Kibbles & Bytes Blog
Apple news, tech tips, and more…
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New Mac Mini, MacBook Air and iPad Pros!
At a special event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Apple threw back the curtains on significant updates to the long-ignored MacBook Air and even longer-ignored Mac mini. Then Tim Cook and company followed up with revamped 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, complete with an enhanced Smart Keyboard Folio and redesigned Apple Pencil. You can order all of Apple’s new gear right away and shipments will start on November 7th. We hope to have stock quickly but some items will certainly be constrained.
MacBook Air Gains Retina Display and Touch ID
When Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air in 2008 by pulling it out of an envelope, it set the standard for the ultralight notebook category. We quickly produced a nice leather envelope for that unit under our Hammerhead brand. But Apple has been focusing on the high-end MacBook Pro line of late, making this major revision extremely welcome.
Retina Display and Touch ID
Most notably, the new MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch Retina display that’s far crisper than the previous model’s screen. Although the screen is the same size as before, Apple eliminated the aluminum bezel around it, taking the screen much closer to the edge. That let the company reduce the MacBook Air’s size, making it almost an inch (2.1 cm) less wide and more than half an inch (1.5 cm) less deep (and making our envelopes obsolete – good thing we are mostly out of stock). Even more important, Apple dropped the weight by almost a quarter pound (100 g). It’s noticeably smaller and lighter now.
The other major improvement in the MacBook Air is the addition of a Touch ID sensor in the upper-right corner of the keyboard. Rather than typing your password to log in, you can just place your finger on the Touch ID sensor. It also works to unlock some apps like 1Password. It will also work to use ApplePay. To support the Touch ID sensor, the MacBook Air includes Apple’s T2 security chip, which prevents the boot process from being tampered with, encrypts all data on the SSD, and enables “Hey Siri.”
Evolutionary Updates
Many of the remaining changes just bring the MacBook into the modern age. It sports two Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports on the left side for charging and connecting peripherals, and a headphone jack on the right side—all the previous ports are gone. The keyboard is the same one used in the most recent update to the MacBook Pro, which isn’t universally loved—if you’re particular about keyboards, give this one a try before buying. Apple also replaced the old Multi-Touch trackpad with a larger Force Touch trackpad that’s more responsive and provides additional capabilities.
By default, the MacBook Air comes with 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD. You can jump to 16 GB for $200, and we generally recommend that. Similarly, you can upgrade the storage to 256 GB for $200, 512 GB for $400, or 1.5 TB for $1200.
We haven’t mentioned performance yet. Apple says only that the MacBook Air’s 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor delivers “the performance you need for everyday activities like organizing your photos, browsing the Web, creating presentations or viewing and editing videos.” Since Apple never misses the chance to say how much faster a new Mac is than the model it replaces, we have to assume that the new MacBook is no faster than the old one. Hopefully, benchmarks will appear soon.
Price
The new MacBook Air comes in silver, gold, and space gray, and pricing starts at $1199 for 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. If performance is important to you, however, you should consider the non-Touch Bar 13-inch MacBook Pro, which costs only $100 more and is just a bit heavier. And if you’re willing to settle for older technology and a larger form factor, note that the old MacBook Air remains for sale starting at $999. Finally, the 12-inch MacBook also remains in the lineup, but at $1299, it’s overpriced and underpowered, and thus interesting only if you want the smallest possible Mac.
Mac mini Goes Pro with Massive Performance Boost
Apple updated the MacBook Air for consumers and students, but the company is aiming the revamped Mac mini at professional users. This update, the first in over 4 years, takes a cue from the similarly pro-focused iMac Pro in changing the color from silver to space gray, but otherwise it retains the same form factor—7.7 inches (19.7 cm) square and 1.4 inches (3.6 cm) high.
Speeds and Feeds
What has changed are the guts of the Mac mini, which offer huge performance gains over the previous version from 2014. Those improvements come from eighth-generation Intel Core processors: a base 3.6 GHz 4-core i3, a mid-level 3.0 GHz 6-core i5, and a top-of-the-line 3.2 GHz 6-core i7. Apple claims up to five times the performance of the previous Mac mini and up to 60% speedier graphics performance thanks to the integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630.
