There’s not a gadget under the sun that the chroma-crazy lads over at ColorWare won’t slather in Pantone hues if you pay them enough money, alleviating the necessity of the Mac-loving hockey fan from trying to turn his iMac into as gaudy a display of team pride as his torso and face with the help of spray paint alone.
Needless to say, with the advent of the Magic Trackpad, Colorware has now updated their services to allow you to custom-color your new input device. So if you’ve been despairing that your Magic Trackpad doesn’t match your desktop’s Pan-African chromatic aesthetic, head on over and plunk down your change. Who says every Mac has to be so gray, anyway?
We know, we know: Macs don’t support USB 3.0 yet, which allows USB to pipe through up to a blistering 3.2 Gbit per second of data throughput. The good news is, we all know it’s coming: we just have to be patient.
But why wait for Apple to catch up when Iomega is now selling USB 3.0 compatible external drives in their eGo range, which are not only backwards compatible with USB 2.0 (and therefore, your Mac) but without any price premium over their USB 2.0 progenitors.
According to Iomega, they will be updating all of their eGo portable drives to support USB 3.0 by the end of October. The 500GB currently costs just $114, and the 1TB model weighing in at $189, although these are MSRPs and are quite often yet.
Iomega’s not stopping at USB 3.0 support: they are also adding in 256-bit AES hardware encryption, and promising the drives will be capable of withstanding seven foot drops without a hitch.
As for when we can expect our Macs to be able to take advantage of USB 3.0, Iomega’s Jonathan Huberman told Slashgear that Cupertino’s delay was “interesting,” but he expected them to move to USb 3.0 by Q1 2011.
The bottom line: if you think that Apple is going to shift to USB 3.0 at any time in the near future — and its hard to imagine they won’t — Iomega’s just given you a very compelling reason to pick up one of their new drives. They cost the same, they’ll work with your current Mac, and when USB 3.0 hits Apple’s line-up next year, you’ll be able to take advantage of your drive’s blistering speed the second you unbox your new Mac.
If you’re like us, you’ve got some serious requirements when it comes to a dock. In my house, we’ve got a couple iPads, an iPhone, a couple iPod Touches and even an old 160GB iPod Classic kicking around, always hungry for an umbilical to recharge. We’ve got a handful of docks for these devices, but if there was only some sort of uber dock that consolidated the syncing and charging of all our iDevices into one powerful, attractive desktop dock.
We’re delighted to discover today that there is just such a dock: the iPADock from PhotoFast Co.. This baby’s a beast: using this dock, you can sync and charge up to four iPhones, any iPod and up to two iPads at once. Wow.
And that’s just what you can slam into the dock. If you need to sync more Apple devices, there are seven USB ports in the back (although only four are powered), as well as a connector for the iPad Camera Connection Kit. There’s even several memory card readers, including Compact Flash, SD, SDHC, SDXC, mini SD, mini SDHC, micro SD, Sony’s MemoryStick and micro SDHC.
Amazing, particularly in this compact form factor. It’s also extraordinarily cheap: just $70 all told for all of this docking goodness. Consider the iPADock officially added to our Christmas lists.
Sony has just introduced a pair of new cameras that boast intriguing new translucent mirror technology, marrying the quick-focus of an SLR with the fast-shooting of a mirrorless camera.
Called the A33 and A55, Sony’s latest boast a 23.5×15.6mm APS-C CMOS sensor, a 3-inch LCD capable of tilting up to 180 degrees and rotating 270 degrees, as well as the ability to record full HD AVCHD (1080i) or MP4 (1080p) video while simultaneously employing an impressive 15-point video autofocus system. Otherwise, the only thing separating the A55 from the A33 is the former has more megapixels and a slightly faster Speed Priority continuous shooting mode, along with built-in GPS capability.
The real advance here, though, is the new translucent mirror used in both cameras. Essentially, this mirror allows light to pass directly through it to the camera’s sensors while simultaneously bouncing light up to the autofocus sensor.
What this means from a practical perspective is that you get a much smaller camera body and trade-in an SLR’s optical viewfinder for a digital one, while also inheriting a mirrorless camera’s live view mode. Better, you’ll get some truly impressive shutter speeds out of these cameras — up to 10 shots per second — since the mirror doesn’t have to lift in order to capture an image.
Both the A55 and A33 will come with an 18-55mm lens, with the A55 costing $850 and the A33 costing $750. Both cameras will be available in September.
Even as Apple has blazed trails in forwarding multitouch as a bonafide interface for mobile devices, they have completely abstained from installing touchscreens on their MacBooks and iMac-lines, despite the fact that numerous competitors have jumped with both feet forward into the multitouch PC arena.
