LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The first Lightning speaker docks are starting to Rumble out of CES, starting with the thunderous OnBeat Rumble, an attractive new dock from JBL that can not only dock a new iPhone, iPad or iPod, but accepts audio streamed across the room via Bluetooth as well.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The truth of the matter is that there’s just no way to have a telescopic lens phallically jutting out of the back of your iPad in a way that Jony Ive’s sense of dignity in design would approve of. Props to Polaroid, then, for not even trying, instead going a more playful route with their brand new line-up of iPad, iPhone and iPad mini cases that support snap-on external lenses.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Wanna stream video from your Mac but don’t have an Apple TV? No problem. This dongle by Plair will let you stream any video you want to your TV’s HDMI port over WiFi.
Why not just use an Apple TV? Maybe you don’t have Mountain Lion on your Mac and can’t share your display over AirPlay with your TV. Maybe you got a PC in the house too and want to stream video from that as well. There are lots of reasons, but basically, Plair is more universal than a lot of options out there.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Don’t leave sports out of CES. There’s lots of fitness accessories here that want to turn nerds into phenomenal athletes. If you’re in the camp that believes golfing is a sport, then the SwingTIP is best new accessory here.
SwingTIP is a bluetooth-enabled 3D motion sensor that attaches to your golf club to capture the motion of your golf swing, analyze it, and then tell you how to fix your game.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Last night, the Cult of Mac staff attended a CES event called Pepcom. It’s a heavily sponsored event with hundreds of companies showing off their latest products to members of the press. Some products are not available for retail and a few don’t even have prices yet. Pepcom goes all out on themes. The more elaborate, the better. This year the theme was “tailgating,” so there was a lot of deep fried food and people dressed as football players and cheerleaders.
Here’s some of the fun stuff and people we saw:
Just over 100 years ago, Ford, one of America’s oldest car companies, was selling the model T; my, how far we’ve come.
Back to 2013, Ford has announced they’re opening up their AppLink service to all the iOS and Android app developers of the world, essentially creating an ecosystem full of apps that will make their cars even better. They’re calling their new initiative the Ford Developer Program, and I think it’s pretty cool.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – There are many ways that you can annoy pedestrians and motorists with your bike: riding on the sidewalk; ringing the bell constantly as if you were a five-year-old child; running red lights without looking first.
And my favorite: riding a municipal bike-share bike the wrong way down a one-way street, whilst texting (not talking – texting) on a cellphone.
Now, Scosche adds to the long list with a speaker that sits in a bike’s bottle-cage.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Roaming the halls of CES like a ghoul is a hard work. So when someone jumped out from their booth and offered me a free massage, I took it. The kind gentleman then tossed a weird vest over my head and ask me which pop artist I want to have massage me. I originally requested Lionel Ritchie, but had to settle with Carly Rae Jepsen – naturally.
The contraption hanging around my shoulders is called the iMusic BodyRhythm. It’s like one of those fancy massage machines you can buy at Brookstone, except the iMusic BodyRhythm hooks up to your iPhone and will massage you to the beat of your music. And let me tell you, Carly Rae Jepsen is a great masseuse. She should probably switch careers, because as much as I love singing-along to Call Me Maybe, I like it even more when it’s massaging the kinks out of my back.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today, Speck expanded its family of CandyShell accessories with two brand new cases for the iPad mini. The CandyShell and CandyShell Grip both sport Speck’s patented dual-layer design, which combines a rubbery, shock-resistant interior with a hard plastic exterior to protect your iPad mini from accidental dings and drops. The cases are also available in an array of “on-trend” colors for 2013.
Digitimes has today published one of its more questionable rumors regarding Apple’s upcoming low-cost iPhone. Citing sources in the Cupertino company’s supply chain, it claims the cheaper device — believed to be called the “iPhone mini” by one analyst — will make its debut later this year, aimed at China and other emerging markets.
But it won’t be smaller to cut costs. Instead it’ll boast a larger screen to meet the “prevailing trend for the adoption of 5-inch displays.”
Tim Cook has kicked off 2013 with a second visit to China. The Apple CEO met with Miao Wei, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, to discuss the development of China’s information technology industry, mobile communications, and Apple’s expansion in China.
The Cupertino company has doubled its number of retail outlets in the nation, and its iOS devices are becoming increasingly popular there. Cook’s last visit to China came in March 2010 before he pledged “greater investment” in the world’s largest market for consumer technology.
