News - page 1655

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 –  LG’s mission for 2013 is to help you “touch the smart life.” At least, that’s what CEO Wayne Park claimed when he jumped on stage at CES this morning. They make a lot of products that are smart, and LG just wants your life at home to be simple and stress-free.

LG makes everything for your home. I mean literally everything. Yeah, they make smartphones and TVs, but they also make ovens, refrigerators, robot vacuums, microwaves, washing machines – EVERYTHING.

Nearly every major appliance that you have in your house could probably be replaced by an LG version. If any company could make a Siri-controlled iHome before Apple, then it’s LG. But because they’re trying to do so much, their version of the smart home still sucks, and it gives Apple an advantage to become the company that controls your home.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 –

The Nectar fuel cell is yet another attempt at freeing our devices from their relationships with power outlets. And technically, it looks great – compact and easy to use with a simple USB socket.

But unlike charging your cellphone via the mains, which is so cheap that a single charge is virtually free, the Nectar costs a buck a pop.

We’re in Vegas! That’s right, team Cult of Mac has descended on Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest and in-chargest technology show in North America. And to bring you the best and worst tech we’re seeing here at the show, we’re releasing a brand new episode each night until Thursday.

On our newest episode (#51), discover some of the cool tech we’ve seen so far at the show, and our why we think Apple is gunning to transform your house into an all-connected iHome.

All that and more on our CES 2013 special edition CultCast! Stay caught up on the best of the show, subscribe now on iTunes or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – What do a four-rotor, remotely-piloted vehicle, touch-screen car audio and a little, Bluetooth-armed facsimile of a plant stem have in common? Not much. Yet they’re all concoctions from French-based Parrot; the latter is their newest gadget, a sensor-laden gardening device they’ve named the Flower Power.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Withings has now added a heart-rate monitor and an air-quality sensor into their WiFi Body Scale, which previously just measured weight and body-fat percentage. In fact, their scale now has so many sensors, they’re not even calling it a scale anymore.

Lunatik’s new Taktik Extreme case for the iPhone 5 heads a lineup of rather overprotective phone prophylactics. If cases were condoms, the Taktik extreme would be the extra-strength safety model, the Seismik would be the ribbed version, and the Flak would be the ultralight, “natural feel” member of the group.

Apple is one of just two smartphone makers currently seeing any kind of growth in the United States at the moment, and together with Samsung the company is slowly but surely clawing away at the market share held by the likes of LG, Motorola, and HTC. One analyst believes, however, that the Cupertino must make big changes if it wants that growth to continue.

Apple’s either has to dramatically reduce its iPhone profit margins and make the handset cheaper, or face losing valuable market share to cheaper smartphones.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Here’s a question for you: it’s CES, the world’s largest electronics trade show. So where the hell are all the Lightning accessories?

Hyundai is set to showcase a number of new vehicles at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, and the company has announced that they’ll all include Siri Eyes Free technology. The feature allows iPhone owners to perform a whole host of tasks using the intelligent assistant — such as taking calls or creating Reminders — without taking their hands off the wheel.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Unless you’ve got a bizarre predilection for robophilia, there’s nothing exotic about cellular antenna boosters, but we stopped by Wilson Electronic’s booth at CES Unveiled last night to take a look at their latest booster anyway: a cradle for your car that can amp any 4G signal up to five bar status, even when you’re zooming down the causeway.

You wouldn’t normally associate HP devices with the Android or iOS platforms, but the company’s latest gadget plays nicely with them both. It’s called the Pocket Playlist, and it allows you to stream all of your media wirelessly to all your smartphones and tablets. It boasts 32GB of internal storage, and it can stream to up to five devices simultaneously.

Pentax has just announced a new retro-styled point-and-shoot zoom camera, the MX-1. The trend for cameras that look like they’ve fallen through a time warp from the 1960s is trickling down from the high-end and into lower-cost, consumer-oriented models.

Griffin has a new lineup of charging accessories at CES in Las Vegas, one of which is ideal for those who have collected an entire family of iOS devices. It’s called the PowerDock 5 and it charges up to five devices at any one time, storing them away neatly to save space on your desk.

A company called Spicebox is showing at CES a hardware-software product called Mauz that turns your iPhone into a mouse that can also read motion gestures through the camera.

The product comes in three parts: a snap-on thing for your iPhone, an app for your iPhone and a driver for your Mac.

