Although the tiny thermoplastic elastomer (Rubber, meet Plastic, Plastic, meet Rubber) Piolo may not seem like much to look at, it does offer quite a bit of utility. If you follow the world of Android phones, there are a number of models which feature a “kickstand” for watching movies or video chatting. Often these seem a little tacky, add some bulk, and/or can break off. The Piolo gives iPhone users a handsfree experience without the drawbacks seen on some of the aforementioned Android devices. The biggest of which is that you can use it in different angles and orientations, and it’s completely removable, instead of something that can get hung up on things and break off.

The Piolo is available in a number of colors, including cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white, and red. Using the Piolo is pretty straightforward—fit it around an edge on a naked iPhone 4 or 4S (sorry, case & bumper users), and it can prop the iPhone in a somewhat vertical position. It works fine with screen protectors, and there is a tiny hole to attach to a lanyard or keyring.

There’s not a whole lot to say about the Piolo—it’s simple to understand, simple to use, seems well-designed, and isn’t exactly bulky. At a relatively low price no matter where you are, and cheap shipping, the Piolo is a great impulse purchase for any iPhone user.

Since the introduction of the original iPad, many have wanted the acrylic-and-rubber stands that Apple provided for iPads at Apple Retail Stores and resellers. The stand is nearly impossible to find for personal use, since Apple even has a patent on it. For the next best thing, and maybe better, there’s the wedge-shaped Nest. It’s about the same size and angle, but square-shaped. There’s a little cutout in the center so it can act as a dish for small items (the iPad Camera Connection Kit, for example) and on each side there are bits of rubber to prevent slip, and also grip your gadget when in a typing position.

The Nest has a trick up its sleeve—in the back, a small plastic piece slides out to act as a vertical stand for viewing videos or presenting content. Although the iPad’s Dock Connector would be blocked when in this mode, you could always use it upside-down. In our tests, it’s supportive enough, and very handy for a FaceTime call on both an iPad or iPhone.

The Nest accomplishes the same thing as other stands, including our favorite, the Compass, but is a fraction of the price. Although the two do the same thing, they fit entirely different needs—the Nest is nowhere near as portable or convenient as the Compass. If anything, the Nest should be compared to the $20-$30 stands flooding the market that can be found at your local big box store. It’s also worth noting that the Nest is available in a number of colors, including black, white, blue, green, orange, and pink. For the price, there’s a lot right with the Nest, and nothing significant to complain about.

We could sit there and compare the two feature-by-feature, but this isn’t that kind of review. Although they are designed to accomplish the same end result, they both do things much differently. Additionally, Editions is a newcomer, with even a few sections added since we first downloaded it.

Flipboard

Flipboard has a lot going for it. It was first, has a lot of content partners to provide media for it that is specially formatted for the iPad’s screen, and works in both portrait and landscape mode. You can add anything from a section that encompasses a lot of preselected sources to a particular RSS feed of your own. It will even format Twitter and Facebook accounts into something that looks just a bit more like news.

The font choices are excellent and it is updates as often as the actual items are. By being able to choose individual feeds, you can really tailor the content to your liking, and may miss out on broader topics. Furthermore, Facebook and Twitter are limited to one account each, which can be frustrating if you share things through both a personal and business account. Finally, support for Flickr is a handy addition, but leaves much to be desired if searching through groups.

Editions

Editions is Flipboard for those who want a more relaxed pace. Content is updated once-a-day, so many stories may be “old” by Interner standards, but it sure beats the local paper. It initially builds an “edition” based on the sections you select and once you get a chance to read it, it does flow more like a magazine or The Daily. As time goes on, more content is based on things you care about thanks to keywords and being able to specify local content.

Although both apps have wonderful user interfaces, Editions seems to have a little bit of extra visual chrome—the wood background upon opening the app, the curled cover, and using news images for each section “cover”. Since Flipboard is a little less linear and is constantly getting new content, there isn’t much they could do to match this.

Sadly, Editions does have some areas to improve, including working in both portrait and landscape orientation (it only works in portrait, which seems to be the less-used orientation of iPads), the ability to add a custom feed or two, and a few formatting issues.

Still, despite these flaws, it does offer a very good, broad view of news, with some customization in a very friendly and approachable format. The use of content other than just AOL’s is also a good thing, considering the drama with some of their tech properties. The fact that it ends with a horoscope or “On This Day in History…” as well as asking for suggestions is a nice way to wrap things up.

Is There a Winner?

