ces 2012

This Is Microsoft’s Best Product Of CES, Hands Down! [Caption Contest]

By

microsoft

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – There are some really awesome products on the showroom floor of CES this year, but we think we’ve found the greatest Microsoft product of all time. OF ALL TIME! Microsoft lipbalm. Admit it. You’re jealous that you don’t have your own stick yet aren’t you?

To make up for your absence at CES, we’re going to have a caption contest, and the winner gets a bag of CES swag that we got from the floor today.

To enter the contest, just comment on this article with your caption for the Microsoft Chapstick picture. Funniest caption wins and we’ll announce the winner on Friday, Jan. 13th at 12pm PST. Good luck.

The Most Talked-About Gadget at CES Was Probably This Ultra-Cool Fuji Camera [CES 2012]

By

fuji-xpro1-1

My colleagues here at Cult of Mac, PR reps completely unrelated to Fuji or anything photographic, random showgoers whose snippets of conversation I intercepted — everyone seemed to be talking about it. Even the very air at CES seemed to be pulsating with the word “Fuji.” Of course, they were all talking about the enigmatic, neo-retro Fuji X-Pro1.

I Want This Holographic iPad To Be Real [CES 2012]

By

iPad hologram

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – As a kid who grew up in the ’80s, I feel robbed by the tech industry. Robbed, spit upon, and laughed at by a bunch of bald guys in suits who have deprived the ghost of my youth by failing to give me the technology they flaunted when I was a kid. I was promised holograms, damn it, so where the hell are they? Compared to holograms, touchscreens just seem like caveman technology.

Wading through the heaping mess of CES rubbish, I got lost in a time vortex. When I popped out the other side, I stumbled upon this little beauty. Behold! The holographic iPad!

Marvel At The Shamelessness Of These MacBook Air Knockoffs At CES [Gallery]

By

CES_Ultrabooks_12

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple must be feeling very flattered. Also ripped off.

Many of the new Ultrabooks here on display at the Consumer Electronics Show are so similar to the MacBook Air, they can only be described as knockoffs.

Not only do the they rip off the basic design premise — lightweight, portable laptops with long battery life — they copy the same wedge aluminum casing, wedge shape, chiclet keyboard, large, button-less trackpad, and the selection and placement of ports.

See for yourself. Here are just a few of the MacBook Air knockoffs on display at Intel’s massive booth.

Cult Of Mac Says Why Microsoft Might Be The Next Apple On Macbreak [CES 2012]

By

macbreak-ces.jpg

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Our very British Editor Leander and I were invited to sit in with Leo Laporte, Sarah Lane, and Alex Lindsay for Tuesday’s live episode of Macbreak Weekly. We had a hoot ‘n hollerin’ good time playing with new gadgets from the show floor, talking about this year’s trends in tech, and pondering how Microsoft just might be becoming the next Apple.

The full video is almost 80 minutes long, so feel free to skip around to all the good parts where it’s just me talking.

Sony’s SmartWatch Is The Closest Thing To Apple’s iWatch CES Has To Offer [CES 2012]

By

DSC_0048

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – When Steve Jobs unveiled the sixth generation iPod nano in September of 2010, he coyly said, “You can even wear it as a watch!” Overnight, the “iWatch” was coined and a whole new industry was born, as accessory makers flocked to deliver iPod nano watchbands.

Over the last year, Apple’s added a variety of new graphical watchfaces to the iPod nano, further emphasizing the nano’s suitability as a watch replacement. But that’s not nearly enough. The iPod nano’s inherent iWatchiness is a quality that Apple is still seriously under-exploiting.

Want to know how good a real iWatch could be? Look no further than Sony’s SmartWatch, on display this week at CES.

The Top 7 iPhone and iPad Accessory Trends In The CES iLounge [CES 2012]

By

iLounge8.jpg

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Four times bigger than last year, and now filling about half the massive north hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, the iLounge is home to an enormous plethora of iDevice accessories. I weaved and wandered through lanes of the iLounge pondering the products I was seeing, and out of all of what I found filling the massive space, these were the trends that stood out.

Monster’s Not Even Pretending Anymore: It Finally Becomes a Fashion Company [CES 2012]

By

monster-1
The Diamond Tears in black (they'll also be available in white)

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Or maybe it’s that they’re pretending even less. The amount of bling at the Monster “booth” — it was actually more of a compound, complete with a super-secret inner sanctum — would make Snooki (who was at the show) blush. Their three newly released headphones seemed far more focused on fashion than sound; even Monster founder Nole Lee’s Segway (was it a Segway?) rolled around on gold-rimmed wheels. Then there were the booth fashion shows…

MiVue’s iPhone POV Mounting System Attempts To Replace The Need For a GoPro [CES 2012]

By

MiVue

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — I hate having three different cameras to address various situations in life – iPhone for when I’m lazy, DSLR when I want to pretend I know how to take pretty pictures, and a GoPro for when I’m doing something adventurous. Thankfully it looks like I’m going to be able to discard at least one of those cameras from my bag now that the MiVue is in existence.

