Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Twelve South BookBook for iPhone

    “**Twelve South**”:http://www.smalldog.com/mfg/?MfrName=twelve%20south has always made interesting and creative products that catch your eye and are innovative. Their newest product has certainly lived up to the Twelve South standard. The BookBook Case for iPhone is one of the best cases I have ever owned. 

    The BookBook for “**iPhone**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/78820/twelve-south-bookbook-for-iphone-4/at_bis also incorporates a wallet into the case as well. Not only does this case hold your iPhone, but it also holds your ID, two credit cards and a small amount of cash. It’s not really large enough to replace an entire wallet, but it is great for a night out on the town or a lifesaver for those times when you forget your wallet. 

    The BookBook is made of genuine leather with a great distressed look. The book style of the case makes texting a little bit easier because the surface allows for better grip. It has also made reading books in apps like iBook easier. The leather surrounding gives the phone protection from dropping and scratching when the cover is shut. 

    As with any case, it does have a few drawbacks but nothing that really prevents it from being an amazing case. One drawback is that, in order to keep the look of a book, there is no back hole for the rear camera.

    To take a picture you need to actually push the phone from the bottom out of the case to reveal the camera. This makes taking quick pics a pain but something you can get used to. There is also a little bulk added to the phone, but heck, your back pocket thanks you because it’s also a wallet.

  • Updated Time Capsule

    I picked up a “**2TB Time Capsule**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/78529/apple-time-capsule-2tb-dualband-summer-2011/at_bis to replace my aging wireless backup solution. It works as advertised: fast wireless, better performance with mixed 802.11n and a/b/g devices connected simultaneously, gigabit ethernet, and USB expansion for a printer, extra hard drive, etc. with the use of a hub.

    A huge part of the value of this device is its extremely simple administration using AirPort Utility, which is already installed in your Mac’s Utilities folder. Another nice touch is automatic notification of firmware updates.

    Some say the price is too high for what it does, but I’m more than willing to pay for its simple “it just works” Apple-ness and its durable server-grade hard drive… not to mention that it’s covered by my AppleCare in case anything goes wrong.

  • MAC TREAT #163: Customized Shortcuts

    A couple of issues ago, I included our list of top OS X keyboard shortcuts. If you’d like to add to that list, then take advantage of the fact that you can create your own.

    Go to *System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts* and you’ll see a list of shortcuts that you can customize. In Lion, the full list includes Launchpad and Mission Control options in addition to Dock, Screen Shot, Input, Services, Universal Access, Spotlight and Application Shortcuts.

    You don’t have to be a slave to the shortcuts that are pre-programmed; create your own!

  • *Greetings from Manchester, NH!*

    Contrary to the “**intent of Hurricane Irene,**”:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9e82jvJW9PU/TlZ6m17_lJI/AAAAAAAABmY/ydyOoCexZ0c/s1600/hurricane%2Birene.jpg we ARE staying (mostly) afloat! The Manchester store made it through without a scratch, but Vermont, as many of you know, took more of a hit.

    Between flooding, mud, broken bridges and closed roads, we’ve been short-staffed but operational nonetheless! If you want to contribute to aid and relief, here are two great organizations to check out:

    * “**The American Red Cross**”:http://www.redcrossvtnhuv.org/general.asp?SN=8084&OP=8085&SUOP=16069&IDCapitulo=44W8UXGL8L of Vermont and the New Hampshire Valley
    * Text **FOODNOW to 52000** to donate $10 to “**Vermont Foodbank**”:http://www.vtfoodbank.org/

    It’s not too late for back-to-school savings! Purchase AppleCare with any new Mac and receive a 4th year of labor coverage, one free year of “**Top Dog Plus**”:http://www.smalldog.com/topdogplus membership and a $50 gift card for the store! This is a valuable savings that will be sure to help you through your education!

    It’s that time of year again! Don’t let your old and broken electronics collect dust in your basement or attic. In 2007, we initiated a free ewaste recycling day in honor of Earth Day on April 22. We recycled over 55 tons of waste in one day in the event’s inaugural year!

