I can’t be sure, as I was a brainless, sieve-memoried child at the time, but I’m pretty sure that our family’s first portable (B&W) TV had a screen that wasn’t much bigger than the screen of my iPad. Still, the crappy picture and bulbous, almost circular screen didn’t stop my brother and I laying belly-down on the end of our parent’s bed and watching Monkey roll up the screen in a fuzz of snow and bad reception.
Now I can relive those dark days by putting my iPad into the Handmade Natural Stained Wood Retro TV iPad Dock, an Etsy product whose name is as good as a description.
If you have been reading Ken Segall’s new book about Apple, Insanely Simple, then you’ll recognize the hallmarks of simplicity all over JawBone’s work. Even the e-mail containing the press release for its new speaker reads as little more than “Jawbone just released a BIG JAMBOX.”
That’s what it’s called. The BIG JAMBOX. And from its name, you know almost all there is to know about it.
Turn boring old trees into power for your awesome iPhone
Going camping this spring? And by “camping” I mean hiking or biking with your home on your back, and heading out into the wilderness. I don’t mean loading up your SUV and dragging a grill, a tent the size of a European house and enough ball games to keep an entire schools-worth of kids occupied for a month.
So, if you’re heading out under your own power, how about taking a stove that a) requires no liquid fuel, b) burns fast and hot and c) charges your iPhone? What’s not to like?
Don't trust these new-fangled wireless keyboards? MacAlly has just the thing
Who says iPad keyboards have to run on Bluetooth? Not MacAlly, that’s for sure. The iKey30 is a good ol’ USB keyboard which sports a 30-pin dock connector on the end of its cable, and comes with an almost ridiculous number of special function keys.
True story: When my mother was pregnant with me, she and her friends got together to do a Ouija board. The story goes that the glass moved around, and then smashed. My mother told everyone that they should finish things up properly, and “put the spirit away,” or some such thing.
They laughed, and ignored her. Over the next few weeks, everybody present at the séance had an accident. My mother fell out of her car while leaning out the door to reverse. Luckily, her hair was styled in a bun, which cushioned the impact.
Did this make me superstitious? Nope. In fact, the first thing I thought when I saw this Ouija Book Cover Case (€66 or $87) from Etsy maker Joe V was “if you’re able to look into the future and communicate with the other side, Mr.V, then why the hell is the screen of your iPad so scratched up? Surely you should have seen that coming?”
Skepticism aside, the leather book cover looks like the perfect Christmas gift for Cult of Mac’s own resident mysticist John Brownlee aka. Dr.Crypt. Or should I say “pagan midwinter fertility-festival gift”? The hefty tome is etched with the alphabet, numbers from one to zero and — of course — the words “yes” and “no.” Thus equipped, our hard-working editor will be able to check up on us minions without even entering our Cult of Mac chatroom.
“Will Charlie finally write a serious post?” he will chant in monotone, as the empty diet Coke can moves all by itself over to “no,” yet again.
“Whose post will get the most page views next week?” he will continue, and the can will scrape drily across the leather towards the letter “B.” Then, as it slides down and right towards the “U,” Dr. Crypt will hurl the can aside in petulant frustration. “Damn you, Buster Heine,” he’ll shout, “Damn you and your interesting, reader-friendly posts!”
Then, as Mr. Brownlee’s harsh words float down onto the aging cowskin, something happens on the other side of the country. As Buster picks up his morning beverage and relaxes with his iPad to read the news, the air suddenly grows chill, and the screen doors start to flap and slam in the rising breeze. Buster looks up to see the livid, contorted face of his editor swirling in the mists now whipping in through the open windows. He starts, and the iPad slips from his hands, cracking the screen in one corner.
If only he’d had it in a sturdy, witchcraft-proof case.
Jean Michel Jarre might be laying off the lasers, the lightshows and the spectacular outdoor concerts, but he’s not letting his 63 years catch up with him: he has simply switched his ostentatious attentions to high-end iPhone and iPad docks.
