Excellent - page 4

I love it when hardware integrates with iOS devices, endowing them with new powers they never hoped to possess. The Withings WS-50 smart scale, paired with their very good iOS app, does just that.

By connecting to your Wi-Fi and sending your health stats to the cloud, the Withings WS-50 smart scale allows you to effortlessly track your weight, body mass index, indoor air quality, and even your heart rate. All you have to do to make it work, is step on the scale from time to time, then boot up their app to see just how fat or cut you’re getting.

Apple might not make bumpers anymore, and Antennagate may be a thing of the past, but there are still some good bumpers out there… and top of the list is the AL13.

Add the Olloclip accessory lens’s price to the cost of this new Olloclip Quick-Flip case and you get to $120. That used to be the price of an entry-level camera from a fairly decent brand, but I’d recommend you buy the Olloclip gear instead. Your iPhone’s camera way, way better than a $100-200 point-and-shoot, and the Olloclip gear makes it much easier to use.

When my fingers are covered in egg, or I want to use my iPad as a second-screen when working at my Mac, or when I’m performing computer surgery and I want to keep iFixIt in the corner of my eye, there’s a lot of situations in which I might want a stand for my iPad.

Unfortunately, of the few I’ve tried, I’ve found most of them only to be good in specific situations: great for, say, using your iPad as second monitor at your computer, but not good for cooking or doing computer surgery.

The iOStand by iOMounts is the first stand I’ve really liked, because sometimes simpler is better. But it’s not perfect.

For the past six year that I’ve owned an iPhone, not once have I thought about buying a dock. What’s the point? You’ve got your cable right there anyway, and unless it adds some great functionality to the iPhone, I’ve never seen much point in them. But the Projectone from Karas Kustoms has changed my opinion on the usefulness of iPhone docks.

The Projectone is a machined aluminum dock for your iPhone 5 that passively amplifies sound like a megaphone. Its simplistic style and industrial stylings make it one of the best-looking iPhone docks we’ve seen in a while, but is it actually worth its $45 price tag?

Travelers, campers, heavy users, and those who spend a lot of time away from outlets know when you rely on your iPhone for work or play, it’s not making it through the day without at least one partial recharge. Especially with all the hip Vining and Instagramming we’re all do these days.

For those who need a lot of portable power to-go, New Trent’s iCarrier, as the highest capacity portable charger they make, promises not just one smartphone recharge, but up to six. Six!

I devoted my iPhone 5 to iCarrier-only charging to see how well the big boy performed.

The ThinEdge bumper from MyBanana promises to be the world’s slimmest “frame case” for iPhone 5, delivering minimalist protection that doesn’t spoil your handset’s sleek and sexy form factor. It adds just 1mm of thickness to the sides of your device, which is just enough to protect its aluminum edges from dings and scratches.

The ThinEdge extends slightly around the front and back edges of your devices to ensure they never come into contact with flat surfaces when placed down, and that means you can show off your handset’s design without having to worry about picking up scratches.

The ThinEdge provides a soft touch matte finish that increases grip, and it comes in a range of colors, including black, orange, pink, silver, and white.

Is it worth its £23 ($35) price tag?

When the VLC iOS app was pulled from the App Store in 2011, a little part of me died inside. I own a large collection of movies in different file formats, and VLC is my go-to media player for files that aren’t supported by QuickTime and iTunes. While there’s hope that VLC will return to the App Store, I’m not holding my breath. And I don’t really care anymore because I’ve found something better.

For several months I’ve been beta testing an iOS app called Infuse. Support for 14+ file formats, an intuitive interface, and some slick details make Infuse the best third-party media player out there.

Sometimes, a product can really sneak into your heart. Such was the HEX Drake Origin backpack, which I gave a positive review.

Although I loved it from the first for being a backpack that a fashionably-inclined, full-grown man could wear without looking like a slobbering, buffoonish manchild — no mean feat — the Drake Origin has become even fonder to me in the months since, until I found that I was more inclined to hoist it up onto my shoulder as I left the house than I was some of my other cherished messenger and satchel bags.

What I loved about the HEX Drake Origin wasn’t just its incredibly solid stitching and construction, but the way it made me feel when I picked it up, I felt as if I suddenly went back in time, and becamed a dandyish Oxford student in the 1910s lugging a tweed backpack full of natural philosophy texts across a blustery, autumn-strewn quad. This may seem precious, and is in fact precious, but the way we all look at fashion is through the romanticized lens of nostalgia. Fashion is a way we tell other people a story about ourselves, and I liked the story I thought the HEX Drake Origins told about me.

