Apple Campus 2 isn’t set to open for a couple of more years, but once Tim Cook and his merry band of Apple fellows finally cut the red ribbon, Cupertino’s skyline will forever be changed by the Apple’s giant loop of circle and steel.
Rather than wait for the mothership to land in 2016, we’ve created this 3D-rendering of Apple Campus 2 based on proposals presented by Foster & Associates. The video begins with an aerial view of the entire campus before slowly rotating while zooming in on the exterior details of the building before finally dropping you off with all the iPod people at the main entrance.
The Apple Campus 2 project has received its fair share of criticism, and the complaints run the gamut: some small and petty, some erudite and long-winded, and still others self-aware.
The traffic is going to get too heavy. The bike lanes are going to go away. The pollution will be too high. All in all, complainants say, there goes the neighborhood!
A couple of weeks ago, the Cupertino City Council approved the massive Apple Campus 2 project after a long meeting that included final environmental impact studies and overwhelmingly positive live public comment, lots of it from local business owners, like the one who owns a coffee shop and hopes to sell lattes to the thousands of workers headed off to Apple’s proposed new campus.
Not everyone is super happy about the mega-campus coming to small-town Cupertino and its surrounding bedroom communities. Many of the concerns deal with the already slow-as-a-modem Silicon Valley traffic, others are about designs of the campus that effectively cordon off the tech giant from regular residents.
A New Look
Sunnyvale resident Yair Barniv is really upset that his residential neighborhood will be disrupted in character.
“I STRONGLY object to Apple’s plans affecting my Sunnyvale neighborhood!!!” he shouted in a public comment email.
“I don’t want them to convert my quiet Sunnyvale residential area into—effectively—an Industrial area! Playing with words isn’t going to change reality. I chose to live in a RESIDENTIAL area—not in an INDUSTRIAL one!”
Other residents echo similar sentiments, all accessible on the Cupertino City Council website, archived as part of the public comment process.
Another Sunnyvale resident, Stephen Rohde, is concerned about the median planned to run down Homestead Road, near the building site.
“Now, a tree line median may look nice,” he writes, “but did anyone consider the inconvenience to the Sunnyvale homeowners being able to get in or out of their own driveways? It you want to head east toward Lawrence Expressway you would have to go up to Wolfe to make the U-turn. And each time to turn into your driveway you would have to go down to Tantau to make the U-turn. This is absurd, and I am totally opposed to removing the turn lanes.”
Try not to hit the cyclists, mmmkay?
Traffic Woes
There are pages upon pages of concerns of increased and re-routed traffic in the public comment section, and even some proposed alternatives.
Cupertino resident Wahila Wilkie writes, “As mitigation for the traffic issue I suggest having Apple pay for electric school buses to serve all schools in the affected areas to reduce the number of cars on Wolfe and Tantau and compensate for the increased air pollution from addition Apple commuters.”
Robert Neff from Palo Alto worries about bike lanes along streets Tantau and Pruneridge, which he uses to commute to work daily. His concern is that the bike lane allows cyclists to cross the busy 280 freeway without an interchange.
“The plan suggests removing bike lanes where Tantau crosses Calabazas Creek,” writes Neff, “replacing them with a shared bike/ped facility at that point. This is a bad idea, and a definite downgrade for the bike facility.”
Healthcare Matters
Still other residents worry about potential issues to local healthcare facilities. One anonymous poster, known only as Ann, wrote a letter to express her concern for the potential air quality issues resulting from construction of the facility, as well as its operation soon after.
“Which way would prevailing winds blow that excess emission,” she asked, “i.e. toward the Hospital or towards Cupertino High School or towards Birdland or Portal neighborhoods?”
Similarly, Ann wants the council to consider the impact the extra traffic might have on, say, a vehicle attempting to get to the emergency room during peak traffic hours. “Already Homestead frequently experiences gridlock,” she said. “What would be the extra time required to arrive at Kaiser starting from the intersection of Homestead/Hollenbeck? What would be the extra time required starting from Wolfe/Iris? These inquiries should be modeled explicitly.”
Apple Creates Jobs
All of these concerns are valid, of course, as a project of this size can in no way fail to disrupt the lives of the people that live nearby.
Berkely economics professor Enrico Moretti, however, feels that there is an upside to such a large undertaking.
