Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Five iPhone Accessibility Tips That Everyone Can Use

    Apple has built-in accessibility features in all of their products which make it possible for nearly everyone to enjoy and use Apple products. Whether you are disabled or not some of these features can be extremely useful in everyday life. Following are some great tips when using the iPhone. (Note: I made up these titles.)

    Flash Gordon

    Okay, you millennials won’t know who Flash Gordon was but he was a 1950s sci-fi character and TV show that was simply awesome! Which doesn’t really have much to do with this tip but I couldn’t resist conjuring up Flash. When I was in Tampa Bay one of the Apple folks who makes a lot of presentations was saying that she set her accessibility to LED Flash for Alerts so that her iPhone wasn’t constantly beeping and vibrating. This setting is in General—>Accessibility—>Hearing. There you can toggle the LED to flash for alerts and set to flash even if your mute switch is set to off.

    Sherlock Holmes

    Elementary… Need to take a closer look? Need reading glasses but you are too vain? Well, under Vision accessibility you can toggle Magnifier. Go to General —>Accessibility—>Vision and you can toggle Magnifier. It will also automatically adjust the brightness so it is easier to see. I use this when I have to read really small labels to get the serial number or other information. If you press on the image you are seeing you will be presented with toggles for zooming in and flash. This accessibility feature is easily accessed by triple-clicking the side button on your iPhone.

    Maxwell Smart

    Well, it is not quite the cone of silence, but if you are talking on your iPhone in a crowded location or on a busy street, the ambient noise can be distracting. Toggling Phone Noise Cancellation will reduce ambient noise when you are holding your iPhone up to your ear. You toggle this at General—>Accessibility—>Hearing. Please note that you cannot have MFI hearing active and Noise Cancellation at the same time so I can’t use this because I wear MFI hearing aids.

    Mr Magoo

    Zoom can be a handy feature even if you are not Mr Magoo. Basically, Zoom will magnify the entire screen and it also has a number of features you can toggle. You can activate it at any time by double-tapping with three fingers and then you navigate by moving those same three fingers around the screen. You can activate Smart Typing so that the Window is zoomed with the text but the keyboard is not. You can activate the Zoom Controller which gives you quick zoom features. There is also a slider that will allow you to control the amount of zooming you do.

    Ernestine

    Lily Tomlin made Ernestine the phone operator (millennials are asking, what is a phone operator?) famous. I’m old enough to remember party lines where you shared a line with a few neighbors. Well, your iPhone can also route your calls if you activate Call Audio Routing. If you are always sporting Apple AirPods you might want to set this to BlueTooth headset or automatic. You can set it to the speaker, too. There is also a toggle to Auto-Answer your calls. Ernestine would be jealous.

    James Bond

    This is not an accessibility tip but your bonus tip today is about security. Let’s just say you are in a foreign land (or the USA) and are being chased. You don’t want your pursuers to gain access to the plans for that rocket ship but if they catch you all they have to do is hold up your iPhone X to your face and boom! Your iPhone is unlocked. So, when you think the gig is up, quickly hold the side button and one of the volume keys to get to the Emergency SOS screen which will block Face ID and require that your passcode is entered before your iPhone is unlocked.

    Hope these little tips amused you and can also help you out,

  • Dear Friends,

    I took a quick trip up to Tech Data in Clearwater, FL for some meetings this week and it was good to meet some folks I have only talked with on the phone. The recount is underway here in Florida and I think we will be watching some Kibbles & Bytes reader’s pups while they volunteer to help with that. The lesson I get from the recounts and voter suppression issues in Georgia is if we want to protect our democracy we need to protect and enhance our right to vote that so many of our men and women fought to preserve. There should be no long lines, no taking all day to cast your vote, and it just should be so much easier. I say make election day a holiday, enhance voting by mail, or do whatever we can to encourage everyone to vote!

    Did you know that Apple is not alone in using renewable energy to power their facilities? Apple is at 100% and Small Dog lags there, but we do supply 100% of our Vermont operations from the solar farm in our backyard in Waitsfield. We measure our success at Small Dog Electronics with the triple but equal bottom lines of People, Planet and Profit.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the new Mac Mini. The Mac Mini finally got its long-awaited upgrade and this Mac, which resides in many server farms, slot machines and other places where size is important, is now an even more versatile powerhouse. This bundle includes the Mac Mini with a 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of ram and a 128GB SSD drive. We are bundling it with an Apple Apple Magic keyboard, Apple Magic mouse 2 and a V7 28-inch 4k display! We are also including AppleCare + for this Mac Mini! This bundle will give you a great desktop Mac at a very attractive price. It is normally $1550 for this bundle but this week for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can get this for $100 off at $1319.99!

  • I hardly ever eat seafood in Vermont because, well, there is no ocean within 150 miles. I am spoiled by Key West where the sea surrounds us and every restaurant offers freshly caught seafood. I was reading the paper this morning and I think I might go observe Key West’s version of the hot dog eating contest, the stone crab-eating contest. Did you know that stone crab claws actually grow back on the crabs that they are harvested from, making them a renewable food resource?

    The powerboats are in town this week so I might take a ride down to the waterfront to watch some races this weekend. Or maybe I will just go to the beach.