You won’t lack for RAM or storage either. The Mac mini comes with 8 GB of RAM, but you can upgrade to 16 GB ($200), 32 GB ($600), or 64 GB ($1400). We offer less expensive memory options with a lifetime warranty from our supplier of 25 years. While the Mac mini’s base 128 GB of SSD storage might be adequate if all your data is stored on a NAS device, you can upgrade to 256 GB ($200), 512 GB ($400), 1 TB ($800), or 2 TB ($1600). That storage is automatically encrypted thanks to the Mac mini’s T2 security chip, which also speeds HEVC video transcoding.
While Apple’s notebooks have been shedding ports, the Mac mini has bucked the trend. It features four Thunderbolt 3 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, two USB-A ports, an audio jack, and a Gigabit Ethernet jack, with 10 Gigabit Ethernet as an option. Thanks to the Thunderbolt 3 and HDMI ports, you can connect either a 5K display and a 4K display, or three 4K displays.
Price
All this power comes at a price. The new Mac mini starts at $799 for the 3.6 GHz 4-core Intel Core i3, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage. However, build-to-order options for a faster processor, more RAM, and more storage could raise the price to a whopping $4199.
Nonetheless, the Mac mini is once again an attractive option for anyone who already has a good display, keyboard, and mouse, none of which are included. It’s also ideal for those who want to stuff a Mac into a tight space, bring it on stage for a live performance, or stack a bunch of them for rendering video.
11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro Boast New Screens and Redesigned Apple Pencil
As welcome as the MacBook Air and Mac mini updates were, Apple really knocked it out of the park with its new iPad Pro models, which are the most significant changes to the iPad line yet.
Face ID Enables Physical Redesigns
Like the iPhone X series, these new iPad Pros drop Touch ID in favor of Face ID authentication. The 7-megapixel TrueDepth camera on the front of the iPad Pro that makes Face ID possible also enables support for Portrait mode, Portrait Lighting, and Animoji and Memoji.
Losing the Home button enabled Apple to bring the display closer to the edge of the iPad. With the 11-inch iPad Pro (the measurement is the diagonal screen size), that means a larger display in roughly the same form factor as the older 10.5-inch model (which remains for sale). And with the 12.9-inch iPad, Apple kept the display size the same as before but shrank the height of the case by almost an inch so it’s now the size of an 8.5-by-11-inch piece of paper and a little lighter.
Apple also changed the industrial design slightly, reverting to the flat edges last seen in the iPhone 5s. One of those edges sports a magnetic attachment area and wireless charging spot for the redesigned Apple Pencil.
Speaking of charging, Apple broke with tradition and dropped the Lightning connector in favor of the industry-standard USB-C for charging and connecting to peripherals. That will make it easier to connect to an external display. You may also need a $9 USB-C-to-3.5mm headphone jack adapter.
Incremental Changes
Those are the most obvious new features, but some of the more evolutionary changes will be equally as welcome. Most notable is the new A12X Bionic chip with embedded M12 coprocessor and Neural Engine. This Apple-designed chip is reportedly faster than 95% of laptops available today, and it gives the iPad Pro unparalleled performance among iOS devices.
That performance also powers the improved 12-megapixel rear camera, giving it enhanced computational photography capabilities, like Smart HDR, which takes multiple images and combines them intelligently for the best possible exposure. On-screen performance is improved, and everything will look better than ever before thanks to a new Liquid Retina display that features Apple’s True Tone and ProMotion technologies. In a classic Apple touch, the screen now features rounded corners.
Accessories
Along with the revamped iPad Pro models, Apple introduced a new Smart Keyboard Folio that improves on the previous Smart Keyboard by wrapping around to protect the back of the iPad Pro as well. It uses a redesigned Smart Connector and provides two viewing angles.
More impressive is the new Apple Pencil, which now features a flat, touch-sensitive surface that you can double-tap to change drawing modes in many apps. That flat surface also makes it easy to attach to the edge of the iPad Pro magnetically so you won’t lose it and where it charges wirelessly. The easy-to-lose cap is gone, as is the Lightning connector, so the Apple Pencil is now shorter and more pencil-like—it won’t roll off the desk anymore. The new Apple Pencil is not backwardly compatible and the original Apple Pencil will not work on the new iPad Pros.
Price
How much will all this goodness cost? By the time all is said and done, you’ll be in MacBook Air range. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799 for a Wi-Fi-only model with 64 GB of storage. 256 GB runs $949, 512 GB is $1149, and 1 TB will set you back $1549. Add $150 if you want cellular connectivity in any of these configurations.