Moretti is the author of “The New Geography of Jobs,” a book about the positive impact gentrification and development can have on communities.
“I think Apple in Cupertino brings jobs and salaries to the local community outside the constructive workforce,” he told Cult of Mac in a phone interview. “By my own estimate, one job in a high tech company can support five local services in the same metropolitan area–jobs outside the company.”
Moretti says that a company like Apple brings both specialized positions like IP lawyers to the community, as well as more generalized jobs, like taxi drivers and cafe workers.
The professor is excited about the new Apple campus, saying that the proposed Apple Campus 2 “fits in with the Apple vision of environmental responsibility.”
Moretti believes that the rooftop solar panels and other environmental features are the most positive feature of the new campus. “Frankly,” he said, “it’s going to be an improvement over what is there now.”
The issue Moretti has concerns about, however, have more to do with the disconnect of the campus from the local community.
“I’m a little surprised they are so isolated,” he said. “I don’ t think they’re thinking of the future. The more modern approach to corporate integrated with the city, can actually walk outside and go to local shops, restaurants, etc.”
That’s not to say the old Cupertino campus is integrated, either, but Moretti feels like current and future employees in the high tech sector will continue to ask for more connected work places. “You see this need for a better connection with the local community,” he said. “They are all demanding campuses that are downtown, near stores, walking environments.”
Bottom line, the Apple Campus 2 is getting built. It’s on delayed schedule to finish up by 2016, so any concerns the residents may have will play out during the construction and beyond. If Moretti is correct, though, the city should see more benefit than cost as Apple brings in more jobs and more income to the local area.
Sustainability is a key theme of Apple's forthcoming Apple 2 campus. Photo: Apple
Did you know that the new Apple Campus 2 “spaceship” is wider across than the Empire State Building is tall? It’s going to cost 60 times more than the Pentagon did back in 1943, too. Heck, you’ll be able to cram up to 35 jetliners full of passengers in its rounded confines without breaking a sweat.
We thought it would be great, then, to take a look at some of the details of the new campus, set to finish construction in 2016.
It’s big. Like, Pentagon big.
The proposed Apple Campus 2 is huge. Apple plans to put a 100,000-square-foot fitness center, 11,000 parking spaces, 2,000 bike parking spaces, 2.8 million square feet of office space, and a 100,000-square-foot lab. Oh, and a restaurant. All of this in four stories, housing 12,000 employees.
The Pentagon, in contrast, which itself was completed in 1943, has 3.7 million square feet of office space, is seven floors tall, and houses 25,000 people.
A lot of krill, and a lot of oil, really.
The Apple Campus 2 will have a 1,522 foot diameter, which means the Empire State Building could comfortably lie down somewhere inside its massive circular footprint. Heck, a T1-class Supertanker could fit in there, as well, with its 1,246 foot length, and you’d have to get somewhere around seven or eight blue whales–the largest known mammal on Earth–just to get across half of the diameter of the new Apple Campus. That’s a lot of krill.
I’d pick sunny California, too.
The spaceship campus has plans to hold 12,000 employees within it’s solar-panel-using, green technology hallowed halls, which would fill something like 160 double-decker buses, or 35 Boeing 747 jets. The Apple folks will have it easier, as they’ll at least be able to get nice food there, and a much less foggy view in Cupertino than in London.
Beam me up, Ivey.
Of course, no look at anything tech-related is complete without a comparison to a fictional starship, and since we’ve been calling this the spaceship campus since Steve Jobs unveiled the design two years ago, it seemed fitting to see how it stacks up against the USS Enterprise. Unfortunately for trekkies, the new Apple Campus 2 has a diameter quite a bit larger than the original Gene Roddenberry creation.
Nice salaries, folks.
The city of Cupertino itself, home not only to Apple founders Woz and Jobs but also author Raymond Carver and actor Aaron Eckhart, only has around five times the population as will work in the Apple Campus 2. Interestingly, the median income of Cupertino-based Apple employees is a bit lower than that of Cupertino in general, but perhaps that’s just a function of how much larger the city is than the building. Which, to be honest, doesn’t seem to be that much of a news item. It is, however, funny that a .27 square mile building can cause the kind of traffic jams that the city of 11.26 square miles seems to be mostly worried about.
