What happens when you realize you skipped an episode number? Just keep on rollin. This week on Deemable Tech we are talking about… the Apple big announcement. Apple finally announced all the details on the Apple Watch. Apple also announced a new MacBook, ResearchKit and HBO Now.

An incoming call notification on the Apple Watch Edition. Image credit: Apple

This Week’s Run Down

Macbook

Apple announced a new laptop, called…the MacBook.

It’s thinner than the MacBook Air, but it is also less powerful than the MacBook Air and has less battery life than the MacBook Air, and it’s more expensive than the MacBook Air. So, it’s basically, just like the MacBook Air was to the original MacBook when the MacBook Air came out.

It has a 480p FaceTime Camera, but it does have a retina display though, which gives it an advantage over the MacBook Air.

The craziest part is that, except for the headphone jack, the new MacBook only has one port, USB-C. Everything goes through the USB-C port – power, display, thumb drives, accessories, everything. To do almost anything you will have to buy an adapter, which costs $79 a piece.

As a result a lot of people will not be buying this laptop, especially DJs.

The new MacBook is available in silver, Space Grey and… gold, for some reason.

The new MacBook has a new trackpad called a “Force Touch” trackpad. It does not have a physical button, but it is pressure sensitive, and gives haptic feedback when you click it. The Force Touch trackpad opens up new ways to interact with the computer such as “Gradually add pressure to the trackpad to vary the speed with which you fast-forward through a QuickTime movie or zoom in on a location in Maps.”

Apple TV – HBO Now

Apple also announced a partnership with HBO to bring unbundled HBO to cable-cutters. For $14.99 a month you can watch Game of Thrones without a cable subscription, but only on an iOS device. HBO Now is available on iPhone, iPad and the Apple TV.

ResearchKit

In one of the most surprising announcements, Apple revealed ResearchKit. ResearchKit is an open source software development kit that medical researchers can use to easily create apps for studies. The idea is that these apps will utilize the sensors in iPhones to “track movement, take measurements and record information – functions that are perfect for medical studies.” iPhone owners would be able to download these apps to participate in research and provide information regardless of where they are. Since iPhones are the most widely used smartphones, it is hoped that this will lead to larger sample sizes and more frequent data, thus creating a truer representation of the population.

Apple Watch

Preorders started on the 10th.

The watch will go on sale for reals on April 24th.

Three Versions

There are a whole bunch of combinations of watch bands and cases. Way too many to describe them all. If I did, I am pretty sure Tom would kill me.

Apple Watch Sport

• Aluminum Silver or Aluminum Space Gray Case
• Fluoroelastomer watch band
• $349 and $399

Apple Watch

• Stainless Steel Case or Stainless Steel Space Gray Case
• Fluoroelastomer ($549/$599), Classic Leather Buckle ($649/$699), Modern Leather Buckle (38mm $749), Leather Loop (Smartcase-esque – 42mm $699), Milanese Loop ($649/$699), Steel Link Bracelet ($949/$999), Space Black Steel Link ($1,049/$1,099)
• $549 up to $1099

Apple Watch Edition

• 18K Gold
• Priced from “Geez Louise” to “Hoo boy!”
  • Otherwise known as $10,000 to $17,000

Mashable – My Apple Watch Nightmare

This week Ray and Tom talked about the latest tech news from Cupertino California including the newly named iPad Air, the iPad Mini with Retina Display and the new Macbook Air, Macbook Pro and Mac Pro computers.  They also answered questions about backing up your music collection, how to use your iPhone as a scanner and how to scrub a computer of your personal data before you donate it.

#53 Apple News, Saving Tunes and Scanning Documents

TRANSCRIPT

RAY: From WJCT studios in Jacksonville, Florida, I’m Ray Hollister,

TOM: I’m Tom Braun,

RAY: and this is Deemable Tech. This week’s episode of the Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at a small orange dot com.

TOM: Got a question about your computer, smart phone, tablet or the Internet? You can give us a call us at One Eight Eight Eight, Nine Seven Two, Nine Eight Six Eight, or send us an email at questions@deemable.com.

RAY: Hey, we are working on recording an hour long Deemable Tech radio special so give us a call to “audition” for the show.

TOM: Today on the show we?re going to answer your questions about using your smart phone to scan things, backing up your music files and donating your old computer. But first let?s talk tech news.

Ray, I see you chomping at the bit there, so go ahead and tell us about your tech story of the week!

RAY: Well Tom, we get to talk about your favorite thing: Apple had a press event!

Last Tuesday Apple had a big press announcement

iPad Air

? Dropped from 1.4 lbs to 1 lb

iPad Mini with Retina display $399

? Same price as the iPad 2 which is still on sale.

iPad Mini price dropped from $329 to $299

? Still more expensive than a Nexus 7 at $269 and the Nexus 7 has a better screen.

