Tag Archives: macbook

Slickwraps: Get $50 Credit For Only $25 [Deals]

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Everyone’s gadgets look the same these days. That’s because they generally look so good out of the box. But why not personalize your gear a little bit? Make it really your own and let your personality come through every time you bring out your smartphone, tablet, computer, or other tech gadgets for all the world to see.

Cult of Mac Deals has an offer that will help you do just that, letting you change add stylish skin(s) to your tech with Slickwraps. We’ve got a deal tjhat gives you $50 of credit with Slickwraps for 50% off the regular price – just $25!

Slickwraps makes amazing skins for these big name brands and more. They make hundreds of sweet skins for just about every tech gadget out there including your iPhone, Android phone, your MacBook, and even the new Pebble watch!

Use your $50 credit on dozens of different skins for your favorite tech gadgets:

  • Smartphones (average price is approx. $20)
  • iPods (average price is approx. $15)
  • iPads and tablets (average price is approx. $25)
  • MacBooks (average price is approx. $45)
  • Gaming gadgets (average price is approx. $10)
  • …and other gear (average price is approx. $20)

There’s much more to this deal than meets the eye, so check out the Deals page to read about all the finer points involved.

So if you’re tired of having the same old look, then head over to the Cult of Mac Deals page and style up your favourite tech gadgets with slick and protective skins from Slickwraps. You’ll get $50 worth of credit for only $25 – which will let you personalize your gear to best suit you. Don’t let this deal pass you by. Get it today!

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Sharp’s bringing ‘highest pixel density’ IGZO displays yet, could end up in next round of Retina MacBooks

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MacBook-Pro-RetinaSharp, one of Apple’s display suppliers that is rumored to have just begun production on next-gen iPhone displays, this week announced it will soon begin producing notebook displays with the highest pixel density in the biz. With displays ranging from 11.6 inches to 15.6 inches, it’s entirely a possibility that one could end up in a next generation MacBook with Retina display.

IGZO technology enables smaller thin-film transistors and increased light transmittance. As a result, fine text can be rendered crisply and clearly, and images can be displayed with impressive realism. For example, the 14-inch panel boasts a pixel density of 262 ppi, which represents 1.67 times the number of pixels of full high definition*3. Increased light transmittance also means lower rates of energy consumption, with IGZO technology reducing the amount of power required to drive liquid crystals during the display of still images. These factors lead to greater energy efficiency and longer battery life on notebook PCs. IGZO technology is also compatible with stylus-input touchscreen functionality.

Sharp will start producing the displays, which boast a resolution up to 3,200 x 1,800 and pixel density of 262 ppi, in June and already has a 13.3-inch model being mass produced.

We’ve had hands-on time with Sharp’s high resolution IGZO displays at CES this year and had nothing but positive things to say. It was previously rumored that Apple had considered using Sharp’s smaller IGZO panels for iPad and that’s also still a possibility for future generations of the device.

(via TheTechBlock)



How To Get Your Mac Back When The TSA Steals It From You

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On a vacation with his wife and kids recently, Paul Deas opened his suitcase and found a rude surprise: his MacBook had been stolen. Not only that, but the thief had helpfully left him a note inside, telling him exactly who had robbed him: TSA Agent 5414.

Paul eventually got his MacBook back, but his post on the matter is interesting food for thought, not only because it reveals just how common TSA theft is (there’s millions of Google results for “TSA Theft”) but how, even if you get your MacBook back, you’re not likely to catch the person who actually stole it.

In Paul’s case, when he discovered his MacBook had been stolen, he used Find My Mac to locate it and lock the laptop down. He then went to his local UPS location to mail an empty box to the address where the MacBook had been tracked to, a few miles from the airport where it had been stolen. Inside the box was a message, “Return my laptop or we’ll call the police.”

Paul got the laptop back eventually, but it’s a typical story: the guy who returned the laptop had actually bought it from someone on Craigslist, who promptly disappeared when the Mac locked down. So while Paul got his laptop back, the guy who purchased it was out $650.

As for the TSA Agent? Turns out “5414″ was just a bunch of random numbers, and there’s no telling, apparently, who actually inspected Paul’s case… and therefore, no telling who stole his laptop.