Alright, so today’s app isn’t the most practical one you’ve ever seen. It’s not even the most clever. But it’s fun and easy to use, and it’s Halloween, damn it. Boo Halloween is a quickie photo app that lets you put a variety of spooky faces on pictures of you and your friends using reasonably accurate facial recognition. It comes with six masks — four of which are pumpkins — and you can buy nine more for a dollar if you think your buddy would look better as Batman, a zombie, or Billy, the puppet from Saw. Not much to it, but it’s silly, and it made me chuckle.
Now that Halloween is over, the rest of the holidays are clamoring for our attention. And some of them require shopping, which can mean a lot of driving all over town. And if you want to make sure you’re taking the most efficient route possible, you might want to plug your stops into BestRoute Free, a new app that lets you quickly and easily mark waypoints (by searching or just a long tap on the screen). It’ll then tell you the best order in which to make your stops.
It would probably also come in handy if you suddenly had to deliver a bunch of pizzas or something.
Coloring Pages for Zane is a simple app that contains coloring-book-style pages you can send to your AirPrint-enabled printer with just a few taps before you let your little ones loose on them with all the crayons. It’s so simple, in fact, that the kids can run it themselves, and that’s by design. The developer made it for their autistic son so that he could easily print out his own pictures and get right to the important business of coloring them in. It launches with a selection of images; additional pictures are available via in-app purchases. But that warm feeling you’re getting in your heart right now is free.
Cocktail Academy is a new app for people who would like to make their favorite drinks themselves or try some new ones without embarrassing themselves in front of their friends. It has directions to create 110 cocktails and even includes video tutorials in which international-award-winning bartender Giancarlo Di Niso shows you exactly what to do (spoiler alert: It involves a lot of measuring and shaking and/or stirring). You can search for drinks several ways including alphabetically and by percentage of alcohol, and the app even lists caloric content for each concoction for your dieting convenience. Grog, for example, has 186 calories, and I never realized I was curious about that until just now.
Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 30 minutes, Cult of Mac has compiled this list of the best new movies, albums and books to come out this week.
Enjoy!
Best New Books
Hatching Twitter
by Nick Bilton
In 2005, Odeo was a struggling podcasting start-up founded by free-range hacker Noah Glass and staffed by a motley crew of anarchists. Less than two years later, its days were numbered and half the staff had been let go. But out of Odeo’s ashes, the remaining employees worked on a little side venture . . . that by 2013 had become an $11.5 billion business – Twitter.
That much is widely known. But the full story of Twitter’s hatching has never been told before. It’s a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles, as the founders went from everyday engineers to wealthy celebrities featured on magazine covers, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Daily Show, and Time’s list of the world’s most influential people.
New York Times columnist and reporter Nick Bilton takes readers behind the scenes as Twitter grew at exponential speeds and gets inside the heads of the four hackers out of whom the company tumbled: Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Christopher Stone, and Noah Glass.
Rob Delaney is a father, a husband, a comedian, a writer. He is the author of an endless stream of beautiful, insane jokes on Twitter that force you to pause with their absurdity. He is sober. He is sometimes brave. He speaks French. He has bungee jumped off the Manhattan Bridge. He enjoys antagonizing political figures. He broke into an abandoned mental hospital with his mother.
He’s also one of the funniest stand-up comics I’ve seen in person with a weird cornucopia of recklessly imaginative jokes that are both hilarious and repulsive at once. His new book – Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. – reveals the hilarious and heartbreaking true stories of how Rob came to be the funniest man on Twitter today.
Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football
by Rich Cohen
For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team: they were the greatest football team ever–a gang of colorful nuts, dancing and pounding their way to victory. They won a Super Bowl and saved a city.
In Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, Rich Cohen tracks down the coaches and players from the team to find out what made the fantastic offense of Walter Payton and QB Jim McMahon work so well. Did they really hate the guys on the other side? Readers who don’t even like sports will still enjoy Cohen’s story about the love of his favorite game. The end result is a portrait of not just a team, but a city and a game: its history, its future, its fallen men, its immortal heroes. But mostly it’s about being a fan, about loving too much.
