October 21, 1991: Apple launches its PowerBook 100 series. The lightweight laptops quickly become one of the most important tech gadgets of all time.
These devices will almost single-handedly turn notebook computers into mainstream technology. Apple’s subsequent success in this category — whether it’s the current MacBooks or even the rise of mobile devices like the iPhone — owes a huge debt to the PowerBook 100 series.
Technology is great and all, but when it comes to taking notes, nothing beats putting pen to paper. Rocketbook Fusion is a cloud-enabled, reusable notebook that combines the best of the analog and the digital.
With it, you can take your note-taking to a new level — and save paper while you’re at it.
Coronavirus will cause mobile device shipments to plummet during the first quarter of 2020, according to a new report.
Production at major manufacturing plants throughout China is said to be at “way below normal levels” this week after workers returned to their posts last month. Smartphone shipments could slip below 1.3 billion units for the year.
This week we type on our Apple Watches, scrapbook everything into Notebooks, flex our brains with MoneyBall and more.
Apple’s current line of MacBooks is probably its worst laptop lineup in years. The keyboards are so broken that even the newest MacBook Air is covered under Apple’s keyboard repair program. There are too few ports, and too much heat. And if you want to upgrade any internal parts? You’ll have to buy a new MacBook. But what are the best MacBook alternatives?
If you want to ditch the MacBook, you will find plenty of options. However, none of them offer one essential element: macOS. Switching to another operating system is like moving house and having to leave everything but your clothes behind. But there are workarounds even for that. Let’s check out the best alternatives to the MacBook in 2019.
Apple’s current laptop lineup is the simplest it’s been in a while. It consists of the 13-inch MacBook Air, and two sizes of MacBook Pro, which are almost identical apart from size.
If you want a 15-inch Apple notebook, then the choice is easy. But if you want a 13-incher, which should you pick? That’s what we’ll look at today, pitching the 13-inch MacBook Air against the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Global notebook shipments increased more than expected last year, and part of it came down to Apple’s strong MacBook growth.
According to a new report from market research firm TrendForce, Apple recorded a 9.6 percent market share in global notebook shipments, up from 8.3 percent the previous year. As a result, Apple overtook Asus to become the fourth largest notebook maker by shipments, compared to the fifth largest in 2016.
There are so many ways technology helps us record information. Yet, the analog notebook hangs in there. Paired with a pen, nothing commits information to memory quite like sketching or jotting thoughts and observations by hand on nice paper.
A London design agency, understanding how personal notebooks inspire creativity, has created a platform called Book Block for creatives to design their own notebooks.
When you sell 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices in your first weekend on sale, it doesn’t just disrupt other smartphone companies, but notebook manufacturers as well.
According to a new report from Digitimes, notebook sales took a massive hit in August due to customers waiting on Apple’s new handsets. Since sales of the iPhone 6 family devices will most likely continue through the fourth quarter, many notebook vendors are reducing their orders from manufacturers to avoid unsold inventory piling up.
Who needs to go out outside this week? Not us: We have headphones, a home-monitoring video camera, a robot to clean the floors and a keyboard that sleeps on your desk, all ready to play with your iDevices. Determined to leave the house? Take the GoPro PowerPole with you and then offload the footage to a new wireless, battery-powered hard drive from Western Digital.
Cameras, cameras, cameras. German photographic trade show Photokina is just around the corner, and the big names are outing their latest models before the news pipes get completely clogged with the tangled hair and soap scum of new releases. So this week we have a bunch of cool new cameras and accessories, including a GoPro harness for your pooch, along with the usual mix of gadgets designed to make you want to part with your cash.
What’s the difference between a businessperson and a regular person? According to Evernote, a businessperson has secrets, whereas a regular person is happy to share everything. This somewhat cynical take is a pretty good model of the world, and it is embodied in the Evernote Business Notebook, a “collabo” with Moleskine that lets you snap/scan a photo of your pages into Evernote, and selectively share the result.
Let’s take a look.
With Apple’s mobile and desktop platforms growing closer in iOS 8 and Yosemite, I started wondering: Is the laptop inherently better for computing than a tablet, or does it just seem that way because we’re so used to the folding form factor?
Could it be that, if the iPad had launched before the Mac and we’d spent the last 30 years using touchscreens, we would balk at using keyboards, mice and dumb screens to do our computing work? Or, in my time-reversed world, if Apple unveiled the Mac in 2010, would we all cling to our iPads and claim Cupertino was nuts for foisting OS X upon us?
Each week we pull the best Apple-related gadgets from the Cult of Mac and collect them here for your perusing pleasure.
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.
Buy it $30
Ever wanted to take photos of people without them knowing? Perhaps a sneaky shot of a pretty girl to help you “remember” her later, or some equally creepy bit of deceit? Well then, we have good news for you, you pervert: it’s the COVR Photo, an iPhone case which lets you shoot in secret.
The COVR has a little prism stuck on the back, and when want to use it you slide it into place. Now you can hold your iPhone like a TV remote and shoot whatever is in front of you while looking down at your iPhone’s screen.
