Accessories

It was inevitable. Eve Systems, a company that has reimagined itself from an Apple Mac accessory company to a HomeKit automation powerhouse, has created a sprawling line of diverse products. These range from automated power strips that monitor your electrical use and temperature sensors that report indoor air quality. They further extend to a smart outdoor water controller that tracks water usage and even an indoor water detector that can be used to set off a cascade of automation events such as notifying you of a leak and, in turn, communicating with an Eve smart plug to deactivate the electrical pumping source of the water. And yet with all that HomeKit goodness, Eve didn't jump on the home video monitoring camera bandwagon, until now. Did Eve's drop dead simple HomeKit integration and stable quality make it into its first home security product?  Read on to find out.

Can you use a Bluetooth mouse with an iPad? You can now! We've long been able to use accessories like Bluetooth speakers, headphones, or the Apple Pencil with our iPads, but starting with iPadOS 13, iPad mouse and trackpad support finally arrived in a limited way as an Accessibility feature. Now, with iPadOS 13.4, pairing and using a mouse with your iPad is a fully integrated feature. In even better news, Apple announced a new Magic Keyboard with a trackpad with a cursor for navigating, editing, and gestures. We've already gone over iPad tutorials and tips such as how to take a screenshot on an iPad, how to use an iPad as a second monitor with Sidecar, how to set up your iPad for work, and even recommendations for the best iPad Pro apps for professionals. Now, let's learn how to pair and use your iPad with a wireless mouse or trackpad.

Owning a late-model iPhone means that you don't have a headphone jack on your iPhone. For many people, AirPods are the solution they've chosen to get excellent audio quality with cord-free ease. These convenient Bluetooth accessories have made living without wired headphones a breeze, but did Apple make AirPods waterproof? We’re here to help you with that and provide some other important AirPod information.

When iPadOS 13 came out, I was delighted to discover that I could use a mouse with an iPad, as long as the mouse used Bluetooth. When Apple released iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4, it added even more support for using a trackpad or wireless mouse for the iPad, iPad Pro, or even an iPhone, if it's the correct model. Here's how to connect your iPad mouse or trackpad to your tablet.

Most professional videographers agree that high-quality audio capture is just as important, if not more so than, high-quality video capture. Watching a low resolution YouTube video with superb audio reproduction is far more tolerable than watching a high resolution video with poor audio quality. That is why I find it so surprising that Apple has focused so much of its iPhone feature attention on camera and video capture quality while still utilizing a run of the mill embedded mono microphone for audio. The founders of Hooke Audio saw this subpar configuration in not just the iPhone but other smartphones and video capture devices like GoPro's, and built a product to address this discrepancy. Read on to find out if the Hooke Verse wireless binaural 3D audio microphone system ($159.99) succeeds at eliminating this mobile audio capture fidelity problem.

The Apple Pencil is seen by many iPad users as a stylus (much to Jony Ive's annoyance), but its main use is as a tool for markups and creative projects in apps like Procreate or something more simple like Notes. Here are some quick tips for drawing with the Apple Pencil including adjusting opacity and line thickness, shading with the side of the Pencil's nib, erasing, and using the Apple Pencil 2's double tap feature to switch between tools. While there is some overlap with the basics functions of both a regular pencil and an Apple Pencil, you'll find the Apple Pencil has potential to unlock a digital flood of creative possibilties and may help with an artist block or two.

I have used Sennheiser wired headsets for years, finding them to be high quality sound and comfort. So I was excited when Sennheiser announced their initial entry into the rapidly crowding market of wireless earbuds.  How could they possibly match the audio and comfort quality they were known for in the wired headset world in the earbud market, especially when even high-end wireless earbuds were prone to subpar audio reproduction and dropouts?  It was with some trepidations that I inserted each earbud and cranked up the tunes to determine if Sennheiser could master the wireless space as well as they had the wired audio experience.  Read on to find out.

How to Make AirPods Louder & Quieter the Easiest Ways

Wondering why your AirPods are so quiet? AirPods Pro and AirPods volume control can be a bit non-intuitive. It's not easy for everyone to figure out how to adjust the volume on their AirPods when there are no buttons and no dials! If you've been wondering how to work AirPods and AirPods Pro volume control, read on to learn how to make your AirPods louder or lower the volume.

Qi charging, wireless charging, inductive charging... whatever you call it, it's fast becoming a must-have feature in the smart phone world. Apple's latest three iPhone offerings, the 8, 8 Plus, and X, are all Qi enabled and can charge their batteries at the wireless charging stations that are popping up everywhere from airports to coffee shops. There's even a free app, Aircharge Qi, that lets iPhone users know where their nearest Qi charging station is! The versatility and convenience offered by electromagnetic charging isn't just for the latest iPhones, though. If you have an older iPhone and want to get on the wireless charging bandwagon, there's more than one way to Qi-enable your pre-iPhone 8 device. Choices include wireless charging cases, and a variety of wireless charging receiver cards, stickers, and patches; and remember, if you're going to buy a Qi-enabling accessory for your device, you'll also need a Qi charging pad. Let's get started going over your options to get wireless charging on your older iPhone.

With the incredible video-processing technology embedded in Apple's latest iPhones, the optics and 4K video capture make them highly capable video cameras. Unfortunately, the most significant limitation of the iPhone's portability is the reliance on its embedded iPhone microphone to capture audio. AmpRidge has addressed this constraint head-on with two external microphones for iPhones. Let's take a closer look at what each iPhone mic has to offer iOS videographers.

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