iPad-iPhone road warrior weapons of choice: a 2011 guide

by Bill Palmer

This iPad and iPhone user is about to hit the road – for about a month. It’s a cross country journey that’ll see me living out of suitcases and staying in one too many hotels as I work my way westward in time for CES, Macworld 2011, and quite a bit else along the way. With most of what I own packed away (did I mention I’m also moving to a new residence in the process?), I thought I’d take a moment to share to iPad, iPhone, and MacBook related tools that I’ve chosen to keep handy at all times over the next five weeks. Some of these products are more perfect than others, so to speak, but they’re what I rely on when I’m playing road warrior. Depending on your travel situation, you may find them handy as well:

Mophie Juice Pack Plus for iPhone 4: Even as comparatively long lasting as the iPhone 4 internal battery is, working from the road often means whipping out my iPhone and doing “real” work directly on it. Try that for an hour and see what’s left of the internal battery. The Juice Pack Plus doubles my iPhone’s battery and fits perfectly with it stylistically. Learn more.

Dexim P-Flip for iPhone 4: Too many hotel rooms don’t have an electrical outlet next to the bed. And because I’m too insecure to leave my iPhone on the other side of the room while I’m sleeping, I get around that quandary by docking it in the P-Flip overnight. It’s a flipstand with a battery built in, meaning that so long as I remember to charge up the P-Flip during the day, it’ll keep my iPhone 4 fully charged overnight. Also doubles as a bottom snap-on battery in a pinch. Learn more.

Kensington PowerBack for iPad: The first of its kind, the PowerBack is to the iPad what battery cases are to the iPhone. Killing the iPad’s long lasting battery isn’t easy, but this product gives me the freedom to. Learn more.

ZAGGmate with Keyboard for iPad: For day to day iPad use, I have no problem with its virtual keyboard. But in those instances where I’m using my iPad in place of a laptop, writing full length articles on it, that’s when I like to break out the physical keyboard. When I’m at home, Apple’s own iPad Keyboard Dock is my weapon of choice. But it’s not really meant for travel. So I travel with the ZAGGmate with Keyboard, which is designed with portability in mind. Learn more.

Kensington PowerBolt Duo: Most car chargers are a dime a dozen. But rise of micro chargers, which eliminate the traditional big bulb design in favor of a barely-there streamlined look, changed all that. A dual micro charger, one of whose ports charges the iPad at fast speeds? Let’s just say that the ability to keep both my iPad and iPhone charging while I’m driving, and with a small form factor charger, is of value. Learn more.

Twelve South BassJump for MacBook: My MacBook Pro is my main computer whether I’m at home or on the road. Naturally, at home I’ve got it connected to nice multi-component speaker system. On that road that’s not so practical. Rather than lugging along a traditional small two piece speaker system which sounds like a small two piece system, I instead opt for this little USB subwoofer which works in conjunction with my MacBook’s built-in tweeters instead of replacing them. The result is a form of 2.1 audio from my MacBook which only requires me to haul one speaker unit. Learn more.

Just Mobile Lazy Couch for MacBook: Don’t be silly. Always use a laptop stand at home which keeps your MacBook elevated (so it won’t run overly hot) and angled toward you (for better typing posture). But the laptop stand which usually resides on my desk isn’t exactly travel-worthy, so rather than traveling with a portable or fold-up laptop stand (I’ve tried various over the years), I’ve finally settled on a simple set of rubber-topped props which work surprisingly well and take up very little space when not in use. Learn more.

review: gear4 StreetParty 4 portable dockable stereo

The overall market trend for dockable iPhone+iPod stereos in the past year, in both the home and portable realms, has focused on the medium, the large, and the very large systems, so the gear4 StreetParty 4 comes as breath of fresh air in the other direction. Barely an inch thick and about eight inches wide, the unit makes use of a fold-out dock (and a fold-out kickstand which cleverly folds around front when not in use) to make for easy travel. The question then becomes just how strong of a product you can squeeze into such small dimensions.