For the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, add $200, so $999 for 64 GB, $1149 for $256 GB, $1349 for 512 GB, and $1749 for 1 TB. Cellular puts another $150 on the tab. Both sizes of iPad are available in either silver or space gray.
The new Apple Pencil costs $129, and the Smart Keyboard Folio is either $179 for the 11-inch model or $199 for the 12.9-inch model.
Remember, you can still get a regular iPad for as little as $329 and the original Apple Pencil is only $99, so if all you want is an iPad, you don’t need to spring for an iPad Pro. But if you’re using an iPad Pro as your primary work device and are willing to pay for the power, these new models are compelling upgrades.
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Dear Friends,
We made the journey to Key West fun by taking 2-lane roads all the way to Florida. It took a bit more time but was a lot less stressful than days on I-95. The house was in good shape and we even had bananas and one sole lemon. Jezebel and Max remembered our place and fell quickly into the new routine.
There were some great announcements from Apple this week, and we will go into those in detail. The long awaited refresh to the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini highlighted the event with awesome new iPad Pros also debuting. The line between Mac and iPad is getting very blurry, and Tim even referred to the iPad as a computer. It is truly a computer and will be easier than ever to be your only device with the new USB-C interface.
I know it is a hackneyed line but next Tuesday is truly the most important election of our time. I remember the first time I was able to vote when that line was used and that was Goldwater vs. Johnson. Goldwater would seem to be a liberal compared to what we have now! Please go vote! Please take 5 friends with you, too!
We have decided to do something special for all of our customers, we are offering a one time discount to everyone. If you send us a picture of yourself or you and your dog, on November 6th, we will email you a coupon with a discount for your next order. Send the pictures to sales@smalldog.com and we will choose a few to share in the next issue of Kibbles & Bytes! This is our way of thanking all of our readers and customers for their support, without you, we would not still be here.
This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive features the configure-to-order 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. I have three brand new units in stock that have the 3.5GHz i7 Dual Core processor, 16gb of ram and a 1TB SSD storage. These are space gray and available on a first come first served basis. We are bundling them with AppleCare + so you get 3-years of warranty coverage, tech support and accidental damage coverage (with deductible). This week only you can buy this bundle for $200 off at $2468.99!
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This weekend my cousin and her Fiance are coming for a quick visit. They will be coming up from Boston to look at some potential wedding venues and they are going to show me how to properly cook in my Instant Pot. I got my Instant Pot two years ago, but honestly, I don’t know how to use it. Seeing as my cousin and her Fiance use theirs all the time I’ve asked them to finally show me how to use mine!
After my cooking lesson, I’ll work off a good meal with a Vermont tradition, wood stacking. Perhaps this isn’t an actual tradition, but the work needs to be done none the less. Our woodstove isn’t our primary heat system but we do enjoy the added warmth when the cold weather really sets in.
Thank you for reading,
Emily & Mike
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Remembering the Apple Pippin
This October marks seven years since Steve Jobs passed away leaving behind a legacy of innovation and development that has undeniably changed the world we live in and how we live in it. From its early days, Apple has almost always taken the unconventional approach to creating hardware and software, tackling obstacles from an uncommon angle and often finding newer, better, more streamlined ways of doing things. This has led to groundbreaking advances and a modest list of not-so-successful ideas that failed to hit the mark or were perhaps too far ahead of their time.
It’s with this in mind, that we discuss Apple’s little-known singular foray into the world of gaming consoles, the Pippin.
The iPhone and iPad have blossomed into powerful mobile gaming platforms in recent years, and even the often joked about desktop and laptop Macs have more than enough computing power to run most modern desktop games. The Pippin, though, despite the pretense of being its home computer and/or educational platform, was a video games console through and through.
The Pippin was an ugly duckling in the highly competitive market of the mid-1990s, and unlike other machines of the time such as the Panasonic 3DO, weren’t intended as a proprietary, single console like we associate devices such as the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. It was instead meant to be something that could be licensed out to many companies. Apple had designed the brains of the machines but would leave the manufacturing to other firms.
