**Coffee Lovers Rejoice: The Arrow Press**

It's awesome absolutely yeah it's a fantastic way to take a cup of coffee and um what's nice about it is that uh there's very little waste um you know afterwards even the uh the filters are you know extremely extremely small uh but yeah if if you uh uh if you like a good cup of coffee Arrow Press is a great way to go. The the downside is that it makes one or two cups at a time so if you have 18 people over for a party it's it's going to be a little bit uh tedious but if you just want a cup or two every morning you know or every afternoon it's it's just absolutely phenomenally good.

I personally use the Blue Bottle Coffee Blue Bottle bot Tonks which I recommended last year if you're in an area like you know where Peter is where his wife roasts her own coffee then you know you don't need this but if you're in an area where you can't get fresh roasted coffee Tonks is they have sorry Blue Bottle will send you single origin freshly roasted coffee to your door so and and when you open it up it feels like you're being punched in the face it's it smells so good it's not stale over caffeinated you know it's not the stuff you buy at Starbucks it's it's it's coffee for humans.

**Lego: Building Imagination**

I just have to recommend Lego uh Lego is just so much fun I have a bunch of it behind me you know here just for decoration but uh I've been getting it for my God kids you know it's just it's so much fun you can get uh they have the Ghostbuster set from Lego creative right now they have a bunch of Star Wars stuff Batman stuff The Lego Movie stuff you can get small sets that cost about 10 bucks up to Giant sets that cost hundreds and hundreds of celestial space dollars or whatever you're spending on them uh gold press goldplated latinum whatever your currency of choice is but it's good because you know you can build the toy but then you can build anything that your imagination can create and that's the really fun part.

I watched my little six-year-old godson came to me with an entire scene of Doc Octopus and uh Spider-Man fighting off the edge of a tower that he totally made up and it was it was really awesome and when you see that sort of kids building things with their hands it's it's better than the virtual stuff that we stick them in front way too often yeah it's like Minecraft except in real life yes I like real life Minecraft.

**Gift Guide and Black Friday Deals**

Derek hesler our U mobile Nations managing editor has put together some magnificent uh Black Friday sales uh posts and uh gift guide posts we'll have links you don't have to remember all this we'll have links to them in the show notes we've got the Apple gift guide we've got uh alie's and Peters I think Ren's is going to be ready soon got mine come out tomorrow yeah so many so many of the links for you to click.

If people are looking for us over Thanksgiving where can they find us oh I don't know about over Thanksgiving they might not find me um but every day on imore.com and at IM muggle on all of the social things yes what about you Peter on the social things at flar f l g and on imore.com Ren and I will be back on imore.com Monday um and probably tomorrow with a gift guide and on the social things I am at sat s RN

**Fracture: A Great Gift Idea**

I want to once again thank fracture for supporting the show you can get awesome uh images emblazened embedded immersed inside glass the small one starts at $15 for the small square they're fantastic gifts for family and friends they are you know frankly awesome looking and right now you can get 15% off if you go to fracture.me and use the the promo code imore show that's fracture.me and the promo code imore show

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit is November 26 2014 I'm Renee Richie and right now we're going to do our annual holiday and Black Friday gift guide this is the imore show joining me today is a woman that we're trying very hard to convince that Harry Potter is just Star Wars in land Ali kasm MOA how are you doing Ali I'm good I'm still not convinced it's not the same there's no Hano that's my big that's my big Tipping Point Ron Weasley makes a terrible hand solo what about Sirius Black uh he could be Lando I don't get it that was the voice of Cen Caldwell who has made me incredibly jealous uh by her by being at Disneyland or Disney World sorry this week yay Disney World I'm no longer at Disney World and I got very very wet yesterday uh because we had thunderstorms all day so maybe not 100% jealous but uh it was fun I on an iron armor I did not I did not get a strap on any Iron Man armor sadly um to protect myself from the cold or the wet but I did go on a lot of rides and now I'm in Southern Florida recording this lovely podcast hopefully my connection will stay intact it looks good so far uh and talking about looking good we have with us the lovely and talented Peter Cohen how are you Peter fine Renee thank you how are you today I'm doing very well you guys all have turkey day tomorrow which is why we're doing the show a day early and I keep protesting about this but when I have turkey day you have Columbus Day when you have turkey day I have nothing like ashes in your mouth yeah you take a take a day off for yourself Renee enjoy the enjoy the fact that your colleagues are all off for the lack of Americans a Canadian a Canadian friend of mine who used to run a a ma game site uh would use uh opportunities like uh uh Thanksgiving or Christmas which he didn't celebrate because of his faith um uh as as opportunities to run spoof news uh sort of like April Fool's Day so maybe that should be your cue Renee maybe you should run a whole bunch of joke stories tomorrow I will take that under the strongest of advisements Peter in the meantime I'm going to talk to you guys about holiday gifts uh because holiday gifts are important we we we want to either get stuff for ourselves on Black Friday or unselfishly we want to get stuff for those loved ones friends family people close to us and it can be you know Apple used to have this beautiful little product grid where Steve Jobs would say U mobile and desktop or sorry laptop and desktop consumer and professional and it all fit inside there now they need an entire table to to contain their product lineup and if if you're not sure what to get it can be a little bit confusing so I let's start with iPhones um the cheapest iPhone is the iPhone 5C but at 8 gigabytes I can't recommend it to anybody I would just advise you to get a sale price on a better iPhone yeah yeah the only thing I can see the 5c being good for as as a starter phone for a 12 or 13 year old um and even then that's a it's a little bit of a risk 8 G 16 gigabytes is not enough 18 is just insulting it used to be it used to be in a lot of emerging markets and the the thought process was these places only really use BBM or Facebook Messenger because data and voice were so expensive they were very minimalist but even now I think everyone just fills it up with so many photos you know Ali's done tips on how to remove photos from my message because it clogs it up so much that you really you really need to start thinking about if not 16 certainly 32 and take advantage of the sales I would say to get a better phone cheaper if you can yeah yeah so iPhone 5S this to me is the phone um and Peter tell me what you think this to me is the phone for people who think the new iPhone 6es are too big and that's basically the market right now yeah I mean you know the iPhone 5S is a fantastic phone the A7 processor still has a lot of life left in it and touch ID um as a game Cher um so I think the 5S is a very solid option for people who don't want to be saddled with a larger phone having said that it took me you know about three minutes after getting it out of the box to adapt to the new size of the iPhone 6 and I've really had no problems but I understand why some people may you know still want um a a a 4-inch phone you know that's that's a little narrower than the iPhone 6 is uh maybe you like to stick it in your key pocket in your jeans like one of my co-workers does the store um or you know maybe you just don't want a phone that that's that big whatever the reason the iPhone 5S is a very solid option and uh should not be overlooked if you're looking for a good value in an iPhone uh that's a little bit smaller than than some of the other options that you can you can get yeah if you need to save money don't care about Apple pay and prefer 4 inch phones the 5S is for you if you're John grber or John moltz and you really want a 4-in phone Apple still has one for you it just doesn't have the latest stuff on it um Ren what about the iPhone 6 for me this is like this is the iPhone iPhone of this generation absolutely um I really love my six I've become kind of obsessed about