This Cult of Mac giveaway is for the ladies! Five lucky winners will each receive a stylish Napa crossbody iPhone case from Noémie. These cases looks chic and are great for running errands or going out on the town when a bigger bag is not needed.
If you care about fashion (or have a fashionista in the family), and own an iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro or iPhone 13 Pro Max/iPhone 12 Pro Max, you should definitely enter the latest Cult of Mac giveaway.
That’s it, I’m calling it. 2019 is officially the year that men’s pockets become obsolete. Women have had to do without pockets on their pants since, well, since women were finally granted the right to wear pants in 1946, after a year of post-war protests. They then had to wait until the late 1970s before the federal ban on pockets was finally lifted. But by then, no manufacturer was brave enough to take on the powerful anti-pocket lobby.
If only women had had access to the WaterField Designs’ new Marqui Crossbody Pouch, history might have been quite different.
Look, it’s yet another beautiful bag from San Francisco’s WaterField Designs. The Executive Leather Messenger is a modern take on the briefcase, designed for MacBooks, iPads and chargers, instead of clipboards, papers and cigarettes.
That’s not to say that you can’t take this to a martini bar, or fill it with analog vapers and “artisanal emails” (aka written letters), if you want to.
I love rolltop backpacks, both for their flexibility and because they keep the rain out. WaterField Designs’ new Tech Rolltop is a cool-looking waxed-canvas bag, with some typically smart WaterField details.
The Sutter Sling Pouch is a gentleman’s handbag that’s just big enough for you to empty your pockets into. It is also the end of pockets as we know them. What kind of dumbo would stuff their pants full of keys, wallets, multitools, iPads, Kindles and other uncomfortable gear when they can just dump it in the Sutter Sling instead?
A dedicated dumbo, that’s what kind. Smart folks will join me in acknowledging this as a turning point in history: The death of pockets as we know them. When our climate-decimated society is dug up by the Indiana Joneses of the future, they will look at the patches sewn all over our human trousers, and wonder what the hell we thought we were up to.
Only in the United States do men try to carry all their essential out-of-home possessions in their pockets. Wallet, keys, phone, spare battery, AirPods, Leatherman. So wedded are men to this principal that they ridicule small bags by calling them “murses.” Either that, or they use things like cellphone holsters or fanny packs, which are pretty much social death.
In Europe (but not in the U.K.), men just carry small bags. And they call them “bags,” or whatever the local name is. Whatever, it’s definitely not el murse. Now, men in the U.S. can catch up to the the rest of the world with WaterField Designs’ Sutter Sling Pouch, a gentleman’s handbag that’s just big enough for you to empty your pockets into.
I don’t travel much, but when I do, I like to do it properly. And by “properly,” I mean with all my gadgets organized. Yes, you can drop your chargers into the bottom of your backpack or suitcase. Or you can stuff them into a pocket.
But they’ll get damaged, you’ll end up losing something, and if you need to take out one charger, adapter, dongle or cable, you’ll end up dropping the rest all over the floor of the departure lounge.
You need to get organized, and here’s one great way to do it.
WaterField Designs, maker of some of our favorite bags here at Cult of Mac, is back with the Atlas Executive Athletic Holdall. It’s a sports bag that, as the name suggests, holds it all — including your MacBook and iPad.
If you want to crush your shoulder, and at the same time have all your gear and gadgets within easy reach, then a messenger bag is the way to go. Less formal than a briefcase, and less sporty than a backpack, a messenger bag is stylish and practical. And Pad & Quill’s Attache messenger bag is more stylish and practical than most. It’s a hand-stitched leather beauty which can swallow most of your Mac and iOS devices and accessories.
Twelve South’s Bookbook Caddysack might sound like the babble of a sugared-up two-year-old, but it is in fact a super-handy gadget bag for travelers, or folks who spend a lot of time not at home or the office. It’s a little case that’s designed to hold all the chargers and other accessories you need for your various Apple devices.
