Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • A First Look at Mojave

    I swore I was going to wait for the third developer beta to upgrade my Mac to Mohave but I could not resist. After carefully making sure I had back-ups, I downloaded Mohave. I have just started to play with it but I do want to caution you that, unlike me, you should NOT be playing with live ammunition. It is buggy and not yet ready for serious production work. It will get there but things like all the buttons in our accounting system have no labels, all my 32bit applications like 2011 MS Office, 4D and several others all bring up warnings that they will soon not work.

    I think you will find Mohave to be a big improvement in the Mac OS. There are many features that I am discovering that know I will be using regularly. Here’s just a sampling of the new features.

    Dark Mode

    After the installation Mohave defaulted to Dark Mode and while it was unique and different, it was not for me and I changed pretty quickly back to Light Mode. Dark Mode puts the focus on your work while toolbars, menus, and controls recede into the background. It’s integrated throughout macOS so it works with built-in apps—and third-party apps can adopt it too. The desktop picture even changes to match the time of day wherever you are. You can toggle between light and dark modes in the General System Preference.

    Screenshots

    You only have to remember one key command for your screenshots. Taking, annotating, sending, and saving screenshots is easier than ever. Just press Shift-Command-5 to bring up new onscreen controls, including video-recording tools.

    Stacks

    With Stacks, your Mac automatically arranges all the files scattered on your desktop into neat groups based on file type, date, or tag so you can get organized and easily find what you need. My desktop is usually a LOT messier than this example but I think you get the idea. You can toggle Stacks on or off at Finder->View->Use Stacks.

    Finder Enhancements

    You can now browse files at a glance with the large previews in Gallery View, view full file metadata, and perform Quick Actions like rotate or markup. This is very cool and I have just scratched the surface but the Finder window is much more powerful now. To markup pics for this article, I am able to do it now in Finder.

    Quicklook is part of the new Finder, too. Clicking on the Quicklook eye icon will allow you to mark up and sign PDFs, rotate and crop images, and even trim audio and video files right in Quick Look—without launching an app.

    Continuity Camera

    This another really handy enhancement in Mohave. With Continuity Camera you can open your iOS device’s camera from your Mac, then immediately transfer the photo you took over to a document that you’re working on. For example, if you are working on a Pages document, and you need a photo of your dog, you can activate Continuity Camera, take the photo with your iPhone, then immediately see that photo pop up in the document on your Mac. Magic, right? Here’s how you do it for a photo, using a scanner is the same:

    Open an editable document in an app like Pages or Keynote

    Control-click, right-click, or two-finger-click on a space within the document where you want your phone to be located

    Click Take Photo under the name of the iOS device you’ll use to take that photo

    Take the pup’s photo using your iPhone or iPad

    Tap Use Photo. Your photo will now appear in your document where you clicked.

    Group FaceTime

    With Group FaceTime, you can chat with up to 32 people simultaneously—more than ever before. New participants can be added at any time, and a call can include both audio and video callers. And users can join from any Apple device—iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. I haven’t given this a try yet but sounds pretty handy.

    News, Home, Voice Memos and Stocks

    iOS apps on the Mac! Oh no! I use all of these except Voice Memos daily on my iPhone or iPad. I especially like Apple News as it is a great way to catch up on what is important to me. Aside from the normal world and national news my news feed is full of Celtics and Cubs news.

    We use our iPhones and iPads to turn on and off our lights, adjust our thermostat and lock the doors. It has always been a bit weird that you couldn’t do that from the Mac – well, now you can and it works great!

    This is just the start of iOS apps that may find their way onto the Mac and I think that is a good thing.

    We will cover more of the new features in Mac OS 10.14 Mohave as we discover them! The public beta is out now but as I said it is not for the squeamish – some things may not work the way you want them to, some things will not work at all and even though you might like being a pioneer you might also regret heading down that path before all the bugs are squashed.

  • Dear Friends,

    It has been rainy and cool this week but apparently, there is a heat wave coming our way if you believe our weather rumor mongers, Emily and Art. Emily declared that a bunch of AC units on campers were going to freeze up and Artie trotted out his chat status “The days are getting shorter and I hope it snows soon…” It will be nice to have some warmer summer-like weather!

    Apple CEO, Tim Cook sat for Fortune interview this week and had some remarkable things to say about business, privacy and a number of topics. When he spoke about business’s role in society I believe he was square on the mark. Cook said that he doesn’t think businesses should deal only in commercial things. “Business to me is nothing more than a collection of people, and if people have values — and I argue we should — then by extension companies should have values.” Companies should speak out after evaluating whether or not a subject is a core value, says Cook.

    “Ask yourself — is it a core value of your company? […] If something happens that isn’t consistent with those, then I think you need to speak. Think about if you don’t — then you’re in the appalling silence of good people category and this is something I’ve never wanted to be a part of.