it although I will say now my my recommendation for the six includes buy a case because I have scratched slash uh broken my screen too many times and even with the new I'm generally pretty careful with my phones but um this I've dropped a couple times since getting it uh getting the new one not even on accident it's just it's a much slipperier phone so I put the the Apple case on it and that has made things my life much easier blame the curves yeah it is no it's the curves it's the fact that it it fits in your hand but as a result it also you know there are some problems there but it um the new screen size it does take us a couple seconds to adjust to but it's really nice I barely ever use reachability to to get to top corners because I can it's a little bit more of a reach but I can get to it uh you've got Apple pay built in which is really awesome uh if you have stores near you that accept NFC payments uh you've got the latest processor you've got um and that camera that camera is gorgeous I was taking how all of my Disney World pictures you know I brought my nice camera my DSLR um and I ended up just leaving it in the hotel for two days and just taking my iPhone 6 because my iPhone 6 takes great pictures and I could immediately upload them so there's a there are a lot of things going for this for the iPhone 6 and uh I think it's really the I'm I am going to say you know get the 64 gigabyte version because I think the the 16 gab is not worth it uh but if you if you don't care about super giant screen sizes and you want the latest and greatest that Apple has to offer um camera improvements are not that much better in the iPhone 6 Plus to Warrant getting the six plus solely for camera um improvements so if you're looking for the latest and greatest iPhone for you or your loved ones the iPhone 6 64 gigabyte is the one to do it I don't know if you feel the same way as me Ali I like the 6 a lot but I just can't get over the battery life of the 6 plus I woke up I forgot to charge it last night I've been using it for 2 days and I'm still at 50% yeah I'm kind of in the same boat I I sat there when I was writing my gift guide and I was like I don't know which one to pick I don't know like it was like almost like I had an anxiety attack trying to decide which I liked more so I was like screw it I'm just going to go with the iPad Air to because I mean hands down that's probably my favorite device that Apple has released this year but I use my six Reg regularly I much prefer the size but the battery life of the 6 plus I'm on the edge I don't really want to take two phones when we travel this winter and I really think I'm going to take the six plus just because of the battery life it's just it's insane I will say that um being a Disney World the past couple days at when we hit 6 PM or so I was really being like I wish I had an iPhone 6 Plus right now because my phone was at you know 20 or 30% and there's no battery cases for the six right now until it exists yeah I was like oh man when CES hits next next January I'm going be really unhappy to have only a six I feel like you know the true test for me was my girlfriend is I have never seen anyone be more murderous on batteries than she is just because she's a realtor and she's like phone call actual phone calls eat up more battery than anything she would charge her 5S a minimum of two times by 4 p.m. I mean she just would be on the phone so often and the first she had her six plus she came home so excited she was like I have 40% left on my phone I mean she can go a whole day without having to charge that phone so right there I was like okay the battery life is kind of a big deal so I did Singleton and I did the iPad event without having to worry about battery and that's just never never been the thing before I can't do it with my six my six does pretty much get me through a whole day most of the time I've never had a problem making it past like 5 or 6 p.m. but sometimes I'm down to 20 30% where I feel like if we're going out for the evening I have to charge my phone first where Heather doesn't have that problem and like Ren said the camera like the optical image stabilization is only only really helps you in very specific circumstances and to a very specific for a very specific thing your noise will be slightly less noisy which is a sales thing for a lot of people you really have to put the pictures I did a comparison and I mean if I didn't have the pictures side by side I would have been you're perfectly happy with either and honestly with extensibility and all of the photo extensions now I mean you can lighten a picture in the photos app in a matter of seconds I I haven't gotten anything off my iPhone 6 even in low light that I wasn't happy with the six is a little bit brighter or the six plus but not much the other thing that like there's a promise of of tiny ipad-like functionality because you have the split view controller and Landscape but very few apps take advantage of that and because Apple doesn't let you Target only specific iPhones we're not seeing like the paper app come down or pixel Mater come down to the phone anyway so to me it really is if you want like if you want a big screen if you want a 1080p screen because you want to watch a ton of videos play a ton of games I used to travel with an iPad Mini I don't anymore because the iPhone 6 Plus is big enough for that um I think it really comes down to whether you want a phone or you want something bigger than like more than just a phone um moving on to iPads Ally you said the iPad Air to was your favorite device this year why is that it is um I was really really rooting for an iPad Mini 3 that was the same as the iPad Air 2 I figured you know Apple just screwed up my whole cycle I wanted to do an iPad a large one and then a small one the next year and just keep up with that and it just wasn't it wasn't where it needed to be for the iPad Mini this year but the iPad Air 2 um I can notice a difference weightwise even over the original iPad Air um Touch ID I just I found myself using the iPad a lot more since the original iPad Air came out and since I much prefer the the smaller form factor of the six the iPad Air 2 is still something I like to travel with and have on me for movies and stuff on planes and I don't know I I don't I don't think I would like to watch movies on the iPhone 6 Plus and that's typically what I do when we're traveling and reading books and I can't read on the iPhone I don't know if bad eyes or I don't know I like I like the larger screen of the iPad I love the iPad Air to as well you can get an iPad original iPad for 100 bucks cheaper now and I understand why some people think that's a great value I think the screen is so much better and the ability to have Touch ID and Apple pay um it's it's really like the older ones and same with the iPad Mini the older ones are being discounted heavily it's not that the new ones are expensive but Ren or let me ask Peter first because you work in retail how are you recommending the different iPads to people right now well the iPad mini versus the I the iPad Air you know 2 the iPad Air iPad Mini 3 iPad air to um I think a lot of it comes down to um the preference of the user you know for a lot of my customers because where I live there are a lot of retirees and older people uh it comes down to a matter of both mobility and um and uh how good their eyes are so you know they they may be interested in the smaller iPad but when they actually start using it they realize that it's going to be a little bit more of a challenge to actually interact on the screen and it's going to be a little bit more of a challenge to to see stuff on the screen even using accessibility features even using tap to zoom and stuff like that um or pinch to zoom you know that the it it it isn't the same it isn't the same user experience so for many of them the iPad Air form factor Remains the best option um uh obviously your mileage may vary you know some people like to have the the smaller size it can fit into a purse much more easily it can fit into a small bag much more easily um so there are important considerations for for for carrying it around as well and ren I uh I don't know about you but I still I I can't recommend the original iPad Mini for the same reasons I can't recommend the iPhone 5c no I've stopped I've stopped using my original iPad Mini it makes me so sad because I love that form factor I cannot wait until all the stuff that's the iPad Air 2 shows up the iPad mini but until then I've switched to my iPad Air 2 full-time I mean it it's lighter it's uh it's light enough that it doesn't feel like a 10-inch iPad and the screen's still too big for me but overall it's uh it's quite nice and yeah the iPad Mini is just too slow too old doesn't support the right amount of it's good for schools and