The latest is the AeroPad Two, a 30-pin dock connector-equipped behemoth of a home stereo which could probably shake your house to pieces.
It might look like leather, but no animals were harmed in its production. Photo Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
Until I took delivery of the Don’t Panic iPad case this week, this Custom Jacket from Skech has been my new favorite iPad case. It looks like leather, but is in fact artfully textured (and fully vegan) plastic, it holds the iPad tight and safe, and it weighs next to nothing. It also look pretty damn good.
Oh, man. Today is totally turning into Kickstarter day here on Cult of Mac. The latest accessory from everybody’s favorite crowd-funded idea factory is the Brydge, another keyboard case which will turn your iPad into a miniature MacBook Air-a-like.
This case has a little twist, though. Instead of offering an entire laptop-shaped shell into which you can drop the tablet, it has a clever hinge which holds the iPad and uses it as the entire lid of the clamshell case.
I don’t hate the iPad’s speaker as much as I used to. The rear-firing grille on the iPads 2 and 3 doesn’t sound that bad if you lay the iPad face down and let it blast its vibrations straight at you. But as most of us use the iPad to watch movies, or to listen to music while reading, this adequate-sounding speaker simply sends its sound off into the nothingness, hoping that a nearby wall might reflect a little of it back to your ears.
My current answer is a battery-powered Bluetooth speaker, but that’s battery powered. And heavy. The Amplifiear, on the other hand, is lightweight and requires no power.
The Bowden and Sheffield cases are tough and stylish
Imagine the scene: You are a student in England, living in a broken-down house further broken down into noisy, thin-walled apartments (or “flats,” to use the local term). One of your junkie friends has sold you a (totally legit, honest) iPad for just £50, and you need somewhere to stash it for both security and protection.
You look around your decrepit kitchen and see a chipboard door hanging from one of the cupboards. You rip it off and attack it with a saw, screwing and glueing until you have a sturdy box for your non-stolen tablet. To close the hole in the top you pull the artists beret you’ve recently taken to wearing from under a pile of dirty laundry and cut it to fit over the gap. Behold! An iPad case.
But what to do next? If your name is Eric Rea, you quickly form a company called Fine Grain, open up a Kickstarter project and start hawking your new invention under the name “BOWDEN + SHEFFIELD Minimalist iPad Cases.”
Hope they wipe those things down frequently: never seen a kid without at least several culture farms worth of germs on his or her pink, sticky hands. Those iPads are going to be disease-crusted petri dishes after a day’s worth of kids finish sliming them up.
Otherwise, great call. The only better learning tool for a child than an iMac is an iPad.
No matter how hard I try, I can't get enthusiastic about these white elephants
You know how many tech companies strive to make our experience of their products easier and more transparent so that — in the case of things like the iPad — the product disappears and lets us enjoy whatever it is that it does?
Koss didn’t get that memo, and has launched Striva, an “initiative” which takes something as simple as a headphone and makes it as complicated as an old-school router.
The Contega adds some real flexibility to the bookbindery case design. Photo Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
In theory, there are two players in the bookbindery iPad case market: Pad&Quill and Dodocase. But that’s a little like saying that there are two players in the tablet market itself: iPad and (snicker) Android. Technically it’s true, but the difference in real life is huge.
Sure, Dodocase makes a nice lightweight case, but it is pretty much the same one it launched a couple years ago. Pad&Quill’s cases, on the other hand, have just gotten better, iteration by iteration. Just like Apple’s products.
The latest are the Contega and Octavo cases for the iPad 3, and they pack a surprising amount of tech into such a traditional design.
Arqball Spin is a curious mix of hardware and software, with a very niche but very cool purpose: to create interactive 3-D photos. By combining an iOS app with a hardware turntable, Arqball is able to “film” a spinning object and then render it as a touchable 3-D model which can be spun using your fingers.