    Bravo, Tim! This is one of the many reasons we stick with Apple despite the headwinds that make it a challenge for an independent Apple reseller. Apple’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is important to us.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive features the high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. This unit has the 2.9GHz i7 processor, 16gb of ram, 256GB SSD drive and the 4GB video card. It is Space Gray. We have three units that have dented cartons with perfect contents. UPS’s failure is your gain – these units have 1-year Apple Warranty and this week we are bundling with AppleCare + so you get three years of warranty coverage, technical support and up to two incidents of accidental damage (after deductible). Normally with a pristine shipping box, these sell for $2499.99 or $2878.99 with AppleCare +. This week for Kibbles & Bytes readers only for these three units you can get this bundle for $300 off at $2579.99!

  • Is E-mail Taking Over

    E-mail is great, but sometimes there’s just too much of it at work. Ok, don’t jump to conclusions just yet about me, I know e-mail is critical for most of us to perform our jobs. However, it can get a bit overwhelming and, to be honest, annoying. Sharing information as a collective team frequently brings with it e-mail that just clogs your inbox. We all can probably say we have a friend or co-worker that overly uses the share all option or responds with unnecessary answers. To continue with my theme of honesty, this is why I Bcc ( blind carbon copy ) any company wide e-mails. I have found Bcc to be the only effective means of not cluttering up the in-boxes of others with excessive responses. It is unfair, however, to insinuate that a cluttered in-box is solely due to those who overshare. Marketing offers and other junk fills your inbox almost at breakneck speed. It seems we are being bombarded from every corner, and it sometimes seems to me that my e-mail loads feel like the pile of dirty laundry that seems to never end.

    Here at Small Dog, we rely heavily on e-mail for communication and the Apple chat program. Chat is a very effective means of quick communications with individuals, but it’s become more challenging to have group chats. Another downside to Chat is it’s perhaps overly easy to send a message in error to the wrong person. Most of the time there is humor in the wrong chat sent, but it’s also resulted in some red faces of embarrassment.

    Recently I learned of a group messaging service Slack, which is free but includes paid plans with additional features. Slack, which has apps for macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android, isn’t conceptually all that different from Apple’s Messages app. You type short messages and other people in the conversation can reply. You can share graphics or other files in the discussion, and search through past messages. Slack supports person-to-person voice calls, and if you switch from a free to a paid plan you can also use team, group calls, video conferencing, and screen sharing. One of the hiccups we’ve had here at Small Dog with Chat is that not everyone uses the same version of software or, in the case of trying to AirDrop a file, not being able to use personal iCloud accounts.

    An appealing feature of Slack is that it has channels that are easy to create. It can bring together all communications relevant to a particular workgroup, project, or topic. You might have a private #marketing channel for everyone in that department, a private #annual-report channel for the people who need to put together that document, or a public #facilities channel to talk about burnt-out lightbulbs and stuck doors. I feel this is a way better way than organization-wide mailing lists because you can pay attention to just those channels that matter to you, and ignore the others.

    You can also choose to be notified of replies to threads you’re in. Then you can override those defaults for any channel or conversation you’re in, which lets you make sure that important messages get through and water cooler chatter doesn’t interrupt you. Plus, if you leave your computer, Slack can repoint notifications to your mobile devices automatically, with separate settings to make sure you aren’t overly nagged while at your kid’s soccer game.

    Slack provides tons of other features that can prove useful in organizations of any size. You can share and comment on files of any type, which is far more effective than sending attachments around in email. You can create “posts” and get others to edit them collaboratively—a boon when trying to craft the perfect bit of text for some purpose. And you can integrate hundreds of Internet services into Slack so it can act as a single dashboard for many other apps.

    We have not deployed Slack here at Small Dog, time will tell if we do choose to make a switch. However, this find was an exciting one for me to come across so I wanted to share this software tip with our readers.

  • Hello, Tech Tails readers!

    I hope everybody had a solid run of weekends since our last issue. I have spent these last few weekends trekking around New England and New York for festivals, weddings, and various other summer activities and excursions. In the process, I’ve been having a blast getting some sweet photo’s on my iPhone 7 Plus of the summer sunshine decorating the various landscapes and ecosystems. This past weekend I spent a few days in the city of Syracuse, NY for a wedding. Instead of hopping on the interstate and doing a straight shot, my partner, Emily, and I decided to take “the road less travelled” and zip through windy mountain roads. And it did not disappoint. Having never been on the VT to NY ferry myself, we made the decision to embark over beautiful Lake Champlain to NY, (which promptly gave me a brief bout of sea-sickness. I’m a land-mammal, what can I say?). Once I got my sea-legs, I was able to grab some nice shots of the sun bouncing off the waves. It was worth it.

