You don’t want to see my desk. Trust me – it’s pretty bad. In fact, you mightn’t even be able to see it, hidden as it is under a stack of junk and gadgets.
Actually, I’m kidding. I’m a neat-freak, which is why I have my eye on the Station, a bamboo desk tidy for your iPhone and all your other crap.
Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.
From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for the lovely laydee in your life.
![The Ultimate iPad Mini Accessories Buying Guide [Feature]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/mini.jpg "mini")
The iPad Mini at the Apple Store in Passeig de Gracia, Barcelona. Photo Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
The iPad Mini is here, and it is lying naked and vulnerable on your desk/bed/lap/passenger seat. And that’s ok, because today is all about tweaking and configuring your settings, installing apps and seeing which of your pants have back pockets big enough to carry it (don’t sit down!)
But what of tomorrow? Soon you’ll start searching for cases, speakers, docks and other accessories for the latest tiny addition to your family, and that’s where we come in. Yes, you can use most of your iPad and iPhone accessories with the new Mini, but here are some add-ons which work particularly well with Apple’s littlest tablet.
I’m posting this cute little gadget mostly for the benefit of Cult of Mac’s esteemed deputy editor John “olde-worlde” Brownlee, a man so reverent of natural materials that he once swapped out the ugly, modern sheet of borosilicate glass atop his induction hob for a shiny sheet of vintage, tanned pigskin.
With hilarious (and bacon-scented) results.
So this cable wrangler should be right up his street, especially as it is called the “Cable Fondler,” a name which will appear to Mr. Brownlee’s other weakness: he’s a colossal perv.
Grove has long made some of the sexiest Apple accessories around, hewing them out of polished bamboo and then laser etching them with attractive designs of your choice, so it’s no surprise that the Portland, Oregon based outfit now have cases available for the iPhone 5. Also unsurprising is just how gorgeous they are, especially in their etched incarnations.
You’ll pay, of course — Grove’s iPhone 5 cases start at $79 without any engraving, and go up from there to $99 for one with a design and $129 for a custom engraving. Fashion never comes cheap.
Wacom might be letting every other pen maker bring touch-sensitive styluses to the iPad first, but at least its regular dumb iPad styluses are amongst the best out there. And if you have ever hefted your Wacom Bamboo stylus and thought “This is almost perfect, but I wish it were a little stubbier,” then I have good news:
Wacom has made a stubby stylus. What’s more, it transforms into a long and slender stylus. It’s called the Bamboo Stylus Pocket.
This cash register could be used in the House of Bamboo
I used to work as a the sole waiter in a restaurant where the cash register consisted of a wooden cigar box and a solar-powered Casio calculator. I’m an honest chap, and the chef was also the owner, so it worked just fine. But times have changed, and now there exists a modern alternative to our old cedar box. It’s called the Cashbox and it is fashioned from beautiful bamboo varnished to look like a hideous high-school craft project.
You only need look at a child's drawing to know why you need a stylus.
“If you see a stylus they failed.” That might be everybody’s favorite Steve Jobs quote about touch screens, but the fact is the finger is terrible at both drawing and writing — just look at your kid’s scrawlings up on the refrigerator door if you don’t believe me.
If you want to make pictures and words that the rest of the world can recognize as such, you need a little help. Luckily, iPad accessory makers also ignored Jobs’ complaints and set out to fill the world with wonderful iPad pens. Here are the best you can buy.
![The Great New Alupen Pro Stylus Also Writes On Paper [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/alupen-pro-1.jpg "alupen pro-1")
The Alupen Pro: Thinner, healthier and pen-ier than its fat predecessor Photo Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
I was a big fan of the Alupen when it launched — so much so that I went out and bought my own. It was chunky, looked like a metal pencil and felt pretty good in my big hands. Then came the Wacom Bamboo stylus and our love affair was over.
Now, though, the newer skinnier, cleverer Alupen Pro has got me two-timing the svelte Bamboo. Why? Because it has a biro built in.
We firmly believe that Wacom’s Bamboo stylus is one of the best styluses money can buy for the iPad, but that was until this thing came along. The Wacom Bamboo Stylus Duo mixes a traditional ballpoint pen with Wacom’s famous iPad stylus to bring you the best of both worlds, whether you’re sketching a hobbit in Draw Something, or jotting down a phone number on an old envelope.
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![Cult of Mac Holiday Gift Guide: Gifts For Her Edition [Updated]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/her-updated.jpg "her updated")