Enterprise if you're buying hundreds and thousands of them maybe but I feel like it's not for humans anymore yeah my I I purchased my mom and iPad Mini I think last Christmas and she loves it because she can put it in her purse and take it everywhere she loves to read when she's waiting for stuff so I stuff like that and for casual um I definitely probably recommend the original iPad Mini anymore but uh the iPad Mini the new one or the one with r a display the first gener Apple still has the first generation with rtin a display don't they iPad Mini 2 it's been Rec christened yes yes so that I mean depending on budget and if that's what you can afford it's it's a decent tablet I think so I would say and let me know if anyone disagrees with this that the iPad mini is still for people who prefer portability um and travel and want to have something that they can easily keep with them and the iPad is more for people who want something around the house or around the school or around work who has the larger screen and the larger interface and with the iPad Air 2 specifically that wamp in huge Apple a8x processor which Peter we learned it has a custom GPU now as well not just a custom CPU indeed yes so uh you know games will be gamier than ever I probably wouldn't recommend an iPad Mini to anyone that has an iPhone 6 Plus either that's true I honestly would an an iPad Mini to anyone until next year uh yeah specific I me think the iPad Mini what is it the mini 2 mini3 yeah3 iPad Mini 3 um is a okay device but the performance gains are so much greater than the iPad Air 2 that if you have to have the latest and greatest get the air2 if you can wait a year wait a year yeah absolutely agreed we're take a quick break so I can tell you about fracture fracture is a company that prints photos directly onto glass which has been described as being like hanging your iPad on the wall colors pop like you won't believe and it even comes on a solid backing that's ready to mount right out of the package all you have to do is stick the screw in the wall and hang it they even throw in a screw which is very considerate it's all really affordable too with prices starting at $15 for their small square size and they make F fantastic gifts for family and friends because they're the perfect way to celebrate a shared memory with someone that is also unique and modern gift as well each fracture is hand assembled in check for quality by their small team in Gainesville Florida if you needed another reason to buy one besides them being our sponsor you can get 15% off with the promo code imor show just go to fracture me.com and check it out now fracture you you might have heard of them before and what's really cool is just like I said it it looks like the the image is inside the glass just like looking at your iPhone just like looking at your iPad just like looking at the new retina iMac it's it's a very different feeling and what's really cool is that we're used to seeing photos on glass now we're not used to seeing them printed as much anymore or being on paper or being pigment on some sort of surface we're used to them glowing at us from inside of glass so what fracture does is make it somewhere in between a traditional picture and a frame and something that we're used to from all of our Apple devices now and it creates I don't want to say more realistic because that's a really relative thing but it creates a much more familiar and you know almost more futuristic sort of a look and because it's put right into the glass it really feels custom it really feels like someone took the time and effort to get you something specific it's not just uh you know bring your own photo frame it is a specific object a craft made for that image for that person and that the intent behind that the you know they say that it's it's it's not the gift it's the intent that counts or the thought that counts but in this case it really is the intent the thought it's you're making something special for somebody and Fracture does all the hard work it just it makes them uh look fantastic I know Marco armont said that he gets every icon he makes for all his apps put on a fracture and puts on and put on his wall I'm thinking of getting a bunch of the I the pictures that we take at imore because we take a lot of really what I think is really good photography and I'd love to be able to take some of the current devices the best of the best shots of the current devices and just have them you know maybe instead of some of this stuff behind me have those behind me maybe not like an Apple Store per se but I think photography and showing our world and and having it like that around us is really really cool so I want to thank fracture uh once again for supporting their show and just say you know you can go to fracture fracture me and sorry fracture.me check it out online use the code imor show you get 15% off that's fracture.me thanks fracture all right so moving on to the max which is actually super interesting this year it's Peter it's a Renaissance of the Mac um about about Bloody time just to quote Georgia uh starting with the Mac Mini yes we lost quadcore you know there a couple things that a couple people are upset about but I think it's safe to say that the lower price and with with the newer chipsets you can get a Mac Mini for almost anyone now yeah you really can you know it that we can talk about the relative merits of this generation of Mac Mini compared to some of the other uh ones that have come out of over the past few years until we're blew in the face but I I think for most people um they're going to see a a distinct Improvement um uh for the 2014 Mac Mini compared to the 2012 model single uh single core performance is unquestionably better and that's what a lot of people depend on because they they don't use apps that are uh designed to hammer multicore architectures nearly as much or if they do they're probably not even considering a Mac Mini they're using a a more uh rugged uh multicore machine like I feel like handbreak would be the hardest thing to hit a Mac Mini I'm sorry handbreak is probably one of the hardest things to hit a to hit a Mac Mini yeah I would agree with that you know so the fact that it's it's it's dual core as opposed to um with available with a quad core processor as it was in 2012 is you know a little bit of a detriment for those folks or for people who are planning on running the Mac Mini as a server um but for just about everybody else I think it's it's a solid option napples rebooted the price back to where was in 2005 when the Mac Mini first uh was introduced so it's $4.99 for the entry level model the entry level model is roughly on parody with the um entry-level model for the iMac now it's a 1.4 gahz processor it's a Haswell processor just like it is on the MacBook Air as well uh but that's connected to a 500 gigabyte regular hard disk drive so um relative performance compared to a MacBook Air is going to be a little bit slower because it isn't hitting solid state as uh it does on the the MacBook Air but you can get an SSD for it uh or or if you the best of all worlds um you pay $699 for the mid-range model that's $100 less than the the faster processor twice the amount of storage capacity and twice the amount of ram as well you go from four gigs to eight so um and then there's a high-end model as well if you want to pull out all the stops I had a chance to play with that one uh when Apple lent one to us for a little bit and that is a very very nice machine at a th000 bucks it's questionable as to whether or not you're better off doing that or you know a MacBook Air or um uh or something else but it's uh it's it's it's a good little machine that uh offers a lot of performance a lot of bang for the buck I would recommend it to anyone who has the keyboard and mouse and really just wants to slot in a Mac instead of getting a new PC or someone who wants a home theater PC or someone who wants an you know something that runs OS 10 as a server that they can put in a closet somewhere I think either the mid the mid-range or the high-end will serve that function very well and obviously the high-end will give you a little bit more bang um the low-end model is perfectly suitable if your main requirements are for a machine that can keep you on the internet um have you loading web pages and and looking at uh at emails maybe you're running the occas occasional casual game in a browser or um even using productivity apps including a lot of apps that are available for download from the MACC App Store uh but anything more than that you're going to want to probably spend another couple hundred bucks and get something a little bit faster and a little bit more capable so Ren you you're on the latest Haswell MacBook Air where where are they doing this year where are they going um well