MiniDock by BlueLounge Category: Docks Works With: iPhone 5, iPad mini Price: $40
Bluelounge’s new MiniDock really is mini. It’s a tiny little dock which perfectly matches the cuboid charger that came with your iPhone or iPad mini, and turns it into a wall-mounted dock. The device is as portable and effective as it is handy, especially if you never use a case. I have one here in Cult of Mac’s Spanish HQ, and I have been putting it through its paces in our Extreme Test Lab.
I like the direction iPhone docks are headed in, post-Lightning. It seems that making a dock with the little connector is too hard, or manufacturers have already been stung once by the switch from 30-pin connectors, or that they’ve just gotten sick of paying Apple’s Made For iPhone fees.
The upshot is that they’ve gone back to basics. Instead of making a dock, they’re making things that do the job of a dock. And what is a dock’s job? To hold your iPhone, and to (optionally) charge it.
The Alupocket does both, but it does it on the form of an aluminum taco which is stuck to the wall.
The SETA smartphone stand is another one of those post-Lighting iPhone “docks” which don’t actually let you dock the phone. The 30 pin dock connector was bad in many ways but it did at least give us docks into which we could dump our devices and let them charge.
The SETA pretty much ignores the dock part and just proves a handsome, minimalist spot on your desk to park your phone. And it also provides a neat way to control your charging cable.
The Atrio case, a Kickstarter project from Craftwerk USA, is an aluminum bumper that’ll cost you a crazy $90 (less for early-bird pitchers). But the clever twist here is that the box it comes in doublers as a stylish – and matching – iPhone stand.
Do you wish you could get in on this whole one-keyboard-switching-between-multiple-devices game, only you’re wedded to some crazy old clackety keyboard that only connects via cable? Then I have good news! IOGear has a new widget that’ll hook everything up.
Ah, the iCar. We’ve been waiting for Apple to make a real one for years, ever since they transformed a Porsche into one way back in 1980. And we know Steve Jobs was game.
So the promise that Volkswagen is preparing an iBeetle might, at first, seem of interest to Apple fans and auto enthusiasts. But don’t get too excited, because the iBeetle is lame.
Often, simple=good. And the Sine Cable Stand from UrbanPrefer is both simple and good. It does two things: works as a cord-wrapper for your iPhone’s power cable, and acts as a handy-dandy stand for your iPhone while it charges.
Ever wish you could connect all your Thunderbolt accessories to one single box and then just hook that up to your MacBook? No, of course not. Because you don’t have any Thunderbolt accessories. Nobody does, unless they like spending double for a hard drive or have picked up one of Apple’s nice Thunderbolt displays. Which include the dock anyway.
No, what you need is the MacDock, a neat little Apple-TV-like box which connects a wealth of accessories to your vintage MacBook via it’s Mini DisplayPort and USB ports.
White Wave Dock by Modern Tech Category: Docks Works With: All Lightning iDevices Price: $22
For the longest time, there were no Lightning docks available for iPhones or iPads, and it looks like Apple will never make one. I have some thoughts on why that might be, but we’ll get to that in a bit. For now, we’re going to take a quick look at the seemingly crappy dock I picked up from Amazon last month. It’s called the “White Wave Lightning Dock Docking Charge Station for Apple iPad Mini/ iPad 4G/ iPhone 5/ iPod Touch 5G/ iPod Nano 7G,” which should give you some idea of the kind of SEO-mad company behind it.
This is the Anti-Loneliness Bowl, and it is designed to hold your iPhone close so that you need never experience a single second of solitude, even while slurping down some cheap noodles.
![MiniDock Turns Any USB Charger Into A Wall-Mounted Lightning Dock [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/plugins/lazy-load/images/1x1.trans.gif)
![MiniDock Turns Any USB Charger Into A Wall-Mounted Lightning Dock [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/IMG_1727.jpg "IMG_1727.JPG")
![Non-Brand ‘White Wave’ Lightning Dock Is Surprisingly Good [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/1362675627.jpg)