My closet floor resembles a bullpen. But instead of pitchers, it houses a rotation of backpacks and bags ready to be activated for work, day-long excursions or extended travel. Depending on the week, I could shift between four or five bags.
But when Shift Pack recently arrived for a tryout, it threatened to retire a couple of my veterans. It is a single backpack that aims to cover all the bases, work, play and travel or all at once if necessary.
The Kings laptop backpack by STM Goods is handsome enough, but one small detail on the inside got my attention.
Tethered inside one of the two compartments I found a zippered pouch that could be used to store pens or cords. I stow my various incidentals in similar pouches in my shoulder bag, so it seemed like this particular backpack was designed especially for me.
BERKELEY, Calif. — ILE is big in Japan. The California bag company has found a market with the Japanese bike website Blue Lug, and the collaboration keeps pushing ILE into new bags, materials, hardware and color choices.
Eric Fischer, 26, launched ILE (short for “Inside Line Equipment”) out of his apartment four short years ago. He was racing bikes, buying fabric and making bags one at a time for himself, his friends and friends of friends.
“I always liked making things, but building buildings didn’t seem scalable,” Fischer told Cult of Mac. “Making bags seemed more like a painting rather than building a house.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Twenty-five years ago, a bike messenger sat in his garage and used an old-school Singer sewing machine to stitch his mark on the world.
That bike messenger was Rob Honeycutt, and the bags he made in 1989 were called Scumbags. They were designed for use by the city’s notorious two-wheeled delivery riders, whose fashion sense tended toward crude cutoffs, T-shirts and hoodies.
A year later, Honeycutt changed his operation’s name to Timbuk2, and the company’s been crafting an increasingly ambitious line of bags ever since, expanding far beyond the world of tattooed dudes on fixies.
“Timbuk2 wasn’t going to the office 25 years ago,” CEO Patti Cazzato told Cult of Mac during a recent tour of the company’s Mission district factory, where all of Timbuk2’s custom bags are made.
I was pretty sure I would never need to look any further than my trusty Chrome bag when it came time to be out and about with my electronics. It was a simple system, really: Just chuck everything into the bag’s cavernous pocket, buckle it in and go. It was quick, and it worked — until I needed to actually get anything out of there.
See, for all its style and the novelty of its seat-belt strap, Chromes are really only meant to transport one or two larger packages. Because they’re messenger bags. You know, for messengers.
The MixBag takes a different approach: It’s smaller, but it has a pocket for everything you might possibly need to carry around.
Today I’m going to review a plastic bag. A new low, even for me? Maybe, but this is no ordinary plastic bag. It’s a bag that has beaten out pretty much every waterproof gadget case i’ve ever tested, because:
It fits almost every gadget I have
It weighs almost nothing. I can keep one in every bag I carry.
The bag is the LokSak, and it’s designed to keep your gadgets safe.
Travel can be a chance to practice minimalism, or an opportunity to drive yourself nuts. What am I talking about? Luggage. You can pare down your essentials to fit in a carry-on – even if you’re away for a month – or you can throw in every item of clothing and every charger you have. The second approach will result in a broken back, and you’ll still find that you left something essential at home.
Over the years, I’ve perfected my packing technique so that I only take the bare minimum. And when I say “perfected,” I mean “struggled with.” But it works for me, and the principles can be applied even if you’re the kind of person who hires a boy to carry your trunks for you when you take a cruise on the Titanic.
So here’s the Cult of Mac Guide to Traveling Light, a roundup of strategies, product recommendations and other tips to make your next trip a breeze.
This is Waterfield’s Franklin Tote and I l-l-love it. It’s an open-topped leather bag with hand/shoulder straps and a bunch of pockets inside and out, and it’s just about the most practical daily carry-around I’ve ever used. Does is replace a backpack? Of course not.
Does it do the job of a messenger bag when on the bike? No frikkin’ way. But can I reach into my backpack as I walk to grab sunglasses, or drop in that sweet cantaloupe I just bought from the fruit store on the high street? I think you know the answer to that one.