    We’ve got some great content for you readers this edition. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to any of us with some Apple-related tech questions. That’s why we’re here! If there’s a subject or topic you’d like to see from us, we’re always accepting suggestions!

    Enjoy,
    Connor “Mal De Mer” McGinnis
    connormcginnis@smalldog.com

  • Find My Friends

    Last week my oldest daughter went on a school trip to Boston, and, on the second day of the trip, I got a…

  • Grace and I are heading to Maine for the weekend to try out our new travel trailer. It will be our maiden voyage, and we’re hoping all goes well as we re-discover camping. We didn’t do much camping once we moved to Vermont as it seemed that no matter where we were living we were sorta camping all the time! But with Grace hanging up her motorcycle boots we decided to give it a try. I am looking forward to eating lobster and dipping my feet into the ocean once again.

    It has been fun setting up the camper – its got some nice features catering to my need to stay connected, like several USB ports sprinkled around the inside and outside to make sure all my devices stay charged. And, it actually has a 12-volt TV attached to the wall that I will be able to hook up an Apple TV for when we have “shore power”.

    I hope you have an awesome first summer weekend!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    Don & Emily

  • Trello Can Keep You Organized

    For several years now I have been using Trello to help coordinate, collaborate and stay organized between different staff members and departments. I have even used this for keeping things organized for personal tasks as well. What I love most about this application is that you can access it via your computer, iPad or iPhone and it’s free. You do get some added features if you pay for the upgraded service, which I have also used as well depending on the scope of my organizational needs.

    What sets Trello apart from so many other systems is that it takes a real-world approach to managing bits of information. Imagine a whiteboard, with columns drawn on it to indicate different stages of a process and sticky notes that represent tasks. You can write on the sticky notes and move them between columns on the whiteboard, so you can always see at a glance where things stand in the overall project. Trello translates that basic concept into the digital world, with “boards” that are like a whiteboard, “lists” that mimic the hand-drawn columns, and “cards” that are like sticky notes on steroids.

    You can have as many Trello boards as you like, and you can share each board with any number of people. Each board can have lots of lists, and each list can contain as many cards as you want. Don’t go nuts making too many lists or cards—just as with a physical whiteboard, that could make things just as overwhelming.

    Cards are where the magic happens. Each card has a title and an optional description, and its own comment thread for people to discuss the card’s topic. You can add checklists to a card, upload attachments, and even assign a due date. People can be connected to a card so they receive notifications of new comments or attachments via email and via iOS notifications. Labels help you categorize cards in ways beyond putting them in a list. And perhaps best of all, an Activity section tracks everything that anyone does on a card, so you always know what has happened. Additionally, you can specify who has access to each board.

    Imagine a Trello board for tracking job applicants through a hiring funnel. It could have a list for each part of the process, starting with receiving an application and going through each interview to the eventual decision. Each applicant would get a card containing their contact information, with the person’s resumé attached and checklists for mandatory questions. Labels might identify applicants for different jobs. After an interview, the interviewer would add a comment with notes about how it went, and move the card on to the next person. At all times, the hiring manager could see where any applicant was in the process and access all pertinent information.

    Many Trello boards end up being process-oriented, where each list maps to a particular part of a process, and users move cards from list to list as the process goes along. But that doesn’t have to be the case; for example, you could create a collaborative calendar where each list maps to a week, or you could build a board that tracks client leads with a list for each person in a sales group.

    In fact, the possibilities are endless. Whether you use Trello to track your family to do’s, your employees and their tasks or just helping to organize an event, I encourage you to give Trello a try.

  • Dear Friends,

    I got out on the golf course to play with some old (and I mean OLD ;)) friends this week. We were playing in an event for a great organization, the Central Vermont Home, Health and Hospice. I sank a 40-foot put on the first hole and that was the highlight of the day for me. It was a beautiful summer day in Vermont and we had a great time laughing and hitting a little ball.

    I promised myself that I would not upgrade to the new betas of the operating systems until the third beta was released, but when I got notice of the 2nd one, I was sorely tempted. Do you know what operating system you are running on your devices? This week we show you how to figure that out.

    Grace is planning our annual 4th of July party which we have been doing for like 40 years and she broke down and called it a tradition. But, hey, 40 years, that would be a tradition!

    This week’s”** Kibbles & Bytes exclusive is a gold MacBook 12-inch.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900003299/kibbles-bytes-exclusive-macbook-bundle? This CTO MacBook has the 1.3GHz m7 processor, 8GB of ram and a 512GB SSD drive. We are bundling it with AppleCare + this week. We have only two of these available so clearly first come first served! Regularly this bundle is $1898 but this week for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can get the configure-to-order gold MacBook with AppleCare+ for only $1589!