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Native Union was at CES offering an intriguing lineup of handsets that’ll turn your iPhone, iPad or even iPod touch into a more traditional handset-style phone. One model even morphs into a speaker for music or speakerphone. Unfortunately audio quality was tough to gauge at the noisy show floor, so we’ll try to test these in a more controlled setting later. Here’s a quick rundown of the Native Union lineup.

POP Phone

These were announced back in September 2010, but I took a few pics in the gallery for you to check out. They are simply handsets that use a 3.5 mm jack for plugging into your iPhone, converting it into a sort of old-style phone with a handset and stretchy cord. Remember those? You can also use it with Skype or any VoIP app on your iPod touch or iPad or even your Mac.

The POP Phones come in a wide variety of colors (which “pop” as the name suggests) and have a nice soft, rubber finish as opposed to the old shiny gloss finish of Ma Bell’s phones. I find the form factor quite handy for cradling the phone on your shoulder while doing other stuff as opposed to the precarious placement of a slender iPhone between ear and shoulder. As I said, these are pretty basic. They sell for around US$29.99. There are two models with bases which sell for around $64.

Debuted at CES: MM03i Bluetooth handset

This one is pretty snazzy — a wireless handset with built-in iPhone charging stand. If you want the best of both worlds, a desk phone and your mobile, it’s a good design. The iPhone docks at the far end of the base, with the handset in front. They only come in black or white and use a glossy finish, but I get the feeling they are meant to cater to business users.

The MM03i has a 6 hour talk-time charge, and 120 hours of standby according to Native Union. The sync base has a 3.5 mm output so you can plug your iPhone into a speaker system, and my guess is (as normal) any music would be muted when the handset takes a call. You can answer a call just by picking the phone up off the base, or use the buttons on the phone, which include volume. The MM03i retails for $149.99.

Introduced at CES: MM04i Bluetooth stereo handset

Available later this month, the MM04i adds to the 03i feature set with a set of built-in speakers to your handset and a design which allows you to use the thing as a set of small speakers (via Bluetooth, even though your iPhone docks) and pick up and use the phone as a phone or speakerphone at any time. It’s a clever design, although I can’t say I was a huge fan of the angular nature of the phone handset itself. All of Native’s phones are designed by “award-winning” designers, so what do I know?

The MM04i will retail for $199.99. Check the gallery to see a close up of the handset and its buttons plus the dock for your iPhone.

Native Union introduces Bluetooth handset and speakerphone for iPhones at CES originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been stopping by the trailer of our sister site Engadget quite often here at CES for the excellent company (and the excellent Wi-Fi), and while we were in there the other day, the good folks from ClamCase came by to show off their product. Engadget got their own look, but we were kindly handed one of our own to give it a good once-over from a more Apple-centric perspective.

The most intriguing thing about the ClamCase is how light it is. At just 1.8 pounds, even with a 1.6 pound Wi-Fi+3G iPad snapped in securely, the whole unit is only a little bit heavier than a 13-inch MacBook Air. It doesn’t fold down quite as thinly, but it’s still a pretty compact package that feels solid and well-made. The iPad does just snap in — there’s no release or switch, so you kind of have to “pop” the case open to get it out. But ClamCase told us that they tried a few different things, and in the end, the snap was what worked best and easiest.

The keyboard is a Bluetooth keyboard and the keys are tiny. The whole thing couldn’t be made bigger than the iPad itself, so if you’ve got fat fingers, you might find more key presses than you meant to have. The scale takes a little getting used to as well — reaching for the shift key will have your pinky falling right off of the case if you’re used to a standard keyboard.

Continue reading Hands-on with the iPad ClamCase keyboard/stand

Hands-on with the iPad ClamCase keyboard/stand originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As soon as we heard that Boxee was demoing their iPad version at this year’s CES conference, we had to hunt them down and see it. We found them over at Iomega’s booth (stay tuned for a writeup of an Iomega product designed to help iPhone backups as well), and asked to see the app. It’s about what you’d expect from a Boxee interface — slick and clean, with four different options across the top. Friends videos are first, allowing you to tune in to any videos your friends have flagged on various social networks. Featured videos is the second option, where you can watch any videos that Boxee wants to show off. Watch Later allows you to watch any videos you’ve marked on the Boxee service. And Files is the last option, letting you pull up any videos (in almost any format) stored via a Boxee media server on a Mac or PC on the same network.

As you watch any of the videos, you can click a button in the iPad’s interface that will also send that video right off to your own Boxee installation to watch. It’s pretty awesome — browse around for a video on your iPad, set it to start playing, and then either watch it there, or send it AirPlay-style right out to your Mac, PC, or a media player equipped with Boxee. Boxee says the app will be released for free later on this year, with another version for iPhone and iPod touch eventually as well.

Boxee demonstrated on iPad at CES 2011 originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sphero is this year’s AR.Drone here in Las Vegas. Last year, the Parrot AR.Drone turned heads with an iPhone-controlled quadricopter, and this year, Sphero is creating a little buzz as an iPhone-controlled, well, ball. That’s right — the Sphero is a ball that both glows colors and rolls around at your iPhone or iPad’s command. A company named Orbotix is working on releasing the ball sometime this year for no more than $100, and earlier this week at CES’ ShowStoppers event, we got a chance to roll and control the ball ourselves.