Pretty nice, as it turns out. The audio is about what you’d expect for the size: strong on the mids and highs, but not too much bass going on. The latter is preferable to the other option some systems offer at this size, which is to offer up obviously synthetic bass (I’ll take insufficient bass over terrible bass any day). Rare for this price point, the StreetParty 4 comes with a remote control. And even rarer, the remote includes menu navigation.

Truth be told, the best products in this general size range tend to sound significantly better, and tend to come with more features and run on internal lithium batteries as opposed to the AA batteries which power the StreetParty 4. But then again, and this is important to note, those products tend to be larger and tend to cost $129-$149, whereas the the StreetParty’s $69 price tag is a comparative bargain. That makes the StreetParty 4 a definite value play and earns it a four star rating, even though spending twice as much would net you an obviously superior system.

review by Bill Palmer

rating: four stars out of five • gear4.com

Sony attacks iPhone gaming in new television ad

If smartphones like the iPhone 4 are the future of mobile gaming, then Sony and its PlayStation Portable “PSP” platform at least aren’t going quietly. Sony’s new television ad directly attacks the quality of iPhone gaming (the product isn’t named specifically, but it very much looks like one of the participants in the commercial is holding an iPhone 4), claiming that it’s not up to the level of the PSP, which is a dedicated gaming device. The strategy, presumably, is to convince iPhone users who are serious about mobile gaming that they still need to continue to carry a PSP in their other pocket if they want the full-on gaming experience, as opposed to the App Store games that are available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Curiously, the games which Sony has chosen to highlight as being reasons to own a PSP appear to be of no higher quality or sophistication than what’s widely available for the iPhone, although the games flash by too quickly in the ad to be easily identified by name. Still, it’s clear that Sony isn’t taking Apple’s App Store phenomenon lying down.

Logitech Rechargeable Speaker S715i for iPhone and iPod: review

Logitech owned the $149 price range for portable iPhone+iPod stereo systems for years, until the company cut too many corners last year in attempting to reduce the price to $129, resulting in a compromised S315i just as Altec Lansing finally managed to nearly perfect its own competing product. Here in 2010, Logitech’s new S715i attempts to put the company back into legitimate competition in the price range, and indeed fixes much of what went wrong with the previous model.

Despite the return to a $149 price tag, the S715i represents a better value over the S315i right off the at in that it sees the return of a (small, basic) remote control. The design of the S715i is smarter in that the volume buttons, which had inexplicably and awkwardly been on the back of its predecessor, are now on the front of the unit; no more blindly groping for them around back. And while the dock on top still cuts corners a bit by not using Apple’s system of universal docking inserts, turns out to be significantly more stable than what came before, as far as tilting the unit forward and such. And the kickstand, while simple, is plenty sturdy (just be sure to remove that slippery yellow piece of tape first). These are all improvements that were easily observable before I even turned the unit on.

Good news on the audio front as well, as the S715i sounds just a little better than its predecessor – but then again, audio quality was never a problem with the S315i to begin with. The hokey “turn this switch to cut audio quality in half for the sake of doubling your battery life” option is gone, which won’t likely be missed. Perhaps of more concern is that the previous ten hour rechargeable battery is now reduced to eight hours, but that still outshines the five hours you’ll get from the competing Altec Lansing iM620. Altec still wins this round, as the iM620 offers a built-in radio, LCD screen, carrying handle, better docking mechanism, and sounds a little better for the same price. But the S715i puts Logitech legitimately back on the playing field at the $149 price point – particularly if battery life is a priority for you.

Rating: four stars out of five · $149 · Logitech.com

Just Mobile Lazy Couch laptop elevation review

From a company best known for its full size stands for elevating devices like iPhones and laptops comes a much smaller product aimed at the same purpose. The new “Lazy Couch” from Just Mobile is essentially a pair of rubber stoppers a little more than an inch in diameter and about two-thirds of an inch tall which can be placed at the back corners of the underbelly of your laptop. Doing so slightly elevates your laptop’s keyboard, which many users (including me) consider to make for a more comfortable typing option.