According to a recently discovered patent, though, Apple’s at least thinking about bringing multitouch to their desktop and laptop lines, detailing a touchscreen MacBook boasting iPhone-(and iMac)-like IPS display technology.
Take it from me: Germans love their iPods, and they love their hard-boiled eggs. The eiPott, then, is a cute little example of German kitsch: it’s an egg holder shaped like an abstraction of an iPod.
You’d think it’d be hard to get upset about such an innocuous little piece of dishware, but Apple apparently did, bringing a lawsuit against koizol, the manufacturer… and now a German high court says that koizol needs to redesign and rename the product, citing potential confusion.
This is ridiculous. While we certainly understand Apple needs to protect their trademarks and brands, the eiPott only shares the most abstract similarity in form to the iPod, and — needless to say — none of the iPod’s functionality. They’re not trying to confuse consumers: they’re trying to entertain them with a tongue-in-cheek homage to one of the most popular brands on Earth.
I’ve long been mystified by both Apple and Microsoft’s inability to put together a useable mouse. Consider my experiences with each company’s showcase mice. On the one hand, Microsoft’s Arc Mouse was a pleasant-to-use and attractive foldable travel mouse, which — like every wireless Microsoft mouse I’ve tried — mysteriously gave up the ghost and experienced catastrophic hardware failure within the first couple of months. On the other hand, Apple’s Magic Mouse is a reliable piece of kit, but it’s ergonomically terrible and nearly unusable for things like gaming.
If only these two mice could come together somehow. Unfortunately, what I want is the hardware reliability of Apple and the conventional feature set of Microsoft’s mice, not the other way around. Microsoft’s forthcoming Arc Touch Mouse is the latter sort of abomination, offering the Magic Mouse’s touch capability as re-imagined by one of the most inept hardware manufacturers on earth.
Even worse? Early rumors pegged Microsoft’s Arc Touch as not launching with the Magic Mouse’s robust multitouch gesture set, but being single-touch only. So what the heck’s the point? It doesn’t even look as good as the original Arc. Forget it. I’ll stick with my Magic Trackpad.
Nikon have just announced an incremental update to their beginner’s SLR called the D3100, and while it’s a marginal update over its superb budget predecessor, the D3000, it does add one feature into the mix that even their most expensive and pro-oriented cameras have yet to integrate: 1080p H.264 video at up to 24FPS, stored in a QuickTime .MOV file. It even boasts dynamic, constantly updating autofocus for video scenes.
The camera’s other specs are tasty: a 14.2MP, DX-format CMOS sensor, an 11-point autofocus system, ISO support up to 3200. The kit lens is the same old 18-55mm autofocusing kit lens, which — if you’re a beginner — you’re going to want to ditch for something like their classic 50mm 1.8f Nikkor lens as soon as you possibly can to see the real difference between this and a more expensive point-and-shoot.
I have a D3000, and I love it, but I’ve sometimes sorely missed video capability… a deficiency the D3100 ably corrects at a $250 premium: the D3100 will cost $700 when it’s available in September.
iPhone 4 with sliding QWERTY keyboard (all images: Altamash Jiwani)
Desperate for a real keyboard on your iPhone? Indian industrial designer Altamash Jiwani was too, and created a prototype of a snap-on sliding QWERTY keyboard for the iPhone 4:
[The] keyboard offers a QWERTY slider tactile keyboard and a stylish impact case to protect your Iphone from bumps and bruises along with access to all the switches and jacks on your Iphone. Just fit your Iphone in the case while connecting the QWERTY keyboard’s port to the dock connector of your Iphone.
Design also incorporates a finger rest at the lower end bottom of the case to get a comfortable hold while typing. If you don’t open the slider, you still have access to whole Iphone screen and the QWERTY keyboard for quickly typing something.
Jiwani put significant thought into choosing among three possible form factors: a flip keyboard, an elongated iPhone frame, or a sliding keyboard. He documented the design process on his blog.
The EyeTV One from Elgato makes pulling Digital TV (DTV) from the air and down to Earth as simple as 1-2-3. Install the included EyeTV software then plug the device into an available USB port on your computer and you will be watching DTV on your Mac in no time at all.
I tested the EyeTV One on my Macbook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini and it worked fine on all three systems. My ultimate goal was two-fold. First I wanted something that would give me TV on the go and second I wanted something that could bring DTV to my Mac Mini which may ultimately serve as a hub for my entertainment system.
Can’t bear to part with your mouse, but in love with the slim slate of touch-capable glass and aluminum, the Magic Trackpad? 9to5Mac calls our attention to this gorgeous mousepad by Just Mobile, the Alupad.