Melbourne’s Cut Copy came to ether in the early ’00s, when the rediscovery of ’80’s electro and dance pop was in full flower. Yet one of the group’s great strengths is the fact that it is a group, with a flesh-and-blood rhythm section–not just one person behind a bank of gear. The Aussie quartet’s fourth album reinforces that notion, putting crucial yuan muscle behind the sparkling synth riffs. Sure, tunes like “Footsteps” are fueled by an Italo-disco-flavored, club friendly feel. But it’s Ben Browning’s bass guitar lines that lend the greatest gravitas to the elegant synth-pop of “In Memory Capsule,” while Mitchell Scott’s analog drum kit brings a bit of vital rock ballast to “Dark Corners & Mountain Tops” and the luminous, power ballad-esque “Walking in the Sky.” So while there’s little on Free Your Mind that couldn’t drive dancers to exhaustion, the album’s essence is more than just momentum.
“Paper Planes” launched M.I.A. into fame but if you’re not familiar with the singer’s entire musical arsenal, her latest album provides a fun and crazy take on pop culture. Matangi is the fourth studio album by English-Sri Lankan recording artist M.I.A., released on 1 November 2013 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through Interscope Records.
The album, which is the follow-up to her 2010 album Maya, features collaborations and production from The Weeknd, Switch, Hit-Boy, Danja, The Partysquad, Surkin and others.It also features songs like “Bad Girls,” “Bring The Noize,” “Come Walk With Me,” and “Y.A.L.A.”
Few figures in hip-hop have changed the game as fundamentally as Marshall Mathers. The Detroit emcee’s cutting wordplay and playfully sadistic wit have earned him fans beyond hip-hop’s borders and made him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 –Eminem’s first solo endeavor since 2010’s multiplatinum Recovery–comes charging out of the gate with “Bezerk,” a Rick Rubin-produced track that chopps up the heavy guitars of Billy Squier’s “The Stroke,” name-checks Public Enemy, and delivers a flurry of jabs at celebrities. In short: classic Eminem.
Combining forces with Rubin and longtime collaborator Dr. Dre, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is gritty, raw, and an appropriately provocative sequel to Eminem’s groundbreaking 2000 release. Huge, hard-hitting singles like “Survival” and “Rap God” make it one of the artist’s most uncompromising albums to date.
Killer whales are beloved, majestic, friendly giants, yet infamous for their capacity to kill viciously. Blackfish unravels the complexities of the dichotomy, employing the story of the notorious performing whale Tilikum, who–unlike any orca in the wild–has taken the lives of several people while in captivity. Blackfish expands on the discussion of whether it’s ethical to keep orcas and other whales in captivity, as well as the consequences of continuing to do so.
David Clark is a small-time pot dealer who likes to keep a low profile. His clientele includes chefs and soccer moms, but no kids. He learns the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished when he tries to help out some local teens and winds up getting jumped by a trio of gutter punks. Stealing his stash and his cash, they leave him in major debt to his supplier, Brad. In order to wipe the slate clean–and maintain a clean bill of health–David agrees to become a big time drug smuggler for Brad and bring a shipment over from Mexico. What could go wrong?
The comedy finds David twisting the arms of his neighbors to create a fake family and roll their RV to the border of Mexico and back during Fourth of July weekend where everything ends with a bang.
Okay get this, there’s a cranky undercover operative who’s a total badass–played by Academy Award winner Denzel Washington–who begrudgingly joins forces with a young, up-and-coming badass undercover operative–played by none of than Mr. Funky Bunch himself, Marky Mark Whalberg.
The two badass undercover operatives then take on a drug cartel but it blows up in their faces. Once they join forces everyone suddenly wants them dead so they have to strip themselves of the hatreds for each other and work together to get out alive. Yes, it’s your buddy-cop action movie with a new twist, but there’s no one funner to watch on the screen than Denzel Washington strutting around like the coolest cop to ever walk the planet.
This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple retail store genius who answers all your questions about what it’s like to work at an Apple Store. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.
This week our Genius dishes on why Apple raised the price of AppleCare+ replacements on the iPhone 5s to $79. They also talk about how hard it is to get fired from the Apple Store and the biggest daily annoyances of the job.
If you’ve got a question you want an inside scoop on, send us your questions and the answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.
1. Why is the replacement fee for an iPad $50 but the replacement fee for an iPhone 5s is $80? Wouldn’t the iPad cost more to replace?
