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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let me tell you a story. Many years ago, I was a cocktail bartender in a busy London bar. I had just gotten a brand new dumb-phone (a Siemens if I remember correctly), a little silver candy-bar of crap, but it was my candy-bar of crap, and I’d owned it only a few hours.
On shift, I switched the phone to silent and put it in a rocks glass on the backbar, behind my station. The bottom shelf of the backbar had a small lip at the front. Partway through the busy shift I needed some Kahlua (for a Vodka Espresso, not a White Russian). I grabbed the bottle and the base caught the shelf-edge and sheared clean off. The Kahlua – of course – was dumped into the glass with my brand new phone.
I was lucky: this was before the days of moisture sensors and a quick wash later and I got a new handset from the store. Today, you might not fare so well.
Which is why I have mixed (no pun intended) opinions of the Cube.
Killspencer might sound like an order to murder somebody with a fancy name, but it is in fact just an innocent iPhone card-case made from Rosenkrantz*. No. Wait… I mean rosewood.
OK. You spent $100 on your iPhone 4 (plus the invisible $1 trillion your contract will extract from you over the next 24 months). What do you do next? How about dropping $160 on an aluminum bumper case? Thanks to the fine folks at ElementCase, you can do just that with the Viper Pro Stealth 2.
Samsung’s new Wi-Fi-enabled EX2F compact is a nice example of Apple-like design thinking: In order to do some things really well, it sacrifices other options. Instead of the indecisive kitchen-sink approach of Microsoft to its Surface, Samsung has laser-focused the design of the EX2F. But that’s not to say it lacks features.
I’m totally used to the iPad’s soft keyboard, but when I go back to my iPod touch it drives me crazy. I miss the letters, I hit enter when I mean to hit shift, and I generally get angry. I would not, however, buy a phone with a keyboard ever again.
But I might consider the Spike, or more likely, the Spike 2. Both are iPhone cases with flip-open keyboards, but the Spike 2 improves on the formula by getting out of the way when you don’t need it.
You iPhone’s headphone jack is just fine for listening to your MP3s with the crappy Apple-supplied earbuds, but what if you want something a little, shall we say, less terrible? You could of course spring for a high-end headphone amp with its own DAC (Digital Analog Converter), and pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege. Or you could dig $11 out from under the couch cushions and buy CableJive’s LineOut Pro.
Bought a new shiny, silvery compact camera? Think that maybe it’s a bit too silver? Then why not make it less silver by covering up the silver with some non-silver grip-tape? That’s exactly what PimpMyDigicam is offering in its Leather Kit for the Nikon J1, which guarantees that you’ll see less silver.
Finally! Sure, we use that word far too often, but for the iCade Mobile, the physical D-Pad game controller for the iPhone and iPod touch, it seems somewhat appropriate. After what seems like years in development, and months since we saw it at CES, the iCade is finally available to buy at everybody’s favorite nerd-o-rama, ThinkGeek.
The Flea 3 is a weird little camera: at first glance it appears to be a 4K webcam, which would mean the ultimate in chats with mom should your internet connections (and Skype) support it.
I reality though, it’s a dirt-cheap way to start a 4K movie rig. I’ll emphasize the “start” in that, though, as you’re going to need a lot more gear than the Flea 3 itself.
You know your product is successful when somebody starts selling accessories for it. But what about when people start selling accessories for accessories, which work together with the original product? This happens: the New iPad Credit Card Dock, a perspex frame which holds both and iPad and a Square credit card reader.
“You can’t take it with you.” This is a saying usually uttered by those people who are bitterly jealous of their richer friends' and relatives' success. It refers to the fact that your money is no good when you’re dead.
But it could equally apply to many external battery packs for the iPhone, which you can’t take with you because they’re too big, and you’re not carrying a bag.
Enter the Gum, a tiny 2200mAH battery pack which fits in your pocket, and while it won’t help you in the afterlife, it will help you where it counts: in the actual real world of too-short battery life.
Just the thought of letting a stranger use my iPad for anything other than a quick browse of Wikipedia creeps me out, so I’m certainly not the target customer for Griffin’s Kiosk. But I understand that some businesses use iPad’s for display material, and for them the protective, immovable stand looks ideal.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, seems to be getting in on the portable Bluetooth speaker game. Now the ante has been upped by the venerable Dutch consumer electronic company Philips, and the offering is a pretty good one.
Like the JamBox which inspired this whole market segment, the Shoqbox (as it is named) is a small rectangular “candy-bar” style speaker with stereo drivers and a Bluetooth radio. The difference is that this one has been ruggedized.
Pretty much the only segment of the camcorder market that hasn’t been destroyed by either cellphones or video-shooting SLRs is the rugged sports-cam market, if only because nobody wants to strap their iPhone or Canon 5D MkIII to their head and ski down a mountain.
So it’s no surprise that JVC’s latest offering is – you guessed it – a rugged sports cam, complete with various attachment to mount it on helmets, bikes and even goggles.
Pad&Quill’s Littlest Black Book case was announced back on April 1st, and it still seems like a joke. However, I have one next to my keyboard as I type this and it is very real. And very, very cute.