hands-free

In a groundbreaking development, a brain-computer interface (BCI) company successfully demonstrated the first-ever use of Apple’s Vision Pro AR/VR headset — and later an iPad — controlled directly by thought, according to Synchron. The innovation opens up exciting possibilities, perhaps even beyond helping individuals with severe mobility limitations engage with cutting-edge technology. Innovations like thought control of Vision Pro and iPad could lead to big things for both hands-free and voice-free use of devices.

August 4 update: In a new video, Synchron released proof of the first-ever public demonstration of an individual using an iPad controlled entirely by thought, leveraging Apple’s built-in accessibility features and new Brain-Computer Interface Human Interface Device (BCI HID) protocol, the company said. Watch the video below.

May 13 update: Synchron said it would be the first brain-computer interface (BCI) company to achieve native integration with a new BCI Human Interface Device (BCI HID) profile Apple just rolled out among various accessibility upgrades.

iPads are light and easy to handle, but sometimes you need your hands for other tasks — like glancing at a recipe while cooking. That’s where Xvida’s Magnetic Wall Mount for tablets comes in super, well, handy.

And it’s available now in the Cult of Mac Store for just $25.

With all the technological wonders we take for granted today, it’s easy to lose track of the cutting edge in consumer tech. So to keep that sense of wonder alive, we’ve rounded up some of the most innovative new personal gear and gadgets you can find.

Below you’ll find a solar-powered, antitheft backpack, a Bluetooth speaker that doubles as a wireless charger, a touch-free controller for IoT devices, and more. Even better, each item is massively discounted, some by more than half. Read on for more details.

Speck and Scosche have teamed up for a new iPhone case with magnetic mounts so users can engage their phones hands-free.

Announced Monday ahead of the big CES show in Las Vegas, the Speck Presidio Mount is designed to work with Scosche’s MagicMount, a smartphone/tablet mount designed for vehicle or office use.

Here at the Cult of Mac Store, we delight in finding great new deals on tools and tech every week. This go around, we’ve got a gravity-operated mobile car mount, and a super useful writing assistant. Additionally, we’ve got an app to guide you in meditating (really), and a phone plan year of unlimited talk and text. Discounts run from a third to as much as 90 percent off, red on for more details:

You taking a selfie and a dolphin hunting for prey don’t seem to have much in common. But what if you could operate your smartphone with signals similar to the ones dolphins use to find food?

Elliptic Labs, which has bases in San Francisco, Norway and China, used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, to show off advances in ultrasonic touchless gesturing Tuesday that will be available on some smartphone models later this year.

“We are excited about this,” chief technology officer Haakon Bryhni told Cult of Mac in a phone interview from Barcelona. “We’ve been working with touchless gesturing for years and now we have a real breakthrough. The technology enables you to wake up the phone, take a selfie or engage any other functions on the phone without touching it.”

The first impression upon seeing Satechi’s new GoRemote Bluetooth remote-controller for the iPhone is oh man, that’s really freaking cool! Followed rapidly by wait, what am I going to do with this thing again?

Dorks of the world, rejoice. Runnur has designed the perfect way for you to carry your iPad on your belt and not look cool. Countless hours doubtless went into making sure that the Hands Free would be not only secure and reliable, but also make you look like an utter drongo when you use it.

Remember the hands-free Leap Motion Controller for Mac that everyone went on and on about how cool it was going to be? The one that got delayed until July?

Well, it’s been three weeks since it actually started shipping, and the team behind the 3-D motion controller is reporting some significant numbers, including 25,000 downloads of its software developer kit (which allows developers to include code for the device in their own apps), and 1 million downloads of apps that work with the hardware.

That’s pretty fantastic, right?

Hold the phone! Or, rather — don’t. Martian Watch models see much of its promised potential unlocked With the launch today of iOS and Android apps, just ahead of their estimated ship date(s).

The app finally adds two major features to the watches — remote camera control and social media updates — along with a few smaller ones.

Glympse is a clever — and potentially lifesaving — feature that we’d love to see in more smartphone-connected cars.

It started out as a free app that can broadcast the user’s location to selected contacts, Facebook friends or Twitter followers. But it’s become a valuable tool for drivers of smartphone-connected Fords and Merecedes-Benzes, allowing them to broadcast their location without taking their hands off the steering wheel.

Now BMW and Mini have partnered with Glympse, raising the marque total to four.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – By now it should be obvious to anyone that doing pretty much anything besides actually driving while driving is inherently dangerous — more so when a hand is taken off the wheel, and even more so when focus is split between driving and a phone screen.

This is the original Parrot Asteroid Classic car stereo head-unit ($349), and it made quite a splash when it launched last year. The single-DIN, 4×55 watt receiver boasts a formidable array of features: Bluetooth connectivity, powerfully accurate voice recognition for both calls and music, a GPS receiver, a bright, 3.2-inch LED screen and a quiver of apps that run off its customized, upgradeable, early-vintage Android 1.5 OS (all of which require a data connection via a dongle).

Though this model was originally called the the Asteroid (no Classic), the Classic nomen was added to lessen confusion as three new models were announced a few months ago. However, the Asteroid Classic still very much in play; in fact, as this review goes live, the Classic is the only member of the Asteroid family currently available, as its new siblings haven’t shipped yet.

