Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Apple news, tech tips, and more…

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  • Apple Demolishes the Street

    Tim Cook has said time and again that analysts should not look at “supply chain” reports to predict how Apple is doing. Over the past few weeks there were quite a few of those same analysts that didn’t listen, claiming that Apple’s sales were slow, that the iPhone X was not a success, that guidance for the next quarter was based upon supply chain checks.

    Ooops, wrong again! Apple stock rebounded from the erroneous reports that had some folks selling their Apple stock and it has rebounded with Apple well on its way to becoming the first trillion dollar company. Apple services business alone, which has tripled over the past 5 years, is now at around $35 billion. I remember well, when we started Small Dog Electronics, an Apple exec boasting that Apple would soon become a $5 billion company.

    Think about services revenue for a minute at $35 billion. FaceBook has revenues of about $40 billion, Netflix had revenues of $12 billion and database giant SAP had revenues of $28 billion. These companies have market caps of between $150 and $500 billion so we can assume that if Apple wanted to just spin off their services business (who spins off a double digit growth sector?) it would be about a $200 billion company. Simply amazing.

    In the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $61.1 billion and a net profit of $13.8 billion or $2.37 per share. This compares pretty darn well with last year’s $52.9 billion in revenue and $11 billion in profit. All three numbers, revenue, net profit and profit per share, were records for the 2nd quarter for the company.

    Apple is re-patriating a lot of its overseas cash and their board of directors cranked up the dividend by $0.10 per share to $0.73 per share. Apple is one of the largest dividend payers in the world. They also announced a new $100 billion share re-purchase program so they can buy their own stock back the next time the analysts try to beat down the stock.

    Apple sold 52.2 million iPhones this past quarter, compared to 50.8 million in the same quarter last year. iPad sales were up, too, at 9.1 million units. Mac sales slid a bit from 4.2 to 4.1 million units. Tim Cook said:

    “We’re thrilled to report our best March quarter ever, with strong revenue growth in iPhone, Services and Wearables,” said Apple’s CEO. “Customers chose iPhone X more than any other iPhone each week in the March quarter, just as they did following its launch in the December quarter. We also grew revenue in all of our geographic segments, with over 20% growth in greater China and Japan.”

    Tim also mentioned that Apple’s wearable business, which includes Apple Watch, AirPods and Beats, was up almost 50 percent and was now the size of a “Fortune 300” company.

    Apple remains “the iPhone company” with 62% of its revenue coming from iPhone, but the growth in the services and wearables sectors, as well as continued leadership in the tablet market, should be evidence that Apple is not a one-horse show!

    Congratulations to everyone at Apple for an amazingly successful quarter and another chapter in the greatest ongoing American business story ever told.

  • How Does My Apple Watch Know My Heartrate?

    In this day and age, it’s easy to become blasé about technology. Understanding why a common device works has become less and less important as our gadgets become integrated into our lives and are more reliable than ever but occasionally my curiosity just gets the best of me.

    I remember when I was younger going to visit people in the hospital and seeing the little white plastic clothespin-like thing clamped to a finger with a glowing red light emanating from it that fed heart rate data to the machine that went blip-blip-blip with each beat of the heart.

    Fast-forward a few years and now I wear that same technology on my wrist under my Apple Watch. Some sort of sensor sits against my skin and does the same thing. But how does it actually work?

    Short answer, long word: they use photoplethysmography, a method of detection which measures differences in light absorption.

    The bottom of those watches have a mixture of infrared and green LEDs and light-sensitive diodes that pulse back and forth hundreds of times per second and measure how much light is absorbed or reflected.

    Most of the time in order to sense your heartbeat the IR LEDs, which are just on the edge of our visual spectrum, are activated. If they aren’t doing the trick because of sweat or other interference the green LEDs are activated. Why green? On the color spectrum, green is the exact opposite of red and therefore is a more efficient color to use to detect the presence of blood in your veins.