There’s a lot of clear warnings here. Don’t put your valuable computer equipment (or, indeed, anything valuable) in your check-in luggage. If you buy a used MacBook off of Craigslist, check for ownership. But it’s still disheartening that we live in an age where an organization that is meant to keep us safe in the sky is, instead, abusing their power to rob us blind.

Source: Paul Deas

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Review: LandingZone’s Secure MacBook Air dock – adds Kensington Lock, Ethernet, USB ports in seconds

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I’ve been using the $99 LandingZone 2.0 LITE 13″ Secure Docking Station for the past couple weeks to dock my MacBook Air when I use it at my desk. Until now, when I got to my desk, I would manually plug in MagSafe power, USB hub and sometimes audio jacks – which isn’t a huge pain, but it did add time time and clutter to my workflow.

LandingZone, which started as a Kickstarter project but is now in full production, has a complete solution in a white plastic/steel dock that allows you to secure your MacBook Air, and within seconds, have Ethernet, a 4 port USB hub, power and MiniDisplay Port outs ready for use.

I work at home so I don’t have a Kensington lock but that is one of the focal points of this device and it is pretty sturdy so I’d imagine it would put up a good fight if someone tried to take it. It uses the USB/MagSafe/Thunderbolt ports as a way to secure the machine. That’s a huge bonus since MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pros don’t have the ability to get locked down by default.

In practical use it works great. You put your Air in the dock where the little rubber feet go. Matching up USB ports the first few times takes a couple of extra seconds but gets easy after a few tries. You then squeeze the MagSafe, USBx2 and Display Ports onto the Air and boom you are done. There is a loop at the back which makes ejecting the Air extremely simple (so long as you aren’t a crook).

My one gripe is that there is no USB->3.5mm AUX port on the back. I have analog desktop speakers and I still have to plug those in on the side when setting up my Air. I guess I could get USB speakers (or Bluetooth) and plug the adapter into one of the open USB ports.

I thought I’d dislike the added angle of the keyboard (the dock raises the back of the Air up about a half inch) but it is actually better and more like Apple’s Wireless Keyboard, which I enjoy.  Also, since my Air is only USB2, LandingZone only supplies a 100Mb Ethernet connection. However, the more expensive LandingZone docks for older and new MacBook Airs come with Thunderbolt passthrough which allows for faster connections.

All in all, this is a no brainer for those who work in public spaces. I might just keep mine at the house without a lock because it makes docking so easy.

Check out all models at Amazon.

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Related: Thunderbolt Docks from Belkin and $249 Matrox (review)

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Montgomery Street Pack Keeps Your Camera Close And Your Macbook Safe [Review]

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Even prettier than Seacrest: The Montgomery Street Backpack

With an urban, brushed-metal look, premium construction, and space for your camera and Macbook Air or 13″ Pro, Acme Made’s Montgomery Street Backpack is no doubt a great day pack for city walkers. Its side-sitting camera pouch is the standout feature of this bag, though, allowing quick retrieval of your mirrorless cam or DLSR without having to take the bag off.

Montgomery Street Backpack by Acme Made
Category: Backpacks
Works With: Macbook Air, 13″ Pro, Smaller Cameras
Price: $100

The Montgomery however, while well suited for those with petite electronics and a taste for the more hipster things in life, mightn’t perform as well for those with a larger Mac, a full size DSLR, or a fear of wearing a pack so cute the girlfriend might want to borrow it.

What It Does

You could keep your camera in any old backpack, sure, but with its super-soft lining and quick side access, any camera would be happy to live in Acme Made’s Montgomery Street Backpack.

Space for a big lens/water bottle, and a small lens in the covered inner pouch.

The Montgomery Backpack (MB) also provides space for one extra lens in a little flap-covered pouch in its main compartment, along with space for a big water bottle or telephoto lens. In another separate and plushly lined pocket, space for a Macbook Air or 13″ inch Macbook Pro.

Those of you who miss the brushed metal look of OS 10.4 will probably also fancy the MB’s fabric exterior of similar appearance. How I loved those days when Tigers roamed in our Macs.

In Use

Though the MB is about as comfortable as other backpacks with similar stature, it definitely feels more premium.

A cozy home for your Macbook Air or 13″ Pro.