Gorgeously carved from a slap of anodized aluminum, then infused with a coating of iPod ivory plastic, the Alupad looks like the mousepad Apple would create if they bothered themselves with such things… and makes me even sadder that the Magic Trackpad itself isn’t large or flush enough to double as a mousepad when it’s not in use.
The price is right, too: $35 is a lot to spend for a mousepad, but most mousepads just wouldn’t go with our iMacs nearly as well.
With Apple’s recent acquisition of LiquidMetal, a lot of people have been wondering just what they’ll use their new and incredibly T-1000-like metal alloy for.
Meanwhile, we’ve been running a contest asking readers to guess what hardware element Apple is already making out of LiquidMetal. The prize? A new Magic Trackpad, which — protip — doesn’t have any LiquidMetal in it at all.
For answers, perhaps we should look at what other highly design focused companies are doing with the alloy. The interesting video from watchmaker Omega embedded above shows one possible use for the Liquid Technologies supermaterial: super durable and gorgeously aesthetic bezels.
Would Apple drop serious bank on an exclusive license to Liquidmetal just to make nicer bezels? Or are they already doing so? Your guess is as good as mine, but Leander will set us all straight later today when he announces the winner of our contest. You may want to get your last minute guesses in now
Were you one of the many prospective customers disappointed that the iPad didn’t run OS X? Axon’s got your cover: their forthcoming Haptic tablet is designed from the ground up to run any Darwin-based operating system… which means it can be Hackintoshed to run OS X.
The stats make it clear that the Axon Haptic is strictly a netbook on the inside:
For $800 bucks, that’s some pretty woeful performance, particularly when it comes to battery life. Worse, if you do decide to break Apple’s EULA and install Snow Leopard on this thing, the operating system isn’t really designed to be useable on a tablet.
The bottom line is that while this tablet’s interesting from a hackability perspective, if you want a Hackintosh, you’re better off with a netbook, and if you want an Apple tablet, the iPad is going to be superior in performance and functionality in almost every way. For collector’s only, we’d say.
Remember Clear’s iSpot, a wireless hotspot that gives $25 all-you-can-eat WiMax to any iOS device wirelessly connected to it? It was a great deal, but the only limitation was that it couldn’t be used with your MacBook, iMac or — horf — PC.
Some plucky modders, though, have come to the rescue, ungimping the iSpot for use with any device you want to connect to it. It’s a simple fix: all you do is load a new config file in the iSpot’s web portal. Once it reboots, your iSpot will be completely unrestricted, and you’ll be able to connect the $99 device to anything you choose to throw at it, making the iSpot an even more stellar deal than ever before.
We were delighted by Apple’s surprise roll-out of a battery charger last month, having long wanted a solution as green-friendly as Cupertino to the problem of peripheral juicing. It’s also a pretty good deal: Apple’s charger comes with six batteries capable of retaining 75% of their original charge after three years, all for the song of $29.
We might have gotten a better deal with the Apple Battery Charger than we thought, though. According to Czech site Superapple, Apple’s batteries and charger appear to simply be a rebranding of Sanyo’s Eneloops… which are actually a little cheaper than Apple’s own. Good to know.
While Apple’s own iPad Camera Connection Kit comes with two different attachments to juggle between USB and SD connectivity, but look at this piece of kit the Chinese are rocking: a $26 two-in-one dongle that allows you to switch between SD and USB with just the push of a button. Why can’t we get something this slick officially, Apple?
I’ve been using Apple’s Magic Trackpad for just over a week, and I can confidently say it’s replaced the mouse for me.
The Magic Trackpad is easier to use, much more functional than even a multibutton mouse, and possibly less prone to causing repetitive strain injuries.
Sure, everyone’s grateful that Apple got around to divorcing their gorgeous 2560×1440 display panel from the 27-inch iMac and selling it on its own, but it came at a cost: they discontinued their 30-inch Cinema Display in the same stroke.
It’s a bummer, and we know this will be small comfort, but if you miss the 30-inch Cinema Display, Dell will soon be shipping a monster of a 30-inch display of their own christened the U3011, containing a 10-bit IPS panel boasting the old Cinema Display’s 2560 x 1600 resolution and mustering a 10,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and a 270cd/m2 brightness rating, with ports including VGA, two DVI ins, one component, two HDMIs and DisplayPort.
Dell’s actually responsible for some of the better monitor buys out there, and the U3011 looks like it might be a good successor to the classic 30-inch Cinema Display… if you can stomach the usual gross Dell design aesthetic on your desktop. It should be out in October for an unknown price.
Remember this case from China that allows you to use a regular SIM to make phone calls and SMS messages from your jailbroken iPod Touch? It’s been reviewed.
