Batteries

Nomad is ending 2015 with a bang. Having moved from small plastic accessories into using luxury materials including metal, leather, and wood, Nomad is flexing its design muscles with four new Apple device chargers that are equally attractive and creative. There’s a deluxe metal Apple Watch/iPhone travel charger called Pod Pro, the wood-encased iPad battery pack PowerPlant, a hybrid iPhone battery and car charger named Roadtrip, and a Lightning battery-equipped leather Wallet. Three of the accessories look as if they were expressly designed to be holiday gifts, while the fourth is less exotic, but practical.

The common thread here is “portable power.” Pod Pro steps up from Nomad’s Apple Watch-only Pod (reviewed here) by more than tripling the power to 6,000mAh, and adding iPhone charging. PowerPlant packs an iPad-ready 12,000mAh cell inside a solid American Walnut wood block. Roadtrip serves as a car charger in your car, doubling as a portable iPhone battery pack for on-the-go use. And Wallet guarantees you’ll have a 2,400mAh battery and Lightning cable anywhere you go. Below, I’ll quickly walk through all of these new accessories so you can get a sense of whether any or all of them is right for you, or your favorite gift recipient…

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Over the weekend, we learned some preliminary details about Apple’s planned updates for two of their most popular Mac accessories, the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse, in the form of FCC filings. Aside from new and improved connectivity thanks to Bluetooth 4.2, both accessories appear to have design deviations from their existing models, as detailed by the rough sketches accompanying the FCC filings. Based on these sketches, I decided to more fully visualize the changes Apple could be planning for an all new and more modern wireless keyboard based on other modern Apple product designs.

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Christmas and the end of Hanukkah are only a week away. You’re looking for a last-minute gift that’s guaranteed to arrive in time for the holidays. We’re here to help with a collection of top picks for Apple fans, all at great prices.

Welcome to 9to5’s Last Minute Apple Gift Guide!

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Earlier this week, I walked through a great collection of iPad, iPhone, and Mac products that I’d strongly recommend. Today, I’m here to help you choose an excellent spare battery for any portable Apple device. You can trust me because I’ve been testing Apple batteries for over a decade, conducting hours-long tests to learn how each new Apple device consumes power, and how quickly each battery replenishes a given device. If you want to learn more about why I’m recommending the specific batteries below, I discuss key factors worth considering at the bottom of this guide.

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Update: The patent was granted on 6th January 2015 (via Apple Toolbox)

These are certainly not the first flexible display related patent applications that we’ve seen from Apple. A few different Apple patent applications have received attention in recent months, including one for a slap wrist-style bracelet with a flexible display, and others for curved and flexible displays in various iOS device-like form factors. Today we’ve come across a couple of recently published Apple patent applications filed as early as September of last year that further show Apple’s work with flexible displays (via UnwiredView).

The first patent application, titled “Flexible Electronic Devices” is pretty straight forward: Apple is interested in methods of providing not only flexible displays but also flexible components like batteries, circuit boards, and the housing of the device itself. Apple describes a device that could respond accordingly depending on how a user was manipulating the flexible display. The patent applications provides examples such as the device shutting off and entering standby mode when folded, or a user answering a call or changing volume:
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Talk about good timing. A few days before Sandy hit our town, Hyper sent me its new MacBook + iOS charging external battery device, the Hyperjuice MBP2-100.

Hyper has made external MacBook/Air/Pro batteries for years, and if you’ve ever been to an Apple (or any big technology) keynote event, many of the live bloggers have their rigs hooked up to them. HyperJuice’s latest line, dubbed the “MBP2 series”, expands on the capabilities of the big power batteries…

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