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Author "mikemoffit"

wrote in 1048: Spyglass In Your Pocket, Apple Pencil, Set Phasers To Stun .

I am by no means an artist nor someone who has drawn anything beyond your standard High School art class. However something drew my attention the Apple Pencil, call it intrigue or even memorization of the new slick addition to the Apple line up I could not keep from considering why it was so endearing. Whatever the calling was I finally made up my mind and purchased one of these compelling little stylus, and boy oh boy was I impressed. I had little experience playing with the abilities of the Apple Pencil outside of the store. I have discovered a new found obsession with sketching.

For anyone who has ever drawn with your standard paper and pencil, (as well if you are as nit picky as I am) you will quickly find by erasing multiple strokes several times you quickly create this indent on the paper, an indent that will never go away. This is infuriating! As with any drawing tablet this frustration is elevated when using a computer to render your work allowing easy (Command – Z) undo functionality. There are some intense differences when comparing drawing tablets vs paper and pencil, and many artists strongly dislike the separation between the two. Again, I am no artist and do not claim to have a strong history with any of the options discussed. However I must express my complete and wonderful surprise that was using the Apple Pencil. The fluidity, precision and pencil likeness was unmatched by any expectations I had. Whether it be lightly sketching out the initial point of reference lines or deeply highlighting the final details it feels as though I am sketching on a piece of paper just underneath the glass of my iPad Pro.

Without spending all day going into details and further examples, I’ll wrap this up with a final thought. The Apple Pencil is not just for Artists, or people in the field of artistry. If you are someone who draws, sketches, paints or even prefers written notes, the Apple Pencil can be another tool added to the arsenal. Even if you are like me, someone who has never tackled anything artistic but has a nagging urge to create, I highly encourage swinging down to Small Dog and testing out the Apple Pencil. We have one at the counter anyone can test out on one of our iPad demo models and see for yourself what makes it such a unique and diverse product.

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wrote in 980: AirPods, Are You Ready For iOS 11 .

I’m one of those types of people who likes to use different types of headphones when it comes to listening to music. At home I have a pair of studio headphones that I use with my Mac when I’m listening to music and watching movies. On my commute to work, I have another pair of studio headphones with noise cancellation, so that I can focus to getting to work on time and not so much on whats going on around me.

However, I’ve gotten to a point where I wanted something a little lighter in my ears for the commute to work. Primarily something I could just put in my pocket, and not something that I have to fold up, place in a bulky case, and stuff said bulky case back into my backpack. Initially I was a little unsure about the AirPods, but the more that I kept thinking about them, the more I kept noticing that these might actually be a perfect fit for me. I didn’t have a cord that I needed to spend time untangling (like with the Apple EarPods, for example), they weren’t difficult to pair with my other Apple devices (iPad, iMac, and yes the Apple Watch), then there’s the charging case that charges the AirPods when you’re not using them, and best of all it’s super small!

Music will pause, when you take the AirPods out and starts back up again when you put them back in your ears. You can interact with Siri to make calls, and change the volume of your music just to point out a couple cool features. They’re definitely worth checking out if you’re curious about what it’s like to have a completely unique wireless headphone experience. I’ve only had them for a couple weeks and I’m totally hooked.

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wrote in 980: AirPods, Are You Ready For iOS 11 .

Mid-August is beginning to feel like late September, and I’m not complaining! We’re experiencing beautifully foggy mornings in the South Burlington area, and nice, cool evenings. Things are busy as always in the South Burlington store, and we’re all looking forward to the back to school rush that is certainly upon us.

After our last edition of Tech Tails, I received some thoughtful feedback, and great questions from our customers in regards to film scanning techniques. As I mentioned last week, a lot of my spare time is spent shooting and scanning film. Soon to be added to the ritual is chemical processing at home. For those of you looking for the scanner comparison article, hang tight, I’m gathering resources to compare a few leading scanners, so look out for that article soon!

This week I received a great question about iPhoto vs. Photos, and how editing has improved between the platforms. While I understand the change can be jarring, I believe Photos is a superior application, though it does require a shift in perspective. I always tell my customers, Apple is aiming to merge your iOS and macOS experience. If your introduction to Apple products was through iPhone, or if iPhone is your most frequently used device (as it is for a lot of us) it would stand to reason that your macOS experience should grow to resemble the handheld interface that you’re accustomed to. The telltale sign is when I see customers trying to touch a MacBook Pro screen as if it were a touch screen, then remembering to use the trackpad. Today, we share documents, photos, emails, and more between our iPhone or iPad and Mac. With the replacement of iPhoto, you see a clear shift in the way photos are sorted and edited. Overall, I find that Photos allows for more detailed editing points, and the sorting method makes a lot more sense to me, as it resembles the iOS “Camera Roll.”

Have you found anything missing, or new features you recently discovered in the latest applications from Apple? I would love to hear your feedback to share with other customers. For now, I’ll be on the sales floor, and working on a few rolls of Kodak at home! Have a great rest of the summer, as autumnal as it may feel!

Patrick McCormack
“patrickm@smalldog.com”:mailto:patrickm@smalldog.com

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wrote in 1047: Apple Does It Again, Get To Work Faster, How Fast Were You Going .