I think that the update was a very nice little speed bump uh I I'll admit I got this because my air was four years old and I needed something uh to travel with especially because of continuity and my my old Air just wouldn't support it but I kind of plan on getting rid of this sky and and upgrading to a retina on MacBook Air as soon as it pops its its lovely head out the door uh so to be perfectly honest if you have an if you have a laptop a Macbook an air that you that you like that supports continuity which is I think 2012 or is that right yep yeah if you have 2012 or later um and you want to hold out for the screen then hold out until probably next year um if you're on a pre continuity Mac the low-end Mac air is pretty pretty inexpensive at this point you know it starts at $88.99 and I did I got myself a SSD upgrade just because I store a lot of things while on the go apps and the like uh but you can even work with the base model and and especially like there are some sites that are giving you know 50 bucks 100 bucks off of the base model it's pretty pretty decent deals so you're looking at a a very cheap very portable still super Speedy laptop that supports all the major OS 10 us70 features which is which is pretty Rad but if you're if you're really looking for the uh if you're looking for the screen and um and hoping the battery life will keep up with said screen you can wait another year now you do something that I am incapable of doing you and Jim darle can both and I think Jason sell too can all survive on that 11inch screen I love the 11inch screen you know what all right so here's the thing I grew up on a Powerbook Duo um that was my that was my laptop in high school um before I got an iBook so I love the the little portable computer and when um I never got a 12-in MacBook Pro because it just didn't work for my workflow at the time uh but as soon as I moved away from filmmaking and back to writing I I got the 11inch air and then went whole hog and just I have a huge screens workflow and external monitors screens and external monitors are the ways I survive yeah you have an 11 inch Like I Do allly Right 13 13 sorry uh yeah you have the 13 in like I do yeah and I you know I went to the 13 Haswell when it came out from a 15in MacBook Pro and I really miss the screen size I think it's just coming from a 27in iMac which is what I do most of my work on to the 13inch I was like oh it's so small I can't do things but I learned how to use spaces efficiently and you know I just I would love to be able to use the 11 inch but I just think I have bad eyes I just feel like I try to do too much stuff at once too and I I don't know I I don't like photoshop on small screens and when I'm forced to use it makes rage it's like the iPads where if you really want maximum portability you go for the 11 in and if you want screen real estate you go for the 13in but they're both good machines to Ren's point if you if you want retina and you can wait wait till next year yeah but but they're really good solid machines that being said I finally switched I I switched to a 13-inch MacBook Pro because I'm doing a lot of video and especially when I travel if I go to an event or something I need to Crunch a lot of video and the air is just not rendering as fast fast as the MacBook Pro is and that's you know that's proving to be more important to me so I as we speak I am migration assistan assistant toning something you need more better English words um it is migrating to a 13-inch MacBook Pro and I I like the MacBook Pros the only thing about them Peter that makes me sad is that unless you get the highest in highest n 15 inch you're not getting discret Graphics anymore well that really depends on uh whether you're looking for the cash of having discret Graphics or how you're actually measuring performance I'm all about the cache Peter there we go so you know if you're a spec whor then sure I guess it's important but you know for uh for for a lot of people they'll see the same or better performance out of uh the the the integrated Graphics that they will out of the discret graphics that were in the previous generations uh um uh the previous generation model so uh you know it really depends on on what you're doing specifically having said that I'm still using a 2012 model um that that's got discrete graphics so I've got no complaints it can still run just about any app that I throw at it um but you know just because it's got discret graphics doesn't necessarily mean that it's better or um uh better equipped than uh the newer machines ARA Peter because you made an interesting point some people just they've been taught that they have that they that discrete graphics is better and it may not be true anymore but I don't know how often we reset our beliefs on those things well I think that that's very true and I think that that's the problem and for a long time in fairness to people who think that discret Graphics sucked um but has well change things you know uh I Intel uh made a lot of uh core architectural improvements to uh to boost um the performance of integrated Graphics chips um and uh um they they continue to do that yeah you've got Iris and Iris Pro um and are you know much much better than what we've seen you know with the HD 4000 or HD 5000 Graphics or you know the even older slower integrated Graphics that were available before see I used to have I was I'm the opposite of Ren I used to have a 17inch MacBook Pro at my old job uh because I was doing tons of graphic design mostly um in design and just having a ton of screen real estate it was just meant everything to me because I could have like two pages side by side and just so many pixels and then when I went to the retina MacBook Pro it you lose real estate over the high density option of the previous MacBook Pro but I could put it into the scaled mode uh and still get you know ridiculous amounts of pixels so it's going to be interesting to see I think with the 13inch I'm going to put it into scaled mode too but I I go back to this all over again you have the portability and then you have screen real estate and those those they seem to be the theme of the choices we're facing this year and you know Rene it's funny my my um track with laptops is not uh en entirely dissimilar I started well I started way back in the day with other ones but uh for for a number of years when I was at macor I used a 17-inch MacBook Pro that I was very very fond of and that I still have Sitting on a shelf someplace even though it's no longer operational and I went from that to a 13-inch MacBook and then from that to an 11-inch MacBook Air um so I sort of downsized continually um and you know all the things that that that Ren has said about the MacBook Air the 11-inch model are things that rang true with me as well it was trivial to hook up an external display and get it to work when I needed it to but I very rarely needed it to and I adapted to the smaller size very quickly now I use a 15-inch MacBook Pro uh retina MacBook Pro and I don't miss the extra real estate that I used to have on the 17-inch MacBook Air because the screen resolution is higher um the scaled resolution is higher and the native resolution is of course much higher but even the scaled resolution is uh is higher than what I experienced with my MacBook Pro my 17inch so although it takes a little bit for my eyes to adjust to um the the smaller size of the screen um I still think it's an eminently usable um resolution and a very capable machine so Ren on the flip side you have a 21.5 in it's so weird the 21.5 inch iMac is the only one that gets a 0.5 I think in Apple's nomenclature everything else rounded well it has to do I think with uh the diagonals of the screen uh my 21.5 in iMac I like I really want the retina iMac but I can't justify buying a new computer uh that wasn't a laptop for but for for my current needs it's fine it supports continuity it's fast it's Speedy I don't have an SSD in it yet but I think that might be an upgrade that I'm going to make in the new year uh I think it's a it's a really solid machine but if you have the cash the retina iMac is gorgeous well you said you made a good point a while ago that the 21.5 in kind of fits in the nook space that you had for it yeah I mean that's the other thing right is that I live in a studio and um as much as I want the 27inch retina computer uh my desk isn't that big and I really need something that's going to fit in my room without me having to buy the vessa compatible model which of course you know with a new IMAX you have to choose at start whether you want one with the base or you want one that you come out to the wall and given that I rent it's very hard for me to justify oh yeah I'm going to buy something that mounts into my wall and that may or may not tear out my drywall or