    When blood is in your wrist after a heartbeat, it absorbs the light and signals to the watch that a heartbeat is occurring. In between beats, there is less light absorbed due to the absence of blood.

    That’s why it’s important that your watch fits snugly to your wrist and is unobstructed.

    How accurate is this method? A 2017 study showed that the displayed result was within 5 BPM of an ECG reading 95% of the time so reliable enough to track your activity and workout effectiveness for sure.

  • 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) Battery Replacement Program

    As many folks out there are aware, Apple has instated a battery replacement program for the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro models manufactured between October 2016 and October 2017. While this may be alarming news to some, Apple has determined this is not a safety issue, rather there is a potential for internal component failure which may lead to battery expansion. If you believe your MacBook Pro falls inside these manufactured dates, we urge you to visit the Apple support page and enter the serial number of the device in order to determine the year, model and eligibility of the device. Of course, you can always give Small Dog tech support a call and we can also check the eligibility of your device.

    Once you have determined eligibility for your device, we recommend bringing it into one of our service locations to begin the battery replacement process. Please be advised, these repairs require 3-5 business days to perform, but once it has been completed you will have a brand new battery. If you previously had your battery replaced for this model, you can contact Apple regarding a refund.

    As always, we recommend performing a backup before bringing your device in for service and repairs, but we are happy to perform a backup for you for a nominal service fee as well!

  • Hello, Tech Tails readers!

    After several teases, it appears as though spring is finally upon us in Vermont. I’m personally looking forward to many hikes underneath the sun with some four-legged friends this season. Last year I purchased a GoPro Hero 5 from our South Burlington store and didn’t get much use out of it outside of capturing some of my live performances. However, this year I plan to invest in the “Fetch” dog harness made by the clever folks at GoPro and get some great footage of various hikes and adventures with my yellow lab, Bruin.

    As many of you may have heard, last week Apple released a statement regarding a battery replacement program for the 2016 & 2017 13” (non-Touch Bar) MacBook Pro models. If you believe you have a device of this model, we’d urge you to go to check your coverage and enter your device’s serial number on the Apple support page. Alternatively, you can always call Small Dog tech support to help find this information. But more on that later.

    We have some solid content for you in this issue of Tech Tails. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or feedback you may have.

    Enjoy!
    Connor “not complaining about snow anymore” McGinnis
    Connor@smalldog.com

  • The local power company is holding their annual shade tree giveaway on Saturday. The Keys lost a lot of vegetation and some areas up around Big Pine were so devastated that firefighters were fighting a huge brush fire this past week. Grace and I have done a lot of planting this year but I think we will go get our allocated two baby trees and figure out a place for them.

    We are thinking about the trip to Vermont but I keep looking at my cameras at my house on Prickly and keep seeing this white stuff on the ground so I guess I shouldn’t rush!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    Don & Mike

  • How Does My Apple Watch Know My Heartrate?

    In this day and age, it’s easy to become blasé about technology. Understanding why a common device works has become less and less important as our gadgets become integrated into our lives and are more reliable than ever but occasionally my curiosity just gets the best of me.

    I remember from when I was younger going to visit people in the hospital and seeing the little white plastic clothespin-like thing clamped to a finger with a glowing red light emanating from it that fed heart rate data to the machine that went blip-blip-blip with each beat of the heart.

    Fast-forward a few years and now I wear that same technology on my wrist under my Apple Watch. Some sort of sensor sits against my skin and does the same thing. But how does it actually work?

    Short answer, long word: they use photoplethysmography, a method of detection which measures differences in light absorption.

    The bottom of those watches have a mixture of infrared and green LEDs and light-sensitive diodes that pulse back and forth hundreds of times per second and measure how much light is absorbed or reflected.

    Most of the time in order to sense your heartbeat the IR LEDs, which are just on the edge of our visual spectrum, are activated. If they aren’t doing the trick because of sweat or other interference the green LEDs are activated. Why green? On the color spectrum, green is the exact opposite of red and therefore is a more efficient color to use to detect the presence of blood in your veins.

