Of all the accessories for the iPad, a networked-attached storage device may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but a NAS may actually prove to be very handy.
A NAS allows you to store all your memory-hogging media cheaply and in one place. Instead of buying the more expensive 64GB iPad, which will soon get filled with movies, music and other media, get the 32GB model and invest $100 in Iomega’s iConnect Wireless Data Station.
The iConnect is perhaps the easiest and fastest way to get an iTunes share on your home or office network.
The iConnect is a book-sized box that turns any hard drive into a NAS drive, including thumb drives. Simply plug it into your router and plug a USB drive into one of the four USB slots. The iConnect makes the drive accessible via a wired network or wirelessly, giving access to a gigabytes of files as though they were stored on a local drive.
Better yet, the iConnect acts as an iTunes server, streaming music and movies across the network (or syncing them with iPads and iPhones/iPts).
The iConnect offers a host of NAS features. It supports NTFS and FAT32 file systems, shares USB printers, and serves as a Time Machine backup. And it acts as a Bittorrent station, downloading files from the file-sharing network. It doesn’t tie up your machine or slow the network to a complete crawl.
Set up is a breeze, and in several weeks of use it’s proven pretty reliable. I’ve had a few connection issues, but suspect it’s a flaky Ethernet switch rather than the iConnect. Iomega’s browser-based software is fairly straightforward to use, though some features have proven a headache to implement, such as remote access.
You can connect a host of USB drives, printers or hubs using the four USB ports (three on front, one at the back). The USB ports on the front are an unfortunate design choice: connect more than one drive, and you have ugly wires running out of both the front and back.
If you have a big external drive lying around, the iConnect is an affordable way to put it on your network. As a NAS, your drive can store all your memory-hogging media, act as a backup target for Time Machine and a Bittorrent station for all your machines. Easy to use and affordable.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