I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars on a v compatible arm that I can do attach to a bookshelf like there are there are considerations to be made and Ally you have the 27in standard display iMac I do um I have the I bought the 27 in whatever the Top Model was last year when it was the first uh Slimline one that they came out with with where the 21.5 in you can't upgrade the RAM and everyone was in a big uproar about that but the 27 in you can so I have that model I really want the retina model but I can't justify it either I think my first retina computer will be I held off on my laptop I almost bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro this year but I figured I'd wait if I can I'm I've adjusted to the 13inch and I kind of don't want to give up the battery life and just the portability of the air so if I could have a 13in retina MacBook Air even I guess maybe a 12 in was what they were saying I don't know what's going on with that but I figured I'd hold off and wait and that will probably be my first re in a computer my iMac has lots of life in it even the I the 27 inch uh standard iMac is still I don't have that computer but I have the 27in LED display that I was using with my laptop and that's still a gorgeous dis greats panel and it's so big for photos and everything I had a 27inch iMac the the thicker version from I think maybe 2009 before I got this machine and there's a huge difference in display quality because it's a laminated panel it's kind of the difference between the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2 I see a huge difference because you're negating that space between the glass and the uh the display so I it's a gorgeous display um I saw the retina display on the IMAX in an Apple Store a couple weeks ago for the first time and it kind of did make me made me cry a little inside it's it's gorgeous but I just can't justify it it's like and we're going to get to this in a second but it's like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari right now where you're you're buying it because you're buying it I mean there's very there's very few other reasons you're just you're saying I have the cash and I want it now I would really like if they would eventually release just a 5k Cinema display yes and I would happily just toss that right next to my current 27inch iMac and then I would have dual displays and but you need something so that's the problem cuz Dell just released their 27in 5K display and it requires two cables and it looks like os10 can't drive it properly and it'll be it'll be to see how PCS do because those two cables mean each side is being rendered separately and then it tears down the middle sometimes so if Apple does release a 5k display my guess is and Peter can correct me if I'm wrong they're going to wait till Skylight comes out when they can use Thunderbolt 3 and you'll need a Mac that has Thunderbolt 3 to drive it wanted that point I might as well just buy a 5k Mac or a retina MacBook Air with a ferbow 3 on it I mean back in the day Apple did have a 30-inch dual link uh DVI display but um I I don't think that apple is going to backslide into into that sort of uh um that sort of configuration again because um you know even on a Mac with Thunderbolt 2 ports as few of them as there are uh you'd have to use uh you know two separate channels in order to to drive all those pixels so yeah my expectation is that we're going to wait until Sky Lake and Thunderbolt 3 before um we uh we we see something like that however you know that's less than a year away so um you know by this time uh next year uh we should be looking at new machines that have that capability so I have neither the self-control nor the good judgment of Serenity or Aly and I immediately ordered the Veta iMac as soon as as soon as I saw it I had to have it I was Covetous of it and really really pleased with it the screen looks like a an iPad Air 2 screen it's not as high down it's 218 versus 264 you know DPI PPI sorry but you're farther away so it still looks like a retina display it's still super close laminated to the surface looks absolutely fantastic but it it really is something for I think you know a photographer a videographer someone a designer someone who will take advantage of those pixels I'm not that important yet no just and the other thing that's interesting though is that the Dell uh 27in 5K display costs as much as the iMac so if you if you are a Mac afficianado do yourself a favor and take the free computer and just get apple yeah right I would really like apple to release some kind of external display I know it probably won't happen I just be interested to be able to see if you could watch displays from other manufacturers and see you know I kind of want to keep an eye on displays for a while and see if the one is gorgeous like the gamut is fantastic I'm going to hold out hope that I can just eventually hook a display it'll come it'll come in time in time uh so Peter that brings me squarely like I I was talking about Lamborghinis and Ferraris but now I want to talk about the Bugatti Veyron of computers which is the Mac Pro that is no big changes to that this year so that the conventional wisdom for that is still if you need that many cores you'll know it yeah no no changes at all since the machine debuted in December of 2013 um so uh you know if if you we're looking for an excuse to buy a Mac Pro um unfortunately Apple hasn't given you one to uh uh a new one to consider anyway but yeah you know the Mac Pro is a parallel processing monster it is has more cores or it can be configured with more cores than any other Mac in the lineup uh it uses a xon processor and uh error correcting uh memory um so it's very heavy duty plus it's got these two gorgeous um gpus Graphics processing units from AMD that are specifically designed as workstation class uh gpus as opposed to the sort of uh home slash gamer parts that you find in other Macs um what that means is that if you're doing work in opencl if you're doing Gene sequencing or Mo physics modeling or if you are uh doing uh video uh production and you're doing sophisticated special effects effect and color correction and other stuff you're going to see a lot of benefit there uh with a very well-configured Mac Pro that you're not going to see out of any other Mac configuration not even the retina iMac but as as you alluded to Renee if you're kind of scratching your head going do I need that much horsepower you've pretty much answered your own question and chances are you don't you know if you have to ask the price you probably can't afford it uh in the same time if if what I'm talking about is just going over your head chances are a Mac Pro is a lot more muscle than you need or is the wrong kind of muscle more than anything um you know some people mistakenly think that well if I drop 3,000 on a Mac Pro I'm going to get a qualitatively um quantitatively better machine uh than any other Mac I can get and that's not necessarily true you know initial benchmarks for example for the model that you got of the Mac the uh Reda iMac show that it actually outperforms that quad core uh base model Mac Pro in some respects so single threaded tasks yeah exactly so um you know it's it's something that you have to be careful with but the Mac Pro is also the most expandable Mac it's got six Thunderbolt two ports on the back of it um it's got four USB 3.0 ports on it it's also got HDMI 1.4 you can drive three 4K displays which you can't do with any other Mac in the product line and it's all solid state there isn't a hard drive inside of it it's SSD um it's it's also got expandable memory so there there's a lot to recommend it uh but if if you don't know if you're going to need it chances are you probably really don't if you need a Lamborghini for your morning commute you probably know you need a Lamborghini for your morning commute and if you need a Lamborghini for your morning commute maybe you need to reassess your morning commute I'm on the autobond for half the drive Peter I mean so St while you were away we sort of we debated whether or not to include iPods on the Apple gift guide this year and we ended up not including them cuz the sales had you know fallen off the s and they' canceled the classic and they hadn't updated them this year and I was a little sad about that frankly but I think it's sort of time to move like the watch is coming up the iPhones are cheaper than ever the I think it's time to move on you know the only thing the only thing iPod related that I would still recommend is a little Shuffle if you really like um something light and easy like so I I use the shuffle when I'm warming up for games and I actually brought it down to Florida this weekend um because I was doing quick warm-ups and I didn't want to carry my phone around and have it