What’s the verdict? It’s a little tough to control, but then again the AR.Drone was as well, and that sold all right when it was released late last year. Setting up the free, not-yet-released iPhone (or iPad, or Android) app for Sphero is simple, and once it’s up and running, you just need to face the ball in the right direction by dragging a little icon around a round area on screen. When the ball’s aligned in the direction you want it facing, you just press the screen, and the ball moves the way you drag it — forward, backwards, left or right. You can also adjust the ball’s speed and the screen’s sensitivity, and you can dive into another menu that allows you to change the (completely cosmetic) color of the LED inside with a few RGB sliders.

It’s fun, though, since it’s still a prototype, it’s tough to make the ball do exactly what you want, and most of the time, you just have to settle for what it does anyway. The dev told us that they’re opening the platform up to anyone to make games or create applications, and the team has been working with ideas like turning the ball into a car with augmented reality. Our suggestion: let a cat play with this thing. They’d love it.

Hands-on with Sphero at the CES 2011 originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iRecord Pro Personal Media Recorder has been around for a couple of years, but I couldn’t help but notice this year it was connected to an iPad. Apparently the onboard analog-to-digital converter will also upload your MP4 converted video directly to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. It works on a Mac too, but it also works on a PC, PSP and a raft of other devices.

One thing that seems a bit odd: you have to pay for a firmware upgrade to allow transfer to the iPad, according to the iRecord site. Why the extra charge for the iPad? We’ll have a hands-on at Macworld if they are there again this year and ask.

It’s a pretty simple thing, and maybe our need to transfer analog video is soon to become pointless, but if you’re looking for a relatively simple and fast solution to dumping video to your iOS devices, this might do the trick. Then again, for around $230 on the street and a firmware cost if you want to dump to iPad, something with such limited use might not be flying off the shelves any time soon.

iRecord Pro transfers grandma’s VHS tapes directly to your iOS device or Mac originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 17:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Mac App Store is off to a great start, but it’s not all sweetness and light. Users have been confused by how some third party apps bought elsewhere show as “installed” in the store UI whilst others don’t — and in fairness, it is confusingly inconsistent. Meanwhile, developers are struggling to deal with the lack of upgrade pricing, and what that means for their existing customers.

As with the iOS App Store, everyone buying an app pays the same price, whether they are a new customer or someone who bought a previous version. There is also no ability to “grandfather in” licenses from elsewhere. For example, I purchased Pixelmator v1.6 from its website for $60 back in September, but the team has now announced that v2 will be exclusive to the Mac App Store.

If they had maintained the $60 price point, I would have had to pay the full amount again in order to move my license from their own system and onto the Mac App Store. Generously, they have dealt with this by offering Pixelmator v1.6 for $30 on the store for a limited time — with a free upgrade to v2 when it is released. This isn’t perfect; some people like me feel annoyed that they paid twice the current rate just a few months ago for a product that won’t get an upgrade to v2, and Pixelmator’s developers are also effectively giving new customers an upgrade discount they perhaps shouldn’t be entitled to. Overall, though, it’s the best of a bad set of choices they can make.

Not all devs are having such a smooth ride, however.

Continue reading CoverSutra kerfuffle highlights Mac App Store teething troubles

CoverSutra kerfuffle highlights Mac App Store teething troubles originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last year at Macworld 2010, I got to see the SHOWWX pico projector in action. Back then it was just a prototype, and the company was still shopping around the technology to try and get a unit into production. MicroVision has released the SHOWWX projector at a unit price of US$299. This year’s model, however is the SHOWWX+, and while it’s still a little unwieldy (and $100 more, at a $399 price point), it’s brighter and clearer than ever, and a few tweaks to the iPhone have made it much more useful.

First up, TV out was simply a lament last year, but since Apple made it official with iOS 4.0, lots of developers are including a TV out function in their apps, and the SHOWWX+ can project all of them. There’s the standard ideas of kicking out regular videos or Netflix (which looks terrific, even on a solid 3G connection), but MicroVision pulled up what we really wanted to see: Rage HD. id added TV out to its app recently, so the projector can put the video on a wall, but id also added support for the in-phone gyroscope. Since the projector is portable, the MicroVision rep can move it around while playing the game, so as the projection on the wall moved, so did the in-game angle. The effect was somewhat fleeting (the gyroscope feature isn’t quite perfect, and the image was distorted as it moved around the square walls of the room), but there was a definite virtual reality feel, as if the projector was showing a dynamic window into the world of Rage.

So what’s the drawback? While the projector is a quality product, and there probably at least a few people out there who could pick one up and use it, even MicroVision agrees the technology has a little way to go before it gets to prime time.

Continue reading Microvision runs TV out apps, including Rage HD, on the SHOWWX+ pico projector

Microvision runs TV out apps, including Rage HD, on the SHOWWX+ pico projector originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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