It used to be that if your phone ran out of juice, you could just pop into the nearest bar or cafe and ask “Do you have a Nokia charger?”, and the waitron would hand you one of the needle-tipped jacks from some cupboard or drawer.
Now, things have moved on. Battery life is measured in hours, not days, and Nokia is going the way of RIM and if a bar has an iPhone charger, it’s likely the bartender is using it to charge his own iPhone.
What you need is a charger that is always with you. What you need is the Case:Lynk.
Ugh. That was my first reaction to the CruxSKUNK, a case which turns the iPad into a laptop-shaped-object. Then I got onto the name, which is equally clunky. Then I saw the price, which appears to be around $155-$250. Oh, and this case? It comes with its own case. Nice.
The Hidden Radio speaker is like one giant volume knob.
Hidden Radio, a Bluetooth speaker and radio so minimalist it makes a sheet of blank paper look like something from a Jules Verne story, has finally emerged from a lengthy Kickstarter pupation to go on sale in a web store near you.
It’s stylish, it’s loud and it lasts longer than most other Bluetooth speakers around. What’s not to like?
I imagine that every SLR user ever will want the QuickDraw.
QuickDraw is about as apt a name for a gadget as any we’ve ever seen. And the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that obviousness extends to its function: Quickdraw is a lens bayonet that hangs on your belt and lets you clip any spare lenses around your waist, read to for – you guessed it – a quick draw.
Wood is, indeed, awesome. Speaker makers have been using wood for years to wrap high-end speakers in, utilizing the highly resonant natural properties of wood for sound reproduction. Now, with the all the rage for tiny bluetooth speakers like the Jambox and the Logitech Mini Boombox, perhaps it’s time for something just a bit more, well, woody.
Mobi-Lens: Like the Olloclip, only more promiscuous.
If I owned an iPhone, then I’d already have bought the Olloclip lens, a clip on widget which adds fisheye, macro and wideangle lenses to the iPhone using a slip-over clip. It’s impossible to line it up wrong, and it fits in a pocket or bag. But I don’t have an iPhone. I have an iPad. And I hate futzing around with all the magnetic lenses I have: they’re easy to lose, easy to get dirty and impossible to line up. What I need is a Mobi-Lens, a universal clip-on lens from Kickstarter.
Do you remember the Pear, an ingenious Bluetooth dongle that would give any 30-pin iPod dock the ability to receive and play music streamed from an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? We were eagerly awaiting the little gadget’s successful funding on Kickstarter, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer: the product has been pulled from the crowdsourced project funding website following an accusation of trademark infringement.
The good news is the issue should be resolvedpretty quickly: the guys behind the Pear say that they were hit with a cease-and-desist order over the name of the dock converter, which caused the Kickstarter page to be pulled immediately, leaving the Pear team with no way to tell their fans and supporters what was going on. However, with a name change and a slight design alteration, Pear should be back to life in the next 3-6 weeks. Let’s hope a shippable product isn’t too far behind.
Every time I’ve talked about iOS gaming, I’ve said that it’s missing one thing: physical controls. Sure, all kinds of games work well with a touchscreen, but a lot don’t. Numerous accessory makers have attempted to change this with add-on controllers, but none have really taken off.
The Bladepad hopes to change that. It’s a detachable case with a slide-out controller that features dual analog sticks, physical buttons — including shoulder buttons — and more.
Ever wanted to try your hand at iPhone app development? The folks at Code School want to teach you, via a series of web-based coding courses focused on learning to code for iOS now available for backing at Kickstarter. The new set of coursework is called Try iOS, and it will use video, in-browser activities, and a hands-on approach to teaching anyone how to code for the iPhone.
We want to create Try iOS, a Code School course which teaches how to build your own iPhone apps. Our course will combine high quality screencasts, in-browser code challenges, and gamification principles to make learning fun. There will be no need to install anything, since students will build iPhone apps using our in-browser iPhone simulator.
It’s hard to overstate my love of the Paparazzo light, despite the fact that I have never touched or even seen one outside of the photos on its Kickstarter page. Maybe it's the idea I like so much: it's an old-style flashgun which pumps out a ridiculous 300 lumens of subject-petrifying light whilst making you look like and old-school newspaperman.
This is the Franc, a clever, minimal iPhone wallet which the maker Chris Anderson (no, not that Chris Anderson) inexplicably pronounces as “fronk,” in some crazy attempt at a French accent I guess.