you know risk getting getting no seriously so I have like a pair of $20 headphones and uh and my little tiny I have a little blue iPod Shuffle uh with controls not like this thinny the skinny one the latest version iPod Shuffle and that's really useful for me but that's a I think that's a very specific use case if you're an athlete or if you're someone who runs or want something very very lightweight that can store a preset amount of music then it's then it's potenti potentially a good gift otherwise also it's a fun stocking stuffer I have debated the Nano or the shuffle just for the gym because I hate armb bands like when I'm working I hate them so I've never found one that I like Amazon Aly yeah I just I would prefer like I've deated like a little Shuffle just to be able to clip it on to you know my shirt or anything you know and not have to deal with armbands or my phone or anything like that so yeah I could see that being very valid that's probably yeah right the only iPod really worth recommending I think I feel like the touches were like kind of a cheap entry into developing iOS apps and now the iPad Mini is kind of I mean if you just want a really cheap way to develop for iOS you could buy an iPhone 5c you can buy an iPad Mini it just doesn't seem like there's really that many reasons to recommend the current model anymore you know and the the store that I work at um the people who buy shuffles and Nanos the most most frequently are athletes you know people who don't want to be encumbered with a larger device like a phone or like you know in Ren's case or afraid that they're going to break their phone uh because of whatever they're doing um those those are definitely the the the the big use cases but I still think that there's a case to be made for the iPod Touch at least for kids you know if you've got let's say an iPhone 5 that um you're turning into a hand-me-down because you've upgraded to a 5S or you know a six or six plus uh maybe um you know deactivating the five as a phone and just handing it off to your kid as an iPod Touch will be enough that that'll be enough for them I know that in past Generations that's been enough for my kids you know when they've wanted iPod Touches I've taken my old you know three my old iPhone 3GS and uh stuff like that and uh repurposed it uh for them to to use as iPod Touches but um uh the iPod Touch is still a very viable machine um you know can run the latest iOS updates it can run most of the latest software that hasn't been oped my only it's my only drawback the A5 and it's not 128 gigabytes which Peter would love yeah no absolutely I think that those are good things but when I sell them to people those are the people who I'm selling them to people who want um an iOS device for their kids or for a relative who doesn't want to be saddled with um a monthly payment plan uh for a phone or uh doesn't want all the the functionality of phone having said that it is very long in the tooth and it is overdue for an update and I'm hoping that Apple will uh finally get around to bumping up the i iPod Touch to um something iPhone 6ish uh sometime in 2015 but I'm not holding my breath I'm GNA Echo Ren's advice from earlier with the iPad with the U MacBook Air and say that if you can wait till if you can wait till next year do so because you'll have the watch to choose from and maybe there'll be more yep we take a quick break so I can tell you about grammar if you have ever been frustrated by the Instagram app on on the iPhone uh in non-existent on the iPad then grammar is for you uh grammar was written because people were unhappy with the iOS Instagram app they wanted something better they wanted something that worked the way they thought that it should work so uh you they went through made what's the best way to say this they fixed the things that were wrong with Instagram I'll just say it the best way to say it is the plainest way to say it with grammar you get multiple accounts and you can switch between them it will you know for example we have an imore Instagram account that I almost never use because I have to log out of Instagram log back in and it's a pain uh it's it's they make it hard to do they make it uncomfortable to do maybe that's for a reason but it's not for the reasons that I like so this just multiple accounts you can switch between them all you can decide what feeds you want to see what feeds you want to hide you can use Touch ID to lock your account you know you've always said you give someone your phone they can start going through all your stuff maybe there's stuff in Instagram you do not want them to see it is your business you know it doesn't even have to be anything that you know someone would have a problem with it could just be your stuff mine and I don't want to share it you can lock it with touch IDs which is just phenomenal gives you a list of hashtags trending that are personalized to you you can like people sorry like images follow people you get all the actions you're used to an Instagram just better and more easily accessible you you have a configurable grid view you can double tap images to show them full screen because you know that's what iOS is supposed to do you double tap it and it zooms now you're trying to double tap and it favorites and it's awkward and uh yeah no this double Taps to show the image full screen and from there you can zoom into it swipe around yeah you can do what you want to do when you're on an image page you can swipe left to see all the images from that person and from anywhere you can quickly swipe right uh then left to show everything else without losing your current spot in navigation you know Instagram is terrible terrible at saving state so if all this sounds good to you and if you're an Instagram user I bet it sounded good to you instantly you just like where where can I get it stop talking already Renee and tell me where I can get this app well you can get it from grammar.com that's g r m oy.com or you can just search the app store for grammar and you can get your Gram on I want to thank you grammar for supporting the show so uh now that all the Apple stuff is out of the way we can get to the secret fun stuff um Ally I'm going to start with you because you're the most immediate person on the left uh thanks to Google Hangouts shuffling order what are a few of your favorite you know non-apple non necessarily techie things for this year I I had to really kind of dig for non techie stuff um one of my favorite things that we picked up this year was a water pick um I don't really know how I didn't get one sooner cuz flossing your teeth sucks and those things are like so much better and take half the time um we picked one up a couple months ago and they're awesome so um yeah I don't there's really nothing to say except they're awesome I didn't mean like I mean like the non-apple device thing um what else Sonos was probably my big one for the year um you and Kevin are responsible for that but um it's awesome I love Sonos I don't know how I worked from home without that before um it's just awesome that we can you know divide things up throughout the house if one person's in the living room and one person's in the bedroom um I can like if I want to know what's going on during a football game I can you know be in the office working but have the audio from the TV playing in here so um what else did I have on my list like you had a liquefier or a blender or something I did I had um and anyone who like is not kitchen Al literate will probably laugh at me but I had no idea what an immersion blender was until this fall they're amazing we went over to U one of my really good friends house and we helped her make homemade applesauce like just out of boredom one day this fall and she pulled this thing out after we finished like cutting apples and putting everything in the pot and I was like in awe I she's like have you never seen one of these before I'm like what is it and so um that's yeah amazing it's like a magic wand but for food well pretty much for food for applesauce for Soups for smoothies like 20 seconds my favorite it's one I I got that for Christmas last year and it is one of my favorite kitchen gadgets ever yeah yeah they're pretty awesome and I did not even know what one was but um and you also had the Netflix and the Rio I think yeah I've went back and forth with streaming services um Rio is my favorite I just they have a really well put together app package in general across the mac and iPhone iPad um it's just always suited my needs I just I feel like it's really reliable I've had many times where and I've had this happen with Spotify in a couple like beats especially I would sync stuff for offline playback and it would say that it was there and it was eating my storage but then it would never play and the only service I found that like