Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Powering your lifeline

One of the few knocks on the iPhone 4S has been its battery life. While our own iPhone doesn’t seem to be plagued with any battery-sucking gnomes, having a longer battery life, when you need it, is never a bad thing. PowerSkin makes a number of cases for major mobile phones (ahem, your iPhone) that [...]

One for all, all-in-one

People at the helm of Apple, like Jony Ives and the late Steve Jobs, tend to get all of the credit for the company’s constant innovation. Startups like the Nest Learning Thermostat and Flipboard, which were both founded by Apple alums, proved though that Cupertino’s talent pool is incredibly deep and certainly capable of innovating [...]

If Apple Got Into HVAC...

If we had to guess what famed Apple hardware and software engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers would do after leading the team responsible for the first 18 generations of the iPod, and the first three generations of the iPhone — revolutionizing the thermostat wouldn’t immediately spring to mind. Now, after launching the Nest Learning [...]

Giddily Gutted

Oh the torture! Our Pavlovian anticipation for a new iPhone every 12 months has been pushed to the limits this go around, especially after being teased earlier this summer about what to expect from iOS 5 (which, FYI will be available to all current iPhone 4 owners October 12th). Now the news is out and [...]

You Mess 'Em Up, It Ties 'Em Down

Dutch designer Michiel Cornelissen has devised a clever product to tame Apple’s ubiquitous ear buds. The CableGuy ($13) features four slots for holding the ear buds and 3.5mm plug in place, leaving room in the middle to wrap up the pesky cord in a nice ‘n tidy fashion. There’s also a built-in clip for attaching [...]

Your Mac's New Big Brother

Screaming thunderbolt three times while hoisting a sword into the sky won’t do anything. The nifty technology embedded in Apple’s latest über monitor does, however, provide new Mac owners with a hassle free docking station, not to mention 27 glorious inches of display real estate. Specifically, connecting one MagSafe cable to the display, and one [...]

Assaulting Batteries? Guilty as Charged.

Mac heads are normally a pretty cohesive group — that is until you ask what “magic” product they prefer using. Both the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad have their respective advantages, but until recently, dealing with frequent battery changes was an issue for either side. Thanks to the Mobee Magic Charger ($50) the tides have [...]

X, Rated

The glossy spawn of iMovie and Final Cut Pro, Apple’s new Final Cut Pro X ($300) is completely rebuilt from the ground up with an all-new interface, 64-bit fully parallel processing, raw video tagging, built-in color correction and a cool new editing method called Magnetic Timeline. Of course, the revolutionary software won’t transform your scripts [...]

More Space, Same Case

After sulking in the corner for the last two years from lack of attention, the Time Capsule ($300-$500) has finally received an update from the loving engineers in Cupertino. Well, sort of. Now the line consists of a 2TB and beefier 3TB model, which are available at the price points of the old 1TB and [...]

The Future Forecast Is Decidedly Cloudy

The speculation started long before today, but now the folks in Cupertino have officially released iCloud, a new service designed to help consumers effortlessly store and access digital assets in Apple’s freshly-minted data centers. iCloud is free to all, and will launch in full with iOS 5 this fall — presumably to coincide with a [...]

What You & Your iPod, iPhone, and iPad Need to Know

IPhone, iPad, and iPod touch owners will receive a ton of new features in iOS 5. The bad news is that the latest and greatest mobile operating system won’t be available until fall of this year for consumers. On the up side, we’ve made getting a knowledgeable head start on what’s to come super easy. [...]

What You Need to Know Before Diving In

2011 is the year of the tablet, no matter how hard we and our wallets squirm over having another gadget thrust into our lives. But why now? A discussion on that topic could take longer than the birther diatribe if explored in full, but the short answer is we have our smartphones addictions to thank. [...]

When it comes to traveling you may still rely on tried and true packing lists, but it goes without saying that gadgets and tech, have become both welcome and obnoxious additions — so much for packing light. In this Essential Gear feature we bring you our list of travel-tech endorsements, field tested by the GP [...]

Judge An iPad By Its Cover

Now that the iPad 2 hysteria has passed — at least until launch day, it’s worth circling back to focus on its companion Smart Covers. Apparently Steve Jobs was upset that the old iPad case hid the beauty of the original iPad’s industrial design, so Apple went back to the drawing board to develop an [...]

The Tablet You Love, Take 2

Let the speculation cease. The iPad 2 ($499-$829) is official. Apple’s latest creation features a new A5 dual-core chip, that’s 2x faster than the original and 9x faster graphics performance. A front and rear video camera are now included too, with the latter being capable of recording 720p video at 30fps — implying HD video [...]