Despite this oral boo-boo, the Fronk itself appears to be a rather desirable Kickstarter project.
Under pressure: The JaJa turns your iPad into a digital sketchbook.
If Crocodile Dundee had been a digital artist instead of a hardened Aussie hunter, and if you had pulled your iPad stylus out in the middle of a heated argument somewhere in NYC, then he would have said this:
“Call that a stylus? That’s not a stylus… This is a stylus.”
And then pulled out the JaJa, an iPad stylus that is not only pressure-sensitive (with 1024 levels), but manages to communicate its intent to your iPad without a cable, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or any other radio protocol. How the hell do it work?
I might bang on a bit about manual knobs and dials, but sometimes they are the perfect and simple solution to a complex problem. Who wants to dig around in menus when you can just twist a ring and get immediate feedback on the result?
So it is with the Astro, a tripod-top time-lapse controller with all-manual – and all-awesome – controls.
Every so often, an iOS accessory maker takes advantage of a little-known or little-used feature to create a really unique product that no one else thought of. The FLASHr from Phaze5 is a Kickstarter project that falls right into that category. It’s an iPhone case that lights up whenever you receive a call, text message, or email — but there are no LEDs built-in. Instead, it uses your iPhone’s flash and the LED alert feature in iOS 5.
Back in March, Max Petriv tweeted some images of a Spotify iPad app he had been working on. Not only was the app optimized for the iPad’s larger display (at that time there had not been a Spotify client even teased for the iPad), but the design and interface of Petriv’s app looked downright gorgeous.
The New York-based designer had no clue that his pictures would cause such a stir, with many publications, including Cult of Mac, reporting that an unofficial Spotify app was finally in the works. You see, Spotify had been promising the world an official iPad client for months and months, but when pressed, the music streaming juggernaut would only give vague hints, like “it’s definitely coming.” Hardly a satisfactory answer for iPad users wanting their own Spotify experience.
After showing off his early work on a Spotify iPad app, Petriv was blindsided by Spotify suddenly coming out of the woodwork to release its highly anticipated official app in May. The timing of Spotify’s announcement was interesting given that Petriv had just asked for help developing his own app less than two months prior.
Petriv is now publicly working on his own Spotify app again, but due to the restrictions Spotify imposes on developers, he needs your help.
When we review speaker docks here at Cult of Mac, one of the most common things we’ll ding them for in our ratings is lack of Bluetooth streaming support. Especially for the more expensive speaker docks, it just seems like a no brainer: why not just slap in a Bluetooth chip for a couple bucks and infinitely expand the usefulness of your product?
We assume that we will continue to be disappointed by Bluetooth-less speaker docks for years to come, but maybe this brilliant KickStarter project can help mitigate that disappointment. Called the Pear (get it?), it’s a tiny little Bluetooth dongle that plugs into your speaker dock’s 30 Pin Dock Connector and gives A2DP streaming Bluetooth audio support to any device!
There’s not much more to it, which is why this is such a great idea: imagine being able to upgrade that dusty old speaker dock going unused on your nightstand or in your kitchen with just a $40 add-on. Unfortunately, it’s a Kickstarter project right now, but with more than $29,000 dollars towards its $40,000 goal already attained with almost two months left to go, this looks like one idea that’s going to soon become a reality.
This is the Pear, and it might just be one of the most useful iPhone accessories yet devised. It’s a little, puck-like Bluetooth receiver that is designed to slot into any speaker dock and free your iOS device from its needy clutches.
Honestly, it's embarrassing that Apple's earbuds need so much help to work properly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apple is clearly working towards making solid-state storage a standard for its MacBook line, which means our notebook computers have never been speedier. The only problem is, the flash storage Apple uses is still pretty expensive, and so most of us have to settle for less of it when we’re buying a new MacBook.
That means we either need to come up with ways to decrease our data consumption, or add cheaper external storage for things like our iTunes libraries and torrent archives. If you’re going for the latter (the easier option) then you need the Nifty MiniDrive, an SD card specifically designed for MacBooks that you’ll hardly ever notice.
Turn your iOS device into a classic console with the GameDock.
If you’re reluctant to spend $99 on an Apple TV just to enjoy your iOS games on your HDTV over AirPlay, check out this Kickstarter project for the GameDock by Cascadia Games, the team behind Cavorite for iOS. It plugs into your TV via a HDMI connection and allows you to “play classic games the way they were meant to be played,” in full 1080p. It even has two USB ports on the front so that you can hook up a pair of retro gamepads.
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.