doesn't have offline playback issues sporadically is Rio I've never had issues with their service um and it syncs everything offline between all of your devices so you don't have to do it on an individual basis um my favorite thing I think I bought Tech wise this year was my Bose headphones um I really really wanted a pair of noise cancelling headphones and I don't like overthe headphones um I just feel like they're I like to be able to shove headphones in my pocket or my coat or something and just walk out the door and I feel like I can't do that there we go see those are ridiculous yeah I don't mind them at a desk but like if I were traveling I just want something I can throw on a bag with my iPad and um I think Bose's only rates them at like five hours of noise cancelling at a time I get way more than that um I feel like I go weeks without charging them and I'm at Starbucks for sometimes hours at a time or another Cafe um doing this Rene now looks like the most ridiculous Princess Leia ever my only hope I don't get it uh Peter you you had I think the most surprising gadget on the list for me you had a a sash muffin with egg maker which looked brilliant yes indeed so Hamilton M Hamilton Beach makes all sorts of kitchen gadgets but this one has got to be my favorite this is a breakfast sandwich maker and breakfast sandwiches and I go way back I think the Egg McMuffin pretty much the perfect food and if McDonald's Had The Egg McMuffin available 247 I would order it in the middle of the day and in the middle of the night because it's it's it's an awesome thing um so for 24 bucks you get this single purpose kitchen gadget and I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of single-purpose kitchen gadgets but I will give this one a pass because breakfast is of course the most important meal of the day and the way that this thing works is that it's it's uh uh stacked and it's got a separate little container uh where you um well first of all you put in your breakfast uh uh your breakfast bread so you can put in a bagel you can put in an English muffin you could put in uh round waffle maybe you might have to trim the edges a little bit or a pancake you know so you can make any kind of breakfast sandwich you want and then you put in your meat um if you want to have meat in it like Canadian bacon or a sausage patty P bacon nothing Canadian about it that's right um and uh a slice of cheese if you want or any other toppings and then there's this little containment vessel on top of that that uh you crack an egg into and then you put your top piece of uh of of breakfast bread in there and then you just assemble the whole thing and uh and cook it for five minutes uh as soon as the green light hits you can take it apart you slide a little trapo to make the egg collapse onto the rest of the thing and uh out comes a breakfast sandwich and all the parts that are in between the cooking services are removable and can pop in a dish washer very easily um some some of our colleagues at other Mobile Nation sites have these uh Renee and they swear by them yeah Adam's ice and I just think it's the coolest uh the coolest little thing for 24 bucks so sounds like a breakfast Miracle quite frankly it really is it's a it's a it's a it's a breakfast Miracle it's the Hamilton Beach breakfast sandwich maker but else was on your list Peter uh let's see well another kitchen gadget actually you know I I drink a lot of tea um because I have haven't been able to drink coffee since August because of the surgery that I had a few weeks ago um and I've come to find out the different teas if you know if you drink a white tea or if you drink a green tea or if you drink a black tea different tea steep at different temperatures um to extract the most flavor but trying to get your water at a specific temperature is kind of a pain in the ass you can sit there with a kitchen thermometer and you know kind of fake it or over boil your water and then wait for it to cool down but it seems seems like a long line for a short ride when all you want is a cup of tea uh so the queas andart cpk1 17 is the answer to this and I first became familiar to with this uh last year um Renee when I met you and the rest of the mobile Nations uh team in New York you guys had one of these in our hotel suite uh where we did much of our filming and uh the CPK 17 uh is this cool little Gadget that has uh from que andart has uh temperature settings right on the handle and a uh a back lit um uh water window showing you how much water it can hold it can hold up to 1.7 lers so it can hold plenty um and you can set it to a full boil if you want to otherwise if you're cooking I mean if you're if you're making white tea or if you're making uh green tea or whatever there are different settings for it a very handy little little Gadget it costs 80 bucks pretty soon'll be able to control that with our iPhones you guys will probably yell at me I'm like the laziest team maker ever we have a curig for coffee and I sure do just put water in a cup with no K cup in there oh I used to I used to do that all the time I used to do that all the time sometimes I'm not lazy but most of the times I if I'm just making tea and I don't really care I just yeah I use the curing just I can't bring myself to get a curing because to me it feels like paying for printer cartridg is just to drink coffee yeah you really are especially now that the uh the cartridges are DRM no seriously L they are and the new ones they're DRM um it's crazy and then the other another thing I've got on my list are Sony's md10 R RBT uh wireless bluetooth headphones I think that they offer much better bang for the buck than beats do I'm not a big beats fan even though Apple owns them now um and I unlike Ally do prefer to have uh a pair of Cups over my ears these are mine um I don't I don't always wear them on the show um but um I do uh infinitely prefer the sound and the Comfort level um that a nice big pair of Cups uh offers compared to uh inear uh earbuds like these so you can pick them up for about 200 um and uh they work very well and the passive mode uh lets you continue using the headphones with a wire even after the uh the batteries run out batteries last for about 17 hours at a stretch um but uh if you happen to be in the middle of a flight or something and your batter is cut out you just plug in the wire and you're good to go until you can get some new batteries in there awesome how about you Ren what's on your list this year oh God I have a bunch of different things um I actually for iPhone users have a bunch of sort of case and uh and cool little Gadget related uh recommendations you had like a case of the month club or something yeah so um actually of all things this is the only thing I've ever bought thanks to a Facebook ad which seems odd I was like when I first saw this I'm like this is kind of strange there this place called casetify um where they offer these custommade cases that basically artists can design and um sell using this sort of it's a it's a uh just a plastic B covering that covers the corners of your phone but on the back had are all sorts of custom designs that local artists and and people who have uh who have joined the site can build and you can join a um a monthly Club so that you pay 30 bucks for your first case and then every month after that you pay $10 to get a new back plate just at random of a of a design um and you get little uh you get little tokens that you can redeem for like oh someone an artist I like came out with this design um and it it works primarily because the cases are pretty nice but the designs are fabulous and they're clear which um for me you know I have the gold iPhone and I'm like well it seems silly like my current my current uh Apple leather case is very nice but completely covers up the fact that I that I have a gold iPhone whereas the case toy cases um are largely some of them are are fully fully painted but some of them are clear and have like really cool designs that allow the the b the original backing to show through so I've only gotten one of them so far um but I really like the one that I have it has it has fancy stars um I think the um the subscription is currently still iPhone 55s but they're they're working on starting the it for the six but I thought that was really neat especially for people who want different you know multiple cases for their phone for design purposes not just not just for protection for fashion exactly well I mean there's it is a fashion accessory in some in some I don't wear my hair the same way every day R I don't want to have my iPhone in the same case every day oh no um the other thing let's see I had a couple I had a couple apps um including transmit for iOS which I still think is amazing if you have to do any sort of um file transference or uploading to the