Cult of Mac

LAS VEGAS — CES is the tech world equivalent of an all-you-can-eat dim sum buffet. Your eyes boggle at all the tantalizing-looking options, but you’re never really sure what you’re about to sink your teeth into.

Sometimes an exhibitor at this sprawling electronics show serves up the tech equivalent of a delicious shrimp dumpling. Other times you end up politely nodding and searching for the nearest napkin.

In today’s Cult of Mac CES 2016 roundup, we’ve got hoverboards, a game console for dogs, robots and other exotic offerings on the menu.

Best List: Phantom speaker by Devialet

A whispered conversation in a library is about 30 decibels. A normally loud chat comes in at around 65 decibels. A jackhammer at 50 feet is 95 decibels, and also the loudness at which our ears can get damaged with prolonged exposure.

The Phantom speaker I’ve been using as my main television and Bluetooth speaker for the last couple of weeks tops out at 99 decibels. This sucker gets loud, without any distortion, real quick. It’s easy to use, looks amazing in any room, and will change your experience of music and movies from the moment you turn it on.

While it looks like something out of the future depicted in a Kubrick film, has an ungainly outdoor-style power cable, and is heavier than you’d think, the Phantom is simply the best home speaker I’ve ever encountered.

For two grand, it had better be.

The iPhone camera is great at photos and videos, but if you want to take your shots to the next level, you need some extra gear. BeastGrip is the easy-to-use solution that enables photogs to attach all sorts of components like stabilizers, mics, lights, and DSLR lenses to the iPhone to make a custom, pro-quality camera rig.

Every aspect of BeastGrip’s modular system can be expanded to fit practically any piece of photography hardware you throw at it. Whether you’re shooting on an iPhone, Android, or Windows device, simply loosen some screws, slide in a new segment, and you’re ready to capture professional quality video from your smartphone.

Flexibility is BeatGrip’s biggest selling point. The body alone costs $115, but you can also buy a kit with the company’s DOF adapter that lets you mount Canon or Nikon DSLR lenses to your iPhone, giving you much better depth-of-field for really unique camera phone shots.

The upcoming iPhone 7 is almost certainly ditching the headphone jack at this point. What at first seemed like a ridiculous stretch is now shaping up to be the most credible rumor about the next-gen iPhone so far.

The latest whispers indicate that, while the headphone jack is out, wireless charging and a waterproof design are finally in.

You can warn your kid about too much screen time until you’re blue in the face. They’re too absorbed to listen. You need an enforcer or, better yet, an EyeForcer.

It’s another gadget for your kid, but this one works with you. Looking like eyeglass frames without lenses, the EyeForcer shuts down your child’s device when it senses he or she has been on it too long. It promotes good posture by switching the device off when the young user begins to slouch.

LAS VEGAS — The makers of a tiny new device called the TarDisk Pear promise to permanently double your MacBook’s hard drive space in a matter of moments.

Simply slide the Pear into your MacBook’s SD card slot, run a quick setup (called “pearing”), and your hard-drive capacity will be permanently doubled.

“Pear is a one-click option for upgrading,” TarDisk’s Pierce Schiller told Cult of Mac at CES 2016.

We can officially add luggage locks to the list of things we kind of never expected to get smart versions.

Case and lock maker Dog & Bone is bringing out a keyless, TSA-approved, Bluetooth travel padlock that’s designed to keep unwanted people from getting their dirty hands on your underwear and hoard of duty-free booze. The company is showing off their new device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

The holy grail of the home workout is something that you can get set up for quickly and easily, doesn’t require a lot of gear, and will only take as short a time as possible.

Wahoo Fitness thinks they have this down. The developer of the Wahoo 7 Minute Workout app has brought its science-based, high-intensity interval workout to your big screen via the Apple TV app store, so you can get your workout on quickly and easily.

Apple’s latest acquisition is of a small artificial intelligence company called Emotient. The startup has technology that analyzes people’s emotions through their facial expressions.

Apple “buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” Apple’s spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. That’s the typical statement Apple gives when snatching up small companies.

It’s not clear yet what Apple has in mind for Emotient, but we sure can speculate.

Navigating the many health devices on the CES show floor, I came across the vSculpt booth and stopped dead in my tracks. Mainly because it looked like a sex toy and they were giving away red panties (best swag ever).

But what I assumed was just a basic vibrator is actually a medical device used for vaginal rejuvenation therapy.

Drones may be big news at CES, but only one can make a splash.

Chinese hardware company Taihuoniao Shenzhen has developed what it says is the first consumer drone for exploring all those big bodies of water that cover most of the Earth.