On a few recent road trips, I got to really test out a handy feature in my new car: radar sensing. Many newer cars are available with these features whether they be collision avoidance radar, backup traffic monitoring radar, cruise control radar or blind spot radar. It’s incredible to me that this relatively sophisticated technology is becoming available in even cheaper cars. It made me think that it would be interesting to discuss what radar is, how it works, and the different applications. Many of the fundamentals I’ve discussed in other articles, specifically my article about electromagnetic radiation, will be good to know about before we get into this. So if you haven’t read that article, give “**it a read first**”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb1026/ and then come back.

Ok, are you refreshed? Good! Radar is one of those words like laser, modem or scuba. Radar was originally an acronym for RAdio Direction And Ranging. The original name should give a hint about how it works. Electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range doesn’t totally penetrate solid objects. This means that when the microwaves hit something they bounce off of it. Depending on the nature of the material involved, some microwaves might be absorbed by the object. In a radar system, there is a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter sends out microwaves and the receiver receives the reflections back to interpret them. Some properties, like simply knowing where an object is, can be determined by how long the transmitted waves take to return to the receiver. The strength and makeup of the received waves can also help infer the material of the object as well as its size. If the radar is set up to detect frequency shifts, it can use that to determine rotation or relative motion of the object. This kind of radar would be called doppler radar (after the Doppler effect) and is often used for detecting rain motion in meteorology.

Many of the radars that are added onto cars are able to determine relative motion. This means that they can see an object and not only know it’s position in that moment, but also it’s relative velocity (relative to your car). For example, the blind spot radar on my car doesn’t trigger if I pass a car, but it does trigger when a car passes me. The radar is able to distinguish between these two motions. Forward sensing radars are able to detect possible collisions in the same way. This is also how police track your speed by radar. You can notice this effect with sound. When a police siren is approaching you, it sounds higher pitched, and when it passes you, it sounds lower pitched. The reason for this is the Doppler effect.

When a wave (sound or electromagnetic) is emitted from an object in motion, stationary receiving points along the object’s path will see the waves either compressed or elongated depending on whether the moving object is approaching or departing. When the waves compress, this places more peaks and troughs in the same area. More waves in the same size area or shrinking area (shrinking because the distance between the source and you is shrinking) means higher frequency. When the waves are electromagnetic, this shift in frequency can be determined with high precision to determine how fast the object is moving.

Because radar is an electromagnetic wave in the microwave spectrum it can be “jammed” relatively easily. By receiving the microwaves, modifying them, and then retransmitting them back to the source, the radar system may not be able to detect the object properly. Radar is also easily detected because it’s an electromagnetic wave. For these reasons, police often also use LIDAR. Which is the same system except it uses visible or invisible light (“LIDAR” is actually a portmanteau of light and radar) to do the same thing. Remember that light is an electromagnetic wave itself, so all the same principles apply. LIDAR can also be jammed, but as it’s a newer technology than radar, it’s less common. LIDAR also depends on lasers and other light focusing technologies and so wasn’t developed until the 1960s.

You can also use ultrasonic sound to accomplish all of the same exact tasks, but sound is too easily affected by the environment. It’s also horribly slow compared to electromagnetic waves that travel at the speed of light. An ultrasonic rangefinder and speed detector would have to be calibrated every single time it was used. Changes in air density, pressure and temperature would all affect the sound waves. For this reason, we typically only use radar and LIDAR.

Obviously there are hundreds of uses beyond cars and speed tracking when it comes to radar and LIDAR. We use LIDAR for surveying, aerial mapping, and precise distance tracking of celestial objects like the moon. If all of this was interesting, next week I’m going to talk a little bit about lasers. I’ve always been fascinated by lasers and will never forget my parents getting me a little pocket one when I was just 10. So tune in next week!

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wrote in Uncategorized .

It’s back to usual this week for my article, because I thought of a good topic. I’ve talked many times about AC power and how and why we use it, but many things don’t use AC power. In fact, they can’t. These are things we use every single day. Virtually all digital electronics cannot use […]

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wrote in 1046: AppleCare+ is a No-Brainer; Rectifying Alternating Current .

It’s back to usual this week for my article, because I thought of a good topic. I’ve talked many times about AC power and how and why we use it, but many things don’t use AC power. In fact, they can’t. These are things we use every single day. Virtually all digital electronics cannot use AC power directly. It needs to be converted into DC power. Remember that AC means the current is alternating and DC means the current is flowing in one constant direction.

Any time you convert electricity from one type to another, or one voltage to another, there will be losses. Nothing is free. Every time you change something about electricity, you have to pay a tax. The goal in electronics design is to minimize those losses. AC to DC conversion is one of the simplest and most efficient conversions we do on a regular basis. DC to AC conversion is also possible (accomplished by inverters). Most of these processes are on the order of 95% efficient or greater. So how do we convert AC to DC?