Right now, if we had to choose one, it would be Flipboard. Sure, other products, like Zite also exist, but Flipboard has almost become a standard and has won many awards. That being said, both are free and Editions offers a unique take on an already new model of spinning the news. We think they can coexist peacefully on your home screen, especially if AOL continues to improve and build upon Editions.

The TekCharge is a small black plastic 4400 mAH battery pack, roughly the side of an iPod mini from years ago. You can compare that to the capacity of the iPhone 4′s 1420 mAH battery or the iPad’s 6930 mAH battery for a bit of perspective on capacity. It’s not very bulky, and can easily find its way into a travel bag, purse, or pocket. Included in the package is the TekCharge itself, the myCharger USB power adapter, a Dock Connector-to-USB cable, a retractable USB cable, two tips (micro and mini USB) that attch to the USB cable, and a small drawstring pouch for the tips. Overall, you should be able to charge anything using the included items, and if not, as long as it can charge from a USB port, you should be able to use it with the TekCharge. Tekkeon offers additional tips for most devices, costing about $5-$8 apiece.

On the TekCharge itself, there is a white LED that can act as a flashlight, a three-setting power switch (off, on, flashlight), a mini USB port for charging the TekCharge (connect to the AC adapter or a computer), two regular USB ports for connecting devices, and a capacity indicator. Although we would’ve liked something a bit more detailed, it serves its purpose. When charging, orange indicates 0-80% full, and blue indicates 80-100% full. When using it, orange indicates 0-20% full, and blue indicates 20-100% full. We’re not sure how much additional LEDs would have cost to add, but something like Apple’s notebooks would have been better—5-7 LEDs to give a slightly more accurate reading.

The TekCharge also provides pass-through for USB signals, although you’d need your own mini-USB cable to connect to a computer (the included one only carries power due to its changeable tips).

A backup battery may have great included features or may be well-designed, but the big selling point is how it works. With power outages thanks to crazy spring and summer weather in the Midwest, we were able to test the TekCharge quite a bit over the last few months. By using it with both an iPad and an iPhone 4, it worked as advertised, charged fairly quickly, and provided enough power for both an iPad and an iPhone. One USB port can output up to 2.1 Amps, while the other can provide 1 Amp when used alone, or 0.4ma when used simultaneously. It was a bit difficult to start from completely empty on the devices, simply because of Apple’s already outstanding battery life. Still, the TekCharge should be adequate for anyone who may be a day or two away from a recharge with their iPhone or iPad.

Due to so many variables in the testing process (especially since the TekCharge recharges a device’s battery, rather than powering it directly), we had varying, but similar results with each test that seem to be in line with Tekkeon’s stated times (it could recharge a depleted iPad to about 48-50% in two and a half hours). The TekCharge will be able to charge an iPhone or iPod touch twice over before it’s depleted. Using both ports slows charging down, since the devices are sharing the power available.

It’s worth noting that the TekCharge can charge an iPad, but its AC adapter will not provide enough power to charge the iPad (only maintain, like many iPhone AC adapters). Although this shouldn’t be a hassle for most, this could be an inconvenience co those with a drained TekCharge and iPad—they’d have to wait for the TekCharge to fill somewhat first.

Overall, we found the TekCharge to be a handy addition for any road warrior’s toolkit, especially since the price includes a capable backup battery, a Dock Connector, and an iPhone-compatible (but not iPad) AC adapter. It’s a great option in the case of not having a wall outlet available.

The $29 Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was first shown off at the Back to the Mac event in October. This was arguably the quickest turnaround between initial discussion/demonstration and shipping. Additionally, Lion really changed a number of things compared to prior Mac OS X versions. The overall theme does follow two things—simplifying the experience for the “average user”, whomever that may be, and taking the best features of the more popular iOS devices and bringing it to Apple’s desktop operating system.

Purchase & Install

I think one of the big scary moments for anyone installing Lion is the sheer simplicity it has, especially for anyone who has worked with prior versions of Mac OS X, Linux, or even Windows. You download the installer from the Mac App Store, much like any other app, and it creates a self-destructing installer. Running the installer jumps right into the process, without options for erasing a disk, clean installs, or anything else. Apple is putting a lot of trust in its software engineers for forcing the “Upgrade” option, but it seems to have gone smooth. About a half hour later, I was ready to use my computer again. This stayed consistent with prior versions of Mac OS X. The fact that the almost 4GB installer is erased upon installation is slightly annoying, as Apple allows you to install Lion on as many Macs as you want, and this can save on downloading a copy on each machine. On the flip side, if you view the package contents, you can make your own bootable DVD or flash drive. I tried this on another computer and the process works similar to the download, except you can boot directly into an installer.