The padcaster turns your iPad 3 into a movie-making powerhouse. Photo The Verge
Remember the Padcaster? It was a photography rig made to turn the new iPad into a shallow-focusing movie camera, and it was [teased](https://www.cultofmac.com/156157/padcaster-turns-new-ipad-into-shallow-focusing-movie-camera/) by the makers Manhattan Edit Workshop last month. Now, the Padcaster has been revealed at NAB 2012, and it is just what we thought it would be — a way to mount big lenses on the iPad 3 and turn it onto a movie camera.
The low-profile Retrospective series now comes ready for your iPad
The Retrospective 7 is another one in Think Tank’s great lineup of stealthy-ish camera bags. This one distinguishes itself by slapping a pocket on the side which is designed to hold an iPad or an 11-inch MacBook Air.
The All-In-One camera connection kit will take anything you throw at it
If you have a DSLR, I hope you opted for the 64GB model when you bought your new iPad – MIC Gadget has just announced a new camera connection kit which will let you slurp in your huge RAW (and not-so-huge JPEG) files from your Compact Flash cards, SD cards, microSD cards and even via USB direct from the camera.
There are plenty of add-on lenses for the iPhone’s great camera, but if you’re shooting movies, the sound is still going to suck. The iPhone’s mic does a fine job of picking up sound, but maybe it picks up a little too much, or maybe it gets freaked out by a little wind and starts to sound awful?
What you need is a boom mic, and luckily Photojojo will sell you one specifically made for the iPhone.
Turn your tablet into an old-school Nokia Communicator
When the iPhone launched, “pundits” said that it would fail thanks to the lack of a physical keyboard. Then the iPad debuted to the same knee-jerk whine. Years passed, and tens of millions of units were sold, yet there are still people who think they want a keyboard to take up half the face of their device, all the time. For you, my dear Luddite friends, there is the TK-MBD041, a tiny Bluetooth keyboard that will mimic your precious (and tiny) BlackBerry buttons, and packs a special secret function (spoiler – it works as a phone handset).
The Alupen Pro: Thinner, healthier and pen-ier than its fat predecessor Photo Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
I was a big fan of the Alupen when it launched — so much so that I went out and bought my own. It was chunky, looked like a metal pencil and felt pretty good in my big hands. Then came the Wacom Bamboo stylus and our love affair was over.
Now, though, the newer skinnier, cleverer Alupen Pro has got me two-timing the svelte Bamboo. Why? Because it has a biro built in.
Oh man. I wasn’t going to write anything about the Comfe Hands iPad grip(s), as they just look too awkward and bulky to carry just to fit to the iPad when you need them. But then I accidentally scrolled down the page and saw the image you now see above this post. It is titled simply “pointer” and it epitomizes everything I love about stock photography and catalog photography in general.
SleekSpeak is the bike speaker I have always wanted
Cyclists: Imagine that you could buy a speaker that combined the Bluetooth-connected, rubbery boxiness of JawBone’s JamBox speaker with the stretchy go-anywhere strap-and hook of Knog’s bike lights and cyclocomputers. Well, imagine no more, for a mere $70 will get you a SleekSpeak, a handlebar-mounted bike speaker over on Kickstarter.
Braven’s new Bluetooth speakers are like feature packed JamBoxes, only with a slightly more confusing product lineup. They are all marked by a great 12-20-hour battery life, can also be used to charge your USB-powered gadgets and — here’s the neat part — can be daisy-chained together using their 3.5mm audio-in and audio-out jacks.
This is probably the most amazing, and yet the least practical iPad case we've eve seen
An iPad stand made from a pair of hammers, a screwdriver and some old coins and bolts. What could possibly go wrong? This amazing iPad stand was put together by Etsy makers Docks4iPods, and works just fine for the iPads 2 and 3. It will also take up more than its fair share of counter or desk space, and the screwdriver can be moved by loosening the wing-nuts and rotating it further back, letting you angle the iPad a little lower.
Thomas Fulton’s Don’t Panic iPad case started life last year as a Kickstarter project. Now, after sending out cases to all his happy backers, the case is available for you and me to buy.
The case is made from floppy felt and leather, and is designed as much for using as it is for carrying and protecting. When closed, the felt closes up just like any other folio case. Open it up, though, and the fun starts.
