Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite it hitting the shops a couple of months ago.
Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-TS1 shockproof camera is designed for outdoor activities like mountain climbing and scuba diving, but for this accident-prone mom, it’s tough enough for birthday parties, school trips and Saturday soccer matches.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
According to Wikipedia, which is where I’ve learned 92 percent of the useless stuff I know, the phrase in Latin above means something along the lines of “don’t make things more complicated than they should be, dumbass.”
The V-Moda Vibe II with Microphone fits this explanation so exquisitely, you might well see them being whipped out as a teaching aid by your Latin instructor when the above phrase comes up.
Carpe diem. (Seize the day. Best way would be by clicking on the link for the rest of the review.)
Screens of all shapes and sizes can end up cluttered with windows and palettes all over the place. On tiny little MacBook screens you get everything overlapping everything else; on ginormous 27″ iMac screens, everything’s so far apart you have to crane your neck to take it all in.
Step forward Zooom/2, a utility designed to make managing all those windows a little bit easier.
Bare Bones released a Yojimbo update this afternoon, which adds a handful of nice new bits and pieces.
We’ve seen this before: A company that’s built a reputation offering stuff to the budget-minded shopper suddenly does an about face and starts wooing the uptown crowd. Sometimes it works brilliantly; often it’s a misfire.
Earlier this year, it was iHome’s turn at bat. The company, well-known for their cleanly simple, inexpensive line of iPod/iPhone accessories, stepped in a bold new direction with the release of their flagship iP1 iPod dock, a product that costs double their previously most-expensive item.
Hit the jump to find out if iHome struck out or hit a home run with the iP1.
Sure, I could write a whole How-To on rolling your own “Back To My Mac.” It involves port forwarding, obtaining a Dynamic DNS, blah blah blah.
Or you could use the iPhone app LogMeIn Ignition [iTunes Link] to remotely access to your Mac or PC in three steps.
This is a great idea, and bound to go down very well with your kids.
Balloons is simple: you launch a virtual balloon into the air from your phone. You add a photo and a text message to the label that dangles below the balloon, and send it off.
Anyone with the Balloons app can catch that balloon and add their own message. If you shell out for the paid version, you can track the balloons you’ve launched and see what other people have added to them.
To celebrate and set things off, we’ve created a Cult of Mac balloon for you to catch. It’s purple with green stripes, and has a photo of the Cult home page at the top. If you catch it, let us know what you think about Balloons.
This is a particularly friendly application. I can see school classes all over the world launching balloons to make contacts in other schools. And Shiny development have wisely kept the choice of balloons fairly limited to start with; I wouldn’t be surprised to see custom balloons appearing soon, as an in-app purchase.
The San Francisco based company Waterfield presents the Muzetto laptop bag. This “urban man bag” will make the geekiest nerd feel hip. Don’t be surprised when your fashion-forward girlfriend tries to steal it.
Designed as a lightweight laptop tote, this bag is high quality; it’s made from distressed dark brown leather and offered in six accent colors. It’s a pleasant change from the over-used nylon of most laptop bags.
I really like the gold liner which makes items highly visible. On my first use I accidently scraped the bag with my keys and made a horrible mark. But no worries! The well-oiled bag is designed to scratch easily for a distressed look. The marks will blend in time or you can just give it a good rub.
Seems like a no-brainer: Take two different concepts that work great separately, Frankenstein them together and — viola! Instant more amazingness!
Except we all know how the Frankenstein story ended. The LiquidAUX story isn’t as ugly as that. But it isn’t pretty either.
Bash the jump for the full review.
TapeDeck is one of those apps that I don’t use very often; but when I need it, I’m glad it’s there.
It’s App bundle season, and MacZot! has put together a nice software package that has a variety of apps at a great price. The Mac Sale Bundle covers 10 apps for $49.99.
If you want legitimate rounded corner shadowed header images for your blog post, this App bundle has what you need. Want to play PC games on OS X? That’s bundled too. Let’s take a look at some of the super star apps in this pack, and maybe the MacZot! bundle will add a little strength to your Applications folder.
The sexiest all-in-one computer has long been the iMac, and last year’s 24-inch model was a beauty. But oh my Lord, the new 27-inch machine induces crazy lust. Look at the size of that screen!
I just returned from the Apple store with one. I went to buy the new Magic Mouse. They were out of stock, so I bought the new iMac instead — it comes with a Magic Mouse.