LAS VEGAS — Learning how to fly a drone isn’t easy, and accidents happen all the time. Wouldn’t it be great if your drone could just fly itself?

AirDog does just that. In fact, the only way to fly AirDog is to use its incredible auto-following technology that keeps the camera aimed at you during the entire flight Cult of Mac met up with the makers of AirDog at CES 2016 for a mountain-biking demo in the desert to see how the drone uses LiDAR and other tech to capture spectacular aerial footage on the fly without any human intervention. We came away ridiculously impressed.

Like all of us, our computers can develop habits over time, not all of them great. Many computers basically become hoarders, getting distracted, forgetting where things are stored. CleanMyMac 3 corrects that behavior and cleans up your Mac’s act, using sophisticated algorithms to find and remove files taking up space. It’s easy to use, powerful, precise, and right now you can get a license to use on two computers for $35.97.

Apple stock opened morning trading today below $100, marking the first time it has dipped below this level since October 2014 — shortly after Apple introduced the iPhone 6.

HTC’s iPhone clone was missing one thing when it made its debut last October: a pink paint job. Now it’s gone one, giving Android fans a near-identical alternative to the rose gold iPhone 6s.

Razer may be best known for its gaming accessories, but the company just launched its latest creation: an activity-tracking, notification-giving Nabu Watch, which works with both Android and iPhone.

Just don’t call it a smartwatch!

Have you ever wanted to try out a different operating system on your Mac? Ever since Apple started using Intel chips in their computers, it’s been super simple to run Windows and even popular Linux distributions via Boot Camp, virtual environments like Parallels and VMWare Fusion, and the like.

The problem is that you need to use up precious system resources to run these things on your Mac. Even virtual machines take up disk space, as does running Boot Camp and partitioning your main Hard drive. What if you just want to test something out on your Mac before fully committing?

Turns out it’s fairly easy to run Linux on your Mac without using up any bit of your hard drive. Using a flash drive and some Terminal commands, you can check out a distribution like Ubuntu running right on your Mac without having to sacrifice a thing. Here’s how.

With innovations like HealthKit and ResearchKit, Apple has been making big strides into healthcare in the past couple of years. In a new interview with Conversations with Health Care, Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams talks about Apple’s belief in the “democratization” of medicine, among other topics.

With Jony Ive being a self-proclaimed mechanical watch fan, it’s fascinating to see how the Apple Watch design language borrowed elements from traditional Swiss watches — and now how Swiss watches are starting to resemble the Apple Watch.

Luxury watchmaker H. Moser & Cie’s is the closest yet, looking virtually identical to Apple’s smartwatch with its rectangular chassis, crown, band, and even 38mm size. It’s name? The Apple Alp Watch. We’re not even kidding.

More evidence is piling up suggesting that iPhone sales may be weakening, with multiple Apple suppliers reporting lower revenues as a direct result of “weak iPhone 6s and 6s Plus sales.”

If you’ve ever lived through a house fire, you know how devastating it can be. The fear of fire leaves many homeowners anxious, especially when they are away from home. The Leeo Smart Alert is here to save the day.

LAS VEGAS — The makers of a powerful new battery pack called the iTron claim it can be fully charged to 9,000 mAh in an astonishing 18 minutes. Even better, in just three short minutes, it slurps up enough power to recharge an iPhone 6.

To make the package even more enticing, the quick-juicing battery pack charges on a dock that offers three USB ports, so it can become a full-blown charging station for multiple devices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made approximately $10.3 million in 2015 — $10,281,327 to be exact. That is up only a tad from the $9.2 million he earned in 2014. The other executives at Apple all made around $25 million each for the year. Sure, it’s rough to place the word “only” in front of a ten million dollar check, but in Cook’s case, he is making significantly less than the other execs.

LAS VEGAS — Who says everything at CES is rubbish?

Well, yeah, there’s a lot crap, but that’s why we’re here — to rummage through the rubbish and find the best stuff.

And we found plenty: smart footballs and running shorts that improve your game and gait; a coffee mug that instantly cools coffee that’s too hot; and a speaker system that uses all the iPhones in a room to create a distributed, shared sound system that sounds better than you’d imagine.

Check it out:

2016 has not exactly been a spectacular year for Apple. There have been some nice highlights, like major changes to the MacBook Pro lineup and the wildly successful AirPods, but it hasn’t really been a year to remember for fans or investors.

Will 2017 be different? We know the next-generation iPhone will be big, but does Apple have more up its sleeve that will help turn around its fortunes and make the next year a spectacular one?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over Apple in 2017.