In our latest roundup of new Mac gear, we’ve got all kinds of ways to carry your MacBook, plus mega-storage, colorful mice, standing desks, and more.
The $295 Cobra brief is a mid-sized laptop bag — it’ll fit a 15-inch MacBook Pro — with an extra pocket for your iPad, phone, or other small items. The laptop compartment is padded, the pockets are trimmed with leather, and the entire bag is outfitted with a waterproof nylon exterior, ensuring that your valuable electronics are safe from the elements.
The $200 Sound Blaster E5 is a high-resolution portable headphone amplifier and digital-analogue converter designed to play your music in high fidelity. It includes dual audio outputs so you can share music with your favorite audiophile.
We’ve been getting into this whole “standing desk” thing lately, so we’re intrigued by the Lift, which sits on your desktop and can easily transition between collapsed mode, for when you want to sit, and standing mode. The lift holds your Mac, of course, but it is also customizable with “display docks for your phone and tablet, a dry erase board great for note taking, a recessed cup holder to protect all of your devices, and a super thick mousepad that sits flush for comfort.” The first round of Lifts, funded through Kickstarter, is shipping in October.
The $1,599 8big Rack Thunderbolt 2 comes in capacities of 12, 24, and 48 TB. It has two Thunderbolt ports with transfer rates of 20 GB/s. It can be daisy-chained with up to six other Thunderbolt-capable devices, and it comes in both four- and eight-disk configurations.
The $120 Urbana briefcase “boasts a spacious interior large enough to fit up to a 15″ laptop plus an iPad with room to spare for books, folders, and other documents,” says the company. It’s made of lightweight, waterproof materials for comfortable, lightweight, safe MacBook toting. It comes in Cerulean Blue, Forest Green and Mineral Gray.
We’ll let the sellers describe the ThunderBay 4 RAID5 edition: “RAID 5 merges the four drives inside ThunderBay together for exponential performance gains over a single drive, the combined capacity of three of the drives, and data redundancy that allows the array to still work even if one drive were to fail.” The dual-Thunderbolt-port device starts at $870 for a 4 TB configuration.
The $110 Valet Luxury Sleeve for MacBook, available in brown or black, is built for MacBooks and is made of full-grain leather “as reslilient as a Texas Longhorn,” says the vendor. It provides enough room for you laptop computer, of course, but it also features an extra pocket for your iPad, power cables, or similar-size gear. The sleeve ships in late September, but you can pre-order now. Also new from Pad & Quill is the $420 Attache Leather Bag.
The $70 iLevel 2 is an aluminum MacBook stand for your desktop, holding your laptop up and away from the desk for better ergonomics and to help whisk the warm air away for better cooling.
The $25 Spectrum Wired Optical Mouse accessorizes your workspace as much as it does your Mac: It cycles through seven bright LED colors to add a bit of jazz to your computing life. Need some visual peace? The LED can also be turned off, or you can lock into a single color that best expresses your style.
The $129 VertiGo 2.0 Laptop Bag is oriented vertically, and comes in three sizes to best fit your particular laptop. The bag comes in black or chocolate leather, has a front pocket with a magnet closure, and sports a zippered pocket inside. It’s made to order, but shipped within five days.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.