Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Tune in to iTunes U

    Headed to college this fall? If so, I recommend finding out if your school is on “*iTunes U*,”:http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ a virtual education library in iTunes to which many colleges and universities worldwide contribute. Through your school you may be able to access a wide variety of lectures, videos, films, podcasts and other educational resources on your computer, iPhone, iPad or iPod. These can be extremely valuable when researching topics for your various classes. iTunes U also supports PDF and ePub file formats, so you may find that some of your professors choose to distribute syllabi and other course materials in iTunes U.

    Even if you’re not college bound, or if your school is not currently making content available, iTunes U is a fun and informative resource that covers a broad spectrum of topics. Many schools—such as Harvard, Cambridge and The University of Chicago—have chosen to open their content to the public. Today while eating lunch, I downloaded and listened to a lecture given by one of my favorite authors at Princeton in 2008. I greatly enjoy traveling through time and space via iTunes U to experience talks I would otherwise miss out on.

    Designed for formal students and life-long learners, iTunes U is an amazing trove of information containing something for everyone. iTunes U is not just limited to institutions of higher education; it also features a Beyond Campus section filled with content from museums, libraries, PRI and PBS. Like all Apple products, iTunes U contains accessibility features for users with disabilities, such as working with VoiceOver on the Mac. I encourage everyone to explore iTunes U and learn something new!

  • MAC TREAT #161: Shortcuts. I'm Talkin' Shortcuts.

    Since they are by far our most popular request, I wanted to run down the basic keyboard shortcuts that are essential for students as well as beneficial for __any__ user. Can you believe that the last time we featured these it was in the “*plain text Kibbles archives?!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/kibbles/

    *Create a new folder:* Command-Shift-N
    *Open a new Finder window:* Command-N
    *Switch Application:* Command-Tab
    *Find:* Command-F
    *Select All:* Command-A
    *Copy:* Command-C
    *Cut:* Command-X
    *Paste:* Command-V
    *Duplicate:* Command-D
    *Undo:* Command-Z
    *Save:* Command-S
    *Save As:* Shift-Command-S
    *Print:* Command-P
    *Close window:* Command-W
    *Close all windows:* Option-Command-W
    *Show or Hide Dock:* Option-Command-D
    *Hide Applications:* Command-H
    *Empty Trash (without warning):* Shift-Command-Delete-Option
    *Empty Trash (with warning):* Shift-Command-Delete
    *Move an item to the Trash:* Command-Delete
    *Force Quit:* Option-Command-Escape
    *Eject Disk:* Command-E
    *Sleep:* Option-Command-Eject
    *Quit all programs and restart:* Control-Command-Eject
    *Take a picture of a selection:* Command-Shift-4 (*essential shortcut–it’s far and away my favorite)
    *Copy an item being dragged:* Option-drag
    *Move an item to new location without copying:* Command-Drag
    *Select multiple files that aren’t next to each other:* Command-click
    *Select multiple files in a row:* Shift-click

    Love these but want to view them all the time? Print this list or “grab our sweet mousepad”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76977/small-dog-mouse-pad-keyboard-shortcuts/at_kb for only $4.99!

    __Note that these shortcuts are universal for OS 10.4 and higher. We will be adding Lion-specific keyboard shortcuts in future issues.__

  • Mac to School 2011

    Are you heading back to school? Know someone who is? Once again, it’s the time of year where kids (and adults alike) are hitting the books and we want you to be prepared.

    Our dedicated “*Mac to School*”:http://www.smalldog.com/mactoschool shopping page features what you need to head to the classroom, including our exclusive Mac + AppleCare bundle. *Buy any new Mac with AppleCare, and you’ll receive a $50 Small Dog gift card!* (If you’re local to the Vermont/New Hampshire area, be sure to contact us about some in-store benefits as well!)

    And while these offers are geared toward the needs of students, anyone can purchase them. Except for a few Adobe academic titles, there are no requirements to be affiliated with any school or university.

    Check out the special offers at “*Smalldog.com/mactoschool!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/mactoschool

  • _Dear Friends,_

    Grace and I have been poring over maps and guidebooks as we plan our upcoming vacation to Italy and France. You may remember that Grace gave me an awesome trip to Africa for my 60th birthday; well, I had to come up with something to rival that.

