Photo Credit: Slickwraps

Obviously, the Slickwraps Vivid Purple Glow Wrap for iPhone 5 isn’t a case. It’s basically just a series of stickers you apply to your iPhone to make it look different. Any protection the stickers might offer is coincidental.

It looks pretty neat, right?

Application is fairly straightforward, everything you need is provided including a screen protector. The only other thing you need is some fairly steady hands.

And it does look good, when your surroundings are dark enough.

When the lights are on it looks a little like a storm-trooper on my Black iPhone with the white stickers.

However, within a few days or a week it’ll start to fall apart.

Here’s what mine looks like after less than a month:

Photo Credit: TimeDoctor Dot Org

After less than a week the top piece fell off.

After two weeks the discoloration had gotten pretty bad around the earpiece.

Photo Credit: TimeDoctor Dot Org

Finally, the bottom piece has started to disengage from the lower-left hand side of the phone. Once this happens, it gets pocket fuzz covering up the adhesive and is pretty much unfixable.

Photo Credit: TimeDoctor Dot Org

Do you want your phone to look like this? The glow effect still pretty nifty looking in the dark, but it’s rarely dark enough to trigger the effect unless you’re sleeping. In which case, who cares?

The best part of doing this review was when I took the Slickwrap off my iPhone 5 and it still looked great despite having had stickers all over it for the better part of a month. They’re not using low-quality stuff here, as is evident in the adhesive leaving no residue on the device. The problem instead is that this is the best level of quality you can get until material science makes some kind of ridiculous breakthrough that allows us to stick devices into a cheap home 3D printer and then they come out glowing in the daylight.

I’m throwing this Slickwrap in the trash, because that is what you do with a sticker once you remove it.

0 out of 5 Oil Slicks

It’s almost unsettling how many choices you have when deciding what kind of iPhone case you’d like to buy.

Do you get one that charges your phone, or looks cool?

Is it a wallet?

Or a steering wheel?

The BookBook fits into the wallet category.

It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, though of course it adds a bit of bulk to encompass a few cards, some cash, and your iPhone.

Lets talk about the look.

The spine and sides of it are designed to look like a worn, pocket-sized, tome.

You can alternate between being insulted that it is phony, or charmed and amused.

There isn’t any way to get around this, you either like that look or you don’t. It wasn’t until I saw the Book Book in person that I was convinced it was more than a goofy novelty.

There are cutouts for the sensors, speakers, mic, dock, sleep/wake, home button, headphone, and the mute switch, though the volume buttons do not get a cutout.

The BookBook is about as smooth as you’re going to get for removing a case and docking it. Pull a red tab on a strap from behind your phone to enable removal, and push the phone up and out. Simple and not frustrating.

Unfortunately this is also the process for taking pictures or video. Though you don’t have to slide the phone out all the way to do so, if you choose to keep the phone in the case the top edge and speaker cutout will block some of the screen. An unexpected upside is that it gives you something to grip that isn’t the screen when shooting, so I find that to be a little more stable. Of course you’re also now going to be slightly concerned with the phone tipping out when held horizontally in landscape mode.

The friction of the leather’s grain holds your phone in until you’ve tipped it at a fairly extreme angle. If you slide the phone out for picture-taking until the volume-down button is resting inside the cutout for the mute toggle switch it’ll feel fairly secure. Of course, this is on a day-old product, and I can’t say that this will remain the case (rdrr) after several months of use.

There is minimal screen protection when the case is open. Nothing to prevent an object from impacting with the screen, but the leather frame that holds the phone in should be enough for any drop that isn’t face down. I actually like that this case doesn’t include a screen protector, most of the plastic built-ins would lock dust and pocket lint in and make touch controls that much more difficult.

It is actually a little difficult to hold the phone and use it one-handed. You have to flip the front cover back over the rear and the springiness of this configuration changes the way you touch the screen and the distance from thumb to edge. It isn’t an issue for quick taps, or reading, only for swipes and more complicated thumbage. I don’t find it too impractical, but this is actually the limitation that is the most bothersome from day-to-day.

I chose to be amused by the faux-book style, and am surprised at how well this case functions. For about $60, you’re getting what is actually a quite good leather wallet and iPhone 4 case. If you’re bothered by the style initially, the functionality may win you over.

Lots of interesting stuff including Ryan discussing OS/2 at length. This portion is especially compelling:

I find if you’re targeting Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X right from the start, your code will probably work anywhere else that you might try it later.

Not to long ago, people would say, “why bother? Everyone runs Windows!”

But then the consoles became important.

And smaller shops might still say, “well, I’m not targeting those anyhow!”

But now they wish they had an iPad port.

You never know what will be important tomorrow!

via Interview: Ryan C. Gordon.

The English version of the interview is unfortunately lacking this great picture so I have provided it for reference.

OWC was theoretically ready for this situation with their OWC Mercury On-The-Go enclosure. It is available in a variety of port configurations, but I chose the one that offered Firewire 800 support to match my MacBook Pro.

There was one other option, the Oyen Digital MiniPro 2.5-in FireWire/USB enclosure. I could not find any reviews of the minipro, so it didn’t seem right to order it. I even went so far as to contact Oyen Digital via their website and received no response.

Now, I couldn’t find any reviews of the OWC On-The-Go with the larger physical drives, so I first contacted them and confirmed that it would work. OWC support assured me it would work, but for the requirement of a conversion kit.