First off, the process of converting AC to DC is called ??rectifying??. Devices that accomplish this task are often called rectifiers. A very common rectifier design is called a bridge rectifier. To understand how they work, we have to recall that AC is a wave. Sometimes it’s voltage value will be positive, other times it will be negative. This doesn’t work for DC since the voltage has to always be positive or always be negative. Rectifiers take the negative voltage swing of the wave and flip it up top so that it’s positive. Now instead of a sine waveform, the output of the circuit will look like mountains. The voltage will always be positive, but it will still vary considerably, from the peak (approximately 170 volts on grid-level 120VAC) to zero and then back up again.

How is the voltage rectified? In a bridge rectifier a ring of diodes is used. Recall that a diode only allows current to flow through it in one direction. By arranging the diodes in a ring we can create a “draw off” point for the current where the voltage will always be positive. Instead of being allowed to “pull” the current backwards during the negative voltage swing, the diodes redirect it back to the output point. Of course, this only means that the negative voltages get flipped up, creating the mountain-like waveform I mentioned earlier. This is not good for DC power, so how do we fix it?

There are many ways to minimize this issue, but it can’t be fixed perfectly. One way is to use capacitors to buffer the output voltage. Instead of sinking when the mountains go back down to zero, the capacitors prop the voltage up during that period, until the next mountain peak arrives. Depending on the load, this could mean large capacitors to hold the load long enough. Remember also though that AC has a frequency on the order of 50-60Hz. This means there will be around 120 of those mountain peaks every single second, so the capacitors don’t need to hold for too long.

The other issue we have to contend with is how to reduce the voltage from anywhere between 120-240VAC to something DC electronics might expect, like 5VDC. For AC to anything, this is actually very easy; we use transformers. A transformer has two sets of wire windings, a primary winding and a secondary winding. The primary winding contains the input current, usually fluctuating AC. This fluctuating current induces a magnetic field that also fluctuates in a metal core that extends from the primary winding to the secondary winding. The changing magnetic field in the core induces a new current in the secondary winding. The induced current will necessarily be greater than the input current if the windings are configured to reduce voltage. The overall power has to remain the same. So if the input were 120VAC at 1 amp (120 watts), and the transformer was reducing the voltage by a factor of two, the output would be 60VAC at 2 amps (still 120 watts). The output of a transformer will still be AC, but this is where we would apply rectification.

This method of power conversion is extremely efficient, but as transformers are highly inductive, power companies would hate it if every single device used one. The reason for this is because inductive loads shift power around a lot without actually consuming that much. So the power company has to pay to send the power all the way from their generating station, to you, only to have your device reject almost all of the actual energy in that power. Most homes don’t have solely inductive loads though, so most of the time it’s not an issue. However, certain industrial processes rely heavily on inductive load machinery. In these cases, the power company may request that they burn off a certain amount of power in dump loads (basically huge resistors) in order to keep the grid functioning normally.

So there you have it. How we take that high voltage raw AC power from the wall and tame it to safely power all of your devices.

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wrote in 979: More Uses for Time Machine, Malware on macOS .

I’m pretty sure everyone has dealt with malware at some point in their lives, especially given the prominence of desktop and laptops that people are using more and more.

As a tech person, malware is like my arch-nemesis. I know its weakness, but it never seems to go away! So today I’m going to go over a few common malwares on Mac that people may not know are actually bad for their computer or just plain unnecessary!

1. MacKeeper

MacKeeper is the #1 unnecessary program. MacKeeper and is essentially a placebo! It pretends to be helping your computer out by “scanning” it and telling you if you have “threats” but most of the time the “threats” are just normal files! MacKeeper seems to have a pretty convincing setup that can lure unsuspecting consumers into a false sense of security and make it seem like downloading the software is a benefit, when in reality it’s superfluous! MacKeeper is typically downloaded from pop-ups on various websites found on the web. MacKeeper is a very invasive malware, meaning it can mess with your entire operating system on a deep level.

2. Mac Defender

Mac Defender is probably one of the worst malwares. It constantly pops up telling you that you have “threats” and telling you to delete files when actually, your computer is fine…except you have this malware called Mac Defender! This one is actually a phishing scam. This software is not as much of a threat thanks to security updates from Apple, however I have still seen it on customer’s computers. It comes from a legitimate website advertisement that redirects people to Mac Defender, saying their computer is “infected”, and offers itself as a “solution” when in actuality it is the root of the problem! The goal of this malware was to steal people’s credit card information, which can be used for fraud! Not fun at all, to say the least.

3. Dok

Dok is a rather new piece of malware. This malware was extremely scary until Apple managed to block it out. One of the reasons people purchase Macs is because they tend to get viruses a lot less than Windows computers. This is a perfectly legitimate claim because Macs have built-in security measures not only in the software that is used to develop the operating system (macOS) but also has security features built in from Apple! So don’t worry, your Mac is double wrapped! However this particular piece of software was a direct result of hackers. The hackers in question managed to gain access to a legitimate Apple developer’s account and have this particular piece of software authenticated by Apple! Essentially this software was allowed by Apple to be installed on people’s computers, and the way it was spreading was through an email phishing campaign, pretending to be Apple and attempting to steal the victim’s information. Don’t be scared though, Apple has since fixed that and revoked the software’s authentication so it is blocked by Apple’s built-in security measures as of a few months ago!

Thank you for reading!

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