In my tests with the Lazy Couch (got to love that name for its uniqueness if nothing else), I found it to be a steady and easy to use method of elevating my 15” MacBook Pro laptop. Even though there is metal on the Lazy Couch, it’s located in such a manner that there’s no risk of metal-on-metal scratching when using it with a metal laptop.


Ultimately I concluded that because the $19 Lazy Couch only elevates rear of your laptop by a few degrees and isn’t really adjustable in that regard (moving them slightly forward can ever so slightly change the angle), it’s is not a suitable replacement for those (like me) who’ve grown used to using a full fledged laptop stand on their desk. However, for those times when I travel with my laptop and only wish I could take a laptop stand with me for those late night typing sessions in hotel rooms, Lazy Couch is invaluable to travelers – particularly enhanced by the fact that the two pieces snap together so you’re only traveling with one piece instead of two.

New MacBook Pro may not matter

This is a surprise even for me, but when Apple introduced its new, faster, more powerful MacBook Pro laptop lineup this week, my own reaction was “meh” – and that’s probably odd, considering that I’m typing this on a MacBook Pro right now (early 2009 model) and have spent the past several months wishing Apple would release a more powerful model, particularly one that holds more RAM than my current four gigs, so I could upgrade. You see, my laptop is my only computer. And it’s been that way for a decade, with only a slight relapse back in 2008 when I tried having both an iMac and a MacBook, one for home, one for the road, only to find that my data was never one the machine it needed to be; I soon sold them both and bought this monster of a laptop instead. But now that the iPad is on the horizon, I just can’t seem to get myself to care about new laptops – or is it laptops in general?

I don’t have an iPad yet. Yeah I know, I’m an idiot. Actually I’m just waiting for the 3G enabled version to be released, because if I’m going to rely on a device as much as I expect to rely on my iPad, I want to actually be able to use it for basic things like email and internet and social networking any time, and place – not just when I’m at the mercy of the wifi gods. I’ve encountered too much bad wifi first-hand at hotels, restaurants, and conferences, then I see random stories like this, and then I’m reminded of the recent problems with my own home internet, and it occurs to me that for me at least, I want that 3G network available. But while I’ve just spent a paragraph explaining why I don’t yet own an iPad, it’s also a manifesto on just how much I intend to try to rely on my iPad; in fact, if it plays the role I expect it to be able to based on the limited amount of time I’ve spent with one, I’m half expecting to end up ditching my Mac laptop in favor of a Mac desktop.

When I look at the scenarios in which I use my laptop as a laptop, it’s less about toting it everywhere and more about being able to grab and go on five or six trips a year – and on most of those trips, I could probably get away with just taking my iPad. That leaves me not needing portability from my main computer at all, which means I can trade up to an iMac which would be significantly faster than any MacBook Pro on the market, with a much larger screen. And as far as having my data in the right places, iMac+iPad is a different scenario than iMac+MacBook for the simple reason that a Mac and an iPad were born to sync effortlessly with each other, with none of your really permanently on the iPad, the device being more of a subset mirror image of your computer than anything else.

So when I read about all the juicy new MacBook Pro specs coming out of Apple this week, I’m torn – I suddenly can’t get myself excited about Apple’s laptop lineup even though I’ve spent a decade partaking in it. I’m not saying I’ll actually pull the trigger on my plan; I’ll have to see just how much (or little) my iPad can do in terms of laptop replacement once it’s integrated into my daily routine. But at this point, I think the only aspect of having a traditional laptop that I would miss is the fact that it has a trackpad less than an inch from its keyboard, which is so much more speedy and intuitive than resorting to a mouse (trackball, etc) that’s placed far enough away that I have to take my hand off the keyboard just to reach for it. In these iPad and iPhone days of the keyboard literally being part of the screen tracking motif, reaching for input device located at the other end of a USB cable feels so twentieth century.

review: Livespeakr

Review: XtremeMac Luna Voyager

New in iProng Labs: a hands-on review of long-awaited Luna Voyager portable alarm clock for iPhone and iPod from XtremeMac, priced at $79…

review by Bill Palmer

Back at Macworld Expo in January of 2008, while being given a tour of the XtremeMac booth, I spotted a super-slim iPod/iPhone alarm clock called the Luna Voyager. Excited by the prospects I asked for a demo but was told that it wasn’t a finished functioning unit. Fast forward twenty-one months, so long a span of time that XtremeMac has since become part of Imation, and the fully functioning Luna Voyager has finally arrived. And it’s even tinier than I remembered.