Mauz connects with your Mac over WiFi. It works like a regular mouse. But it can also register movement of the phone like the Nintendo Wii remote, as well as register in-air gestures like the Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360.  Here’s a video.

The product should sell for less than $70 when it becomes available in June.

Apple has today announced that the App Store has surpassed a whopping 40 billion downloads, with almost 20 million seen in 2012 alone. A record-breaking December, helped by another successful Christmas, boosted this year’s figures, with more than two billion downloads during the month.

When Apple’s all-new iMacs made their debut in late November, a super speedy Fusion Drive was only available as a build-to-order option with the 27-inch models. But that’s no longer the case. Over the weekend, Apple made the 1TB Fusion Drive an upgrade option for the entry-level 21.5-inch iMac, too.

Stick-n-Find is a clever – and very small – object tracking device that talks to an app on your iDevice via Bluetooth, over a range of about 100 feet. After a hugely successful fundraising program on Indiegogo that raised six times more than required, the makers will be showing off the gadget at CES.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – When Sandy hit NYC and New Jersey last year, hundreds of thousands of people were left without power and no way to recharge their iPhones. After the 2,463rd round of Temple Run and your iPhone dies, what are you supposed to do? Talk to people?

Eton’s newest line of portable battery packs will make it possible for anyone to power-up their iPhone even during a diaster. All you need to do is put in a little old fashioned manual labor for a few minutes and you’ll create enough juice to make a short phone call.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Let’s be honest: any moron can crap out an iPhone case. Sketch out a quick model in CAD, send a few emails to someone in Shenzhen, and just a couple weeks later, a buttload of cheap plastic iPhone cases will hit your door. The fact that it’s literally this easy to make an iPhone case is what makes reporting on iPhone cases just so tedious: they are literally a multi-billion dollar industry fueled by brain farts.

Which is why I like Sculpteo, and was charmed as they lead me through a demonstration of their service. Unlike most of the bozos at CES, they aren’t hiding the fact that any moron can crap out an iPhone case. In fact, that’s their whole business: they want you to be that moron.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The idea behind Felt Audio’s lineup of iPhone accessories is simple. We’re going to let you take the sound from your iPhone and snap it on anywhere.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013  – If you want to get on some James Bond level espionage stuff, you could try buying a flying robot to spy on your neighbors, but the noise will clue them in. The best option right now is this tiny sensor wearable HD camera sensor from Liquid Image that can grab 1080p video without anyone knowing it’s there.

The Ego mini is a Wifi equipped HD camera that is marketed towards outdoor adventure seekers that want to record their greatest stunts and disasters, but it also comes with the ability to broadcast your video-feed over WiFi to an iPhone or Android device 400meters away, making it a perfect spycam.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The iPhone has many hardware advantages over the competition, but it sucks at LED alerts. Smartphones like the ones offered by RIM have a dedicated LED that flashes when you get a message; on Android, you can even dictate the pattern of the LED flashes per contact with a staccato rhythm applied on the touchscreen with your index finger.

Your iPhone? Nothing. The LED can flash if you get a message, but it’s messy and unrefined. But that’s where the Endliss Hybrid Battery Case for the iPhone 5 by uNu comes in. It gives the back of your iPhone just as much information to display as the front.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – When I videochatted over Skype with one of Belkin‘s PR people a few days ago, I told them I was dumbfounded at the sound coming from the tiny speakers built into the pre-production Thunderstorm case they sent me to play around with (the review notes I scrawled down actually read “pretty fucking amazed with this thing”). Nate, whose face I could see gazing at me from Belkin’s Los Angeles office, seemed stoic. “Invariably people have that same reaction… we call it ‘the thirty seconds of wow.’ ”

The world’s largest gadget showcase starts today in Las Vegas, and as we have in years past, Cult of Mac will be at Consumer Electronic Show 2013 from day one to report on the latest iOS and Apple news, the most important tech trends, the best accessories and gadgets, as well as rock out at the some of the most bitchin’ and downright bizarre parties Sin City has ever seen.

On our website, you’ll be able to access all of our CES coverage by visiting our dedicated CES 2013 page.

For those of you who simply must have all your devices – and a few on loan from a friend too – by your bedside all night, every night, here’s a new thing you’ll see at CES this year: the Easy-Doks CR19.