The message here is twofold: DVDs and other tangible media are dead and you shouldn’t need to worry about what options your OS installs. Does anyone care what specific items get installed with each version of iOS? Aren’t our drives (save for SSDs) large enough that an extra gigabyte or two wasted on drivers and language packs with a smaller OS worth a simpler install?

Rescue Me

Lion also does some other magic on your computer during the installation—it creates a recovery partition that is hidden from most views and uses about 650MB of space. Provided you don’t have a major issue where your drive itself is physically damaged, this should be good enough to bail out users who may have a disk error or need to reinstall Lion to their primary partition. It’s a great move for anyone with a laptop, since you can travel without any sort of recovery media and not stress as much. It also provides access to the Terminal and Safari, which is great if you need to access the Web and have a mostly-dead Mac.

The only complaint about this semi-ambitious feature (which was around in one shape or another since at least the early days of Windows 98), is that even if your computer is locked down and secure, someone could access this recovery mode by knowing the Command+R sequence. It’s no difference than them having a bootable disc, but it just makes the case for firmware passwords even stronger.

Noticeable Changes

The first change you’ll notice is the overall look of Lion is even more toned-down. I find it funny that the first version of Mac OS X was a departure from the grey-and-simple look of Mac OS 9. Over the past ten years, every iteration of Mac OS X has gotten flatter, greyer, and more refined. This is the case once again, which has created a bit of controversy, due to Apple monochromizing the sidebar icons, as seen on iTunes 10 and iPhoto ’11. At the end of the day, it’s a continuation of a theme from Apple—keep the controls simple and out of the way, and let the content be the focus.

Launchpad is a new feature that simply adds an iOS-style app overlay to the screen when invoked. It doesn’t do anything more or less, but does let you put your applications, found in the /Applications and ~/Applications folders, in iOS-style faux-folders. Most power users will still use Spotlight, Dock folders, or third-party tools, but for everyone else, Launchpad is a great idea. I’d like to think of it as an extension to the Dock. You can put your B-list apps there and still have really quick access to them without digging through folders-within-folders in the Applications or Utilities folders. In my case, it has moved things like Disk Utility, Activity Monitor, Address Book, iCal, and the iWork trio into a place where I can still call on them quickly, but they’re not taking up Dock space. It would be nice if it offered more flexibility with arrangement or included items, but this is a first-revision feature and I see it only improving from here.

Gestures and the reversed scrolling are two things that have also gotten a bit of press. I have found that the “Natural” scrolling takes some getting used to, but once you think of things like an iOS device, it makes some sense. Mouse users may have the hardest time adjusting, and thankfully, the setting is reversible. As for gestures, when paired with Mission Control or full-screen apps, are a joy to use on any of Apple’s notebooks. I enabled the 4/5-finger gestures on my iPad and find it convenient for avoiding the home button and switching apps, and the same process works on my MacBook Pro. Full-screen apps remind me a little of “maximized” windows on various versions of Windows, except that you can switch between them with a simple swipe. I’d almost say they’re cleaner and I can get to them faster than a number of windows piled on top of each other, as long as I know where each one is spatially in relation to another.

Elsewhere things are more of the same with some fine-tuning: the same 3D-and-ridiculous Dock introduced with Leopard, but now the indicator lights can be turned off. The way Apple sees it, most apps should work like iOS apps—there is no open or closed—I like this idea, especially if it works as seamlessly as it does on iOS. For this and many of the other new features, users will have to upgrade their applications to Lion-compatible versions. Fortunately, Safari, Mail, Pixelmator, and Apple’s current iWork and iLife suites all have been updated to take advantage of Lion’s new features. For many users, this should be sufficient to try these new ways of working with documents and applications.

Don’t Panic

I find it funny that the biggest complains en masse are things that Apple is offering, but not forcing. As I wrote things like scrolling, gestures, Launchpad, the hidden Library folder, and more can be undone or ignored, leaving an OS that acts pretty much like Snow Leopard. Sure, it’s more disruptive than the transition from Leopard to Snow Leopard, but Apple is providing some flexibility. Even the iOS-style character accents work alongside the tried-and-true Option key method.

