All Apple All Day

Well, this isn't great.  After standing in my driveway, talking into my watch over and over to open the garage door and getting no response, I had to use the regular keypad, like a chump.  But what was wrong?

As I'm sure you may have read by now, Apple will no longer produce the Leather case for iPhones.  This is a good decision, and it's overdue. 

The August Lock Wi-Fi is a substantial improvement over the August Lock Pro.  But its battery life isn't just bad - it's unworkable.  Fortunately, the issue can be fixed. 

Fitness tracking requires motivation. The Apple Watch Ultra does all of that for you.

Our old house had a MyQ enabled garage door panel, and it worked PERFECTLY.  (After we added a MyQ Home Bridge, anyway.) At the new house, our garage is detached. Our wifi signal reaches the garage when the door is open, but not when the door is closed. Bottom line, MyQ didn't work anymore.  So we had to look into new MyQ devices - and Powerline. 

When we moved into our new house, we inherited an Ecobee thermostat.  To be honest... I liked our old Nest more. It had stainless steel and glass, while the Ecobee felt more plasticky.  But the Ecobee has HomeKit, and Nest does not.  So we got 2 more Ecobees.  And then the problems started. 

HomeKit integration for the August Lock Wi-Fi is broken. It simply doesn't work.  Fortunately, HomeBridge is there to pick up the pieces. 

  As promised, we went ahead and installed HomeBridge on our QNAP NAS.  And we connected our Ring Doorbell and cameras to HomeKit.  It worked. It worked SO well.

The last couple of years have been kind of a mess for everyone. We moved into a new house, and then immediately got locked down in it.   Here's what we've been up to on the HomeKit front.

Our new house came with an August Smart Lock Pro already installed.  We've written about it in this space quite a few times.  Now, we've upgraded to its successor - the 4th Generation August Wifi Smart Lock.  It's a worthy upgrade, and Pro owners should consider making the switch. 

I'll get the "review" part out of the way immediately - the EGO steel-deck mower is the best lawn mower I've ever owned, by a long shot.  There isn't any competition, really. Certainly not from gas-powered mowers, not from EGO's electrified competition, and not from EGO's plastic-deck mowers, either. 

When we moved into our new house, we inherited an August Lock Pro.  It's generally worked out as advertised, but a few issues have sprung up from time to time.  First off - as we discussed in the earlier article , the lock occasionally spins without turning the deadbolt... and the only way to open the door is to remove the August Lock entirely.  This may be specific to our door. It only happens when the door isn't completely closed, so the deadbolt is a little bit misaligned, and there's too much friction.  Still, it's embarrassing when your friends and family can't open the door from the inside. A door should be open-able!  I'm ASSUMING that the fix here is to replace the deadbolt adapter, which is a little worn. They're $10 from August - I'll report back. The second issue is more of a "pet peeve" than an actual issue... You need to use your phone to unlock the August Lock Pro.  And by the time you've pulled your phone out of your pocket,...

Back in the early days of AAAD, our late-2009 iMac was the center of our connected home. It held all of our photos, our iTunes library, and our documents.  We replaced the late-2009 iMac with a 27" retina iMac a few years ago. My dad took the old iMac and used it in his office.  Last week, he let me know that the iMac was having issues, and that he'd bring it to me to check it out. It would only boot to the White Screen of Death. No Apple logo, no cursor, no pinwheel... not even a bomb icon.  I'd never repaired an iMac before. Was it worth trying to fix this one?

We've been in our new house for six months, and in some ways, it feels as though we just moved in. In terms of AAAD projects.... it's been even slower going. The house came fitted with an August Lock Pro, which has been a bit of a godsend in some ways... and has been a source of conflict in others.

We recently moved into a new house in the same Chicago suburb. This means starting all over again with HomeKit - and it also means trying to retroactively figure out the existing tech systems in the new place. August Door Lock? Up and working. Ring Video Doorbell? Seems to be dead. Ethernet? ...Maybe? There's an "Open House" box in the basement with a lot of CAT-5 coming together at a switch. We're still trying to unpack, and most of the remaining items on the to-do list are my tech items. I'll try to post any insights we may gain here as we move forward.

If you're upgrading to an iPhone XS, you're probably considering the exclusive "gold" version. After all, it's the only phone that announces  that it's the latest and greatest.  BUT... if you're going to the trouble to get a golden iPhone, do you want to cover it up in a case? Which one?

All good things come to an end. And while we've owned (and loved) almost every Apple Airport product, the line has been discontinued. And it was becoming clear we'd been left behind.

Apple announced a new Mac Mini today! It's been four years since Apple last updated the Mac Mini, and a full six years since they introduced a Mac Mini worth owning.  The 2012 Mini was the last to have user-upgradable RAM, or quad-core configurations. UNTIL TODAY.

It's been four years since Apple updated the Mac Mini. (And six years since they released a Mac Mini worth purchasing.) If rumors are to be believed, our long wait is almost over. Apple seems set to announce an updated Mac Mini, with "pro" specs, this fall.  But is it simply too little, too late?

We finished our basement during 2016. And in doing so, we added a bedroom. (Because, theoretically, adding a bedroom will provide more return on investment for the basement remodel.) But, we never put a BED in that bedroom, until last week.