Reviews - page 130

Denso is a little bit like Flipboard, but just for video content. Open it up, and you’ll see a selection of curated and branded channels that you can subscribe to on your iPhone or iPad.

Here’s how you know you’re a nerd: a charging station gets you excited. Yeah, I’ll say it: the IDAPT i4+ Universal Charger ($60) excites me. And yes, I’ve known the touch of a woman.

Before you judge me any further, let me explain how the i4+ works; you might start getting a tingly sensation too.

Once you’ve downloaded Better Touch Tool and started to explore what it has to offer, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

This is my favorite bag. I have many (too many) bags, but this is the best. I doesn’t have any fancy features. It has no padding, and there’s no way to lock it securely shut. But unless I have a special task requiring a special bag, it’s the one I always grab. I’m so used to it that every piece of junk I carry with me has its place inside.

And even after more than a year of solid use, it’s as good as new. The bag is the Zero Messenger from Rickshaw, and here’s why it’s so good:

PopClip brings cute iOS-style select-and-click text tools to your Mac. It’s great.

The new Timbuk2 Command Messenger 2012 ($140) is nothing like the first Timbuk2 bag I ever owned, some 11 years and 20 pounds ago, back when I was heavily commited to the world of cycling. Timbuk2 called it the Bolo, and it was a real messenger bag — though messengers almost always opted for it’s larger sibling, the Tag Junkie — crafted from a single piece of vinyl and Cordura; just a massive main compartment with not much more than a small pocket sewn on the outer face for coins and maybe a patch kit.

Although it’s just about as tough, the Command Messenger is light years away from my Bolo (and is really as much a messenger bag as a Chevy pickup is an ox cart): It’s sophisticated, uses several advanced materials, has loads of pockets and a trick feature that makes air travel easier for laptop-toting jestsetters. My how you’ve grown, Timbuk2.

Acorn describes itself as “an image editor for humans”, and that sums it up in a nutshell.

What you get inside Acorn are pretty much all the image editing features you’re ever going to need, for a fraction of the price of some of the competing apps.

One of the things I have always found interesting about bags is the way they are defined by their intent. There is more to them than their fabric and stitch. To judge a bag, you need to look beyond what it is to what it aspires to fill itself with. In other words, bags have souls, and like people, you can’t judge them just by what they are. You must also consider what they want to be.

The Acme Made Clutch is a bag that aspires to be as sleek as the 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro that it is designed to fit. At that, it succeeds. Those looking for an all-purpose laptop bag to throw anything and everything into should look elsewhere, though. The Clutch is as minimalist, meticulously organized and with as much eye to fashion and form, it’s as if Jonny Ive had designed it for Steve Jobs himself. But Steve never was a guy who needed to keep a lot of things in his bag.

Bag-maker STM hails from dehn undah (if you think my Aussie impression sounds bad here, well, it’s even worse in person), where they’re apparently pretty huge. They’re less well-known here in the States — but that’ll likely change thanks to a big marketing push and bags like the fantastic STM Velo ($100), a designed laptop bag stuffed with unusually clever features.

I’m always looking for ways to enhance my music listening experience on the Mac. For the last several months I’ve been using Bowtie to control iTunes with keyboard shortcuts, and Ecoute is another great alternative for managing iTunes in a minimal, simplified way.

When the developers of Skip Tunes contacted me, I was intrigued by the app’s menu bar interface. For quick access to simple music playback controls, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Never have I felt worse about buying a gadget accessory than I did buying the Speck SmartShell, a flimsy plastic cover for the back of the iPad 2 which Speck somehow summons the stones to sell for $35. Worse, I bought it in Europe, where it goes for €30, or $40. After a few months of use, though, it turns out to be the best iPad “case” I own (and I have rather a lot).

Makego is a cool new app that makes your kids’ real world creations come to life.

The two-dollar app comes with three virtual vehicles – a racing car, an ice cream truck, and a river boat. All you have to do is make one (out of Lego, paper, or anything else you can think of), plop your device inside, and run the app.