    So, at the end of the month we will fly to Milan, pick up a couple of rented BMW motorcycles and tour around the Italian Alps and Dolomites for a week and then head to Annecy, France, where my friend and Small Dog advisor, Geoff Blanck, has allowed me to stay in his family’s house while we tour the French Alps for a week. We know we cannot do everything we want in the short time we will be there, but I have this sneaking suspicion we are going to have some great motorcycling!

    The MacBook Air is currently one of the hottest-selling Apple products. So much so, that the 13-inch model has gone on constrained supply. We were fortunate to snag a bunch before they became rare, so if you are looking for one of these sleek new speedsters, please give us a shout. We will have stock of the 1.7GHz i5 with 4GB of RAM and 256GB solid-state drive arriving on Monday or Tuesday.

    Apple surpassed Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable company in the world as measured by market capitalization (outstanding shares times share price)–simply an amazing accomplishment for a company who had obituaries written about it. Remember back when it was Microsoft that had “won”? Sure, Exxon is bigger in terms of sales, profits and number of employees, but Apple is the biggest in the world in sheer value as measured by investors.

    The paradigm has really shifted in Apple’s favor as the iPod, iPad, iPhone and Mac are now seen as the standard for digital devices and making major inroads to all four major markets: Education, Government, Enterprise and Consumer.

  • Go to Hood, Get an iPad

    So, I’m indulging a bit here, but I felt compelled to report that a college from my hometown has decided to give incoming…

  • AT&T Networks Down Across New England

    As I experienced firsthand this morning, AT&T is reporting a “massive outage” of their 3G and 4G networks in New England. Customers in…

  • Making Launchpad "Better"

    I have been a long-time lover of organizing my apps by folder and putting them in my dock to access them more quickly….

  • A Stellar iPad Case

    A great device deserves a great case, and lately I’ve been outfitting my first-generation iPad in the black Booq Taipan Spacesuit for iPad….

  • Properly Protect Your MagSafe Adapter

    One of the most common things we see in our shop is MagSafe power adapters with damaged wire insulation and/or fraying where the thin cord meets either the power brick or the actual MagSafe tip. While many consider this the result of a design flaw (coupled with the fact that Apple __does__ offer free replacement in some situations), the simple fact is that these conditions are completely avoidable.

    It is my opinion that Apple’s offer to replace these damaged cords is more a customer service measure than a reaction to any design or build quality issue. I have three 85 watt adapters from the original MacBook Pro; they are the larger variety, about four years old, and in fine condition. The logical solution to fraying is to not let there be tension at the two crucial points of the cord.

    Most commonly, fraying at the power brick end is the result of wrapping the thin cord too tightly when the adapter isn’t in use. *Wrap it more loosely, and wrap it such that the cord remains perpendicular to the power brick.* This eliminates the strain. The same principle applies for the MagSafe tip end: *keep it perpendicular to the computer to eliminate strain, but also never pull on the cord to remove the plug from the power port.*

    “Replacement adapters”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=magsafe+adapter are $79.99.

  • Making Launchpad "Better"

    I have been a long-time lover of organizing my apps by folder and putting them in my dock to access them more quickly. With the advent of Launchpad in Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” (you don’t get it if you’re on an earlier version of OS X), I no longer need to clutter my dock with ten or more folders. The downside to Launchpad is that every application on your Mac ends up there. If you use Parallels, this is going to include all the useless Windows apps as well; this has been a huge source of irritation to me until now.

    Thanks to the Redmond Pie blog, I’ve been introduced to a preference pane called “Launchpad-Control,”:http://chaosspace.de/dev/launchpad-control-hide-apps-from-launchpad/ which will allow you to decide which applications show in Launchpad. Without this preference pane, you would have to delete an application from the computer to get it out of Launchpad. What the preference pane will do is give you a list of all the apps as well as the folders you’ve organized them into. In the preference pane, you can check or uncheck apps and folders; any apps and folders you uncheck won’t appear in Launchpad. In the case of the Windows applications, I moved them all into the folders, unchecked them in the preference pane and poof… no more pointless applications in Launchpad. Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

    Launchpad and the other iOS-like features of 10.7 are the way of the future. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Apple eventually merges iOS and OS X into a new operating system. It’s nice that third-party developers are making free applications that improve on Apple’s already solid operating system.