Ordered both the kit and the enclosure from OWC, received it promptly, and I’ve put it together with the drive this weekend.

It is clear from my time with this setup, that it really is not ready for 12.5 mm drives, even with the kit.

Problems with the OWC are easy to anticipate, it barely accommodates the extra size and at this time, I can’t even remove the hard drive from the enclosure without damaging the circuit board or the plastic portions of the enclosure. The heatsink tray that carries the PCB is separated from the components by two critically placed silicone bumpers. The drive is kept from bouncing around the case by another two bumpers located at the rear of the drive near the air vents on the enclosure. Four screws hold the heatsink/sled in place, they don’t line up properly with the holes in the plastic case.

The drive functions fine, but without the ability to change it out from the enclosure I can’t make a positive recommendation. Unless I’ve made some kind of major mistake in following the provided instructions, this is another failure. Just like with the Tango Pro, I’m sure this OWC enclosure would be fine with a normal drive. I’ll be keeping it, if only because I’m going on a trip in a few days and I don’t anticipate the need to change out the drive, but I’m not a happy customer.

The big deal about these old keyboards is their lovely, positive key-click. When you use a keyboard that doesn’t have a good positive click, it’s hard to tell when you’ve depressed a key properly. You have to watch the screen to make sure you don’t leave letters out, or you have to really hammer the keyboard, which is not good for your hands.

Most of the mid-priced keyboards these days use some variant of the “rubber dome” switch technology, which gives a definite little popping sensation when the dome buckles, but doesn’t necessarily give you an actual letter at the exact same moment, thanks to uncertain contacts. The old buckling spring tech absolutely positively does give you the letter when you feel the click. These keyboards feel very much like an old IBM Selectric typewriter – there are plenty of these ironclad behemoths still in service, and they may herniate anyone that has to move them but they’re darn nice to type on.

Rubber-dome keyboards are just not as reliable, ergonomic, or fun to use as mechanicals. Though you do have to give up some goofy options for mechanical keyboards, this Adesso keyboard is kind-of goofy as far as mechanicals go.

Most mechanicals are fairly boring and extremely beige. At most you might get a trackpoint or trackball. This is why you have to go with somewhat more modern options if you want something closer to the gaming keyboard experience without the rubber-domes.

Which features does the  Adesso Mechanical Gaming Keyboard have over the basic Model M? An integrated, powered two-port USB 2.0 hub, windows keys, multimedia controls, and audio jacks. If you too dislike the beige style you might also be happy to know this keyboard is a glossy black everywhere but the keycaps. Speaking of which, the key caps are painted with a good ink that doesn’t feel cheap.

Even my Keytronic and Logitech G15′s keycaps have faded over time, but my original Model M hasn’t. However, until this keyboard has been in my possession for a few years I can’t give any kind of definitive answer as to the quality of the ink process on the keycaps.

After yesterday’s non-review of the Tango Pro, I’m happy to say that this keyboard feels great, the throw on the key press is close to Model M perfection and far superior to anything you can buy from Logitech or any of the other major peripheral manufacturers. With the Adesso I’ve played enough RTS and FPS games and had a similar experience to my old Model M, except without the pain of giving up normal gaming keyboard features.

The only real downside for the Adesso compared to the Model M is that the plastic isn’t as solid. Now don’t misunderstand, most cars aren’t as solid as the Model M, it is just that the Adesso doesn’t have a metal backing plate and thicker plastic like the Model M so maybe it’ll only last for ten or fifteen years instead of twenty-five.

Buy a Model M if you don’t need the extra features, or if however you too do not like the color beige and enjoy these extra features buy the Adesso. I’m not returning it for anything else.

I had planned on reviewing this Tango Pro USB/Firewire HDD enclosure this weekend.

I drove down to Microcenter, picked up the Tango Pro, and then since Microcenter didn’t have the HDD I wanted I got that from Fry’s.

You’ve probably heard of the drive I wanted to use, it is the only 1 Terabyte 2.5 inch SATA drive currently on the market, the Western Digital 1 TB Scorpio Blue.

Anyway, the enclosure sounds great on paper, it supports Firewire 800, 400, and USB 2. It even includes all the right cables and has a pretty blue LED.

The one problem is that the WD 1TB drive doesn’t fit. It has three platters rather than the standard two, so that makes it slightly taller than a regular 2.5 inch laptop drive.

Oh well, back to Microcenter tomorrow for a return.

[Various points of data showing how iPhone OS app, iTeleport generates a ton of revenue despite being priced at $25 snipped...]

We also hope this demonstrates that you can build a business on the App Store.  That doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that you’ll automatically make more money if you raise your price, or that every app should be priced at $25.  It’s just another perspective, albeit one that we haven’t heard in all the discussions of the iPhone developer ecosystem.  This may be because we’re the only ones, but we don’t believe that’s the case.  And we’d like to encourage others to add their voices to the chorus, in the hope that we can change the perception of the App Store.

via Quality over Quantity: How We Built iTeleport into a Profitable Business on the App Store – The iTeleport Blog.

gfxCardStatus is n open-source menu bar application that keeps track of which graphics card your dual-GPU (late 2008/2009 w/ 9400M/9600M GT, or 2010 i5/i7 w/ Intel HD/330M) MacBook Pro is using at any given time, and allows you to switch between them on demand.

via gfxCardStatus: menu bar gpu status monitor for os x / cody krieger – mobile, desktop & web developer.