It has taken me a couple of weeks to refresh and recharge from my first Macworld experience (now known as Macworld | iWorld, of course). But during that time of getting clear I had the opportunity to give the latest offering by RealMac Software (Rapidweaver, LittleSnapper) in collaboration with Milen and Impending, Inc. a thorough “beta” test drive. Coincidentally, the iOS app is called Clear, and it is one of the more compelling list-makers/task managers I’ve seen for the iPhone.

The innovative thing about Clear is that it is entirely gesture-based in execution. There are no visible buttons or sliders; you use a series of gestures to interact with it, and that is what makes it stand apart from other iPhone list apps and task managers.

Till January of this year, the Wahoo Key for iPhone ($80) dongle pwned fitness on the iPhone. Why? Because the tiny, ubiquitous dongle gives the iPhone access to dozens of ANT+ sensors, and more fitness apps than any other system — turning your iPhone into a fitness-tracking powerhouse.

Then in January, Wahoo one-upped itself and introduced the Wahoo Blue Bluetooth heart-rate strap, which completely bypasses ANT+ and instead communicates via low-energy Bluetooth v4.0. Does this mean the Key is obsolete? Not by a long shot.

Hands up if you forget birthdays all the damn time. Hey, whoa, slow down. I can’t see all of you at the back. Waaaaay too many hands. Wait. No, OK, hands down. Let’s do this differently.

We’ll forget about the counting bit, and just assume that pretty much everyone forgets birthdays and ends up hating themselves just a tiny bit more each time. Especially when a few months later, the person whose birthday you forgot remembers yours, and sends a perfectly judged gift too. Dammit.

I’ve had the pleasure of using the HEX 13-inch Recon Messenger Bag ($80) for the last couple of weeks. We at Cult of Mac love bags, and I was excited to try such a good-looking messenger bag for my MacBook.

The HEX Recon differs from many bags in its class by offering a pouch specifically designed for holding and offering quick access to an iPad. With it’s top-notch build quality and minimal design, the Recon bag is an attractive option for everyday use.

DoodleDesk ($5.99) turns your Mac’s desktop into a digital whiteboard you can write on and attach sticky notes to.

ImageXY is an image resizer for OS X, available for 10 dollars on the App Store.

Instagram 2.1, which launched at the end of last week, has fixed up the frankly horrible interface of v2.0, and added in some significant new features. Other things — like the proliferation of scantily-clad ladies and (normally-clad) pets in the “popular” section — remain just the same.

There are many grid cameras in the App Store, but Grid Lens by Bucket Labs caught my eye because it adds a little bit of fun, something you don’t see often in camera apps.

This is the timer-tastic Repeat Timer Pro, a two-dollar multitimer for iOS.

Meet Niko, star of a cute-character platformer for iOS that involves the usual amount of bouncing, running, hopping and collecting things.

Oh, sure. The idea of being able to reach out from across the room and dramatically direct your mighty will to zap stuff on, off, up, down, or cause the very Air to shimmer with Play is intoxicating — that is, until those nine remotes you’ve been using to control all your magical devices become horribly unruly; perhaps they no longer bow to your commands, or maybe they’re off chasing hobbits under a couch somewhere. Whatever the reason, it’s time to harness the VooMote Zapper ($70), and make them all submit to your will!

(WARNING: Tossing the Zapper into a giant pit of lava under a mountain is not advised and will undoubtedly void the warranty, ‘mkay?)

Adam Lashinsky is a veteran Silicon Valley journalist and Senior Editor at Large for Fortune. Lashinsky wrote a riveting feature last year on the inner workings of Apple’s secretive culture that prompted him to publish Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works in January of 2012.

Inside Apple is a short read (about 180 pages) that provides several peeks behind the thick veil of secrecy Apple keeps between itself and the outside world. After reading Lashinsky’s portrayal of the company, you should have a better understanding of how Apple works and what makes it tick. Your perception of the world’s most valuable technology company should be challenged with fascinating stories from inside the walls of Cupertino.

If you do a lot of typing on your iPad, the ZAGGFolio keyboard case should be on your list of things to try. It’s a nice wireless keyboard and solid iPad case combined in one reasonably-priced unit. Let’s take a closer look.