george kaplan

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george kaplan
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  • Inside Apple Irvine Spectrum Center retail store: The new Silicon Valley

    george kaplangeorge kaplan
    For those making the trek to the Spectrum store, the parking structure has a healthy number of EV charging stations. If you come in a non-Tesla EV (superchargers are elsewhere), you can get some miles put back while you shop. 
    watto_cobra

  • Inside Apple Third Street Promenade: a luxe temple in SoCal

    george kaplangeorge kaplan
    To appreciate what Third Street Promenade once looked like, watch Pee Wee’s Big Adventure for the exterior scenes around his store. The shops on the street were very Middle America back then, before the street was reimagined as a pedestrian shopping experience, a walkable outdoor version of the then-current shopping malls.
    gregoriusmcitpeksFileMakerFeller

  • Chamberlain pulls the plug on its HomeKit smart home bridge

    george kaplangeorge kaplan
    I first tried the Meross unit, thinking I would both save money and have HomeKit control. I couldn’t get it working to save my life (my LiftMaster is a yellow button model).

    Then I got the MyQ unit for HomeKit. It took me a couple of reboots of both the bridge and the eero router, but it has worked with zero downtime for the past 8 months, and it still almost makes me cry when I’m two blocks from home and the CarPlay button appears on the screen, offering to raise the door.  One of my goals was to get the door-opener remote out of the car for security reasons, and the MyQ got me to that goal.  
    Alex1Nwatto_cobra

  • Lomi review: A great countertop composter -- if you've got the space for it

    george kaplangeorge kaplan
    We have one. Wife thought it would be a good idea, I resisted but we got one. I was wrong. It’s actually very useful. 

    Local regs now mandate food waste must go out in the green waste can with yard waste. We live in the inland deserts of SoCal, and leaving food in an outdoor can with 90-100 degree days isn’t an option. The food waste we formerly scraped into the kitchen trash or in the garbage disposal now goes into the Lomi. We have time-of-day electric rates, so we run it inexpensively at night after we go to bed. Eco Mode takes maybe 5 hours and the dried waste can go into the green waste can outside where it won’t stink in the heat. 

    The device is also stink-proof in the house. It doesn’t smell at all, even with some pretty rancid food waste deposited in there. 

    Side note: Grinding up waste in the sink garbage disposal is a poor option in many municipalities. Older sewer treatment systems were designed for human waste, but are challenged by the addition of large quantities of ground up food waste. Some areas separate the food byproduct and burn this waste, which is not good for environment, or use anerobic digestion which generates methane as a byproduct. Many cities would prefer we didn’t use sink disposers (NYC outright banned them for a few decades). Lomi is not for every use case, but has legitimate value for many. 
    dewmewilliamlondonmuthuk_vanalingam

  • Apple issues tvOS 15.6 to the public with under-the-hood improvements

    george kaplangeorge kaplan
    The last update, either for ATV or for HomePod, basically nuked all the HomePod audio reliability

    I have two pairs of old-school HomePods, each pair connected to a ATV 4K, and set to do stereo audio with Atmos where applicable. In the last few months, I have one or the other of the HomePods in each pair disconnecting, or playing audio uncontrolled by ATV remote, etc. It is a constant project restarting and resetting the HomePods and ATVs to get things in alignment again. None of them chime off the doorbell, either.
    FileMakerFellerwatto_cobra