    In 2008 and 2009, our events brought in over 130 tons over the span of 5 hours. Our 2010 events in South Burlington, VT and Manchester, NH brought in over 100 tons from 1,800 carloads! Join us for our upcoming eWaste events to make them the best yet!

    “**2011 Fall eWaste Events**”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewaste
    September 24th 9:00am-2:00pm: Ben & Jerry’s on Community Ave
    October 8th 9:00am-2:00pm: Manchester, NH in the Mall of NH Food Court parking lot

    – Steve and the Manchester Retail Team
    “**steve@smalldog.com**”:mailto:steve@smalldog.com

  • _Dear Friends_

    It’s Jan filling in for Don in the next couple of issues of Kibbles & Bytes as he and Grace take a well-deserved break. It will be difficult to live up to his editorial standard, but I will do my best!

    The Mad River Valley was hit hard by tropical storm Irene. Waitsfield, our home base, saw homes and businesses flooded and ruined beyond repair. My 16-year-old son volunteered with the Waitsfield Fire Department on Sunday during the height of the storm, and when he returned home, he relayed story after story of devastation and dramatic scenes. Huge propane tanks and hay bales floated down the rushing Mad River while firefighters, police and volunteers watched helplessly, unable to stop the river’s fury. Landmarks throughout the valley have been damaged or destroyed, and countless numbers of families have suffered tremendous losses to their homes, businesses and farms.

    Our beloved covered bridge in the heart of Waitsfield held firm for the most part, but surrounding homes and businesses were lifted off their foundations by the flood waters. Here at Small Dog, the water came within six inches of our doors before beginning to recede. We were very, very lucky since the Mad River runs directly behind us and could have brought devastation to our doors as well.

    Numerous Small Dog employees helped the community on Monday by pushing water and mud and helping others recover their belongings. We’ve donated computers to local towns to help with disaster recovery and have posted links on our Facebook page to local and national organizations that are directly involved in the efforts here in the Valley. If you would like to make a donation, here are two organizations providing flood relief in Vermont:

    “*The American Red Cross of Vermont and the New Hampshire Valley online*”:http://www.redcrossvtnhuv.org/general.asp?SN=8084&OP=8085&SUOP=16069&IDCapitulo=44W8UXGL8L

    Text FOODNOW to 52000 to donate $10 to “*Vermont Foodbank*”:http://www.vtfoodbank.org/

    In our next issue, I hope to report that the Mad River Valley is well on its way to recovery and displaced families are back in their homes.

  • Why No Bump?

    When I got my iPhone, one of the first apps that I found was Bump. For those of you not aware of what…

  • iPod Troubleshooting

    While many of us have switched from iPod to iPhone, or even given up either for iPad, it certainly seems that most of…

  • Tip of the Week: iPod Troubleshooting

    While many of us have switched from iPod to iPhone, or even given up either for iPad, it certainly seems that most of us still have working iPods. Every iPod’s day comes eventually, but in a wide variety of cases, it is possible to revive a seemingly dead iPod with one of five simple steps.

    Apple calls them the “*Five Rs*.”:http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/

    Hard drive-based iPods like “*iPod Classic*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple/iPod_classic/ have a telltale failure that’s easily diagnosed by simply pressing your ear to the back of the iPod. If you hear clicking or grinding that repeats at regular intervals, odds are the hard drive inside the iPod has failed.

    While only a tiny percentage of these devices actually fail in their first years of existence, some do. Because hard drives are like record players, it’s not surprising that shaking an iPod over the course of a year will cause hard drive failure.

    The Five Rs mentioned above will not fix a broken hard drive, nor a cracked screen, nor dents on the corner of your iPod. But you have nothing to lose by trying the troubleshooting steps when your iPod isn’t working properly.

  • Repair of the Week: First-Generation Mac Pro

    The Mac Pro has always been a beast of a computer, and even the first-generation examples remain so. Their reliability is second to none amongst the Apple product line, but with some approaching three years old, we are beginning to see more failures. This week’s repair is on an 8-core 3.0 GHz unit outfitted with a Fibre Channel card normally connected to an Xserve RAID, 16GB of RAM, a super high-end Kona video card and four 2TB hard drives set up in RAID 5.