I don’t feel the same way about the HEX Cabana Laptop Duffel, but it’s not really the bag’s fault. If the Drake turned me into an Oxford student from a hundred years ago, the Cabana Laptop Duffel turns me into that Oxford student’s girlfriend on a day out at the beach. It’s a very feminine bag that I love, but perhaps not the right bag for me.

If extreme outdoorsman Bear Grylls has an iPhone 5, he no doubt needs to protect it from all sorts of dangers, like rain, dirt, mud, and when things get really tough, his own micturitions.

That’s exactly the kind of over-the-top protection Seidio’s Obex case promises—total refuge from water, dust, sand, and grime. Add to that submersion protection in up to three feet of water and an anti-reflective glass camera cover that maintains image quality, and you’ve got the perfect case for taking iPhone photos on the beach.

There are a ton of Bluetooth headsets on the market today, and because I prefer talking hands-free, I’ve tried a lot of them. But as a Bluetooth enthusiast (yes, we exist), I’ve been continually frustrated. That’s because all the headsets I’ve tried thus far have missed the mark, especially when paired with an iPhone, delivering callers’ voices as muddy and hard to decipher, or making me sound like I live under the sea (I don’t).

So when I got my hands on the Plantronics Voyager Legend UC, with its promises of excellent audio, call routing touch technology, and the ability to work on both my Mac and iOS device, I was dubious. Not anymore. This little Legend hasn’t just proved my first impressions wrong, I’m now convinced it’s the best Bluetooth headset I’ve ever used.

We’ve reviewed a lot of Bluetooth speakers here at Cult of Mac, and yet to this day, the easiest one to recommend is still the speaker that launched the category: the venerable Jawbone Jambox.

Well, Jambox, move over: there’s a new king in town. We’ll be hard pressed to recommend you anymore after getting our hands on the JBL Flip, a Bluetooth speaker that has better (and louder) sound than the Jambox, at a cheaper price, and a killer trick up its sleeve: it’s also an external battery pack, capable of charging your iPhone on the go!

I called the Pad&Quill Aria the “classiest iPad mini case yet,” and I’ll stand by that after using it for a week or two. It’s also most definitely the sturdiest, best crafted case I’ve ever seen, and the fanciest that Brian Holmes and the P&Q crew has come up with to date.

But can such a fancy case ever be practical? Let’s take a look.

So many apps are designed first for the iPhone, and the iPad is more or less an afterthought. Not so with Status Board, a brand new app from Panic that is designed meticulously with the iPad’s larger display in mind.

If you know Panic’s pedigree (Coda, Transmit, etc.), then you know what kind of app to expect: something incredibly powerful, focused, and impeccably designed. Status Board is no exception. And although the app won’t appeal to most iPad users, it is perhaps Panic’s most consumer-friendly app to date.

Ulysses 3 is a superstar text editor which takes a whole new approach to, well, to editing text. I love it – it’s my favorite new piece of software in a long time – but there are one or two gotchas which could stop me using it full-time to write posts for the web.

Want to know more?

First, remember one thing: this isn’t a full review of the Fujifilm X100S, even though I had to write it up there in the title to please our CMS. I’ve only had the thing for a few days, and even though Cult of Mac isn’t DP Review, a few days isn’t enough to evaluate an iPhone case, let alone a camera like the X100S.

On the other hand, the X100S is So Hot Right Now, and I’ve been staying up tip 3AM since I got it because I can’t stop playing with the thing. Combining those two interesting facts leads me to think that an in-depth first look might be a good idea — especially as you can now convert the RAW files on your Mac using the just-released Lightroom 4.4.

Let’s take a look — You might want to go make a cup of coffee first.

The cellhelmet for iPhone 5 is the world’s only case that comes with one year of protection against accidental damage. If you drop your iPhone and it breaks while inside the cellhelmet, its makers, cellpig, will have it repaired or replaced for free — all you pay is the $50 handling fee.

That’s how confident cellpig are in the cellhelmet’s ability to keep your iPhone protected. The case itself costs $49.99, which is a little costly when you compare it to other iPhone cases of its kind. But because of the accidental damage cover, it negates the need for a dedicated insurance plan, so you’re still saving yourself a small fortune in the long run.

