lot of exciting articles for you to check out below to help you with all your tech needs and news. Kyle has some input on the Small Dog Service team and our future, Mikhael has some insights on Apple as a front runner when it comes to taking chances, and RJ discusses why Apple accessories are worth every penny.

    Take a peek below — you might just learn something!

    Barry
    “*barry@smalldog.com*”:mailto:barry@smalldog.com

  • Sadly, Apple no longer makes the 13-inch MacBook, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t buy it — we have ample stock of…

  • Memorial Day

    As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, it is important to remember this is not just a holiday that marks the unofficial…

  • Your Order History Gets A Makeover

    Our IT department has been hard at work over the past month (not that they ever stop working hard) making improvements to our…

  • The weather is not looking that good for the Memorial Day ride, but we have booked rooms at Moosehead Lake and along the coast, so we will ride and try to stay dry. I hope that you have a great holiday weekend!

    It is so beautiful here in Vermont this time of the year with all the trees flowering. The big Apple tree in my front yard is covered in white blossoms this year and the “mom tree” — a flowering crab apple — that we planted in honor of my mother is covered with beautiful pink blossoms. Now, if I could only freeze time…

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
    _Don, Kali, Mike & Stephanie_

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  • REVIEW: Easily Remove The Background From Your Images

    There’s a pretty cool website out there that some of you photo junkies might want to check out. The site allows you to easily remove the background from your photos to create masks, cutout or clipping paths without the knowledge of knowing how to use Photoshop or having Photoshop itself.

    The website is Clippingmagic.com and it works like so: Simply upload your image, then mark it using green (for the foreground) and red (for the background) and boom! You will have your isolated image.

    I wanted to give this a try, so I used a photo of Waitsfield pup Maya, laying on a busy rug. I marked her with green and marked the rug with red. The result was OK — a little choppy around her long fur, but it wasn’t horrible. I did read on their site that “hair and other partially transparent things such as veils or sheer clothes are not currently handled. This leads to bob-ish “cropped hairstyles in the result.” Something to keep in mind…

    I wanted to try one more, so I used a photo of a MacBook Air sitting on a table — something that I knew would be a little easier to isolate. It produced a much better result than the shaggy dog I tried before. This process works better if your subject is on a fairly simple background (i.e. a person standing against a one color wall).

    The bottom line is that you can remove the background from a photo in Photoshop, but not everyone has that software or knows how to use it. This is a great fast and easy solution for people who might want to isolate the subject of a certain photo (bloggers, take note!).

    This site only works with Google Chrome and Firefox at the moment (sorry, Safari users). Hop on one of those browsers and give it a try!

  • Your Order History Gets A Makeover

    Our IT department has been hard at work over the past month (not that they ever stop working hard) making improvements to our website. Their main goal has been to make it easier for our online customers to shop and for our local shoppers to have access to their records.

    We’re happy to announce that “*Smalldog.com*”:http://www.smalldog.com/ has a revamped Order History system.

    Order History 2.0 (not its official name, but it’s fun to say it) includes a lot more info then the old one ever did. It can show you all of your orders, regardless of the source. For example, if you purchased something from our retail store and from our phone sales team, you will see both of them on your account page. This means that your order history is complete. Our old system was unable to display anything other than web orders.

    Another nice thing to note is how you can easily click a link to take a survey about your experience for each purchase you make. Of course, this is less important for web orders (though if something is incorrect we hope you will let us know), but for phone and retail orders where you are interacting with a real person, we love to hear how it all went.

    If you chose a method that ships with UPS, you can see the tracking history of the package. I don’t do a lot of online shopping, but when I do, I find that none of the websites can track shipping from my account page. I always end up going to UPS or FedEx’s website where I enter my tracking number to get what I want. Not super annoying, but having this feature on our site just makes it that much more convenient than all of the competitor sites out there.

    Stay tuned for more improvements, as we’ll be rolling out new features throughout the rest of the summer. I hope every likes this upgrade as much as we do — we really see it helping out our customers’ online shopping experiences in the long run. Also, if you have any comments on the new system, let us know!

  • MAC TREAT #208: Disable Notification Center

    Back in March, Apple issued their update to the latest OS, and one very convenient thing about Mountain Lion is that the Notification Center will tell you that there are software updates available.

    This can be both convenient and annoying if you are like me and don’t like to run your updates the second they’re available. (Just in case there are any bugs in the system that didn’t get worked out!) For me, that means I swipe to hide the notification and then, 10 minutes later, it is back.

    I have been really lazy about my updates, so I have been swiping to ignore that notification since March and frankly, enough is enough. I should have just run the update to get rid of the notification, but instead, I found a way to disable Notification Center. The process is super simple and not permanent at all.

    Hold down the option key and click on the Notification Center icon in the top right of the screen. This will make the icon turn grey to indicate that it is disabled. If you want it back, simply repeat the process. I have also noticed that if you close the lid to your laptop and reopen it, the Notification Center will be reenabled regardless of how you left it.

    I hope you all find this quick Mac Treat as useful and stress-relieving as I have. Enjoy.