Seidio, a leading manufacturer of mobile accessories, has today announced the OBEX, the latest addition to its lineup of iPhone 5 accessories. In addition to offering unbeatable impact protection, the OBEX is completely waterproof and dust-tight, protecting your delicate device from liquids, snow, and even mud.
AT&T will announce its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012 later this month, but the carrier has today confirmed that the quarter saw its “best-ever” sales of both Android and iOS devices. More than 10 million smartphones were sold during the three-month period, with an average of more than 110,000 smartphone sales a day.
PowerSkin has used CES 2013 to introduce its next generation of battery cases for the iPhone 5. There are three in total, all of which are equipped with Lightning connectors and designed to provide your smartphone with portable power while you’re on the go, ensuring you never run out of battery life before you get home to your charger. Meet the PowerSkin Pro, the PowerSkin Hybrid, and the PowerSkin Battery Case below.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 –
We’ve seen quite a few mobile power solutions already at CES, but the Nectar Mobile Power System is different. Instead of lasting for only a few charges like traditional external power packs, the Nectar charger promises to charge all of your mobile devices for up to two weeks.
eBay has issued updates to its iOS apps this week to introduce a number of features that promise to make selling from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch a much more pleasant process. When listing a new item, the apps will now help you choose a category for your item — just like the website does — and they’ll help you select the right shipping charges. What’s more, you can now start listings on your iOS devices and finish them off on your desktop — or vice versa.
It’s David Bowie’s 66th birthday today, and he’s celebrating the occasion by making his new album available to pre-order. The Next Day is Bowie’s first record in ten years, and those who pre-order it through iTunes will get a bonus track early. You can download your copy today.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – One thing is guaranteed for visitors to CES this year – your phone will never run out of power, because there will be stands demonstrating portable power supplies roughly every seven steps.
One of them will be these tidy looking Magic Cubes, a new idea from the people at Powerocks.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Braven, the maker of some of the best Bluetooth portable speakers we have used, has just announced its new Big Jambox competitor – the 850.
Like the 650, the new speaker comes in a drilled aluminum case which is both stylish and light. Unlike the 650, it is huge, with a sound to match.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – With irritating regularity, my girlfriend and I dance the same dance. She, or I, go to bed with our iPhones. She, or I, lose it somewhere within the ocean of the bedfolds. She, or I, find ourselves apoplectic. She, or I, demands that the other calls the phone to locate. And then she, or I, realize that we’ve lost our phone too. And then we murder each other into a spattering of bloody chunks in our festering rage, somehow to reconstitute ourselves, temporarily find our iPhones and begin this amphisbaena dance anew.
But no longer! At Digital Experience, I talked with a wonderful little outfit selling a gadget called the Hipkey, which creates a sort of blood bond between a dongle and your iPhone. The possibilities after that are pretty rich: not only can it help you find a lost iPhone, or a lost set of keys, but you can even do things like help find a missing child or be alerted by a pickpocketed smartphone with it.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – End-of-lifing the Garmin EDGE 500 bike computer is a little like Apple ditching the iPod mini. It’s a classic which would surely keep selling millions for years to come. But the new EDGE 510 is as odd a replacement as the iPod nano, only it’s bigger, not smaller.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Hyper has been juicing up our iPhones, iPads, iPods and Macs for ages. Now they want to juice up your camera: not with mere electricity, but with advanced smartphone functionality. Their latest product is called the CameraMator, and it basically allows you to control your SLR with your iPhone, iPad or Android device.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Ubuntu’s entry into the smartphone market is interesting, and at first gasp, they look like another open-source Android competitor doomed from the start for lack of marketshare. Maybe it’s not so bleak, though, for the Linux maker. Sure, they’re hopelessly outnumbered and entering a bloody fray, but like Battlestar Galactica’s Cylons, they’ve got a plan.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The only thing that sucks about the iPod touch is that you don’t have a data connection all the time. You can try to scour the streets for free Wi-Fi, but everyone’s locking their networks now. FreedomPop has a solution that will give your iPod touch the data connectivity of an iPhone for free.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Moshi’s bag is pretty simple. They aren’t the first accessory makers to enter a space, but when they do enter it, they try to do it with a certain degree of zen-like style. So we were interested in what Moshi had cooking when we stopped by their booth at Showstoppers. After an aborted attempt to try to get us to write up a really long HDMI cable, the cream bubbled up to the surface: the entry-level Mythro aluminum earbuds and the Ionbank 10K. And we were also, shallow as it is to say, pretty impressed with their aluminum Lightning cable.