As crazy as it seems, there is no difference in fees for AppleCare+ replacements between iPad and iPhone. It has always been a $49 fee, up until the release of the iPhone 5s. With its release, Apple changed the fee for AppleCare+ repairs or replacements to $79, whether it be an iPhone, iPad, or the recently added iPod, which was not previously eligible for AppleCare+. If you purchased the AppleCare+ protection plan before the change then you still get the $49 price while any plans purchased after the change will have the new cost of $79.
With the price change, Apple also announced that the protection plan coverage would extend to any of the other countries where it is offered. Keep in mind there are some countries that don’t carry specific models.
I’m not so sure offering the coverage outside of your own country justifies the $30 price change. My guess is manufacturing costs for retina displays and newer silicon chips, like the A7, may explain the cost increase but of course they’d never tell a Retail employee why. The real question is whether the price change is a deal breaker. As for me, I still see it as a great protection from having costly accidents which, for many, happen all too often.
2. What are the most common reasons for getting fired at the Apple Store?
I really haven’t seen very many people get fired. The only guy I ever saw get fired was arguing with management on a regular basis. After he messed up and still argued with managers, he was asked to leave. Apple has many strict policies that result in termination if its policies are not followed. Outside of these policies, management will make every effort to work with individuals who are having any problems at work.
Managers seem to notice the smallest of errors and are sure to let people know when they make mistakes. Constant policy and procedure changes can make it pretty tough to do everything right. Even those who are trying to follow all the rules can feel bombarded by “fearless feedback” as Apple calls it, otherwise known as constructive criticism. Some just can’t take it so they end up leaving to find more suitable employment. You either get with the program or face the music.
3. What’s the most exhausting (or even annoying) situations that a genius has to deal with every once in a time or on daily basis?
The toughest part of my job rarely has anything to do with Macs or iPhones. People seem to be the hardest part about my job. Dealing with a difficult customer while trying to make the experience positive is sometimes impossible. People can be outright rude, impatient, and childlike with temper tantrums and all in order to get things their way. Keeping the “act” of an Apple Genius can be tough.
These situations often involve partnering with a store manager and rarely get resolved quickly. Trying to stay on time with all the appointments while dealing with these issues and other technical issues can be a nightmare. Nothing that a nice bottle of scotch can’t fix, though. It’s all just part of the job after all.
Concept drawing of Apple's breathtaking new circular headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Apple is still moving forward to build its $5 billion, 176-acre “spaceship” Campus 2 headquarters, expected to open in three years in Cupertino, California..
Critics have been attacking it since Apple CEO Steve Jobs first proposed it to the Cupertino City Council. And since that poignant moment, which was Jobs’s last public appearance, the campus project has evolved and changed. As I write this, the old HP buildings on the property are being demolished.
Here’s what we know about the spaceship campus so far, and also what the critics have been saying.
Architecture hasn’t really ever been important in the brick and mortar-averse tech industry. It wasn’t all that long ago that digital utopians proclaimed physical geography dead altogether, with a vocal minority apparently pleased to leave the actual world behind them and embrace the cyberspace of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the technological breakthroughs of Silicon Valley have advanced almost inversely to the region’s architecture. In a brave new world of lush rolling hills and the always impressive San Francisco Bay, the most that the majority of companies have managed to come up with are drab industrial parks filled with two-story, cubicle-lined buildings.
True Color is one of those apps that definitely has a practical application but is also just fun to mess around with. Its purpose is to create “formulas” for different hues so that artists can properly mix paints to match, and you can easily take samples from your photos. You can also just mess around with the four component colors — red, yellow, blue, and white — to get the tone right before you go wasting all your acrylic on experimenting.
But it’s also good for curiosity. The picture over there, for example, is the exact color of Jake from Adventure Time. Did you know he was 24 percent red? Because I didn’t.
If you’re worried about your iPhone getting damaged the next time you’re involved in a heavy turf war, then check out Proporta’s new case for iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s. It looks like a standard leather folio case from the outside, but it’s lined with carbon fiber that’s so strong, it will comfortably withstand a shotgun blast from 20 yards.
It’s been a little while since I reviewed a fantasy game with a branching plot, so I picked up Sorcery! 2, a new title from developer Inkle Studios and designer Steve Jackson, co-founder of Lionhead Studios (maker of the Fable series of role-playing games for Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles) and writer of the gamebooks on which this franchise is based. Not the Steve Jackson who created the GURPS tabletop RPG platform, but that’s an amazing coincidence.