    Needless to say, this is a computer our customer desperately needed back up and running as quickly as possible.

    Because he bought AppleCare and the computer from Small Dog, he enjoyed a free loaner computer during the repair. But because we need the entire machine–fibre channel card, RAM and all the hard drives–to properly diagnose, he had to make do with a more-or-less stock Mac Pro.

    The Mac Pro came in for random kernel panics during Time Machine backups of the startup partition to a FireWire 800 LaCie external drive. The first step was to swap the the RAM with known-good chips, and the kernel panics persisted. We then booted the computer from an external drive with a known-good operating system, and the kernel panics persisted. Then, we unplugged the internal drives and booted the machine again off the external drive. No luck.

    Component isolation is where you strip a computer down to its minimal configuration, unplug every nonessential component and then plug them back in one by one until the problem reappears. When it does, you can be fairly certain the component just reinstalled is the culprit. In its minimal state and not showing symptoms, we plugged the optical drives in one by one with no luck. It can only be called good luck that the second component swapped in, the Bluetooth card, brought the kernel panics back. Swapping in a good one fixed the problem.

    This was an easy one, but some of the harder Mac Pro diagnoses can take a very long time and are often a combination of software and hardware. More common failures are of hard drives, processors, logic boards, RAM and RAM riser cards. Logic boards and processors are very expensive, so this customer was very lucky!

  • From the Archives: Magnify on the Fly

    One of the things that makes the Mac OS intuitive is Apple’s use of universal symbols. Apple also extends these symbols to most of their software titles, creating a cohesive environment. The most common examples are Apple’s use of the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ symbols for adding and deleting, the magnifying glass icon for searching and the gear icon for changes or additional options.

    While the use of these universal symbols adds to the usability of the OS, they are sometimes overlooked. The symbol that I find is most commonly overlooked is the magnification slider found in Finder and iPhoto. Just yesterday a customer emailed support with a screenshot of iPhoto. It appeared that he was looking at single large image, and he was writing because he couldn’t get himself into “thumbnail view” despite having clicked on ‘Photos.’

    I immediately looked at the lower right of the screenshot and saw that his magnification slider was slid all the way to the right, which is the highest magnification. He __was__ in thumbnail view; his thumbnails had just been blown up to the full window size. By dragging the slider back towards the left, he was able to view the pictures in a more traditional thumbnail size.

    This slider can come in pretty handy, though! Not only is it nice to temporarily blow thumbnails up to a more viewable size, or scale them down to a mini-size if you have a ton of photos and want to scroll through them quickly, you can also easily use the magnification slider in Finder when viewing a Finder window in icon view.

    Try it out! Open a new Finder window by clicking on the smiling blue Mac face in your dock (or, if you love menus, you can go to the Finder and to *File > New Finder Window*). Now navigate to a folder with many documents or pictures in it; it’s much more fun with pictures! Get yourself into icon view by selecting the icon that looks like four squares on the top left of the Finder window. You should now see the slider on the bottom right; you can play around by dragging the slider to the left and right and watch your icons grow and shrink.

    Being able to resize photos and documents on the fly makes it even easier to find the item you want quickly. If you’re rocking Leopard or Snow Leopard, check out the Quick Look feature (select a document or picture in Finder and press the space bar), which helps fine-tune the process even further. Play around with it and have fun!

  • Happy Tuesday,

    We’re recovering from the epic rains and flooding from Irene. I spent yesterday shoveling muck from neighbors’ houses and generally cleaning up in Moretown Village, which was under as much as eight feet of water Sunday night. The entire state took a big hit, and just as expected, communities are coming together to clean and rebuild.

    The scene Sunday night was just incredible. Down by the Mad River, propane tanks hissed loudly as they barreled downstream and the smell of gas was overwhelming. One homeowner used his canoe to rescue a motorist who foolishly tried to drive through rushing water. Paddling back to shore, he watched his porch separate from his home and violently snap apart as it went with the current.

    The last flood of this magnitude was in 1927. Here’s hoping it’s at least another 84 years until the next one.

    As always, thanks for reading, and keep in touch.

    Matt
    “matt@smalldog.com”:mailto:matt@smalldog.com