Snappgrip is an add-on camera grip for your iPhone, bringing the extra manual knobs, dials and buttons you miss from your regular camera. It’s been around for a while.
But that’s not the news. The new is that a couple of great iPhone camera apps now incorporate the Snappgrip API. That is, these apps can be controlled by the buttons on the grip.
These new flexible wooden sleeves from Grovemade are amazing. Look at them. Just look.
They’re made from veneers of maple or walnut, lined with felted wool and have leather and brass straps to pull out the MacBook or iPad within in one easy yank.
At just $15, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Amzer Shellster fell apart after a couple of weeks, but what a couple of weeks that would be. The iPhone 5 case comes in pretty much any too-bright color you can think of, and features an integrated clip and kickstand.
Logitech’s new Hinge is an iPad case with – what do you think? Yup, a hinge. To be honest, it’s really no different from all the other cases that have a vertical crease in the back so that the front flap can fold away and around to make a multi-angle stand, but the Hinge looks better than most of them while it does it.
This week we look at docking stations for the MacBook. Docks let you stow your laptop out of the way. With its lid closed, and yet still use its brain to power a monitor and hook up to a mouse and keyboard.
Some docks are simple dumb stands, others offer hookups that the modern MacBook lacks, like HDMI and Ethernet ports.
Let’s take a look at three of the best.
Remember the Slate Mobile AirDesk, which I described as resembling a “neatly-drilled chopping board”? Did you look at it and think “I like that. I could see myself using one of those, if only it was a little smaller, so I could carry it in my bag.”
If the answer to either of these is yes (or to the second question, mostly), then you will be ecstatic at the news of the SlateGo, a slightly smaller version of the laptop lap-desk.
You know the old saying: “Give a man a router, and he’ll turn a piece of wood into a perfectly-designed desk for the iPad-toting Mac user”?
Or was it “Give a man a router and he’ll set up a wireless network in your home office”?
No, wait, it was “Offer a man a router, and he’ll be forced to infer from context which device you mean to give him.”
Anyway, it’s a good saying, and it might apply to Artifox’s Desk 01, a desk which is equal parts beautiful and functional.
The Mobile Home is a one-thing-well kind of product. It connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth and lets you trigger Siri remotely. Which brings me to that excellent name – this is literally a mobile home button.
Remember when the coolest brag for a gadget was that it was “credit card size”? Those times are back. The Revi Charger is a credit card-size iPhone charger with a built-in backup battery, and could really be just the thing in an emergency.
Each week we pull the best Apple-related gadgets from the Cult of Mac and collect them here for your perusing pleasure.
Remember the Elevation Dock? Yeah, me too. The Kickstarter took so long to ship that everybody who’d ordered one had upgraded to the iPhone 5 by the time the dock shipped, so they needed adapters to make them fit their new phones.
Still, that won’t happen with the new Elevation Stand, which is a simple $100 aluminum brick that adds a few inches to the height of your iMac.
Barely two months after I bought the original, Logitech has updated the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad, with matching new models for the iPads Air and Mini. The Bluetooth keyboards still work as covers and stands for your iPad, but now they also hold the iPad at an adjustable angle, and have a hidden hinge that pops out when your need it.
Lytro’s new Illum field Camera is the first of its products you’ll want to buy. The original Lytro Field Camera was a nice proof of concept, but the low resolution images were pretty crappy, and the unit itself was one of the least ergonomic camera designs I’ve ever seen.
The Illum still has some ergonomics issues, but promises much better pictures.
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Evernote’s new Business Notebook (made my Moleskine) lets you share just a part of your handwritten notes with other businessy-type folks, and it also lets you check a box on each page to set a reminder. And of course it does this in concert with the Evernote suite of apps.
It’s hard to come up with a reason you wouldn’t buy the Jimi, a little dongle that plays the hell out of your iMac, then smashes it all over the stage and sets fire to it, all while continuing to kindle sweet electric guitar music from its dying body.
Wait, that’s not the same Jimi? The Bluelounge Jimi is a little j-shaped USB extension that lets you plug your peripherals into your iMac from the front? That sounds pretty cool.
Each week we pull the best Apple-related gadgets from the Cult of Mac and collect them here for your perusing pleasure.
Sometimes the simplest things are the best. A pen and paper for writing shopping lists. A broom instead of a Roomba. An Aeropress instead of a crappy K-cup. And now, a Lifta iMac stand instead of, uh, more complicated iMac stands.
Macally’s BTKEYPRO looks like a nice do-everything keyboard, for all your devices. The main selling point is that it can pair with and switch between up to five devices, letting you use it with your iMac, MacBook, iPad, iPad Mini and iPhone, all at the touch of a key.
But it does more than just that.
Grovemade’s neat iPhone bumper cases offer protection to your phone, and although they’re a bit bulky they’re light and they look great. This new MacBook Back, a self-adhesive walnut panel, offers no useful protection, but it only adds 1.8 or 2.5 ounces to the weight of the whole package.
You know how when you pull that rank-looking piece of meat from the fridge, you don’t really know whether it’ll fill you or kill you? Is that chunk of chicken still fresh? Should you grill that fish or toss it?
Now (or soon anyway), you can use the Peres to answer those questions. It’s an electronic nose that sniffs your meat and tells you whether it’s still good to eat.
This is the Gallery Waist Pack. It’s the answer to the question, “What if we made a fanny pack for the iPad?”
That’s not quite as simple as it would seem. After all, the fanny pack is the preferred bag of the middle-aged and style-free. It’s the bag for somebody who values practicality over everything else.
And while the iPad is not completely the opposite of this, it is at least opposed to the beige pleated-pants crowd.
Mixing the two is like crossing the streams.
Dorks of the world, rejoice. Runnur has designed the perfect way for you to carry your iPad on your belt and not look cool. Countless hours doubtless went into making sure that the Hands Free would be not only secure and reliable, but also make you look like an utter drongo when you use it.
I like this Hammerhead Lightning cable for two reasons: it’s red, and the cable is flat. Actually, make that three reasons – it’s called the Hammerhead, like the frikkin shark.
I wonder why every backpack doesn’t use a roll-top. They’re waterproof, they’re mechanically simple (and therefore they never go wrong), they let you extend the size of the bag and they form a handy grippy handle.
They also look cool, and the Becket bag has one.
The little Luxi turns your iPhone’s front camera into a light meter. A what? A light meter, a device that measures the amount of light falling on a subject so that you can set the exposure correctly on your camera.
But wait, doesn’t you camera already set its own exposure? Doesn’t it have a light meter built in for when i want to kick it old school in manual mode? Yes and yes, but this $30 widget might still be handy.