A lot of tech people are saying that Apple has lots its mojo with Lion, or that it is “dumbing down” the experience. Instead, I see it much more simplistic than that. Apple is delivering, as promised, a more iOS-like experience on the Mac, but has done nothing to limit Lion as a desktop operating system. Sure, power users may need to get accustomed to some changes, but that was the same with the Jaguar-to-Panther, Panther-to-Tiger, Tiger-to-Leopard, and, to a lesser extent, Leopard-to-Snow Leopard transitions. It’s progress and making the computer more approachable for the non-geeks.

One feature that many will appreciate if they deal with foreign languages is the iOS-style character input. If you have a letter with an accent, rather than remembering which accent you need through an Option-key sequence, you hold down the letter you want to use, much like an iOS device. From there, a popup gives you all the possible accented versions of that letter and you can pick the one you want. This comes at a price—key repeats are turned off. Fortunately, this can be reversed through a Terminal command, but most users shouldn’t notice. Also, the “old way” of entering symbols still works, so your habits don’t need to die.

Why Upgrade?

The big question is if Lion is worth the hassle and money of upgrading. For most users who are using Snow Leopard, it’s a tough sell. With Snow Leopard, we have a very efficient, polished, known product. Lion has bugs, some performance issues, and numerous incompatibilities. Still, it does make your computer a more enjoyable experience, especially once you get the hang of gestures, use Mail a lot, are an iOS addict, or have apps that will make use of the document tools (Versions and Auto-Save). These changes alone could be a lifesaver for some, while others represent a groundwork for the future iterations of Mac OS X and third-party applications. If you have the money and a computer that can handle it, it’s a worthwhile product to check out.

One of the big draws to silicone cases is that they are flexible and absorb everyday shocks. Drop your iPhone in one of those cases and it probably will fare a little better than a hardshell case or naked. The dermaSHOT doesn’t try to be anything other than a good basic case. Available in a four colors (black, yellow, fuscha magenta, purple), the case covers everything except the mute switch, camera opening, and features a generous opening for the Dock Connector, microphone, and speaker. The case is advertised as working with both GSM (AT&T/world) and CDMA (Verizon) iPhone 4s.

The case fits rather nicely, and even is shaped to come a little closer to the earpiece and the home button, adding a little more coverage and security. The silicone is actually a little thicker than some other cases out there, making the whole thing feel a little more substantial and “chunky”. Some may see this as a drawback, while others a positive—we’ll let you be the judge.

Also included with the dermaSHOT is a SwitchEasy-style (and also a trend with Incipio) goodie bag of little add-ons. The dermaSHOT includes a scrren protector (unlike the Feather’s two), microfiber cloth, and applicator card. Although they are not exactly make-or-break, they do sweeten the deal a bit, especially with so many manufacturers offering just a case at higher prices.

One area where we don’t like the DermaShot is that even almost a year after the iPhone 4′s launch, it still has issues with the flash reflecting off the case. The cutout is big enough that this should not happen, but it does on all models except black. A Sharpie marker would fix this (think eyeblack), but is an annoyance for hardcore iPhone photographers. The other area the case struggles is in the same scope as other silicone cases—lint loves it, it hangs up in pockets, and it tends to peel away from the iPhone along the long edges.

Despite the drawbacks, we found the dermaSHOT to be a good, durable case that offers quite a bit of protection, especially if you have butter fingers. With a variety of colors available, and a fairly low price, you can do a lot worse for the money.

Available in over twenty color choices, the feather is available with a few different finishes, including a rubberized matte texture, a glossy “chrome” texture, translucent, or even a pearl. The 1mm thick Feather snaps on the back of the iPhone with little ridges to keep it firmly locked on to the stainless steel antenna band. It’s fairly easy to remove if you work around one of the corners first.

Unlike many other cases, including Apple’s Bumper, the Feather does not have a lip around the screen, so if you set the phone face-down, the glass will be in contact with the surface. Also, the Feather has large gaps of open area near the volume buttons and mute switch, along with the top and bottom of the case. This is both a positive in that the Feather has excellent compatibility with third-party accessories and works with both the GSM (AT&T/world) and CDMA (Verizon) models, but leaves areas vulnerable. Then again, since the Bumper is the other “minimal” case that comes to mind, the whole back is exposed. Really, in the case of the Feather, one simply needs to understand the exposed areas, although the corners being covered are a huge plus.

Similar to SwitchEasy, Incipio offers a few extras in the package, including two screen protectors, a cleaning cloth, and an applicator card. Although these items really aren’t much to write home about themselves, they do add value to the Feather.

Our only gripe is that the edges doesn’t extend further to create that lip around the screen, but as far as cases go, it’s about as close to naked as you can get.