Its bright green liner exudes quality, and so does its stitching and general construction. You can tell Acme paid attention to the little details when creating the Montgomery, even going as far as giving its brushed-metal skin a slight metallic sheen to finish off the look.

On the inside, I found Montgomery’s pockets well-placed and thoughtfully laid out. The Macbook slot is definitely a good home for any Air or Pro, and its covered inner pouch is a really nice feature for lenses because it keeps your glass from tumbling around when you’re jostling about throughout your day.

Montgomery’s quick-access side pouch.

The side camera pouch is useful too, making camera access quicker than digging it out of a regular backpack. I’ll tell you right now, though, you’re not comfortably fitting a full-size DSLR in there unless it has a shorty pancake lens attached. If you have a small DSLR or a mirrorless camera, the space will be acceptable, but this isn’t the bag for larger DSLRs.

I would also caution tough guys out there, the Montgomery has a somewhat feminine look to it, and with it affixed upon your arm, it could be considered treading in murse territory.


Product Name: : Mongomery Street Backpack
The Good: Very well made. Looks good. Keeps Mac and camera accessible.
The Bad: Not good for big cameras or big Macs larger than 13″. Will be too pretty for some.
The Verdict A good bag for those with small gadgets and a taste for the refined.
Buy from: Acme Made

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 

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These Laser-Cut MacBook Lids Will Take Your Mac Décor To An All New Level

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Putting a sweet decal on your MacBook’s lid is cool and all, but if you’re looking to take things to another level with your MacBook decorating skills, maybe you you should try cutting some artwork into it with a laser.

The process of laser cutting artwork into your MacBook’s lid isn’t easy, but the people over at Uncover will do it for you. You can get almost any design cut into your MacBook, but Uncover requires that you send in your MacBook to be beautified, or just buy a new one through them so they can customize it before sending it out to you.

The results are pretty stunning, and it will definitely help you stand out at a college or your next IT conference.

Here’s a peek at some of the cool laser-cut artwork others have had Uncover do for them:

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Uncover says they can modify both MacBook Pros and MacBooks Airs. Unfortunately, laser cutting isn’t cheap. Some of the simple designs will only set you back $260, while more complicated procedures demand up to $780. Whatever you decide to go with, you better love it for the rest of your MacBook’s life because there’s no going back once you’ve cut your lid with lasers.

 

Source: Uncover

Via: iLounge

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Every MacBook Will Be Updated At WWDC [Report]

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Apple’s not expected to show much at WWDC that isn’t software. Tim Cook himself pretty much precluded seeing any major updates to Apple’s hardware line until fall. That doesn’t mean, however, that Apple won’t bump the specs of some existing Mac models, and it’s now expected by one of Apple’s more reliable activists that Cupertino will do just that, unveiling upgraded MacBooks across the line at the beginning of June.

The word comes from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, who also made note earlier today that it looked increasingly unlikely that Apple would be able to update the iPad mini with a Retina display for a fall launch.

In addition, Kuo said that he expects all MacBooks to be updated to Intel’s next-gen Hawell processors, which will result in a performance bump of around 7-13%. Nothing to sneeze at, but nothing revolutionary. In addition, battery life should also be improved, but don’t expect infinite power capacity: while Haswell can theoretically power laptops that run all day without a charge, you need to make major performance sacrifices to achieve that sort of efficiency.

As for whether or not Apple will have any MacBook surprises up its sleeve at WWDC for us, probably not. Ming-Chi Kuo pooh-poohs the idea of a Retina MacBook Air debuting in June, saying Apple simply can’t make a MacBook Air with Retina Display at the right price and size. Yet. Maybe 2014?

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Snip! Slash! Staple! Make A MacBook Desk Stand From An Old Pizza Box

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I always thought the handiest thing I could do with a pizza box was to toss it in the trash and use the little three-legged plastic widget (the one that stops the lid from touching your cheese) as a milking stool for my Barbies [1] .

But I was wrong. Assuming that you can keep the cheesy grease off the box, then a few cuts and folds will turn it into this awesome MacBook stand.

Mmm… Pizzzzaaaa… Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were still there. Well, at least now I have an empty pizza box to make this project.