Say iDo With An iPad At This Las Vegas Wedding Chapel [CES 2012]

By

popupchapel

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Not only does Sin City’s newest quickie-wedding chapel look like an Apple store, but the vows are read off an iPad.

For the moment, the chapel is offering only pretend weddings. It’s not yet licensed to perform legally-binding unions. So what happens in Vegas can really stay here. You can “marry” that hottie you met at the club, but you don’t have to give them half your earnings when things inevitably go sour.

iLuv’s CES Secret: They’re Selling A $129.99 USB Wall Charger. Say What? [UPDATED]

By

DSC_0056

UPDATE: iLuv has since clarified the price of the RockWall to be $29.99, not $129.99. iLuv’s rep misspoke during our interview. For $29.99, including Apple charger compatible international plug adapters, this is a very good deal indeed.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – iLuv’s pretty much known for making button-cute accessories at super affordable prices, so when they broke out a mysterious, secret $129.99 device they were keeping away from prying eyes and not on display to the majority of the CES public, my eyes lit up. This must be something special, as awesome as it was a total bargain, even at that price.

“What does it do?” I asked earnestly. “Some sort of Bluetooth-enabled, app-controlled atom smasher? An iOS-compatible home Lasik kit? Is it GOD? Is God in that box?”

Nope. Meet iLuv’s seemingly inexplicable, $100+ USB wall charger.

iLuv’s DreamTraveler Could Charge A Whole Apple Keynote By Its Lonesome [CES 2012]

By

DSC_0064

 

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Wandering the showfloor of CES as a juiced-out gadget writer, charging solutions can take on a bizarrely exotic appeal. That external battery pack you passed over the press release for with a yawn months ago can suddenly become this season’s must-have gadget, all because your MacBook’s battery icon is blinking red, all the outlets are taken in the press room and you’ve got three stories to file.

As such, it’s hard to tell if I like iLuv’s DreamTraveler so much because I’ve got a desert wanderer’s thirst for electricity or because it’s genuinely a sexy, useful product. Certainly the Cult of Mac team could have used one in the press room this week. But I’m definitely leaning toward ‘sexy’ and ‘useful’, because the DreamTraveler isn’t just a good looking power strip, it’s also a dock that can charge six Apple gadgets at a time from just one outlet.

Case-Mate Shows Off Silly Looking ‘Build-It-Yourself’ iPhone Cases [CES 2012]

By

buildacase

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Odds are that giving away free stuff will attract people to your CES booth no matter how high the level of suckiness of said free product. Earlier this morning Case-Mate wasn’t even giving away free cases, they were giving away fragments of free cases, but their booth was still mobbed by an army of swag seeking CES attendees, proving once again that freebies and booth-girls are still a viable way to get your product a momentary flash of attention.

Battle of The Armatures: Upstart Audiofly, Sony Introduce Their First-Ever Armature-Powered IEMs [CES 2012]

By

audiofly-af78

  

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Amazing to think Sony has never offered an armature-driven earphone before; now that they are, they’re diving in huge time with eleven models. Aussie new kid on the block Audiofly just have one in their new lineup, but it’s a doozy, and it sounded absolutely stunning; we fully expect these to be a huge hit.

AppGear’s Elite Command AR Fills Your Home With Invading Alien Hordes! [CES 2012]

By

CESBug

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Remember the days before you had an iPhone and played games outside? Using sticks for swords and your hand as a gun? I bet you spent hours outdoors pretending you were some movie superhero trying to rescue Julia Roberts from a a plague of mutant zombie pandas. Then you got into video game consoles and iPhone games and your imagination just went in the toilet. Well, AppGear is here to bring back the nostalgia for your youth and make alien invasions a (virtual) reality.

Follow Cult Of Mac On Instagram For A Behind The Scenes Look At CES [CES 2012]

By

instagram

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Yes, it’s true, we’ve joined the masses on Instagram in order to give you more behind the scenes photos of what life is like for the Cult of Mac staff as they pound the streets of Vegas in search of gadgets galore. The team is currently rockin’ the party at CES, and we’ll be sending all our cute little followers photos from the showroom floor and behind the scenes looks at what goes into covering an event like CES. It’ll be like you’re here with us, even though you’re totally not but we wish you were. If you don’t already have Instagram, go download the app right now and add @CultofMac.

And if you’re hungry for even more info, here’s who’ll be on the ground, along with their Twitter handles. Follow us for on-the-floor updates, or if you’re at CES and see one of us, make sure to say hi.

8MM Movies And Private Audiences With Steve Jobs Inspire Ex-NeXT Programmer To Give Us Givit [CES 2012]

By

DSC_0037

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – For Greg Kostello, an amiable ex-Apple and NeXT software developer with a goofily winning smile, there’s an intimacy and immediacy in a smaller audience. It’s something Greg discovered first as a kid showing his latest home movie neighborhood blockbuster in a small garage crammed with kids. It’s a lesson that deepened giving personal software demos at NeXT in a small office close to Steve Jobs himself. And it’s something that Greg is now trying to impart to the YouTube Generation with his new video sharing site, Givit.