The cellhelmet is made from a polyurethane plastic that covers the back and sides of your device, while providing access to all of its buttons and ports. It has a matte finish that promises not to attract lint, and it’s available in eight different colors.

Say hi to the little Braven BRV-1. Take a while to get acquainted… You’re going to be spending a lot of time together this summer. Why? Because not only does this little fella sound pretty good, he can follow you almost literally everywhere you might go – beach, biking, even boating – without stopping.

If Apple sold an iPhone 5 dock designed to work alongside the iMac, then the OCDock would probably be it. Born on Kickstarter and provided by the fine folks at BiteMyApple.co, this device fixes to the base of your iMac or Apple Thunderbolt Display and provides you with a beautiful built-in dock that looks like it was always a part of your machine.

The OCDock has a paper-thin wire that runs under the base of your iMac’s stand, so it looks like it’s completely integrated. It also has a spring-loaded base that moves up and down, so it will even accommodate your iPhone in a case — providing the case isn’t too thick.

I thought I’d heard everything there was to hear from wireless speakers. I have tested everything from the smallest, crappiest pocket speaker to the big booming Big Jambox. Then I “hooked” the Libratone Zipp up to my iPhone, and I started to enjoy music again.

This review is slightly unusual: We already published a review of the same device a couple of weeks ago: the Logitech Easy-Switch keyboard. I liked the look of it so much that — on Killian’s recommendation — I went out and bought one of my own. Or rather, I bought one, returned one and searched the internet high and low for another one.

So why the “duplicate” review? Because I use a keyboard in a different way than Killian. Where he sits at the dining room table surrounded by iDevices and Macs, I work not only in different rooms but in bars (cafes), on buses, wherever I might be. So I figured I’d write a very different review.

Interested?

This is the Unu Enerpak Vault. It’s an excellent spare battery pack for any of your portable devices, and it is even powerful enough to almost (almost) charge the thirsty, thirsty Retina iPad.

But what it does the most (apart from get you out of pretty much any charging emergency) is show the amazing difference between the batteries inside out iDevices.

It’s no longer a surprise to walk into a store that sells gloves and mittens and finding a pair with capacitive spots on the thumb and forefinger. These gloves let you tap on the screen of your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or other touchscreen device without having to take off your gloves, thereby saving you from potential cold hands or frostbite.

Living in a cold city like Anchorage, AK, I’ve come to appreciate the ability to use my iPhone when I’m outside, but really haven’t found a pair of gloves that let me use my iPhone naturally and easily, until now, with these knit gloves from Glove.ly. These soft, warm knit gloves now let me use my forefinger, a pinky, a thumb–indeed, a whole hand or two–to tap, swipe, and multi-touch gesture my way around an iPhone or iPad screen.

I’m fairly in (g)love.

V-Moda likes to say their new Crossfade M-100s ($310) are the first pair of “crowdsourced” headphones on the market today. Put simply, that means they culled product feedback from forums and social media, and solicited input from audiophiles, journalists, and enthusiasts to create them.

I applaud the endeavor—working with so much public input definitely had the potential to backfire on them; have you seen the Homer car? But V-Moda, somehow, someway, was able to weave the wisps and whispers of public and professional feedback into a a set of headphones so good, they just earned the highest review score I’ve ever given.

Out of all the junk that I own, there are a few objects which I love to use. And I mean “love” on a base, visceral level. These are the things that are so well suited to their tasks that they not only never get in the way, but they make doing that task better.

When I heat milk and cocoa in my small De Buyer saucepan, alone in my quiet kitchen late at night, I smile when I unhook the pan from its hanger and feel its durable heft; I smile again when I pour the cocoa into a thermos and feel the pan’s perfect balance. Even washing it and hanging it up again is a pleasure.

I also love to use my dented, stainless steel Klean Kanteen “Reflect” water bottle. It’s design is so simple, just two pieces of steel, a silicone ring and a bamboo disk, but it does its job so well that I really do take it everywhere with me. And it’s so trustworthy that I’ll toss it into my bag along with my iPad and never worry about it leaking.

Which is to say, some things are not just well designed, they’re actually wonderful objects in their own right. And Twelve South’s SurfacePad for the iPhone is one of those objects.