“Thunderbolt, ho!” That’s the cry of low-frame-rate animated big cats when they found out just how much the new Akitio Thunder Dock can do when hooked up to a Mac. And “Snarrrfff” is what their rat-like friend said when he saw the $269 price tag.
“Thunderbolt, ho!” That’s the cry of low-frame-rate animated big cats when they found out just how much the new Akitio Thunder Dock can do when hooked up to a Mac. And “Snarrrfff” is what their rat-like friend said when he saw the $269 price tag.
Yes, it’s another iPhone 5 dock. And yes, it’s on Kickstarter. But just take a look at the Spool Dock and tell me you don’t want the hell out of it. Go on, I dare ya.
If you’re looking for an ultra-simple dock, or just for a way to stop your iPhone skittering across your desk every time you snap it’s cable, then you might like the Rolio from Blue Lounge. Not only is it one of the most versatile iPhone and iPad charging accessories around, it’s also one of the most affordable.
Belkin’s new Express Dock for iPad lets you dial in the perfect fit for any Lightning iPad, whatever case it’s in. Literally: there’s actually a dial on the back to adjust the dock’s size.
If you have a router (no, not that kind of router), a chunk of plywood and some mad craft skillz, then you could make your own Undulating Contours charging station. If you are missing any one of those, then, it’d be better to spend the $24 on the real thing, hand-hewn in Louisiana.
Although we thought it was a pain in the butt to assemble, one thing TwelveSouth’s HiRise dock really got right was this core concept that a dock doesn’t have to be specific to one iPhone or iPad model, but can be universal as long as it uses a Lightning connector.
EverDock is a new dock that takes that concept even further. It’s a universal dock that will work with pretty much anything, whether an iPhone, a Galaxy S3, an iPad, or something weirder all together.
Every time I use my iPhone 5, I’m less and less convinced that it even needs a dock. It’s far easier to use the phone when it’s laying flat on my desk than when it’s propped up at a steep angle. The only place I’d like one is on my nightstand, and as I don’t have a nightstand that option is out. However, many people want docks, and of these many of them keep their iPhones in fat, ugly protective cases. The Sarvi Dock is for them.
Remember the Area Ware wooden iPhone dock concept that we saw back in May? No, neither do I, a problem not helped by the fact that Google insists on searching for “are aware” when I tap in “Area Ware”. Either way, that neat design has been, uh, redesigned and can now be almost bought: it’ll be shipping on November 1st.
An iPhone dock is a pleasant thing to have on one’s desk. It keeps things nice and tidy, while making it easy to holster your iPhone and juice it up without mucking around with wires.
There is one way in which tethering your iPhone via cable directly to your computer is superior, though. It’s easier to actually use your iPhone that way instead of gorilla-arming it.
That’s the brilliance of the Saidoka: it’s an iPhone dock that lets you easily tap our text messages, answer calls, and even play games, all while your iPhone is charging and syncing.
You’re going to love this one. What if I told you there was an iPad accessory that combined a full-sized keyboard, a case, a desktop tray and an iPhone dock, plus a compartment for storing a whole mess of charging and connection accessories. And what if I told you this behemoth was styled into a package that would make a 1990s-era traveling businessman proud to use it?
Well, as you may have suspected, this absurdity does exist. It’s called the Modus III, and it’s all kinds of awesome.
The Saidoka is both ingenious and utterly superfluous, both at the same time. It’s an iPhone dock designed to let your iPhone lay almost face-up, letting you charge it and use it when you’re sitting at your desk. It comes in 30-pin and Lightning flavors, and hooks up to a charger or computer via micro-USB.
You know what else keeps your iPhone say on your desk and facing upwards as it charges? Nothing? That is, you can put nothing under your iPhone and it’ll do the exact same thing. And neither will it cost you €50/$50.
The new A4000i electric scooter from Japan’s Terra Motors can hit 65km/h (40mph) and do 65km on a full charge (or “gallon”) of electricity. Used to travel 20km per day. The scooter will cost just $29 per year to run. That’s even less than my bike, which I fuel with a combination of delicious pizza and chocolate.
But the real reason I’m writing about the A4000i Is that it’s a giant, mobile iPhone dock.
You should probably have a smoke detector in every room, and you should also test it regularly, thus making a mockery of Nina Simone’s song Don’t Smoke in Bed. However, some of us live in apartments in which the landlord can’t even provide a toilet that flushes properly, and so the hope of him fitting smoke detectors is a distant one.
For us, the SENSE+ was invented.
If you stayed in any but the most flea-bitten of hotels in the last few years, you will have seen an iHome dock on the nightstand, ready to be mostly ignored until you need a place to charge your iPhone at night.
And as you eyed the clock/radio/speaker you may have chuckled to yourself and muttered something about the poor hotel owner, who just wasted like tens of thousands of dollars on now-obsolete 30-pin connector-equipped boxes.
If only he's waited, he could have had this new Lightning version, which also works with older models.
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.
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.
Remember the Braeburn Dock? It was a hefty, beautifully-crafted iPhone 5 dock hewn from a single block of aluminum, and incorporating special channels which boosted the sound from the speaker and to the mic.
Now it has been joined by the Braeburn HD, which is the exact same thing, only made to hold your iPhone in landscape orientation for watching movies. Or docking it on very tall desks which leave almost no clearance between their surface and the ceiling above.