With its Android-based OS, you’d be forgiven if you thought the Asteroid Classic was more friendly to Android phones than the iPhone. In fact, the opposite is true, as I’ll explain later. And while it suffers from something that can probably be described as teething trouble, it’s still a lust-worthy system.

When one company swallows another, it’s common for a slow shift in rebranding and design to occur as the two entities thrash out their roles and relationship. The latest shift in the Logitech-Ultimate Ears story — Logitech purchased UE in 2008 — occured a month or so ago, when Ultimate Ears was rebranded as Logitech UE and launched a suite of high-end, blue-tinged soundware, with a product selection that reached far beyond the in-ear monitors the company has thus far been known for. In fact, out of seven new gadgets, just one new IEM was introduced: the Logitech UE 900 ($400), a quad-armature earphone that now sits at the pinnacle of UE’s non-custom earphone line.

The UE 900 has lineage, of course; we loved the snug fit, solid build and amazing sound of its antecedent, the TripleFi 10. But the TripleFi 10 is gone, and the UE 900 has stepped into its place with new ergonomics, a new sound — and a lot of blue.

The Jabra Freeway ($100) is Jabra’s flagship bluetooth car speakerphone. The Freeway has loads of top-rung features like hands-free voice commands, caller announcements and FM music-streaming, wrapped around three loud, powerful speakers accompanied by noise-cancelling dual microphones — making it a very attractive option for drivers who want to add a hands-free speakerphone to their cars.

Discovering great headphones from a company that specializes in making bags was surprisng at first, when we reviewed Incase’s Sonic headphones late last year. A month later we were less stunned when we grunted in approval at their Capsule in-ear ‘phones during our budget(ish) canalphone shootout.

This time around we played with a new denim-clad version of the on-the-ear Incase Reflex headphones ($80) — which sit between the $150 over-the-ear Sonic and the canalphone Capsules — and came away with the impression that the Reflex may very well be the best bang-for-buck of the bunch.

Ever heard of MirrorLink? A bunch of really big names in the car and tech world — Honda, GM, Toyota, Panasonic and pretty much all the big Android handset makers (that’s right, no Apple) — got together, called themselves the Car Connectivity Consortium and created a standardized communication format so that smartphones could easily communicate with car audio head units and the like. The format is called MirrorLink, and today Sony has unleashed no less than five MirrorLink-equipped units head units out onto U.S. roads, two of which are equipped with MirrorLink.

The Mini Boombox ($100) is Logitech’s entry into the hotly contested Bluetooth micro-speaker contest. Like its contemporaries (the Jawbone Jambox and Monster iClarityHD are two prime examples), the Boombox supplies big sound in a tiny, wireless, battery-powered package — only in this case with Logitech’s signature sleek, stylish approach and a futuristic control panel. Let’s take a look at how it stacks up.

This isn’t the smallest headset. In fact, Motorola’s Elite Sliver Bluetooth Headset ($130) is actually bulkier than many other personal BT headsets. Its trick, though, is to hide most of the bulk behind the user’s ear, leaving just a sliver — hence the name — of technology visbile.

But the Sliver isn’t just a one-trick pony; its case also doubles as a battery that will top off the Sliver when the headset is housed in the case (which actually does triple duty as a charger).

A long time ago, before this site was born, we reviewed the Altec Lansing BackBeat 906 Bluetooth headphones, and liked ’em. Plantronics had their own identical version of the 906, as they had owned Plantronics since 2005 (the two companies parted ways about the time the 906 was released).

The Plantronics BackBeat Go ($100) is an evolution of the 906. Same principle — wireless (meaning there’s no wire conecting the player with the headset) music and calls in a compact form via the magic of Bluetooth — but in an even smaller and more svelte form factor. Should be even more fantstic, right? Let’s take a look.

While other manufacturers might tart up their headphones with loud colors, obnoxious logos and frills, the Klipsch Image One ($150) drops all extraneous nonsense in favor of making you happy through its three impressive strengths: perfomance, comfort and portability — a triple threat that makes these headphones a contender for best traveling companion.

Sennheiser’s VMX 200 is one kostspielig little Bluetooth headset. Its $150 MSRP is higher than the other guys’ flagship mobile-phone headsets, like the Motorola CommandOne, Jabra Supreme and BlueAnt Q2, all of which are good-to-stellar performers, and stuffed to the gills with features.

Taking the pricing into consideration, one might expect the VMX 200 to have near-perfect manners, and at least as many bells and whistles as its competitors, if not more. Right?

Some combinations are so obviously good when you see/hear/taste them that you wonder why they haven’t existed forever. Of course, some *have* been around for that long.

Just 6,000 years ago, when the universe winked into existence, the Lord blessed us with such holy wonders as apple pie (or apple crumble in the King James bible) and vanilla ice-cream; Dungeons *and* dragons; and of course hurtling, death-dealing two-ton automobiles and chronically distracted drivers.

Now we can add another devine device to that list: the solar-powered hands-free speakerphone.

There are those faithful who will never surrender their little white Apple earbuds. To them we say: Wear proudly. But for the rest, for those who don’t want to deal with sub-par sound, earbuds flopping around and having to hunt for foam covers, come with us — and we’ll show you a world of possibilities.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — There are no shortage of iPhone cases being showcased here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but only one grabbed my attention at last night’s media preview. It was a case called Flygrip, and it promises to keep your iPhone in hand so you can do other things without worrying about dropping your valuable device.

Macworld/iWorld marks the launch of FlyGrip, and I was given a unit to test out.