Ever since I picked up an iPad 4, I've been on the lookout for a bag that will snugly accommodate the device along with some other items. The Journey Pack by Sons of Trade ($139) seems to fit the bill nicely. It sports a sturdy felt exterior (available in black, olive, or gray) with water-resistant interior lining, and lots of little storage…
If someone were to ask me what the best AirPlay speaker setup is, in most cases I would point them to the Sonos system. It's super easy to set up, especially if you want multiple speakers throughout your house. But if you only need a single speaker and you want the best sound from it, it's hard to beat the current deal…
Some people buy cool little vinyls to stick on their MacBooks, but maybe that's not enough for you. If you'd really like to take it to the next level, and you'd be okay without your MacBook Pro for a few days, AND you've got some cash to burn, you should check out the services of Uncover. Here's how it works: you send…
Limelight for iPhone is a gorgeous new app for tracking movies. You can list movies in two ways: "Watched" and "To Watch". Pretty self-explanatory there. You can rate movies on the "Watched" list, and it will display them in order of rating. Both libraries appear as shelves of beautiful movie artwork, as you can see in the first panel below: Adding movies…
TC-11 is a trippy, fully programmable, multitouch synthesizer app for iPad. Rather than fiddling with a bunch of knobs, you interact with the app by tapping and dragging your fingers around the screen. The sounds produced by the synthesizer depend on where you touch the screen and how your fingers move in relation to one another. Even the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass…
The Classic Station by iSkelter ($40) is a handsome, handcrafted bamboo dock/caddy that will seat just about any smartphone, along with some of your smaller personal items. There is no dock connector, nor any wires to fuss with, just a nice little solution for keeping your workspace tidy and beautiful.
Learning to Love Evernote is a series of screencasts by Bradley Chambers that have been gathered into an iBook for iPad. The videos are geared toward people who want to use Evernote, but haven't quite figured out how to fit it into their workflow yet. It first covers the basics of the Evernote interface (notebooks, stacks, etc) and then shows you different…
About a week ago, the guys at Pixelmator released version 2.2 of their popular image editing app, code-named "Blueberry". It was packed with new features, such as smarter shape-selection tools, a palette with drag-and-drop shapes, a new light-leak effect, and a lot more. What they didn't announce until yesterday though was that there was another, more hidden feature built in: Vectormator. Press…
I am an ardent iPhone fan, and maybe the least likely candidate to ever buy a Windows Phone, but I have to admit that the newly-announced Nokia Lumia 925 looks very nice. Gone are the intense, almost-garish colors of the Lumia 920, and in their place is a range of more muted tones. Much more my style. The focus (pardon the expression)…
The desks of most people I know are huge, clunky monstrosities, much larger than any of them actually requires. We're talking about desks that take up 1/4 of a room here. I've helped some of my friends move those kinds of desks from one house to another, and what a pain that is. I think from now on, I'm going to start…
This one's for the musicians out there. ScoreCleaner Notes allows you to play, hum, or even whistle a tune, and it will write out the musical notation for you, including the correct time signatures. It can even pick apart multiple voices at once and arrange them in the proper order of lead voice, second voice, and bass line. After these notation sheets…
Yesterday, the developers of the Hueless photography app released an update that added the ability to save photos in Lossless TIFF format and max-quality JPEG, as well as improved shutter response. After seeing this update and running a quick search on Tools and Toys, I was somewhat surprised to see that Hueless has never been mentioned around here before. This app has…
I must be on a gaming kick this week, because I've got another one to talk about. This one is called Star Command, and it's essentially a Star Trek-influenced RPG simulator for iPhone and iPad. You start off by designing a Captain avatar and a small ship, then you build different types of rooms on the ship and staff each one with…
Most gamers need no introduction to Bastion, being one of the most critically-acclaimed games of the last few years and all. In case you haven't heard of it though, it's an adventure game where you play as The Kid, who wakes up after some kind of catastrophic event and must navigate through a series of floating ruins, fighting monsters along the way.…
The developers of the popular Screens VNC client for iOS recently released another great utility called Mini Display. The two apps are similar in that they both require a free Mac app to be running, but what Mini Display does differently is turn your iOS device into an external display for the Mac (as long as they're on the same WiFi network),…
WWDC is right around the corner, which likely means San Francisco will soon be seeing a sudden influx of international tech enthusiasts. Many of them will be buying drinks for one another, and they might want to keep track of exactly how much money they're losing spending back home. Instead of doing mental calculations on the spot, they should use the Currency…
There are, give or take, about a billion and one ways to hang or store large headphones at your desk. One of the more stylish ways you could do it is with the HeadStand made by Just Mobile. Like so many great desk accessories these days, it's made of high-quality aluminum and looks great with any Apple geek's setup. A particularly nice…
Remember back in 2009 when designer Rob Rhyne unveiled an ambitious UI prototyping toolkit for iPhone called Briefs? After several years of waiting, and a couple of rejections by Apple, Briefs has (finally) made its introduction to the public. Briefs for Mac allows app designers to arrange UI elements (such as buttons, toolbars, alerts, text/search fields, etc), entire screens, artwork, and transitions…
Much like the CINCH wallet I wrote about a while back, the Vestige wallet ($20) sports a minimal design along with a wooden "backbone" to help the wallet keep its shape. The biggest difference though is its leather exterior, in contrast with the CINCH's elastic band. It can hold up to six cards, some folded bills, and most interestingly, a key on…
One of my favorite tech writers on the web, Patrick Rhone, recently released Apple Consulting - A Minimal Guide. This project started out as a simple blog post detailing how one can make a career out of being a Mac Consultant to individuals and/or small organizations, and after initial interest exploded, it has grown into a full-blown ebook that is being updated…