Another day, another iPhone camera lens case and adapter. This one is called the Phocus and manages to distinguish itself both by its angular, military-look styling, and by the fact that you can (with a further adapter) stick your SLR lenses on the front.
Let me count the ways that I have killed so many successive sets of earbuds, whether from Apple or otherwise. Rain, sweat (ears), sweat (general, dripping), wet ear canals from insufficient after-shower toweling. More rain.
You get the idea.
If only I’d had a pair of Klipsch’s new rugged S4i earbuds, which are rubberized against both the elements and also my deadly perspiration.
The earbuds are also fully iReady, with a mic for calls and a three button remote for play/pause/answer and volume control. The specs say that the sensitivity (a good measure of how loud they are) is 110dB and the frequency response goes from 10Hz to 19kHz – a respectable range for a ‘bud.
But the toughness is the thing, and these multicolored cans can put up with most exercise and outdoor activity.
I doubt they can resist my single most common way to break a pair of headphones though – the Tug. The Tug can be achieved in many ways, but has one common element: you forget about a dangling cord and catch it fatally on an immovable object, or your own body. I have ended the life of a pair of Porta Pros by standing from a crouch and catching the cable on a knee. And I butchered a pair of retro Panasonic over-the-ear headphones when the cable snagged on a post in the street.
I should probably be more careful.
The S4is will be available soon.
Source: Klipsch
Thanks: Ashley!
This replica is probably the closest you’ll ever get to having a real Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver. What does it have to do with Apple, you ask? After all, this is the Cult of Mac.
The Screwdriver is also a universal remote, which means that it will not only control your TV and VHS VCR, but also you Apple TV and – via the Universal Dock – your iPhone or iPod.
Sick of plugging and unplugging cables from your MacBook Pro every time you get back to your desk? Hate wasting one of the two USB ports just to keep your iPhone connected? And finally: don’t want to spring for a $1,000 Thunderbolt Display?
Then the KwikDock might be right up your alley: It’s a simple (and cheapish) pass-through dock with some handy extras.
This is the Pear, and it might just be one of the most useful iPhone accessories yet devised. It’s a little, puck-like Bluetooth receiver that is designed to slot into any speaker dock and free your iOS device from its needy clutches.
The big advantage Jambone’s Jambox has over its competitors is upgradeable firmware. The speaker is in fact a tiny computer which can be updated from time to time. Previous additions have been the spookily excellent surround-sound simulation called Live Audio, and you can also install one of many apps which add new voices, or let you access third-party services.
The Jambox might not be the loudest or even the best-sounding speaker out there, but it is certainly the most future-proof. And now another update adds yet more new features.
The Touchfire is a weird little gadget, a silicone skin which covers your iPad’s touchscreen keyboard with a floppy membrane that partially simulates a real, physical keyboard. Launched over a year on Kickstarter, the Touchfire finally goes on sale today. I have been testing one out for the past couple of weeks. Is it worth the $50 asking price? Well, that depends.
I’m a big fan of G-Form’s protective iPad cases. I use one on bike tours to keep my iPad safe in a pannier no matter what’s going on outside, and I love the relatively thin form-factor which comes courtesy of its special-sauce material which stiffens and absorbs shock on impact.
I even like the weird, retro-futuristic designs. But for those of you who prefer something a little more understated, there are now two new G-Forms to tempt you: the Reverse Ballistic Edge and the Extreme Hydro Sleeve.
Nikon has gone all Microsoft on us and pre-announced a piece of hardware ahead of this year’s Photokina show. The kit in question is a huge monster of a lens, the 800mm ƒ5.6, which will take the place of the current 600mm ƒ4 as the longest autofocus lens in Nikon’s lineup.
Would you pay $20 to keep your Apple earbuds in your ears where they belong? Me too. Especially if the solution was as tiny, neat and portable as the earbuds themselves. So keep your fingers crossed (or better, stump up some cash) and hope that Zach Herbert and Adam Orshan’s Kickstarter project gets funded.
Imagine you had a 24-inch iPad which could be propped up to any angle. Imagine further that this iPad can be hooked up to your Mac and used as an external display, and that the color gamut of that display shows 97% of the Adobe RGB space. Now add in a pressure-sensitive pen along with the multi-touch goodness.
This is Wacom’s new 24HD.
