Who knew curvy wood could be so useful?
This stunning piece of walnut makes for a brilliant iPad stand that you can use at multiple angles. It’s ideal for reading, writing, and more — and it looks good anywhere.
Toast makes some steller skins that give your iPhone a wonderful wooden feel. They’re so good that we included them in our roundup of the best iPhone accessories of 2017. Now you can get yours customized with cool metallic inlays or your own text.
Check out the new alchemist series — available now.
It turns out that HomePod isn’t the only fancy speaker that can stain wooden tables.
One Sonos user has discovered the same problem caused by a Sonos One. Just like HomePod, it has silicone on its base to prevent slipping.
Apple’s new iPhones are its most beautiful yet. And as such, they deserve to be docked in nothing but the finest cradles ever crafted.
Find the perfect dock can be a bit of challenge considering there are a dizzying array of options to choose from. Not all docks are created equal though, so we’ve rounded up the best options for users of all budgets.
These are the docks you should buy:
Apple pulled back the curtain of its new spaceship campus in a new interview that highlights all sorts of crazy facts about what went into the new campus, including how it Steve Jobs originally wanted it to look like a penis.
Obviously, Penis Park got scraped in favor of Apple’s perfect circle. But the perfect campus might not have been a disaster if Steve Jobs’ hadn’t shown some early drawings to his son, according to Wired’s deep look into the campus that also reveals how Apple went out of its way to invent an all-new pizza box that keeps crusts fresh.
Longtime Cult of Mac readers know I can be a sucker for wood. It’s a material with integrity, and I like the way it juxtaposes with Apple’s preferred design materials of metal and glass. I loved using Monolith’s beautiful wood veneers with my old iPhone 5. And I can’t wait to try Pad & Quill’s new gorgeous wood cases for the latest iPhones.
Love Hultén has created a beautiful replica of the original 128k Macintosh made almost entirely out of American walnut. Known for his craftsmanship in building replicas and concepts of gaming consoles among other gadgets, Hultén has taken that love and applied it to one of Apple’s most beloved products to date. He calls it the Golden Apple.
Grovemade already makes some of our favorite wooden accessories for the iPad and iPhone, but now the San Francisco based woodworkers are entering the realm of the desktop with the Grovemade Desk collection, a gorgeous array of accessories for the wood-obsessed Mac fan.
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.
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.
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.
A bumper is a great option for folks who don’t care for cases, but are clumsy enough that they need some protection for their iPhone. And the brand-new Grovemade wooden bumpers not only offer protection but look great too. Also, they have names that you’ll want to lollop around your tongue, over and over.
I just upgraded my desk to a 1.65-meter monster, a €40 workbench from the hardware store that I cut down to a 64cm height, and which can support up to 200 kilos. If you’re still not with the metric system (and why would you be? After all, it was only introduced like 215 years ago), that means it’s big enough for two people to work at it or stand on it.
But it still gets messy. What I need is a pal to tidy it for me. A DeskPal maybe?
Would you pay $100 for a cutting board with a few holes drilled in it? No? Are you sure? Because somebody certainly does. In fact, as of this writing, 349 people have ponied up between $68 and $98 to pre-order the Slate Mobile AirDesk on Kickstarter, a wooden laptop tray that lets you put your laptop on your lap. Like a sap.
All of Thinksound’s earphones encompass three basic principles: They’re made of wood; they’re given the sort of pro-green marketing and manufacturing attention that would satisfy even the most spirited hippy; and they offer big, warm sound for a relatively small price.
But aside from its requisite earthy wooden elements and green cred, Thinksound’s new supra-aural On1 studio monitors is taking the small company into uncharted territory.
As long as Miniot keeps making its lovely wooden iPad cases, we’ll keep writing about them. The latest is this rather fetching little number for the iPad, arriving just in time to cover the front of your hot new Retina model with slivers of dead trees.
Just as night follows day, death follows taxes and blissful sleep follows energetic coitus, so a new iPad is always followed by a new case. And for me that case might just be Grove’s gorgeous new Wood Smart Case for the mini and the new iPad Air.
If you have a router (no, not that kind of router), a chunk of plywood and some mad craft skillz, then you could make your own Undulating Contours charging station. If you are missing any one of those, then, it’d be better to spend the $24 on the real thing, hand-hewn in Louisiana.
What is it with wooden gadgets? Cases I can understand – cases have been fashioned from wood since cases were invented, but it seems like a poor material choice for most high-tech purposes.
Then again, it looks gorgeous, just like this wireless charging sleeve from Orée.
I absolutely love my Magic Trackpad. It gives me all the functionality of my MacBook’s trackpad, only on a huge panel which can be placed to the left or the right of my keyboard. For a while I was even using two of them, but that deviation is now over (side note: if you want a Trackpad and live near Barcelona then hit me up on Twitter or e-mail). But my happiness with Apple’s glass-n-aluminum slab doesn’t stop me coveting the Touch Slab from Orée, possibly the best-named Mac peripheral ever.
What is it? The Touch Slab is a trackpad carved from solid wood.
There’s something that happens to a certain kind of person when it comes to hobbies: The acquisition of gear becomes more important than the hobby itself. Take photography, for instance.
One short trip to the Internet will fill your browser with awful, pointless photos taken by men with cameras that cost them a fortune. You’ll see truly lame family snapshots taken on an $8,000 Leica Monochrom, posted with notes about the tonality and the bokeh, as if the gear makes these snapshooters into great photographers.
And you’ll see accessories. All kinds of crazy accessories that do little but fuel the need to upgrade to ever more specialized and expensive models.
Back when I worked a Saturday job in a camera store, we’d joke about the men who’d spend so much on a camera that they could only afford the cheap off-brand film. For these folks, there’s the Artisan Obscura shutter release, a tiny, $30 circle of wood that screws into a camera’s shutter release.
Recently on Twitter, our deputy editor John “pipe and slippers” Brownlee posted a picture of his Mac keyboard, with wooden tiles stuck to the keycaps. It was utterly hideous, and yet completely in keeping with John’s fetish for anything made of wood. It was the real-world equivalent green felt or rich Corinthian leather.
This all-wood keyboard, on the other hand, is pretty gorgeous. It comes from French company Orée, it’s called the Orée Board and it costs a steep-ish €150 ($193).
Ever since Jony Ive took over Apple’s industrial design, it has been important to Cupertino to make their products out of material with authenticity and substance, not just cheap plastic. In the pursuit of these goals, Apple has managed to revolutionize the mass-production of not one, but two different materials that had previously gone virtually unused in gadgets, at least externally: glass and aluminum. And Apple’s made big plays to experiment with even more cutting-edge materials, like Liquid Metal.
Here’s a question, then. Apple likes to make its Macs and iPhones out of materials that feel authentic, that give them a unique look and feel. In the pursuit of those materials, Apple has revolutionized at least a couple of industrial design processes.
So what if Jony Ive got it in his head to make iPhones out of wood?
We last saw Miniot making the rather hot MkII wooden Smart Cover for the iPad. Now it’s back with this equally stylish Miniot Book for the iPhone 5. The Book uses the same clever bendy wooden hinge as the iPad case, and adds in a rather smart protective “box.” And one thing is certain: Our wood-obsessed editor John Brownlee is gonna freak out over this.
You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking it’s been three whole days since I posted about a wooden iPhone case. And since the last one before that was maybe at the beginning of last week, I’m thinking it’s about time for another one. So here it is: The Colors Handcarved Wood iPhone 5 Case.
