The Best iPhone Accessories

Philips HF3490 Wake Up Light
No-one likes being woken up, so if you’re looking for a gentler version of your screeching alarm clock, this could be the answer to your prayers. Like your own bedside sunrise, it’ll gradually brighten until it’s time for a building musical crescendo (or African jungle sounds, if that’s your bag) to finish the job. On the weekends it’ll just quietly charge your iThing. And relax.

Customised case
Personalise your handset with a slim-fitting lightweight case, emblazoned with your favourite photo or design. Create your case online in four simple steps, and LikeMyCase.com takes care of the rest. If you’re stuck for ideas, there are more available images in their case library.

Joby GorillaMobile Flexible Phone Tripod
No more of those weird angles when you want to take a picture of yourself and your friends, and no more blurry snaps either. The Gorillamobile offers a flexible and portable tripod for better photos. Simply slide the case onto the tripod, set the timer and say ‘cheese’. The gorillapod’s bendable legs allow you to wrap it around a tree or perch it on rocky surfaces. Do yourself a favour and pair it with Joby’s Frame X Frame app.

Gear4 Unity Remote
Throw away your bucket of remotes and control all your AV kit via your iPhone instead. No dongle required, and no need to plug anything into your iPhone, simply hook up to the little black cylinder with Bluetooth and let its IR blaster do the rest. It can even be programmed to do multiple tasks at once. Now, where’s the “order a pizza and play all five seasons of The Wire” button?

Griffin RoadTrip Handsfree
Sends tunes to your car’s FM radio, gives your iThing a place to perch and charges it, all at the same time. On top of that, it doubles a speakerphone. Now all you have to do is concentrate on the easy bit – driving.

AmpliTube iRig
Plug your guitar into your phone and jam anywhere, anytime. Now you can endow your iPhone with a host of classic amplifier and microphone effects. Play along with your favourite tracks and even record your own, tweaking the effects repeatedly until you’re happy with your next hit. Wandering – or cash-strapped – minstrels, your saviour has arrived.

Proporta Turbocharger 3400
Okay, so you love using your iPhone, but you end up paying the price in volts, tears and missed social events. You need backup, friend. A worthy addition to any gadget bag, the Turbocharger should give you a couple of full recharges before it needs topping up itself. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Sony Ericsson MW600 Stereo Bluetooth Headset
We don’t like to be tied down to our gadgets, and we like choice, so these fit the bill nicely. Using A2DP Bluetooth, they’ll play tunes for up to 8.5hrs, have an inbuilt mic for taking calls, and you can swap out the included earphones for your favourite pair of 3.5mm jack-equipped cans.

OWLE Bubo
Turn your iPhone into a photo and video powerhouse. The weighty aluminium mount comes with a 37mm wide angle lens and an adjustable microphone. The extra heft does a good job of minimising shake, while the wide angle lens makes getting everything in the frame a doddle. We know it looks silly, but it works.

Arcam rCube
It’s not new, but it’s still very clever and – in our opinion – the finest dock you’ll find for US$750.

Steve Jobs timeline – from calligrapher to CEO

1972: Dropout
Dropping out of Reed College led Steve to take a calligraphy class, which gave him the idea to use multiple type fonts, and proportionally spaced formats – which was to become commonplace in computers.

1976: Apple
With co-founder Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula, Steve Jobs started selling the first commercially successful personal computer in the form of the Apple II series. Did it double as a sledge?

1984: Macintosh
The mighty Macintosh computer was launched with the first personal graphical user interface, which included a mouse – cutting-edge stuff.

1985: Sacked
This is the year Steve was fired from Apple. That didn’t even slow him as that same year he founded NeXT Computer, which featured a built-in Ethernet port and NeXTMail that incorporated images and audio in emails to make them useable by the mainstream – once they got internet access that is.

1986: Pixar
Jobs knows how to spot a deal and in this year snapped up Pixar (then called The Graphics Group) from Lucasfilm for a tidy US$10 million. Disney bought Pixar in 2007 for US$7.4 billion.

1996: CEO
Money kept rolling in as NeXT Computer was bought by Apple for US$429 million and along with it went Steve who became interim CEO of Apple in 1997. This put him back in the throne which became his full-time in 2000.

1998: Cleaner
Jobs rightly killed off a few failing projects including Newton (PDA), Cyberdog (internet suite), and OpenDoc (for multi-format documents). Thanks to his pruning, the current kit we know and love is in our pockets and on our desks today.

1998: iMac
This is when the iMac was introduced along with its revolutionary USB port and all-in-one body available in various colours. The lack of floppy drive was a controversial decision that boosted external ZIP drive popularity for a bit, but ultimately gave way to USB memory sticks.

2001: iPod
The iPod was introduced to do away with disc-loading music players and put everyone’s music in one place – iTunes. In the wake of Napster falling that was a very clever move from Steve.

2002: OS
Steve’s old OS – NeXTSTEP – from his startup company, was developed into a new form. This was the birth of Mac OS X.

2006: MacBook
A small, portable and powerful laptop that worked well, was the plan. MacBook launched and Starbucks has been crammed full of the things ever since.

2007: iPhone
The mighty iPhone was unveiled, but was initially pricey and slow to catch on. Then the insane demand for apps sparked a fire of popularity that’s still burning as Apple ships about 20 million handsets in three months.

2010: iPad
It pioneered the middle ground between laptops and smartphones and is still doing so. The iPad got off to a rocky start, and still isn’t really needed by many, but it’s just so pretty that the iPad 2 is still the go-to tablet the world over.

HTC Vigor spotted in the wild

HTC is really finding it hard to keep its upcoming products a secret, or so it would seem. A selection of its impending handsets  – part of the 8-strong party coming our way on 1st September – and Sense 3.5 UI, have all been the victim of image, spec and video leaks. The Beats by Dr Dre-toting handset is the latest to have its cover blown before its official outing. We’re not sure how the king of chronic will feel about his first smartphone collaboration with HTC being spread across the web early, but we’re pretty happy with Droid Life for bringing us what is soon to be.
As it’s switched off, there’s not much to gauge from the handset other than its design choices. With it’s red adornment around the camera lens, it looks like the Vigor has taken its design cue from the HTC Evo launched in the US last year, as well as the Incredible S’ vacuum-packed back-panel.

Flip the camera on its front and you’re looking at a front-facing camera, accompanied by a row of touch sensitive buttons. Need a reminder of its purported specs? Hopefully in a couple of days we’ll be able to separate the rumours from the hard facts.