Which is a good thing, of course, as traveling with something like an iPod alarm clock can be a pain if it’s too large, particularly with luggage restrictions of late. Minimalistic in every sense, the Voyager only has two tiny visible buttons and a wheel, with recessed speaker grilles on each side. Not much more than an inch tall, the product looks vaguely like an external hard drive laid on its side, both in terms of size and styling. But plug it in (or pop in batteries) and the front lights up with the time of day in bright blue. Drop your iPhone or iPod into the centered dock on the top, set the alarm with a few buttons (the Voyager can automatically set the time of day by getting it from your iPhone or iPod), and you’re off to the races. You can even make a “Luna” playlist in iTunes and wake to that instead of the most recent song played.



Any iPod/iPhone alarm clock is going to necessarily draw comparisons to iHome’s leading line of similar products, and in this case I was expecting the Luna Voyager to square off directly with iHome’s similarly portable iP27 product. However, putting the two next to each other, the iP27 suddenly looks monster-sized – something of a revelation considering how many thousands of miles I’ve traveled with the iP27, and never thought of it as being oversized until now. Actually come to think of it, iHome’s earlier iH26 was smaller than the current model, but the Luna Voyager is significantly smaller than even the iH26.



With that revelation, my expectations for audio quality changed altogether. And as it turned out, my revised expectations proved to be correct. The Luna Voyager sounds merely okay. Impressive audio for its size, actually, but it’s immediately apparent how they managed to get it so small in the first place. I wouldn’t mind waking up to it every day, but the compromise comes when you consider using it for music playback during the rest of the day when you’re fully awake. Whereas the iP27 sounds (just barely) good enough to be used as an all-day speaker system while on the road, the Luna Voyager just doesn’t cut it in that department.



None of which is to distract from its appeal when it comes to its strictly intended use, which is to allow you to wake up to your own music. In my tests I found that the two buttons didn’t suffer in their ease of use due to their tininess, and the alarm fades in with a gradual volume increase, as I’d hoped it would. And the Luna Voyager manages to accomplish with two buttons and a wheel (plus two switches on the back) what it took iHome nine different buttons to pull off on the iP27. Still, I can tell you from experience that traveling with a product like this usually means that you’ll be in a hotel and looking to use it as a daytime playback device at one point in your trip or another. And the Luna Voyager doesn’t sound that much better than the middling speakers built into my laptop.



When it comes to the value proposition, the $79 Luna Voyager comes with basically nothing, whereas the $99 iP27 comes with a remote control and velcro carrying case. Pick up the Luna Voyager for its current $62 price on Amazon.com and it becomes a much better value, but the bottom line is that the product’s lone significant feature is that it’s slim and light and therefore very easy to fit into your suitcase.



I’m just not sure how many users would want to bother lugging along an iPhone alarm clock, even one this tiny, if they’re only going to get this kind of audio quality when they get there; it just has the feeling of “niche product” written all over it. That having been said, this product does one thing and does it really well, and I actually look forward to traveling with it on trips where I need to pack light or when I know I’m not going to have any idle time back at the hotel to use it for daytime music playback anyway.



I suppose I’m personally disappointed with the results because I’ve had high expectations for it the past two years, and it’s turned out to be merely mortal after all. But you’ll probably eat it up if you’re a part of the niche that the Luna Voyager is squarely aimed at.

*****

Learn more about the Luna Voyager at XtremeMac.com.

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