Crazy, I know. I just couldn’t help myself. We’ve already got a 24-inch model, but the 27-inch is so much… bigger.
Yeah, like 3-inches of extra screen makes a difference. But it does. The screen is simply HUGE. There’s no other word for it. If you’re sitting right in front of it, hunched over the keyboard, you have to physically MOVE YOUR HEAD to look from one corner to the other. You get motion sickness if there’s video playing, like being in the front seats of a movie theater.
Thanks to this big beautiful screen, the sexiest desktop in the world got a lot sexier. The question is though: is the screen too big?
Full review after the jump, including real-world benchmarks and tons of pics.
I’m a multitouch junkie. Everything I touch has to be multitouch, or it just ain’t right. I can no longer use a regular laptop trackpad — there’s no two-finger scrolling. It irritates me no end if I can’t point, scroll and double-click with my fingers.
How long will it take then, to get used to the Apple’s new Magic Mouse? So far, it’s been frustrating. It seems like the Magic Mouse would be perfectly natural to use, but it isn’t.
I recently came across orbit, which is one of the best navigation options available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I have an iPhone that has over 100 applications and it’s definitely a pain to get to the applications on the last page. I can always put the useful applications on the first page but at this point, I have just stopped arranging them. This is when Orbit enters the scene. Instead of swiping across all these pages, it lets me jump to a particular page quickly using simple tile view, saving me a lot of time. That’s the reason it’s one of my favorites.
OK, I’ll be the one to step up and admit it: Some of us here at Cult of Mac have a… little problem with bags. We’re bagaholics — and I’m the worst. I even have a bag to hold all my bags. So when I say that Osprey’s Flap Jack Courier is hands-down the best laptop bike bag I’ve ever slung over my back, it’s a big deal.
Hit the jump to find out what exactly makes this bag so stupefyingly fantastic.
The main selling point of the Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX is that it works anywhere, even on glass.
It does as well. It even worked when I scrolled it over my construction hard-hat.
Full review after the jump.
My beloved truck used to be behind the times. The factory-installed stereo had a cassette deck. Remember them? No iPod/iPhone connection and worse, no hands-free cellphone.
But now its got a shiny Sony Xplod aftermarket stereo, which features both iPod and Bluetooth connectivity.
There’s a lot of replacement stereos, but the Xplod has the easiest Bluetooth setup ever, and it always makes a seamless connection with my iPhone. It just works, every time, period. Now I’m always chatting it up in while I’m driving, and I love streaming music via Bluetooth. I should have got one years ago.
Full review after the jump.
You can never be rich enough or thin enough, and you can never have enough storage.
I’ve been playing with Iomega’s brand new StorCenter ix2-200, a 4TB network-attached storage/home server that totally kicks NAS!
Not only is it a nice big target for Time Machine backups, it’s also an iTunes server and a Bittorrent machine. It plays nice with the Mac, and is dead easy to set up and use.
Full review after the jump.
In case you missed it first time around, here’s our totally unbiased review of Windows 7.
One of the great things that comes with Apple steadily biting off and swallowing little mouthfuls of the PC market is that we get our very own gadgets. Like the regular stuff, but better — Apple-ized for our computing pleasure. Take the The FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac: a portable hard drive that looks as though it was designed by Apple’s own Jonny Ive.
Full review after the jump.
Is Crumpler’s oddly-named Considerable Embarrassment messenger/laptop bag an embarrassment? Hardly.
The bag has a quirky name — as do all of Crumpler’s products. I won’t even try to understand what it means. What I do know is that looks are deceiving. Meaning that it can hold a ton of stuff, despite it’s slim profile. It doesn’t look like it should.
Back in July this year, I wrote a short scribble on my personal site listing a handful of ideas for iPhone apps.
The first was something I called “Supermarket Spotlight”, and it was described thus:
“Like Spotlight on your Mac, but for supermarkets in meatspace. You tell it that you’re in Tesco in Trowbridge, then start typing in the product you’re after. It tells you: ‘Aisle 12, section 2, top shelf, on the right if you’ve got your back to the cash tills.’ Either that, or it simply does the augmented reality thing and takes you there, beeping louder as you get closer, like a geiger counter.”
I never expected anyone to actually make it.
It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.
Under review this week: AboutTime, Privately, Pro Football Live!, Hanoi Plus, Brave Man, 5ft Monkey, Orbital. As always, all id.gd links are to the relevant App Store page.