    I took some nice drone shots of the fall foliage before I left and I had a couple printed out by Shutterfly. They are now on the wall to remind us of beautiful Vermont. We are so lucky to live in two beautiful places.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    Don & Emily

  • Adding Another Face to Face ID

    If you have an iPhone X or one of the new iPad Pros you are getting familiar with Face ID. I have been using it with my iPhone X and love it. One of the biggest drawbacks is when I want Grace to use my phone while I am driving.

    Touch ID lets users register up to five fingers that can unlock an iPhone, which has long been a boon for those who share access to their iPhone with trusted family members. However, users of the iPhone X haven’t been able to give a second person Face ID-based access, forcing those people to wait for Face ID to fail and then tap in a passcode manually.

    iOS 12 lifts that limitation, allowing a second person to register their face with Face ID on the iPhone X and the new iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max. To set this up, go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode. Enter your passcode and tap Set Up an Alternate Appearance. Then give your iPhone to the person who should have access and have them follow the simple setup directions. This is also handy for those of you that wear disguises, you know, all you spies and clowns.

  • Apple Posts Record Profits, Stock Plummets

    Only Apple could post sales of $62,900,000,000.00 with a profit of $14,100,000,000.00, setting company records for the September quarter, and have their stock get hammered. This was up significantly from last year’s quarter and Apple even announced that they had shipped their two billionth iOS device. Gross margin was up and a strong dividend was declared. We will “do the numbers” but what happened to make the stock fall?

    First, was a comment in the briefing that Apple would no longer be reporting unit sales. That means they will report on revenues but are not going to tell us just how many iPhones they sold unless they want to. That seems fair – how many other consumer product companies report that kind of detail. It did upset the Wall Street insiders because now they won’t have as much information going forward.

    For this quarter Apple sold fewer iPhones that many expected but made more money on the iPhones that they did sell. Apparently that didn’t sit right with some. The other factor was what was considered “weak” guidance regarding Apple’s prediction for the next quarter. Apple said they expected to sell $89 billion to $93 billion worth of goods and services and maintain margins at around 38%. That represents a prediction of record revenue for the quarter! Not too shabby but not ridiculous enough for the analysts.

    While stock price is important for those that have invested in Apple, it does not truly represent the strength of a company. Apple slid to lose its standing as a $1 trillion company, but its prospects are , remarkable. The new MacBook Air, Mac Mini and, especially, the iPad Pros are beautiful advances in technology that puts Apple years ahead of their competitors. Their services revenue surpasses the GNP of small countries, and we know that the pipeline is full of new products.

    So, for the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $62.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $14.1 billion, or $2.91 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $52.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $10.7 billion, or $2.07 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue, profit, and EPS were all-time records for the September quarter.

    During the quarter, Apple sold 46.9 million iPhones, up a bit from 46.7 million a year ago. iPad sales fell to 9.7 million from 10.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, while Mac sales dipped a little to 5.3 million from 5.4 million but did set a quarterly record for Mac revenue. Apple reported $10 billion in services revenue, too!

    For the full fiscal year (Apple’s year ends on September 30), Apple generated $265.6 billion in sales with $59.5 billion in net income, up from $229.2 billion in sales and $48.4 billion in net income for fiscal 2017. Both of those figures are all-time company records.

    During the conference call with analysts, Apple talked about their environmental commitment. With 100% of their power being generated by renewable resources and now with the new Macs being 100% recyclable and using recycled aluminium, there is clear evidence of Apple’s deep commitment to the environment.

    Apple announced a $0.73 dividend and revealed that they had returned over $90 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buy-backs during the year.

    I believe Apple will prevail over the naysayers producing quality innovative products and continued world-class management. Congratulations to Apple for amazing financial results!

  • Dear Friends,

    The mid-terms are over! I believe the mixed results are encouraging. The most representative part of our democracy is now more diverse than ever with more women, more people of color, more gay people, more native Americans, and more Muslims. This is very encouraging. While there were some big disappointments with Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Gillum, there were many encouraging signs. Here in my congressional district, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell flipped a seat and back in Vermont, Bernie got another term and their legislature now has a Democratic supermajority. Clearly, more work to do but definite steps in the right direction.

    We have started to get the new Mac Minis, MacBook Airs and new iPad Pros into the stores and now that we have them unboxed and on display, I can say that they are simply fantastic! Now I really want to upgrade my iPad Pro and will do so once our backorders are filled.

    I would like to virtually introduce our new Director of Corporate Sales, Alicia Prince. She has tons of experience in the Apple world and is tasked with building our B2B business. If you know of opportunities in the corporate world, I am sure Alicia would love to hear from you.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive features two special buys on a Mac Pro. Both of these units are configure-to-order units and have Apple warranty. One is a brand new unit with a rough shipping box but perfect contents. It has the Intel 2.7GHz 12-core processor, 64GB of ram, 1TB SSD storage and the D700 video. This high-end Mac Pro normally sells for $6999.99 but one lucky Kibbles & Bytes reader can have this amazing Mac Pro for $2000 off at $4999.99!

    The other Mac Pro is a demo that is covered by AppleCare until 9/26/2020. It is also a high-end configuration with the 3.0 GHz E5 8-core processor, 64GB of ram, a 1TB SSD storage and the D700 with 64GB of video ram. This one sells for around $6000 with AppleCare but this week you can buy this demo for only $4499.99!