Book fetishists often cite the smell and feel of a book as a reason to keep chopping down trees and wasting fuel to ship the pulp around the world. But what about something that we probably all value, whether we are paper-sniffers or we have entered the modern age – signed books? Specifically, how does one get a digital book signed by the author?
Brett Kelly has the answer.
Macs and musicians have always been synonymous (not to meantion aliterative), and some of the first creators to make a nonsense of the canard that the iPad is “only for consumption” were musicians. And where music nerds go, specialist hardware always follows. Here’s a list of the best Mac and iOS music accessories out there.
The Smarter Stand is just the kind of gadget that we like here at Cult of Mac: cheap, simple and ingenious. And it seems that we’re not the only ones that appreciate these qualities: the stand blew through its $10,000 Kickstarter goal in just 24 hours, and is currently pushing $80,000 in pledges.
The iPhone already has built-in image stabilization (which is why the frame zooms in annoyingly close whenever you shoot video), but who could argue with this tiny, cute steady-cam-a-like for smartphones? It works on a very simple principle, hanging a counterweight below the camera to stop things shaking. Despite this simplicity, though, the kit will cost you a surprising $180.
What if I told you there was a case that adds up to 16GB storage to your iPhone? And further, that this case costs just $50. You’d be pretty interested, right? Well, it’s kind of true. You can indeed buy a 16GB case, but sadly that memory can’t actually be used with the iPhone.
Remember the first batch of white MacBooks? Their top panels would react with the grease from your hands and turn a disgusting, smoker’s-hair yellowish brown. Not only that, but the trim on the edges of the computer was prone to flaking off like mature plastic scabs.
Apple seems to have gotten on top of this kind of first-gen hardware problem, but Canon’s new Rebel T4i (EOS 650D) is doing a similar thing, only in the opposite direction: Its rubber coating is turning white, and leaking irritating substances as it does so.
If you want to make photo collages on your iPhone or iPad, you use Diptic. Those are the rules. But a challenger is in town: Fuzel, from the Vietnamese designers at Not A Basement Studio, will launch on July 12th and looks to be a fast and easy way to make great collages.
Well, I guess it had to happen some time. What? A ring-flash for the iPhone. And not only that, but a ring-flash that looks like an Anglepoise lamp. My feeling is that there are some iPhoneography nerds out there getting very excited right now.
Who needs Instagram? Well, me for one, ever since I gave up on Flickr and never really got started with the evil Facebook. But I’m pretty bored with the Instagram filters already (they could toss them all except X-Pro II and I wouldn’t even notice).
And yes, there are a million other photo-filtering apps out there, but what about a little DIY? If you’re feeling adventurous, grab some tape, some colored gels and your iPhone and head over to Lomography for this great little low-tech project.
It would take a long while to get through all the innuendo-laden jokes made possible by the LenSkirt. So I guess we’ll just take things slow. But first let me tell you what it is: a black cloth bag which sticks to windows so you can shoot through glass without reflections. Now, let the schoolboy fun begin.
The Audio Xciter music player’s press release is full of the usual superlatives, and I quickly glossed over them in my usual cynical manner looking for something to make fun of (which I found – more on that in a bit). But one listen of the audio-processing iOS app is enough to make you sit up and, uh, listen.
It really is amazing.
Oh man, I can totally see myself taking this mechanical Bluetooth keyboard to the local bar and clackety clacking out a few posts every morning. It’s called the KBtalKing Pro and it is a rather clever little beast, a pro keyboard which is designed to work with – and switch seamlessly between – up to ten of your devices.
Did you love the iOS game Sword & Sworcery? Nope, me neither – too much grind, and not enough find. But I totally dug the awesome soundtrack by Jim Guthrie. I bought it in lossless format and listened the crap out of it.
And now I’m into it for another $5, thanks to a remix album which has been released to celebrate the Japanese launch of the game. And if you’re into retro, rock or just good music, you’re in for a treat.
One of Apple’s hallmarks is that it says “no” to way more products than it says “yes” to. And this kind of perfection is what also lead photographer Steve Bloom to capture the amazing photo of stampeding zebras which features in the promo shots for the new Retina MacBook Pro.
Not only was he shooting on film while on location in Botswana, he almost missed the shot entirely rather than capture something less than perfect.