All Apple All Day

We moved into our new house in June of 2012. And about a year after we'd moved in, we finally got around to the dining room. Not that there was anything really WRONG with it - it was just a bit more traditional than we'd prefer... we'd like to take our house from "transitional" back toward "craftsman". (Without spending much money, of course.)

AAAD readers may remember all of the troubles we were having with our First Alert smoke & carbon monoxide alarms last spring.  A visit from the fire department confirmed that we weren't actually having a CO leak - it was just a (constant) false alarm, due to the detector going bad.  Ultimately, I was able to replace the faulty smoke detector with the exact same model, and life went on. But MAN, I'd like to be able to control these sensors with an iOS device.  Enter the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector .  It's literally everything that I've wanted from a smoke detector system, and many things that I didn't know I needed until now. 

I hope that your summer went as well as ours at the AAAD residence.  I started a new job, which I absolutely love. It's a long commute, (and my AAAD output has dramatically dropped...) but it's challenging, exciting work, and we're starting to see major results.  As we head into the last 3 months of 2013, I figured I'd take a look back at what we've accomplished, and a look forward to where our major projects are headed:

Back in March, there were rumors that Apple was going to produce a "low-cost" iPhone for low-income markets.  Obviously, there was a lot of consternation about that - people wondered why Apple would ever produce an intentionally "worse" product, and why they wouldn't just sell the iPhone 5 for a bit less, the way they did with the iPhone 3G and 3GS and 4 and 4S?   Well, except here... AAAD  CALLED IT .  (Please indulge me a little bit...)

It's KEYNOTE DAY! I know that we're getting new iPhones. (Let's see if my predictions from March   - iPhone 5S, "low cost iPhone" to entirely replace the iPhone 5 - were correct! I'm liking my odds.) But what else will we see today? Maybe a spec bump for AppleTV?

I'm obviously a huge Apple fan. And as a huge Apple fan, I swooned when Steve introduced the Time Capsule. " A router that also automatically backs up my entire hard drive - wirelessly?! Sign me up!" But over time, it seems that the central selling point -  a router and backup drive in one!  - was less of a selling point and more of an obstacle.

Remember 9/11?  Of course you do.  12 years ago next week.  9/11 was also the only day my brother ever spent at my parents new house.  Time goes on, and we forget things. Last weekend helped my family to remember. 

Well, it finally happened. After a pretty solid 5-year run, my 2008-era 1st-gen Time Capsule has apparently bit the dust. It's deceased. An ex-Capsule. And unlike the last time, I'm not sure if I want to repair it. But let's consider the options.

AAAD is primarily dedicated to the iOS-based renovations we're doing at our house in Chicago's suburbs.  But it's not just about that topic, or even that house. We also rent out our former house in the city - a duplex down in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood. And last week, we dealt with one of the downsides of property management - our condo was burglarized. 

Our Summer of Vacations is almost over. The AAAD family just returned from a long weekend at Disney World. First things first - if you're going to Disney World, you need the "My Disney Experience" app.  Period. Full stop.  We were able to see and do essentially everything at all 4 Disney parks, in 4 days - almost SOLELY due to the real-time updates we were getting through the Disney app.  Here's a recap of our Disney Experience - and how the iOS app dramatically improved our experience.