Category — iPad Accessories

In the course of working on an article about the iPad and various stands, I discovered that two of my favorite stands from Belkin, both designed for kitchen use, are on sale at Amazon at pretty decent discounts.

First, the Belkin Kitchen Cabinet Mount for iPad 2. As you can see from the image, this is a stand that attaches to a kitchen cabinet. A strong but adjustable clamp grips the cabinet, and the iPad goes in the rubber-coated brace. The brace fits tablets ranging from 7 to 10 inches, so it would work with other tablets. I like very much that the Cabinet Mount is designed to be installed and removed fairly quickly without tools, so that you could stash it in a kitchen drawer and set it up as needed. Belkin’s list price is $49.99; Amazon has it for $33.31.

I also like the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus. (Amazon for some odd reason calls it theBelkin Kitchen Stand and Wand“). It’s a stand that allows you to use the iPad on your kitchen counter, with a companion stylus, keeping the iPad out of the way, yet usable, and food-free. Right now at Amazon, it’s $21.98, vs the list price of $39.99.

I note as well that for those with a spare iPad 2 lying around, the Belkin Fridge Mount for iPad 2 is pretty nifty. It uses removable 3M mounting strips to attach the mount to the fridge, and the mount has magnetic clips that use the built-in magnets on the iPad 2 to grasp the iPad.

Increasingly, people are using iPads for creating content, as well as reading and viewing content. While the iPad digital keyboard is nifty (especially if you know these clever typing shortcuts) a stylus, or keyboard, or keyboard-and-stand combination can all make writing, editing, and creating on the iPad much easier. Dan Frakes has a thorough review of iPad keyboards in his Macworld Buying Guide: iPad keyboards. Frakes also favors Adonit’s Writer folio case and Bluetooth keyboard, the one I wrote about here and have been using quite happily (though I’m still planning to pick up Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard to use with my iPad and with an iMac).

For non-keyboard cases, this Macworld Buying Guide: iPad Cases seems to be the most thorough and helpful collection of reviews. I might as well confess that Apple’s red leather smart case for the iPad 2 (or possibly the navy blue leather one) are awfully tempting—though not quite enough to tempt me into buying an actual iPad 2. Instead, I bought a padded neoprene slip cover case that neatly fits in the padded laptop compartment of my backpack. That said, I’ve been eyeing the design-your-own cases and protective hard shell covers from Zazzle and Cafe Press.

My current obsession, personally, is with the utility of using a stylus to write and draw on the iPad. I’m about to post a review of the Griffin GC16040 Stylus for iPad/iPhone and Other Touchscreens. I’ve been fascinated to see how well it works, and yes, the Griffin Stylus really is an asset. I note that once again the Macworld Buying Guide: iPad Styluses seems to provide the best coverage.
At the high end, they like the Wacom Bamboo (and it’s available in multiple colors) at around $25.00. I’ve heard good things about Wacom’s Bamboo Stylus from others too. I note that a lot of my friends are buying the BoxWave Capacitive Stylus; like the Griffin Stylus, it’s about ten dollars, but the Boxwave comes in colors, and people seem to be buying two or three at a time.

I like Apple’s $29.99 iPad Camera Connection Kit. It turns your iPad into a convenient place to sort and store photos from a digital camera. For example, suppose you are on vacation. You can offload each day’s “keepers” from your camera to your iPad and clear up room on the camera’s memory card for the next day. Later, when you get home, you can connect your iPad to your computer and import the keepers that you saved into your preferred photo app, such as iPhoto.

It’s three simple steps:

1. Take pictures with your digital camera.
2. Transfer keepers to iPad.
3. Copy pictures from iPad to computer.

Now, though, iCloud’s Photo Stream makes the Camera Kit even more convenient. With iCloud, as soon as you transfer your photos to your iPad, they go right into your Photo Stream. From there they are sent automatically to iCloud’s servers when your iPad has an Internet connection and, from there, they automatically download to your computer.

It’s two simple steps:

1. Take pictures with your digital camera.
2. Transfer keepers to Photo Stream via iPad.

There is no Step 3.

I finally received my Adonit Writer I. The Adonit Writer I is a Bluetooth keyboard and cover combination. So far, I quite like it. I note that the keyboard, while it has a nice response, is very small and won’t work well for some users without a lot of practice. I’m accustomed to using laptop keyboards, and was fairly comfortable after about ten minutes.

I do notice that I need to be very careful about bumping the screen lock key when reaching for the Delete key. Oddly, some of the iPad’s keyboard shortcuts, like pressing the spacebar twice for a period and trailing space don’t work.

But The Adonit Writer makes things like blogging much easier than using the digital on-screen iPad keyboard. I’ll likely keep trying other keyboards as well, but I was primarily looking for something to use while away from home, and the Adonit Writer I does look like it will serve that purpose quite well. I’m still thinking about an Apple Bluetooth keyboard for home use as an alternative to my laptop, in case of emergency.

Adonit makes the Adonit Writer for iPad 1 for first generation iPads, and Adonit the Adonit Writer 2 for iPad 2 for second generation iPads. Both are available from Amazon.

Adonit Writer for iPad 1

Writer 2 for iPad 2

As I wrote in The iPad 2 Projects Book, AirVideo is my favorite iPad app. Combined with iTunes Home Sharing and AirPlay, a Mac with AirVideo and AirPlay-capable devices makes a phenomenal expansive and expandable media environment.

A couple of Christmases past (or should that be Chanukahs?), my brother and co-author, Michael, gave us an AirPort Express that we initially employed on our enclosed patio to play our iTunes music through attached speakers and extend the range of our network for better reception in the backyard for our iPhones. Then, Apple released the iPad and that gave us better range for them as well — yes, we have three of them in the household at present: two originals and an iPad 2. The addition of AirPlay, coincident with the release of the iPad 2 a few months ago raised the utility of the Express quite a bit, because we could now stream the content on our iPads, and AirView leveraged it as well, providing us with external speakers for shows we were watching on our iPads.

Recently, we added a new AppleTV 2 to the mix. Now, I can stream just about any type of video that I can view on my Mac: DivX, xvid, mpeg-2, Flash, you name it, through AirVideo to an iPad and stream that content to the HDTV via the AppleTV, without being constrained by the availability of what I want to view being in a “compatible” format.

While Steve Jobs is (perhaps justifiably) accused of constructing a reality distortion field during his keynote addresses, I’m convinced that the “digital hub” that he foretold about a decade back is alive and well, firmly grounded in Apple’s ecosystem. As Carly Simon sings (music by Marvin Hammlisch and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager), “Nobody Does It Better.”