Not so surprisingly, it works, but it’s buggy. You can’t adjust the call volume, the SMS delivery shorts out occasionally, etc. The Peel 520 was a neat idea, but if you want to use your iPod Touch as a smartphone, Sprint’s forthcoming 3G hotspot case combined with a good set of headphones and a SkypeOut account seems like your best bet… no jailbreak required.
Serious>PC heavy, but if you game under Boot Camp, that shouldn’t be a problem, and there are numerous Mac titles like World of Warcraft, Civilization IV and Unreal Tournament 2004.
Other features of the G510 include custom-color backlighting, allowing you to truly tart up your keyboard according to your own chromatic specification, integrated USB audio for headset support, 18 programmable keys and simultaneous key input for up to five keys at once, allowing you to deploy some truly polydactyl shortcuts.
The G510 costs $119.99, and although it’s temporarily sold out, you can sign up to be notified when the keyboard’s next available over on the official Logitech website.
You’d be hard pressed to identify a peripheral maker whose sense of design is more anathema to Apple’s than Logitech. Where one is symbolized by the plinth of aluminum, the slate of glass, the opalescent bar of plastic, the other is a PC-centric slab of black plastic and glowing LEDs. That said, Logitech makes some of the best gaming mice in the business, and their new G-Series Wireless Gaming Mouse G700 is no exception.
Featuring over 13 programmable buttons easily identified by their individual sculpting, smooth gliding polytetraflyoroethylene feet and a comfortable ergonomic design, the G700 is specifically designed for MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Onboard memory profiles guarantee that it’ll always remember your settings even across Macs, while the 5,700 dpi laser promises to track your slightest twitch and jactitation accurately.
The G700 is even rechargeable: simply plug in a micro-USB cable to switch it into corded mode and give the internal battery a juicing good for over two weeks.
If you’re interested, the Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700 is available for pre-order now for just $99.99. Sure, it doesn’t exactly match Jonny Ive’s vision for your desktop… but Ive’s clearly not a gamer, is he?
3G? Pfft. What are you, some kind of stone-humping caveman? WiMax is the new hotness, and your pitiful iPhone 4 can’t even do it… or can it?
Thanks to Clear’s iSpot WiMax hotspot, it certainly can: in fact, the iSpot can serve up to 40 Mbit per second of mobile broadband throughput collectively to up to eight connected iOS devices… but only iOS devices.
That’s right: Clear’s iSpot has a special software feature that detects the operating system installed on the devices connecting to it and shuts out anything not running iOS.
On the plus side, that means that the iSpot is pretty cheap when it debuts on August 10th: that soap-like bar of WiMax goodness will cost just $99 with a $25 month-by-month unlimited data plan.
On the other hand, if you want to connect your Mac, expect to lay out another $15 per month: Clear won’t brook no moochers.
Apple’s>”>suing a number of unlicensed third-party accessory makers for products of inferior quality that reflected poorly on Apple’s brands.
Of course, part of the reason why third-party accessories work so poorly is because Apple is sneaky and employ various hardware tricks to make sure that only “Made for iPod” accessories work perfectly.
The hackers over at Minty Boost have gotten to the bottom of one such trick Apple deploys to make sure that unauthorized accessories have a hard time charging your iPod or iPhone.
In essence, Apple uses secret resistors that are placed in the connectors for Apple devices: if these resistors aren’t there, your iPhone or iPod Touch won’t deted the 2.8V and 2V signals, and hence won’t charge, coughing up a “Charging is not supported with this accessory” message instead.
The good news for unauthorized accessory makers (and makers) is that once you know the trick Apple employs to stop iPod charging on non-“Made for iPod” devices, it’s pretty easy to work around. Now that the secret of how Apple gimps unauthorized accessories is out in the wild, though, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple come up with a new way to stick it to those unwilling or unable to pay their “Made for iPod” licensing fees.
Like we mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re pretty excited about the potential for the iPhone morphing into all kinds of contraptions through hooking up with a little extra hardware. New Potato is one of the lead outfits in this area, and they’ve just introduced a kit that turns the iPhone into a bike super-computer. Rad.
The $99 kit contains a rather large cadence/speed sensor, ruggedized rubber iPhone mount, mounting hardware and a dongle that the iPhone uses to communicate with the sensor; combine the kit with the free LiveRider app, and presto — a cycling computer with all the standard functions (speed along with max and average, time, distance, cadence, pace) and more advanced functions like competing against a chase bike, ride map and speed graph.
Being the bike geeks we are here at the Cult, we’ve already started playing around with a test unit and we’ll have a full report up soon. Can’t wait? LiveRider is available from retailer J&R or directly from New Potato.
