Your Apple Watch tells you to stand up periodically to maintain your health. It’s a small feature, but it’s actually one of the Apple Watch’s killer apps.
If you don’t have an Apple Watch, though, you’re in luck. There’s a new app in town that does the same thing.
Bags, bags, bags. Literally – there are three hot bags in this week’s gadget roundup, and if you buy them all, you’ll be out by around a grand. Or you could buy the ultra-expensive Leica M-P, a new camera so minimal it doesn’t even have the trademark red dot on the front, yet still costs $8,000. Or you can go to the other end of the price range and pick up LensBaby’s new iPhone optic for just $70. And that’s just the beginning…
I was supposed to get a Roost to review last year after the successful Kickstarter went into production. I didn’t, but we fixed that at the beginning of this summer, and think God we did – this stand will change the way you use your MacBook.
The Roost is a crazy collapsible scaffold that unfolds from nothing to become a sturdy stand the holds the MacBook at eye-level. Assuming you combine it with regular breaks, and set your keyboard at the right height, you will never have to experience neck, arm or back pain ever again.
Take the Xistera out of its box and you’ll be disappointed. It’s ugly as hell, like a cheap corkscrew, and it looks like it won’t really do much. But hidden in those graceless curves and eye-gouging corners is what a lazier journalist than me would call a “Swiss Army knife of iPhoneography.”
No matter which way you swing, this week’s gadgets have you covered. iPhoneographers can enjoy the Shoulderpod hand grip or slip the new iPad Olloclip onto their Mini or Air, and film nuts can get instant satisfaction with the new Lomo Instant Camera.
Camping? Take it easy in the giant Meriwether tent or go survivalist with the Blastmatch fire-starter. You can even choose how to arrive at the site, with accessories for your car or your bike. Happy traveling!
We like Moshi’s Verso covers, which fold – origami-like – into a variety of handy stands. And we (actually probably just me – nobody else here uses one) love the InCase Origami, which covers the Apple aluminum keyboard with a case that folds out into an iPad stand.
So how could I resist Moshi’s VersaKeyboard, which kind of does both?
Each week we pull the best Apple-related gadgets from the Cult of Mac and collect them here for your perusing pleasure.
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.
I find anything that promises one-handed operation of your iDevices suspicious, but then I have a dirty mind. The Grip&Shoot – seen by Buster last week and Macworld – is one such gadget, and it adds a trigger grip to the iPhone to make shooting videos and photos way easier.
Oh man. If you make a product. Then somebody, somewhere, will make a case of a stand for it. This is a rule as fast as death, taxes and death taxes. So, if you were thinking that your AirPort Extreme was doing a pretty crappy job of sitting on your desk, and of not falling over, then the Air Mount is for you.
In my review, I described the Ergotron Workfit-A as a terminator arm holding your iMac. The PadDock Pivot Dual Arm Locking Tablet Stand is the same kind of thing, only it’s a Terminator arm holding your iPad.
The FAVI may look kind of dumb, but I have a use-case for it right now: Whenever I play music or podcasts in my kitchen, I use a Bluetooth speaker. This means first getting the speaker to talk to the iPhone, and then it means finding a safe spot in the kitchen where my iPhone won’t get killed by spills.
The FAVI solves both these problems, by being a stand which connects wirelessly to your iPhone when you set it down on the cradle.
When I reviewed the Lollipod iPhone tripod, I mentioned that the super-light support would also make a great portable lighting stand. It seems I wasn’t the only person to notice this, and now the folks behind the Lollipod have added the Faith Speedlight stand to their lineup. And man, it looks every bit as well-thought-out as the original Lollipod.
Got a car? Got an iPhone? Like to tap away at the iPhone screen and distract yourself instead of watching the road ahead and earning the trust that pedestrians and cyclists put in your every time they venture out onto the road? Then I have good news! Now you can careen down the highway, secure in the knowledge that your precious iPhone will never slip off the dash, nor even deviate from it’s perfectly-chosen angle.
I love everything about my iPad Mini’s Smart Case but for one thing: I can’t use it with the BlueLounge MiniDock, a super handy little charging dock.
The iPort Charge Case and Stand won’t help there, but it will at least let me charge the iPad while it’s inside a case. It’ll even work in landscape orientation.
If you own a laptop, it’s pretty easy to up and move to a more comfortable workplace when your joints start to stiffen. But if you have a giant 27-inch iMac or Cinema Display, you’re kinda stuck at your desk. You could opt for a standing desk, but what if you want to sit? Or you could go for one of those adjustable numbers, but what about the perfectly good desk you have already? That’s where the WorkFit-A comes in. It’s a big robot arm that lets you swing around even a 27-inch (2013 model) iMac as if it were an iPad. A really, really big iPad.
These PopSockets are pretty neat. They’re flat circular buttons that pop out, accordion-style, to make little rubbery cones on the back of your iPhone, iPad or other handheld device. They aid grip, work as basic kickstands and offer a place for fiddlers and fidgiters to work off their annoying energies.
Lollipod by Lollipod
Category: Tripods
Works With:iPhone, cameras
Price: $50
The Lollipod is a lightweight lighting stand masquerading as a camera and iPhone tripod. And this is – in almost every way – a good thing. A light stand isn’t nearly as sturdy as a camera tripod, but it is a lot lighter, a lot more likely to be in your bag when you need it, and is roughly 1,000% better than no tripod at all, aka a sharp rock propping up your delicate iPhone.
I just spent a week traveling with my Retina iPad mini, and there are a few things I learned. One is that you don’t have to worry about charging it like you did with the first full-sized retina iPad, the iPad 3 – the new retina mini can be juiced in a few hours tops. Another thing is that I like to have a good protective case for when I stuff the iPad into an already-full backpack.
But I don’t want a bulky cover that sticks around when I’m actually using the iPad. And this is where the new VersaPouch Mini Stand Case comes in.
The TabHandler is another handle that sticks to the back of your iPad, only it beats the competition in a few ways: First, the permanent circular mount is small enough not to annoy when attached. Second, the handle is almost absurdly useful in its range of positions. And third, the voiceover guy on the video sounds amazing, like he should be selling saddles and lassos to cowboys, not iPad accessories to soft-skinned cubicle-dwelling troglodytes (cublodytes) like us.
One of my favorite parts of the Kanex Multi-Sync keyboard I reviewed in October. In fact, I said that “Kanex could sell it as a standalone product and do well.” And guess what? You can now buy it, in a pack of two, for just $18.
The holy grail of mobile devices like the iPad mini, in my opinion, is a bulk-free, cable-less charging system that can position Apple’s diminutive tablet in various ways.
The iPort Charge Case tries to make this dream come true, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. While the iPort stand can indeed hold my iPad mini in both portrait and landscape orientation at a wide range of viewing angles, the need to place my gorgeously designed device into a bulky plastic case sort of kills the whole idea of “mini.”
The iPort Charge Case and Stand does indeed have some very valid uses in and around the home, but ultimately, due to the way it changes the use experience of the iPad mini, it isn’t quite the world-changer it hopes to be.
Finally, the perfect gift for the myopic or sight-impaired person in your life! It’s called the U See Tablet Magnifier, and it’s a stand that turns your iPad into a giant, zoomable, battery-powered magnifying glass for short-sighted folks like me.
Coburns might sound like some kind of hippie Portland-based cooperative for growing sideburns aka. “mutton chops” aka. “bugger grips,” but it’s anything but: Coburns are a pair of hardwood kickstands for the iPad, and they mix in two of my favorite ingredients: frikkin’ magnets, and felted wool.