New Macbook Pros with Retina Display

? Faster Intel Haswell CPUs

? 13″ models saw a $200 price drop.

13″ Macbook stayed the same price

The 15″ Macbook disappeared.

Mac Pro (iTrash can) available date and pricing was announced

? December 2013

? Starting at $2,999

last major update was 2010

Mavericks OSX 10 FREE

iWork: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote Formerly $9.99 each on iOS and $19.99 on OSX

iLife: GarageBand, iPhoto, iMovie – Formerly $4.99 each on iOS and $15.00 each on OSX

TOM: In the interest of equal time, here are some other non-Apple stories from this week. Best Buy reports that returns of the Samsung Galaxy Gear are over 30%.

Acer has a new Chromebook, the Acer 720. It?s got a Haswell CPU under the hood. 11.6-inch 1366×768 TN screen. It retails for $249. Includes USB 3.0, HDMI.

RAY: Kenneth writes, I want to back up my music/photos files on my Dell Home Edition computer that’s using Windows XP as an (OS)Operating System. Which backup system or program do you recommend?

The reason why I need to do this is because while playing music files the music is skipping so I googled the problem and that’s what it recommended me to do is backup my music files. I did try downloading a backup program but I was getting an error message at the finish part of the download.

TOM: Hey Kenneth. We talked a little about backup programs last week, so you?ll want to check that out. There are a lot of good cloud backup programs out there right now, and they?re easy to use.

If you want to backup music specifically, it actually gets even easier. Google Play Music will scoop up your music library and upload it to their cloud automatically. From there you can access it from anywhere, or download it again if you lose it.

RAY: Yeah, it?s great. But I?m a little confused about something.

TOM: What?s that?

RAY: Why would backing up Kenneth?s music files stop his music player from skipping?

TOM: Uhhhhhhh? yeah, I don?t know. That seems strange. Backing up your music just makes a copy of it. It doesn?t do anything to the original files.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe Kenneth is just running out of space on his hard drive.

RAY: He did say that he was unable to download a backup program. If he was out of space that would make sense.

TOM: Yeah. Once you get very low on space on your hard drive you won?t be able to download anything that?s not very small. And it causes a lot of other problems too. Your Operating System uses spare hard drive space to do stuff. Like if a program is running in memory but you?re not using it, your OS might dump a snapshot of that memory onto your hard drive temporarily to free up space. But if you?re out of hard drive space, that?s not going to happen. You?ll see your entire computer getting slower and slower. It might even cause your music to skip.

RAY: The only way to fix this is to either delete some files, move files off your hard drive, or uninstall programs.

TOM: Yeah. If you have an older, smaller hard drive you may find yourself having to do this kind of housekeeping quite a lot. Music files are a great way to start. Try downloading Google Music, because it?s super small. Once it has scanned and uploaded your music library to the cloud, which might take a couple days, start deleting music.

RAY: You also need to open up Program Files in the Windows control panel and go through and look for programs you aren?t using. If you see any, click and uninstall them. Remember with most programs you can always reinstall them later if you need them.

TOM: Nowadays people have a lot of video files on their hard drives. Nothing will eat up space faster. Time to burn some DVDs! And do you really need a copy of every season of Friends?

We have a voicemail from Geri:

Hi guys this is jerry calling over wife I from Cameroon in Africa … I was calling to harass you asked me to let you know if my old computer game would work gravel … and it’s working great it totally will run on my computer so thanks for the tip okay so my new question I’ve just been informed by a friend on face book and that I can use my I phone … camera as a scanner and that they’re apps for the I need to know more and so I’m calling to best guys I know to help me find out so that you can do the research and tell me the best thing … I have an I phone for okay thanks

Depends on what you want to use it for, OCR or image capture.

OCR

ABBYY TextGrabber + Translator $5.99

Image capture

ABBYY FineScanner $1.99

JotNot Scanner Pro $.99

TOM: Julie wrote in: I have 2 laptop computers that I would like to donate to a school or organization. How can I erase/remove any personal information in the hard drive, before I donate them? i have been told i can reinstall the original set up discs that came with each one but I can’t find those. Is there an inexpensive way to do this, i.e. where I don’t have to buy expensive software or take it somewhere like Best Buy where it will cost a lot of $$? Thanks.

We talked about this once before, on episode #42, but it never hurts to repeat. You have the right idea. You definitely want to wipe your computer before you give it away or sell it.

In that episode, we mentioned If it?s a Windows PC you?re getting rid of, use a program like Eraser or the Drive Wiper in CCleaner to completely eradicate your data. If you?re tossing out a Mac, there?s a program called Permanent Eraser. All of these programs are free.

