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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An iPhone case has never “felt” this good (#rimshot). OK, I’ll stop with the puns already. This case for the iPhone 4 from Studio Credence is fashioned from merino wool felt with a leather pocket (and strap, depending on the model). It comes in a variety of tasteful colors, and looks both tough and useful enough to be a permanent iPhone case, even for the committed bareback user.
When I bought my first iPhone last month, there was one accessory I knew I wanted – the Olloclip lens. I actually kept the Olloclip site open in a Safari tab on my Mac so I could check every day to see if the fantastically popular iPhone 4/S accessory had been updated for the new iPhone.
I have been playing with this review unit for a couple weeks now and it’s just as great as I expected, although there are one or two things I don’t like. Let’s take a look…
When the PadPivot arrived, I scoffed: It’s just another iPad stand after all, and a weird-looking one at that. But then I started using it, an interesting thing happened: It grew on me quicker than almost any other gadget I have.
A few weeks later and the PadPivot has not only ousted several other widgets from my gear-bag, but – if it was pried from my fingers right now, I’d immediately order myself up a new one.
I hate camera straps. I’m forever taking one off and threading another one through the camera’s eyelets or hooking up some device to the tripod screw or just wrapping a neck strap around my wrist. For something that’s so simple, and has been around for so long, the camera strap sure is a badly-designed piece of junk.
The Leash, on the other hand (or other shoulder), is an attempt to combine all straps ever into one ultra-versatile sling. Does it work? Let’s see.
In case you hadn’t guessed from the frequency of my posts about them, I’m still looking for a dock for my iPhone 5. The latest candidate for a spot on my nightstand is the “Charging & Sync Dock Cradle for Apple iPhone 5 with audio out” from USB Fever, and it is mentioned here primarily for its weird design.
Ring flash — once the preserve of high-end (or deep-pocketed) fashion photographers and macro nerds with real, like, cameras — now in reach of us plebs with cameraphones. The LED Ringlight from Adorama is a dim-able, continuous light source that can now be used for video and non-synced camera lighting, and it costs just $100.
Why bother? Read on:
At last! A proper Lightning dock for your iPhone, complete with its own built-in, pivoting Lightning connector. No longer do you need to sacrifice a valuable (read: overpriced) Apple Lightning cable to make a dock work with an iPhone 5.
Good lord! Where do we even begin with this crazy iPhone case? With the list of its capabilities I guess, and maybe a video of it (literally) screwing around.
A USB 2.0 Ethernet adapter is a pitiful thing, an ugly workaround only really useful when you find yourself in a Wi-Fi-free hotel room with only your MacBook Air for company.
A USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter, on the other hand, is every bit as good as having a real 10/1000 network connector hole in the side of your machine.
What could be classier than adding a few extra millimeters to the height of your keycaps whilst simultaneously collaborating in the death of a walnut or cherry tree? Nothing, that’s what. Which is why these Lazerwood keys for Apple keyboards are pretty much the best thing ever.
I remain firmly of the opinion that a driver should drive, and not sip coffee, or listen to the radio, or text his lover, or use cruise-control. As a cyclist, I rely on the pilots of these road-going behemoths to pay attention to the road in order for me to remain alive.
So I have mixed feelings about a gadget which puts a cellphone within such easy reach.