Sorcery! 2 by Inkle Studios Category: iOS Games Works With: iPhone, iPad Price: $4.99
Sorcery! 2 is the second (duh) in what will be a four-part adventure series, and it’s equal parts visual novel, RPG, and gamebook. And it all takes place in a beautiful, hand-drawn world with multiple paths and interesting old men to talk to. I mean, I don’t think you only talk to old men, but I spent about an hour with the game, and I did talk to some old men of varying crotchetiness. And a restauranteur who may or may not have been a star-spawn of Cthulhu.
After Apple announced the iPhone 5s in gold, we felt sure that the latest iPads would be available in the same color, but that wasn’t to be the case. But don’t be disappointed. As long as you have lots of spare cash that you’re itching to spend, you can buy a gold-plated iPad Air or iPad mini from Goldgenie with prices starting at just $1,860.
As expected, the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c are now available on Boost Mobile — alongside the iPhone 4S. The former starts at $550 for a 16GB model, while the iPhone 5c is $100 less at $450. The iPhone 4S starts at just $300.
But if you pick up your new handset before November 24, you’ll get a cool $100 off that price.
Apple’s iPhone 5s became the world’s first smartphone with a 64-bit processor when it launched this September, but as you might expect, it’ll have plenty of competitors next year. Unsurprisingly, some of those will come from Samsung, which is already planning 64-bit chips and 16-megapixel cameras for its 2014 flagships, according to industry sources.
When OS X Mountain Lion came out, we found out that there were 43 hidden high-resolution images included as part of the screen saver system: nature images from National Geographic, aerial images, images of the cosmos, and patterns in nature, to name a few.
It turns out that the same images are hiding in Mavericks, too, just in a different–maybe more accessible place.
Last month, Facebook released an update that allowed iPhone users to edit posts and comments and even preview all of their changes. It was a small, but welcome update. Unfortunately, it was also exclusive to the iPhone, but now users of Facebook for iPad can avail themselves of the same trick.
When Apple launched the iPhone 5 last year, it was the most aggressive launch Apple had ever attempted, requiring entire armies of workers to aggressively line-manufacture their most advanced, difficult-to-make iPhone yet. But what was it like to be one of those workers? Businessweek has published a fantastic, haunting investigative report on one Nepalese worker, who almost starved to death after his stint as an iPhone tester.
What’s causing the Retina iPad mini to launch so late in the year, and why is demand expected to be so limited at launch? Display yield issues tend to be viewed as the culprit, but what exactly is happening? According to a new rumor, LCD burn-in is to blame.
It still hasn’t been officially confirmed by Apple, but reports suggest that the company will soon begin offering iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C repairs in its retail locations — providing minor repairs and screen replacements for the two latest iPhone models.
We just brought you a review of Maclocks’ MacBook Pro lock, and today we come bearing news that Maclocks is now taking pre-orders on the world’s first iPad Air enclosure, available December 2.
Writing that Amazon blasted iPad with its new Kindle Paperwhite ad, or that the iOS market share is about to explode may be an unfortunate choice of words after reports that an iPad Air did, quite literally, blow up in an Australian mobile phone store this week.
I hope you’re ready for yet another case that adds extra lenses to the iPhone’s amazing camera. This one has a twist. Well, I guess they all do, but this one has a different twist. It’s also ruggedized and waterproof.
Ever find yourself stuck without a cable when you need to charge your iPhone? No, me either. I’m a nerd and a professional gadget tester, so at pretty much all times I have some kind of Lightning cable, dock or adapter either on my person or close to hand.
But if I got out more, and was more stylish in general, then I’d be sporting a Kyte & Key Cabelet, or cable bracelet.
Do you ever grab screenshots of websites on your iPhone, then struggle to transfer them to you Mac for further editing, or for – say – putting them into a blog post? Now you can do the exact same thing, only without ever having to touch your iPhone. How? Pixa’s new mobile Web Snapper, that’s how.
I don’t know what it is with wireless chargers and the letters Q and I, but what I do know is that the iQi is the first one I have actually considered using. You see, instead of a fat case to hold the induction circuits, or the flux capacitor, or whatever it is that makes wireless charging possible, the iQi is a tiny slim sheet that slips inside your existing case.
BestRoute Free — Navigation — Free
Coloring Pages for Zane — Education — Free
Cocktail Academy — Food & Drink — $3.99