However, one of our listeners, Eva, pointed out that this will not wipe the entire hard drive clean, because it won’t wipe the operating system. That is true. To wipe the entire hard drive clean, you need to do one of two things, boot it from the USB or CD/DVD drive or remove the hard drive and use a USB adapter to attach it as an external hard drive to another computer.

Restore partition.

Thanks for all your questions, and keep them coming. Call us at our toll-free number, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email at questions@deemable.com. Also, subscribe to the show! Search for Deemable Tech on iTunes, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and follow us or subscribe.

Our producer is Sean Birch. I’m Ray Hollister, I’m Tom Braun, and this is Deemable Tech. Thanks for listening. Have a great week!

If you missed it live, Ryan Thompson from GAAM, Games Art and Music, stopped by the studio tonight to talk to us about the upcoming The Legend of GAAM Show July 13 at 6:00 PM at the Museum and Gardens at 4160 Boulevard Center Drive, Jacksonville, Florida. Before we talked to him about that, we answered Joel’s question about which Macbook Pro and which Airport to pick. Then, we helped Katy pick a newsreader for her Android phone.

GAAM on Facebook

#41 – The Legend of GAAM Is EXTREME, But It’s Not Free-99
DRAFT SCRIPT

RAY: From WJCT studios in Jacksonville, Florida, I’m Ray Hollister,

TOM: I’m Tom Braun,

RAY: and this is Deemable Tech, tech help worth listening to.

RAY: This week’s episode of the Deemable Tech podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at a small orange dot com.

TOM: And, by audible.com – Deemable Tech listeners can get a FREE audiobook download at audibletrial.com/Deemable Over 100,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.

RAY: And, from All Florida Insurance Options, an authorized Progressive agency, helping people shop for insurance at 904-757-3288 or at their office in Highland Square on Dunn Avenue in North Jacksonville.

TOM: Got a question about your computer, smart phone, tablet or the Internet? Give us a call us at One Eight Eight Eight, Nine Seven Two, Nine Eight Six Eight, or send us an email at questions@deemable.com.

RAY: So, if you haven’t noticed, the podcast has been a little sporadic lately. We’ve been only doing the show every other week.

Summer vacation!

We have good reasons, I have a pile of products to review like the Therapik and the Jabra Halo 2.
We’re also working on getting the app developed. Starting in September we’ll come back with weekly podcasts.

Today on the show we have a special guest, Ryan Thompson, creator and President of GAAM, which stands for Games, Art and Music.

But first we have a couple questions from listeners.

Joel writes: Hey Ray and Tom,
You may remember me from such questions as, “should I sick my finger in there?” and “is this burning sensation normal?”
Today I’d like to know about the differences between some Apple products.
I’m slowing being turned to the Gala side (that’s an apple joke) and switching to more and more Apple products.
I would specifically like to know about the differences between two products:
MacBook Pro vs. MacBook Pro w/Retina Display
and
AirPort vs. AirPort EXTREME!
For the MacBook Pro, it’s important to note that I am not a graphic designer/artists. The extent of my photo editing skills will just be basic touch-up of photos. I’m not looking for a gaming rig, just something that’s reliable, fast, and that has a decent battery life.
For the AirPort vs. Extreme, other than awesome flashbacks to the ’90s,
what makes the EXTREME so EXTREME?
RAY: OK, let me answer your first question. Here’s the differences between the Macbook Pro and the Macbook Pro with Retina Display.
Obviously the Retina Display model has a retina display. 2880 x 1800 pixels vs 1440 x 900 pixels
-More pixels, brighter screen, incredibly high detail. More room for photo and video editing
– Also the Retina display model is thinner and about a pound lighter.
The retina model comes with more standard RAM, 8 GB vs 4 GB, but you can get 8 GB in the standard Macbook Pro model.
The retina model comes with 768 GB flash storage, but the standard model comes with 512 Solid State drive or 1 TB hard drive.
Also, the retina model does not have an optical drive so no DVDs or CDs.
If you are graphic designer, or video editor, I’d say go with the retina model if you can afford it. Otherwise, I’d stick with the standard model, unless you just really want the retina display.
—–
Now, for Airport vs Airport Extreme
There’s actually three options, Airport Express, Airport Extreme and Airport Time Capsule.
The difference is in the price, size, speed and capability of the routers.
The Airport Express is the cheapest at $99, smallest at about the same size as an Apple TV (about a 4 inch square, 1 inch tall.). It’s also the slowest. It only runs up to 802.11n. It also only has one Ethernet ports and one USB port. You can plug a printer into it and share it on your network. You can also use the Airport Express for audio AirPlay. So, you can play music or podcasts wireless from your iOS devices or Mac computers to speakers plugged into your Airport Express.
The Airport Extreme costs $199, and it is about the same size, but about 4 times taller. It looks like four Airport Expresses stacked on top of each other. It runs 802.11ac which is the fastest existing WiFi standard. It can run up to 3 times faster than 802.11n, if you have a computer with a 802.11ac wifi adapter. With the Airport Extreme you can also share a hard drive on your network in addition to a printer.
The Airport Time Capsule is basically an Airport Extreme with a hard drive built in. The 2 TB model costs $299, and the 3 TB model costs $399.
Strangely the Time Capsule and the Extreme both dropped the AirPlay feature.
Also, if you were wondering, because I was, neither the Macbook Pro, nor the Macbook Pro with Retina Display come with 802.11ac wifi. They only have 802.11n.
The only Mac that is currently for sale with 802.11ac is the new Macbook Air. The new Mac Pro (the well designed trash can) will have 802.11ac.