Buy it $75
Here’s the Das Keyboard 4, possibly the most bad-ass clacky keyboard in existence. No keycap markings, USB 3.0, Cherry MX switches and a huge knob. All that plus Das’s trademark feature: it’s as big as a boat. A “Das Boat” if you will.
You know how when you leave a pack of cookies open instead of sealing them in an airtight jar? They still taste the same, but they get all mushy: the satisfying snap has gone out of them. That’s how I feel now when I use even Apple’s excellent keyboards. They’re mushy compared to my clackety Filco keyboard.
Buy it $169
Elgato’s Thunderbolt Dock has a few unique features that are appropriate for a company that makes video accessories for Apple devices. First, there’s an HDMI port around back, and second, the USB ports put out enough juice to charge your iPad at a decent speed.
Buy it $230
Pad&Quill is at it again, this time with a low-profile rear-shell style case for the iPhone 5/S. While calling anything from Brian Holmes’s P&Q “minimal” would be a stretch, the Traveler Case gets pretty close. It is also gorgeous to look at, and would surely be just as lovely for the hands. It looks like the kind of case you couldn’t stop fingering.
Buy it $80
The Confidant is a 192-page notebook, packed with blank, ruled or dot-grid paper. It opens flat, has its own cotton bookmarker, is covered in pale gray fabric and has neat, extra-wide pages.
There are also 12 perforated pages at the back of the book so you can tear them out without ruining the binding. My copy doesn’t have these, so maybe I have a beta version.
Buy it $16
Yes, we’re reviewing a paper notebook. The thing is – spoiler – this one is awesome. Forget Moleskine, which is nice marketing wrapped in faux leather wrapped around thin, porous, easy-bleeding pages. The Baron Fig Confidant is what you want.
It’s packed with clever “features,” and yet you don’t notice the book at all when you’re using it. Does any of that sound familiar to you Apple users?
Do you get creeped out by the fact that Google reads your emails in order to serve you ads (even though every time you search any web-based email it’s doing the exact same thing)? Then you should leave now, because the Mod Notebook is a service that scans your filled-up paper notebook and sends you back the digital version.
The Baron Fig Confidant notebook started out on Kickstarter, and is today available to buy for just $16 – $4 less than the original price. I have one here on the desk, laying open at a fresh two-page spread without anything to weigh the pages down and stop the book from closing (that’s a Baron Fig feature by the way).
This isn’t a review – that’ll come later when I’ve filled the book with words and doodles. I just thought you’d like to know you can buy one, becasue it’s a pretty amazing notebook. In short, Moleskine can go suck it.
You know what you need when you go away on a weekend trip? Along with your two suitcases worth of clothing, a laptop, a pair of iPads, a speaker maybe, plus case of shoes (rain or shine… Who knows?), chargers, your own personal pillow and, well, you get the point. Now you can add to that list the Traveler Laptop Stand from Magma. That’s right: a folding, portable stand for your folding, portable computer.
Oh Lord, the end is clearly, nearly nigh. Why? Because Kickstarter is now hosting a project to make aluminum notebook covers. No, not covers for your notebook computer. Covers for your hardcover paper notebook. The pull quote at the top of the pitch page says it all:
5052 Aluminum-Magnesium Alloy notebook & journal covers to keep your corners and pages straight.
Believe it or not, Christmas is almost here, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.
From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts that cost less than $50. Yes, you can appear to be a big spender, but without actually spending that much.
These paper notepads are ideal. No, seriously: They’re called iDeal Notepads, they come sized to match your iPad or your iPhone, and they’re designed to be strapped to their partner device with rubber bands.
I used to be a diehard Moleskine fan. I still love them, but I realized that I was spending too much time worrying about what to write in those precious pages that I never actually wrote much. So I switched to completely disposable (and easily scannable) index cards and I never looked back.
Well, apart from the time I found an index card written to me by my future self which said “Look behind you… NOW!” But that just turned out to be a drunken prank I played on myself.
So I have little time these days for Moleskine, Field Notes or any other fancy book that gets in the way of my scrawlings. But that’s not to say that this Field Notes Archival Wooden Box isn’t tempting.
It has been brought to my attention that people still use laptop computers when they travel. Instead of tossing a keyboard in with their iPad and calling it good, these masochists lug along an entire MacBook with them, just to do some work.
For these people, the Stukk stand exists. It is super-light and folds up ultra-small, helping you to not break your shoulder as you lug your behemoth around with you, and can be quickly assembled to keep your hot-running machine cool. Or cooler, at least.
If you think of a device that’s the very opposite of everything Apple makes, it would be the NexPhone. Whereas Apple makes a single product for each use-case (desktop, notebook, tablet, phone), each optimized for its own purpose, the NexPhone takes a Microsoftian approach. In fact, it makes the lame Surface “tablets” look sensible. Here’s the NexPhone’s tagline:
The smartphone that becomes a tablet, laptop or PC.
“The Mac is still growing, and I think it could still grow, but I strongly believe that the tablet market will surpass the unit sales of the PC market.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that at a Goldman Sachs conference several months ago. Cook has been one the industry’s most vocal proponent of tablets as the future of modern computing, and recent statistics support his argument. According to new data, traditional notebook computers will take a backseat to tablets in four years. By 2016, tablet shipments are estimated to surpass notebook shipments.
