USB-C Hubs often feel like a dime a dozen commodity accessory. There are plenty of cheap ones (in more ways than one) to be found at places like Amazon and eBay. I’ve used a few such accessories over the last few years, and you can usually tell how poor the quality is within a few hours. Whether it runs blazing hot or works inconsistently, they tend to be worth what you paid for them, and not in a good way.
We use iPads a lot in the school I teach in. In fact, we have issued one to each member of staff and each student. iPads are amazingly useful in the classroom in a variety of different ways, and certainly one of the best features is the camera. Back in the day, you’d have to book a video camera, film what you wanted, download the file, and hope that it was compatible with your creaky PC video editing software. Now, students can just shoot, edit and they are done all on one device. We use iPad in sports coaching in school and while it works great, it relies on either a student holding the iPad still, or the coach filming, rather than coaching. The Nexstar Training system offers a custom made solution to this issue, and it has certainly been thought about with sports training specifically in mind. Continue reading
The iPad has turned out – for me at least – to be every bit as magical and wonderful as Steve Jobs promised when he first announced it. Probably more so. I spend a lot of quality time with it every day and it is by far and away my favorite device to use (MacBook Pro included).
So obviously I like my favorite device to have some outstanding accessories – to protect it, add functionality to it, and help me use it as effectively and comfortably as possible. Just as a small example of my iPad accessories love, I have *two* favorite iPad stands (and a few backups). They are the two shown happily co-existing above – the Just Mobile UpStand and the BookArc from TwelveSouth.
Accessories are such a personal thing – so much determined by your very own set of needs and tastes – that I won’t venture to do any sort of best iPad accessories list. But I would like to share some thoughts on my favorite iPad accessories and why I like them so much, in the hope that some of them may fit the bill for some of you as well.
Hit the break for a quick rundown of my short list of favorites …
I am a notorious stickler when it comes to accessories for my beloved gadgets. I demand utility and versatility worthy of whatever price I am paying. After a few years of owning the various versions of the iPhone, I have developed a pretty strong feel for what I need and what I like as far as cases, chargers, car cradles, and the like go. However, when I got my iPad, I found myself on new and unsteady ground again. There are just so many cases, screen protectors, stands, and combinations of the three, that it is very easy to get lost in all of the reviews and ads. I was pretty lucky, as I ended up very happy with all but one of my purchases, and thankfully that one was fairly inexpensive. Here is a list of what I got:
In addition to its intended / primary function (importing photos from iPhones and cameras), the iPad Camera Connection Kit can also be used to work with USB headphones and USB keyboards.
I don’t have a USB keyboard around to test with just now, but reports at TUAW, Apple Insider and elsewhere indicate that this is working.
I have had a chance to test out using the kit with USB headphones though. Had a very good test chat over Skype – and it worked just fine.
I’ve also tried out a couple of old USB / flash drives (just to see if the iPad would see any image files on them) – but both just got an error saying the attached USB device is not supported.
What sort of results have you all been getting with your iPad Camera Connection Kits?
Stephen Fry has a nice, quick iPad unboxing video up. It’s an interesting one because he spends very little time on the iPad itself and shows off several of the Apple iPad accessories – including the keyboard dock and the case.
I’m still wondering whether we’ll see any of these available in the Apple stores on Saturday – last time I called my local one they had no idea yet whether they’d have any.
Check out Fry’s unboxing HERE.
I somehow completely missed this in amongst all the iPad coverage last week. I’d been checking out the details of Apple’s line of iPad accessories at their site, but had not spotted any prices for them.
In catching up on my RSS feed reading over the last day or so, I got a chance to read some first look post at iLounge.com, covering each of the five Apple iPad accessories. Here are the prices listed for the five items:
These all seem about what we’d expect from Apple, nothing outrageous or spectacular pricing wise I’d say. I’m looking forward to seeing all the other choices we’ll have for cases, docks, keyboards and more from third party manufacturers.
I’m sure we’re going to see a huge array of iPad accessories from lots of third party manufacturers leading up to and following the release of the iPad. Apple also has a few of their own that should be on offer as soon as the iPad is available.
At least a couple of them were shown off during the iPad launch event this past Wednesday – the iPad Keyboard Dock and the iPad Case.
Hit the jump for a little more details on these and the rest of the Apple iPad accessories …