plugbug

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on plugbug:

Last chance! Save 20% on all Twelve South accessories

By

Twelve-South-collage
Get all these and more at a sweet discount!
Photos: Twelve South

Save 20% on the Cult of Mac Store’s entire lineup of awesome accessories from Twelve South. AirPods cases, iPhone chargers, iPad stands and more are all available at a discounted rate for a limited time only.

The sale includes some of Twelve South’s most popular products, including HiRise Wireless, AirSnap, and BookArc. The discounts disappear tonight, so enjoy them while you can!

PlugBug Duo makes your MacBook charger twice as useful

By

With PlugBug Duo, you can simultaneously charge your MacBook, iPhone, and iPad from one plug.
With PlugBug Duo, you can simultaneously charge your MacBook, iPhone, and iPad from one wall socket.
Photo: TwelveSouth

Everyone wants to tote around less stuff, so add-ons that make your current gear more useful are welcome.  And that’s just what the new PlugBug Duo by TwelveSouth does: it clips onto your MacBook charger and adds a pair of USB ports.

It’s especially handy for people who have a MacBook Pro with a USB-C port, but need to charge gadgets that take a traditional USB port.

Cult of Mac Holiday Gift Guide: Gifts Under $50 [Updated]

By

under50 updated

Believe it or not, Christmas is almost here, 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 that cost less than $50. Yes, you can appear to be a big spender, but without actually spending that much.

Cult Of Mac’s Awesome 2012 Advent Calendar: Day 6 – PlugBug

By

adventcalendar6

One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.

So what’s up with door number 6? It’s a handy little charging solution called the PlugBug that puts a spare 10 watt USB charger in your MacBook power brick.

What’s In Our Gadget Bags: John Brownlee, Deputy Editor

By

bag1everything
The contents of all my bags, organized semi-neatly and labeled for your inspection.

We’re nosey as anyone here at Cult of Mac. We are also complete nerds, which means that we’re always peeking into people’s bags at conferences, or checking out what gear people use.

And we figured that you all might be just as bad, so we figured we’d rip open our man bags, handbags and purses and show you what’s inside, and why we carry what we do.

We’ll be doing this periodically from time to time. This week, we’ll be checking out what’s usually in the three (!) separate gadget bags of Cult of Mac Deputy Editor John Brownlee, and he’ll be filling us in on what everything is and why he carries it.

TwelveSouth’s PlugBug Is The Cute Power Parasite That Can Solve All Your iPad Charging Woes [Review]

By

IMG_0481

Over the last couple of years, I have developed an obsession with traveling light that has been wonderfully encouraged and cultivated by Mssrs. Cook, Ive & Co. When I go out of the house and need to work remotely, my bag is as light as I can possibly make it: an 11-inch MacBook Air, an iPad 2, my iPhone 4S, a couple pens and a steno-pad for notes. Despite the sheer amount of silicon and tech stuffed into my shoulder bag, it’s always light, always svelte, always uncluttered. As they have done with so many other things when it comes to consumer electronics design, they have turned making gadgets thin into a cutting-edge art.

Well, except for one thing. The chargers.

The standard Apple MacBook  Charger is easily two to three times thicker than my MacBook Air. The same can be said about the Apple 10W USB charger, which is just a brick compared to the thin slate it powers. Between the bricks and the cords, Apple’s chargers add an extreme amount of thickness and ungainliness to a streamlined gadget bag… and since my MacBook Air, at least, doesn’t have 10W USB ports, I can’t piggy back charging my iPad off of just the one charger.

Well, not without TwelveSouth’s ingenious, button-cute accessory, the <a href=”https://twelvesouth.com/products/plugbug/”>PlugBug</a>, that is.

Here Are Your Top Apple Accessories of 2011, Now Choose The Best [Best Of 2011]

By

accessories

We’ve seen some crazy accessories for Apple devices over the past year. Some of them have been so inventive that we’ve marveled at their originality and design, whereas others are so simple and functional that we’re knocking our heads wishing we had thought of something so elegant. Over the past year we’ve tried to cover the most important new accessories for Apple devices, and we’ve narrowed down the favorites to a list of 10 accessories that we think are the best of the best.

Now it’s your turn to tell us if you think we’re right, and let us know which is your favorite Apple accessory of 2011. Take a quick glance at the 10 items below and then vote in our poll to let us know which you think is the true winner.

What Is The Best Apple Accessory of 2011? [Poll]

By

iphone_case_058_05

 

This year we’ve seen a slew of absolutely amazing accessories for Apple devices come to the market for both the iMac, MacBooks, iPhones, iPad and AppleTV. Many of them have been remarkable but we’re having a hard time distinguishing which Apple Accessories should be considered the absolute best of 2011, so we’re turning to our readers to help us out.

This Cute Little PlugBug Will Charge Your MacBook And iPad At The Same Time

By

plugbug_desktop_headerlarge

Oh, this is slick. The PlugBug by TwelveSouth is an accessory for your MacBook that solves the problem of how to charge an iPad 2 and your laptop at the same time from a single outlet, and it does so pretty damn ingeniously if you ask me.

So here’s the deal. Apple’s got their MagSafe power bricks so protected by patents that it’s impossible to sell, say, an aftermarket MagSafe brick that charges a MacBook and iPad from the same bifurcating cable.

TwelveSouth got around this restriction in a pretty clever way. At the top of every MacBook power brick is a removable wall socket adapter, which you can even plug standard laptop power cables into. The PlugBug just snaps into the power brick adapter slot and offers a 10W USB port to simultaneously charge your iPad and MacBook at the same time.

I love it. Heck, I’m putting in my order now. If you want to do the same, it’ll cost you just $34.99 with free shipping in the US.