The design, by Russia’s Ilya Andreev, is ingenious. It requires a few quick cuts and creases, plus a staple or two, and you’re left with a wedge of cardboard which will hold a 17-inch MacBook or smaller at a 25-degree angle. There’s even a cable router formed from one of the steam holes.

I have saved this to my Evernote to be used next time I’m staying in a hotel. I invariably order up a $20 pizza from room service, and once the night porter has defrosted me a margarita, microwaved it and carried it up to my room, now I’ll have some extra fun to enjoy while the oily mess oozes its way through my digestive tract.

Source: Behance
Via: Apartment Therapy

  1. You might be wondering why I had Barbies as a child. The answer is that I stole them from the girls in my neighborhood to form my own private “joy division” for my Action Men – the UK equivalent of GI Joe. Hence the milkmaid fantasy outfits.  ↩

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WWDC 2013 could mark 230 days since last Apple keynote event, the longest in recent memory

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via Business Insider

Unless the “April-ish” predictions come true for the iPad 5 launch event, Apple will have gone 230 days without a keynote when it holds WWDC on June 10-14th. 

To make it worse for Apple hardware-lovers, that event is billed as showing off the next version of iOS and OS X so we’re not guaranteed to see any new Apple gadgetry there. The wait is unusually long for Apple as Jay Yarrow demonstrates in his thoroughly researched timeline of Apple’s recent keynotes.

Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted during yesterday’s conference call that Apple wouldn’t have anything notable in terms of hardware until the Fall, though it is unclear exactly what he meant by that.

The 132 day wait between the 2010 MacBook Air and the iPad 2 was the longest hardware dry-spell before the one we are currently enduring.

I need my fix.



TweetDeck To Be Pulled From Android & iOS On May 7

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Twitter recently announced that it’s killing TweetDeck for Android, iOS, and Adobe AIR, and we now have a date for the operation. TweetDeck will stop functioning and be pulled from Android and iOS on May 7, according to an announcement on the TweetDeck website.

This announcement comes as no surprise as back in March, Twitter announced the closure of the V1.0 API – which is the API baked into TweetDeck.

TweetDeck has accumulated millions of users since Twitter purchased the service back in 2011, so some people may be curious as to why the company have chosen to retire the apps rather than re-engineer them to work with the updated API.

Twitter also announced in a blog post that it will be continuing to support TweetDeck’s web application, as it believes that the Google Chrome application provides “the best TweetDeck experience yet”:

“We think these web and Chrome apps provide the best TweetDeck experience yet, and that they are the apps in which you’ll want to see us add new capabilities first, followed closely by our Mac and PC apps” – Quote by Twitter

The closure of TweetDeck was a predictable move on Twitter’s front; for a while now they have been slowing the development of third party clients in an act to encourage Twitter users to use the official Twitter clients.

If you’re a TweetDeck user, you might want to start looking for a replacement client. To make life easier, we have provided you with two of our favourite TweetDeck alternatives for each platform, which you can find below.

Android

  • Falcon Pro: ”Falcon Pro brings the Ultimate Twitter Experience to your Android Phone and Tablet. Looking for a Twitter app with an Innovative UI, Buttery animations, Extra fast loading times and Unique Features ? Look no further, Falcon Pro is what you need.” Falcon Pro is available to download on the Play Store for $1.96.
  • HootSuite: Millions of people use HootSuite to stay on top of all their Social Networks today. Here’s why: HootSuite is a social media management tool that helps you manage multiple Social Media accounts on the go. HootSuite supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + and Foursquare plus many other social networks. The best thing about HootSuite is that it’s free!

iOS

  • Twitterrific: Twitterrific is the award-winning, fast and elegant Twitter client that’s easy to understand and a delight to use. The unified timeline lets you browse mentions and direct messages from a single view and the new theme panel enables you to tailor the way tweets are displayed. Twitterrific is available to download for $2.99.
  • Tweetbot: Tweetbot is a full-featured iPhone (and iPod touch) Twitter client with a lot of personality. Whether it’s the meticulously-crafted interface, sounds & animation, or features like multiple timelines & smart gestures, there’s a lot to love about Tweetbot. Tweetbot is available to download for $2.99.

To find out more about TweetDeck’s closure, be sure to visit TweetDeck’s official blog by hitting the source link below.

Source: TweetDeck

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