LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I tried a Lightning-equipped battery case out today, and it was great. If you were doubting Apple’s decision to swap out its hideous 30-pin connector for the svelte new Lightning, then one smooth-sliding click of UNU’s case will put you straight.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 –
If you’ve ever wanted to feel your music while you listen to it, look no further than CES iMusic Body Rhythm, a new product being shown off at CES. Cult Of Mac’s Buster Heine went hands on with the product to rock out to some Justin Bieber tunes and see how it works.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – There’s nothing that isn’t Bluetooth-powered at CES. We saw a Bluetooth-enabled fork the other day, and today, we saw a pack of Bluetooth-enabled stickers. Really.
Unlike the stickers of Hello Kitty and She-Ra: The Princess Of Power that Buster and I shrewishly compete to collect, however, the Stick ‘N’ Find Bluetooth stickers are actually pretty useful, although worth every penny as much to collect.
T-Mobile recently announced that it has finally entered a partnership with Apple, meaning the iPhone should be sold on T-Mobile sometime later this year. While the iPhone isn’t officially sold on T-Mobile quite yet, that hasn’t kept iPhone owners from joining T-Mobile’s ranks. The nation’s fourth largest carrier says that it has been adding 100,000 iPhone activations each month, and T-Mobile now serves 1.9 million iPhones total.
Since you can’t yet buy an iPhone with a contract when you walk in a T-Mobile store, these numbers mean that a signifiant number of customers are bringing over unlocked iPhones from other carriers.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I, like many of you, love my Olloclip. And while I don’t often use an iPhone case, when I do, I hate having to peel it off just to pop on the super-convenient accessory lens.
Thankfully, Olloclip has weathered the ordeal that was the iPhone 5 launch, and is now back to making cool new stuff. The latest is a case with a slide-open corner for use with the Olloclip. But it packs some really clever extra gimmicks.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Jabra makes some nice stuff, but the last time I played with a pair of Jabra’s headphones I really felt like doing this to them. If I had, they would have broken; the new Jabra are probably better, and they have a nigh-indestructible headband to boot.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I have an unhealthy love affair with LEGOs. They’re beautiful and fun, but also expensive. Have you seen how much it costs to build a replicate R2D2 and B-Wing fighter to put in your bedroom.
Smallworks isn’t helping me any either. They’re making iPhone cases that let you play with LEGOs right on your iPhone and morph it into any creation you can dream up.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I cringe every single time I drop my iPhone 5, but still I refuse to add a bulky protective case to its slim body. If I wanted a fat ugly phone that I could toss around the room, I’d buy some piece of crap Android handset.
But Ballistic’s new Aspira case manages to be not only tough, but also thin and good looking. It’s like the Sarah Connor of iPhone cases.
The Aspira aspires (ahem) to be an everyday, always-on case. It’s a smooth rubbery cover with edges and corners which are subtly flared to make them thicker without looking bulky. I tried on and it is surprisingly thin and light, and slides in and out of a front jeans pocket easily.
There are patterned versions and multicolored ones, and the patterns look a lot nicer in the flesh than in the website’s photos.
I’d seriously consider using one of these as an everyday case, it’s that slim. And when I bashed my iPhone (my own, personal iPhone, paid for by me) up against the Ballistic booth’s table, I didn’t cringe. High praise indeed.
Source: Ballistic
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – FitBit – the OG fitness-tracking dongle – has gone toe-to-toe with the Nike Fuelband and Jawbone’s Up. Or maybe that should be “wrist-to-wrist,” as the new FitBit Flex is a tracker which wraps around your arm.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Are you ready to have your mind blown? Three words: Bluetooth Clackety Keyboard. More words: without the clack.
That’s right. Matias, maker of the non-clicky Quiet Pro, has released a tenkeyless version of the mechanical-switched keyboard, and it has Bluetooth, which means it works with the iPad.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Big ass tablets “Table PCs” have been all the rage at CES this year. Lenovo and Panasonic think that you want to throw a dance party on a big iPad on the floor. It’s amazing, but not in a good way.
Rather than waiting for everyone else to jump in on the big ass tablet craze – we’re looking at your Samsung – did you know that you can actually just pay Steven Hu, of T.S. MicroTech, to make you your own 32-inch Android tablet? Heck, he’ll even make you a 65-incher if you pay him enough.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – MakerBot just announced the Replicator 2X, an advanced 3D printer that’s can print complex 2-color models and is optimized for ABS plastic.
In addition, MakerBot released a printer API and expects third-party software makers to create software for the iPhone and iPad to run its printers.
“I expect we’ll be building the moon base with them,” said Bre Pettis, MakerBot CEO after introducing the Replicator 2X to a scrum of press. “That’s where it’s going.”
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The odds of Apple coming out with an iPhone with a 3D display is fairly negligible. Jony Ive’s not going to let it happen. But just because Cupertino doesn’t want to embrace 3D doesn’t mean you can’t watch 3D videos on your iPhone.
Thanks to a clever iPhone screen protector from Nanoveu, you can give your iPhone a 3D display for cheap. Plus, you don’t have to download any special apps or anything like that. Nanoveu’s lens will do all the work for you.
This morning we told you about the Digitimes report that said Apple is planning to release a low-cost iPhone for emerging markets later this year. Now The Wall Street Journal is corroborating by saying “the device could come as soon as late 2013.”
It’s taken about 6 months, but Mozilla has managed to officially Retina-ize its Firefox browser on the Mac. A beta release of Firefox brought Retina support back in November 2012, but today’s public release of version 18 brings it to the masses.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Poor Ronnie Khadaran.
It’s the first day of CES, and already visitors are destroying his booth. They keep ripping the display items from their stands. Instead of talking up his company’s new products, Marware’s director of marketing is busy trying to stop CES showgoers from destroying his booth.
One of the new items on display is Marware’s MicroShell Folio, a $35 hard plastic shell with a magnetic cover that doubles as a stand.
It shares the same name as an earlier product, but is a better design. I got a chance to play around with one on the show floor, and thought it was a nice, relatively inexpensive case for the iPad mini.
Wouldn’t it be cool if your Mac locked and unlocked itself based on the proximity of your iPhone? A new menubar app called Keycard uses the Bluetooth sensors to detect when you walk away from your Mac. If you need to get up and, for example, take a call on your iPhone, Keycard will lock your Mac for you until you return.
OS X lets you automatically log out when your Mac is left unattended for a certain amount of time, but Keycard is all about location. The nearness of your iPhone is the key to unlocking your Mac, so you don’t need to manually enter your login password.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Sometimes you find something that catches your eye in the back alleys of CES, and the Justin Case by Innovative Technologies is exactly like that. It’s a very compact, slim and stylish folio case for your iPad or iPad mini with built-in slim line battery connected to elegantly sreamlined 30-pin and Lightning chargers.
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.