Katy writes: Hello Tom and Ray!
I like to follow a few blogs and would love to get updates when new posts are added. Can you recommend a blog reader app for my Droid?
Thanks guys!
PS, we love your show! My twin babies Christopher & Clara like to listen to it with us every Thursday morning. They’re going to be so smart!
TOM: Wow, those poor kids. Thanks for listening, Katy! Anyway, what you need in as RSS reader app. We’ve talked about RSS before. It’s basically the way that blogs can publish their content to third party apps. Almost every blog out there supports this.
RAY: Lots of news sites do also.
TOM: Yeah. So with a good RSS reader app you can get all your news and favorite blogs in one place. If you go to the Google Play Market and search for ?RSS reader’ you’ll see dozens of apps, most of them free.
A word of caution, though: do not download the Google Reader app. Google Reader is being shut down July 1st, 2013. So if you download it now you’ll only have a matter days of before it stops working.
RAY: It’s too bad, since Google Reader was kind of the 900 lbs gorilla of the RSS reader world.
TOM: That’s true. In fact Google Reader was more than just an app, it was also an entire back-end database that synched what you had and hadn’t read across multiple devices. A lot of other apps actually depended on it. And that’s why you also need to avoid apps that are dependent on Google Reader, because those will also stop working on July 1st. A few examples include the NewsRob and GoodNews apps. Those tell you that they run off Google Reader and that they will be shutting down. Be sure to check for that on any app you download.
RAY: Okay, so those are apps not to use. What are some suggestions for apps that Katy should use?
TOM: Feedly.
RAY: Feedly?
TOM: Feedly.
Feedly is the heir apparent to Google Reader. If you were previously using Google Reader, Feedly is making it very easy to migrate to Feedly. Like Google Reader, it allows you to synchronize what you’ve read across multiple devices, like your desktop and your phone. It looks and feels similar to Google Reader, except it is more customizable. Feedly would be my #1 and probably my #2 suggestion for an RSS Reader app for Android right now.
RAY: Yeah, Feedly is great. And it’s also available for the iPhone in the App Store.
TOM: gReader is another app that is getting strong reviews. It used to connect Google Reader, but now you can connect it to Feedly.
RAY: Why wouldn’t people just use the Feedly app?
TOM: Well, it’s possible people might like the feel of gReader more. But yeah, if you’re just starting out like Katy is, I would recommend Feedly. And the best part of all, it doesn’t cost a thing!
TOM: It’s Free-99!
RAY: It’s Free-99?
TOM: It’s Free-99!
RAY: Personally, after I heard the news about Google Reader, I spent the requisite amount of time mourning my favorite news reader, but after that I decided not to move on and find another reader. I’ve gone back to just reading Google News for the big headlines, and checking the individual websites. I do use Flipboard a bit to follow some sites, but otherwise, I have reduced the amount of news reading I have done by about 90%. I’m not sure if I’ll go back or not, but for now, I’m satisfied with Flipboard.

On this week’s episode, we have a new toll-free phone number (1-888-972-9868) and a bunch of questions.

Questions

• How can I control what my kid can access on an Android tablet?
• What is the best option for kid safe email?
• What’s the easiest way to share a tablet like an iPad?
• What is the best antivirus software money can buy?
• Which Macs can do Airplay Mirroring on the Apple TV?
• Why isn’t my Rosetta Stone software working?
• What do I need to do to get my GS3 to stop talking to me?
• Why is every window I open only half-size?
• Where can I upload 20 GB of photos for free?

All that and more, on this episode of Deemable Tech!

Make sure to subscribe to the show in iTunes by clicking here, or subscribe to the show in another podcast reader by clicking here. Also, make sure to leave us a review in iTunes. The more reviews we have the higher we’ll be listed in iTunes and the more listeners will see our show!

Need tech help? Got a problem or tech question about your computer, phone or tablet? Give us a call and leave us a voice mail at 1-888-972-9868, or send us an email to questions at deemable dot com. We’ll take the best questions and answer them on the show.

Episode 26 – Keeping Your Kids Safe Inside Small Windows!