    When blood is in your wrist after a heartbeat, it absorbs the light and signals to the watch that a heartbeat is occurring. In between beats, there is less light absorbed due to the absence of blood.

    That’s why it’s important that your watch fits snugly to your wrist and is unobstructed.

    How accurate is this method? A 2017 study showed that the displayed result was within 5 BPM of an ECG reading 95% of the time so reliable enough to track your activity and workout effectiveness for sure.

  • Speed Up Those Apple Watch Updates

    I run Apple beta software on my Apple Watch so I probably update the software a bit more often than most Apple Watch users. But I know you Apple Watch users will agree with me that the Apple Watch updates are painfully slow. As long as I am complaining, I don’t know why Apple requires a charged Apple Watch to be on the charger in order to complete the update. It probably is because that 12-hour charge on your Apple Watch might not be enough to cover the slow update.

    I can’t do much about the charger part but I can help show you how to speed up the updates. Your Apple Watch communicates with your iPhone via both BlueTooth and Wi-Fi. The Apple Watch prioritizes BlueTooth over Wi-Fi to preserve power. BlueTooth uses less power but it also is a lot slower transferring data than Wi-Fi in almost every case.

    If you disable BlueTooth at just the right moment you can force the Apple Watch to use Wi-Fi to do your upgrade. Believe me, it is a LOT faster. Unlike most Apple devices your Apple Watch does not download its own upgrades. You have to think about your Apple Watch as an extension of your iPhone, even if you have the cellular version.

    Let’s say you get a notice on your Apple Watch of an update, and you also see that notice on the iPhone. When you go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone you can download the Watch update to your iPhone and it will then update your paired Apple Watch. This is not a tiny file and sending it over BlueTooth to your Apple Watch just takes a really long time. I am sure you have watched that update circle move like maple sap in the dead of winter.

    You can speed up this process by utilizing Wi-Fi instead of BlueTooth, but to do this, you will have to turn off BlueTooth at the right moment in the process. Here’s the steps to faster updates for your Apple Watch:

    1. Make sure that your Apple Watch is on its charger and charged to at least 50%. Your iPhone should be close to the Apple Watch. We are assuming from the start that both BlueTooth and Wi-Fi are active on your iPhone and your Apple Watch
    2. Open the Watch app on your iPhone and click on the My Watch tab
    3. Tap on General and then Software Update. If there is an update available you will see the version number, some notes about the new release and a Download and Install button
    4. Pushing on that button may trigger a request for your passcode, go ahead and enter that
    5. As the Watch app prepares to send the update to your Apple Watch you will see a message with “Estimated time remaining” just under the version number
    6. When the rough estimate of time remaining shows (i.e. “about 2 hours remaining”) and not before, it is time to switch to Wi-Fi by temporarily disabling BlueTooth. The timing is important here – don’t disable BlueTooth before you see the estimated time remaining alert.
    7. Open Settings*on your iPhone and choose *BlueTooth from the list
    8. Slide the toggle switch to Off. This shuts off BlueTooth on your iPhone. That means all your BlueTooth devices aren’t going to work while you do this upgrade but it isn’t that long.

    9. Go back to the Software Update screen on the Watch App on your iPhone and you will see a warning to turn BlueTooth back on. Click Cancel to continue. Without BlueTooth your iPhone and Watch will now communicate with the faster Wi-Fi protocol.
    10. Now watch that circle close up! You should see the estimated time decline dramatically. Once, the download has completed – meaning the iPhone has sent it to the Watch you will see the “Estimated Time…” change to “Preparing…”
    11. You will then see it say “Verifying…” and then you will have an active “Install” button. Tap the install button and enter your passcode if requested.
    12. Once the progress wheel appears on your Apple Watch your iPhone is no longer needed. Go back to Settings on your iPhone and slide the BlueTooth toggle back to on.

    This work-around is actually pretty easy, the main thing to remember is to turn off BlueTooth on your iPhone at the right time (just after the estimated time appears) and then to remember to turn it back on.