I thought I had the whole “paperless” thing under control until Doxie sent over the new, budget-priced Doxie One for me to review. Trust me: If you snap photos of your receipts with your iPhone in an attempt to banish dead trees from your life, you should probably switch to a portable scanner.
It really is that much better.
The iNotebook from Targus is yet another attempt to solve the old problem of hand-writing on your iPad. This one comes in the form of a folio with a pad of paper, a special pen and a sensor up top to record your ink strokes in digital format.
The trouble is, it looks like another “faster horse and carriage” solution.
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 whining kids in your life.
This is theGOODbook. It is a book, and it is very, very good. It’s so hot that even though I’m a dedicated non-user of cases, I have the product page primed and ready to place my order.
The short form: Zagg’s Pro Plus has got to be the best compact iPad keyboard I have used (and I have used a lot). It is also backlit, incredibly light and doubles as an iPad case.
But it has one fatal flaw – your iPad 3 or later will probably fall out.
It’s December, which means that the lack of real news combined with my absurd love for iPhone and camera-related gewgaws takes over, bring a rain of plastic crap down on the pages of Cult of Mac. Sometimes this intersects with a genuinely useful accessory, and today we bring you the 3-in-1 Lightning Camera Connector.
This spinning, five-lens-bayonet case for the iPhone 5 looks fantastic, but it’s hard to get past both a) the price ($140, or HK$1,080) and b) the name (TurtleJacket PentaEye!)
Still, it’s billed as a tool for the “serious iPhoneographer,” so let’s take a look.
The season is fast approaching for tradeshows, and with it the need for desperate booth-builders to find newer and more gimmicky ways to hawk their wares. I predict that the iPad mini will be the hot ticket this year (or rather, early next year), and New PC Gadgets seems to agree, for it has just launched an acrylic security stand for the little tablet.
Snapseed, the best damn photo editor on all of iOS, has gotten an update. V1.5 adds Google+ sharing, a whole new Retrolux filter, better frames, and a new icon. Oh, and it’s now free, so if you were too cheap to download it before, go grab it now.
Which? –the UK consumer site/organization/magazine — has put tablet battery life to the test. Tablets were split into two size groups, has their screens set to the exact same brightness (using an external calibration tool) and were used to browse the web until they died.
And surprise! The iPad not only won in each category, but won by a landslide.
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.
It wasn’t until I’d written the name at least five times that I realized the Amplifiear isn’t called the “Amplifear” after all. That’s not to say I’m disappointed: I’d much rather have an acoustic amplifier for my iPad than a small, buzzing metal box that amplifies the terror in my heart until my emotions are torn into rags and my life becomes a fearful shuffle from corner to dark corner.
The Boombot REX is a ruggedized, wearable JamBox for outdoorsy types. It looks amazing – and even more so because it was invented by Bill and Ted.
Da-duh-duh-da-duh-duh-da-DUH-duh. So goes the familiar tune of the iPhone’s default Marimba ringtone, as recognizable (and yet not nearly as annoying) as Nokia’s Gran Vals.
And yet what if you want to mix things up a little, but not too much? Greg Pierce, the wonder-developer at Agile Tortoise – responsible for Drafts, Terminology and others – has done the hard work for you, re-rendering iOS’ alert sounds on acoustic guitar.
One thing that nobody sees to have noticed with yesterday’s iOS iWork update is that Pages now tracks changes. And not just changes from other Pages documents, either – it’ll import and export tracked changes from Microsoft Word documents.
This could be huge. Or maybe it just won’t work at all.
This is pure speculation, but I have a suspicion that when Microsoft fired the person responsible for naming the Windows Phone 7 Series Phones, that same person was snapped up by the folks at Ballistic. For how else could you explain the “IPHONE 5 BALLISTIC EVERY1 SERIES CASE,” a case so badly labelled that it even shouts its name?
If you have been trawling the internet for an iPhone 5 bike mount which looks like it was beamed forward in time from the 1980s, then stop! Your search is over. Better still, the case even has a numeral-heavy 1980s-style name: The M550.
Perch is a new way to use your old iOS device. Got an iPod Touch or unused iPhone/iPad laying around the house with nothing to do? Perch is an app which turns it into an always-on portal, letting you just walk up to it and show things to other Perch users in your network.
The idea is to keep this on a wall at home and treat it as a window on your family.
The new TonePrint app lets you download guitar-pedal presets to your iPhone and then squirt them into your actual pedal via the pickup of your guitar. This magical-sounding ability is actually pretty simple, but that doesn’t make it any less useful.
Imagine, if you will, a world where cellphone cameras and SLRs get along. A world where one was never teased by the other. Imagine a world where Canon and Nikon lenses can be used as easily on an iPhone as they can on their own bodies.
Now open your eyes and look around. How do you feel? Does anything look any different? It should, because the whole world just changed. Behold! The iPhone SLR Mount.
The People People Speaker is a clever solution to a persistent, cruel and terrible first-world problem: big, ugly speakers eating up the visual space of your home. The answer isn’t to make the speaker smaller, but to make the speaker less visible.
Thus the almost invisible speaker was born.
Looking for a gift for a loved one, a workmate, or even someone you secretly hate but are obliged to buy something for? Then let us help you. Our Cult Of Mac Holiday Gift Guide is running throughout November and December, thrice weekly with farm-fresh updates every time.
Looking for something in particular? Here’s the full rundown:
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 good gentleman in your life.
I can’t be the only person who took a look at the new iPods’ wrist straps and thought, “I want that for my iPhone.” I’m forever pulling my iPhone 5 from my pocket to snap something for Instagram, and it’d be totally neat if I could just keep the thing in my hand instead, and never have to worry about dropping it.
Happily, the fine folks at Photojojo also felt the persistent pull of gravity and did something about it. Presenting: The iPhone Wrist Strap.
JLab’s brand new Bouncer is a Big JamBox competitor with a Big Jambox competitor’s price-tag: $250 (the BJ is $300). Inevitable comparisons aside, this looks to be a decent portable patio speaker, and it certainly looks the part.