In terms of performance it did boast a few innovative features such as the fact that Mac computers of the era could play software designed for the Pippin since it shared much hardware with the Macintosh. With its educational usage in mind, rather than being solely an entertainment platform it had peripherals like a full keyboard, optional wireless controllers and even a printer.Wanting to get in on the lucrative console business, Japanese toymaker and anime publisher Bandai decided to be first to license the tech, and in February 1995 the first Apple Bandai Pippin consoles went on sale in Japan. The machine’s US launch would take place a few months later, in September. The Japanese-market Pippin ATMARK consoles were a rather classy white, while American-market Pippin @WORLD (pronounced At-World) consoles were black. In Europe, the Katz Media Player had a different but similar black design.
Bandai may have been the first company to release a Pippin, but aside from the tiny European release by Katz, there were to be no more. Unfortunately, the machine was a complete failure.
It never caught on for reasons which had nothing to do with failure to be a good idea. It had at it’s core a PowerPC 603 RISC CPU which could have rivalled the Sony PlayStation for it’s rendering power had it been it’s utilized.
First, it was too expensive. At launch, the retail price of $600 was an unprecedented price for the time. Secondly, it launched into a market already dominated by Nintendo and Sega, and unlike other high-end consoles with the same price point such as the Neo-Geo, it had almost no software or games available.
While with Bandai’s support around 70 titles would be released in Japan, including the extremely popular Gundam franchise, that wasn’t the case in the US market. Over the console’s short lifespan, we only saw 18 games ever hit shelves. And not a single one approached the “must have” status a console needs to attract new customers despite having early internet support, the infrastructure just wasn’t there.
All in all, the Pippin would sell less than 50,000 units in its two years on sale, it’s that less than 5000 units were sold to US consumers. Bandai would cease support for the console in 1997 when it abandoned its deal with Apple and tried to align itself with Sega instead with it’s Netlink internet peripheral for the Saturn, which also didn’t work out. Katz vowed to continue support for the console but they were ultimately getting their hardware from Bandai and couldn’t maintain support beyond it’s current inventory of a few thousand units.
It wasn’t until the Sony PlayStation line finally broke into the scene that Nintendo and Sega would be dethroned as the leaders of the console market, a distinction that they have shared only with Microsoft’s XBox line of gaming consoles.
The Pippin is one example of an excellent idea that just couldn’t find footing through no direct fault of its own. It lies in repose with other valiant but failed attempts at console gaming such as the Atari Jaguar, Philips CD-i, Sega Dreamcast, Memorex VIS, Pioneer Laseractive and Panasonic 3DO among others.
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Dear Friends,
This week we saw snow flurries just about every day, a sure sign winter is coming. The higher elevations have snow sticking to the mountain tops and the trails are turning white at Sugarbush. We have been taking advantage of the still somewhat mild weather around my house and working to get the horse barn ready for another winter. Our big fall project this week was fixing a water line issue, our barn hydrant failed part way through last winter. We had assumed it somehow froze but why June when water still wasn’t coming out we knew we had bigger problems. Thankfully, we have a second water hydrant so it was just an inconvenience for several months. I’m happy we have finally fixed the issue.
We are eagerly anticipating Apple’s announcement next week. Customers are always surprised to hear that we do not have any special intel when it comes to Apple product announcements. We have to do what everyone else does, guess. Added excitement to this event is a new location and time zone, we all want to know what Apple has to reveal.
This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive special is a Philips Hue bundle. Philips Hue is easy to set up and works with Home Kit and smart speakers. I have just installed this set up in my own house, it’s perfect for those with older homes and wants smart home conveniences without costly installs and wiring projects. This starter bundle can easily be set up within a few minutes and it’s as easy as switching out a few light bulbs. Give it a try, I’ve discounted this bundle and thrown in free shipping
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We are packing up and stuffing everything in the car for our trip to Key West. I convinced Grace that we really did not have to rush and spend the entire trip on I-95 so we will be doing some meandering as we head south. I am going to use my iPhone app that tells me where weird things are on my journey. I will never forget the trip to Hutto, Texas, and, with the help of the app, I went to see the hippo statues with Hapy and Jen Mayer. We had some extra time while attending an Apple conference and piled into my rental car to go see where this app was sending us. It turned out the town was hippo crazy.
I will be traveling most of next week. We are celebrating our 51st anniversary at Hapy’s house on Sunday and then jumping in the Jeep on Monday for the trip. Emily will be at the reins of Kibbles & Bytes next week.
Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!
Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
Don & Emily