web I was I was making Gifts of my Disneyland experience and sending them to friends and family by using an app called GIF Mill and then uploading to my web server via transmit because the gifts were too big for Tumblr or Twitter uh so like you know that that's an app that may not appeal to everybody but I think is really awesome um the pixel Mater Suite I think is a fantastic entrylevel option for people who are looking to do some photo editing whether that's just filters whether that's building these beautiful templates for books I think they're it's a really cool set of programs and because handoff is supported you can easily pass it between your IO your um iPad and your Mac which is really really awesome um I put on in the sort of in the camera vein I put on Photo JoJo has a thing called a pocket reflector which basically if for people who aren't in the know um a reflector is basically a j Giant white-sided and silver sided uh piece of fabric that you can hold up and bounce current light in the room onto somebody uh and photo JoJo has I think it's like $20 or something uh where it's a pocket reflector that's about this big but it folds up into about something this big so you can have it in your in your bag and go out and do a photo shoot and have a reflector instantly at your uh at your disposal and I I have one of those and I love it it's their website in general is just full of all kinds of devilry for photography I love I get their white balance lens caps I use those are so much easier than using cards oh for sure the the photo JoJo in general it's such a good stocking stuff replace for like photography friends I've bought so many like little under $20 gadgets that you bu like mugs that look like lenses and all kinds of fun stuff they're really cool and um I would be remiss not to recommend um Canon's 40mm pancake lens for people who want to you know Venture into uh single you know fixed frame photography I got my pancake last year when I went to Italy and it Remains the lens that I use most often on my on my camera um it's helped me not only learn how to shoot manually more uh more effectively but that that that lens produces such beautiful photos that and it's for only 200 bucks which is really really cheap for for that quality of lens and I think you Marco and Tiffany had me totally convinced to buy that lens you you definitely should it's amazing um let's see I I'll I'll quickly highlight three more things um I've been really obsessed with Goal Zero which is a a uh web company that focuses on solar powerered uh solar powered gadgets that also allow you to charge your electronics um and one of their one of their gadgets is a a thing called The Lighthouse 250 Lantern which is a 250 lumens um lantern that has a hand crank and USB ports then can also be charged using a an attached solar panel but I believe it's something like 60 70 bucks and um not only does it have a really bright really awesome light that you can take camping you can charge your phone while you're there you it has a hand crank so that if you really need you know emergency power you can do that um and it works with solar technology in general I I really like those guys I like the stuff that they're doing and I'm I'm really excited to like have a little bit of survivalist gear in my otherwise very non-s survivalist home um as long as there is the sun R yeah as long as our sun does not explode uh I will not be completely destitute in the zombie apocalypse exactly uh and lastly uh this is a bag that I've been testing pretty much all year uh for big long trips and I I love it so much um it's the Waterfield designs outbag duffel um which is basically I wish I had it in this room oh show it's a um it's a if andiana Jones built a beautiful leather canvas duffel bag with fun beehive colored uh paneling indoors it would look like this it's a duffel bag that's incredibly heavy duty but looks really nice it looks it looks as as expensive as it actually is if not more it has a couple of really uh nice compartments and the inside you can get it D dual zippered so that each side of the it's it's split in the middle and you have separate zippers for each side which allows you to compartmentalize like dirty clothes and clean clothes or in my case Derby gear and normal human clothes when I went to travel to Florida to to do roller derby this weekend um it's and it it's uh Airline comp Airline compatible it's carryon compatible so you can take it on TSA approved TSA approved yes exactly uh you can take it on an airplane uh and despite the fact that you can stuff it enor ly full of things it's just it's a very well-crafted bag I I think that in general Waterfield does really nice stuff with their bags they're on the pricey side but but totally worth it um what size do you have I have the large um the double one yeah the large double and those are TSA too like even the large ones are the large one is I think um 3/4 of an inch smaller than tsa's Max required guideline so you might you might not be able to bring it on in like of the super budget European airlines but um it's really it's really nice and the straps are nice too like that's one thing that I always hate about duffel bags if they don't have a a roll um option is like the straps can like eat into your your shoulder or they just don't feel good and they have a really nice long strap that connects to either end of the bag that distributes the weight but also the short straps are just are just big enough that you can carry them or you can put them over one shoulder and um wear it like a backpack and it works really well I think Ren just said that it won't fit in your skinny hipster plane I actually don't know I haven't been on enough European budget Airlines Ally you can go test that for me yeah we always fly American so I don't what what classifies America yeah well I'm thinking like the um oh not WestJet but you know what I'm talking about like the tiny little budget airplanes that fly like between Amsterdam and London or something oh yeah I think we do have one of those like mean yeah I think they do transfer us from like Amsterdam to London this winter so we'll see um but I'm pretty sure those like don't allow any carry on so yeah I don't know I always bring I have the same bag grenades the DSLR the incase pro pack and I've never had issues with that um I like it because I can it has a place for the tripod right on the side so you can just hook it right on there I do have a challenge for our listeners though if they can if anyone can recommend like a light weight small fold up tripod that doesn't suck yes I will have a prize because I can't find I've ordered uh many of them and they're all just you know I either feel they're too flumsy I wouldn't trust them or I would like something that I can just fold up like ideally and put in a smaller bag instead of having to tow it around like a huge tripod I want to bring allly have you tried the um have you tried the fold up tripod that photo JoJo was advertising CU I was looking at that but I had I don't think so I would like to order one before our trip to try because my current tripod I love it but it's heavier and I feel like when I put it on the side of that bag like anytime you're on public transit you're like smacking people with your tripod or you know it's just it's it's too big and it gets heavy and I would like something that's lightweight to carry around and I I want to have the option of having it but I hate carrying it around when I don't I regret it so right we'll ask Martin he'll know otherwise he'll no longer be Martin that'll be the stakes of this request um my list I didn't change too much from last year but I did consolidate quite a bit so uh for apps I recommended Final Cup Pro again because I think if you want to make the step up to doing a lot of fun video stuff it it might seem like it's not a big deal compared to iMovie and it is a little bit pricey but I I I learned to do three camera edits in about five minutes using that and to me that's miraculous so if you want to like if you want to make a little Christopher Nolan uh get get underway this holiday season that's the way to do it I also recommended Space Age which is a little bit cheaper than Final Cup Pro but almost as fun it's a great game from Matt Comey and nein mgan Serenity reviewed it already it's a terrific way to spend a few hours you know over the holidays for services Adobe Creative Cloud I didn't think I would like it I've been using Photoshop forever I've bought you know every second or third generation because it's pricey but for 10 bucks I think there's even a better sale going on right now you can get Photoshop and um uh Lightroom for $10 or less a month it's it's just ridiculous and yeah there's you know pixel Mater and and uh Acorn and a bunch of other great editors uh and you know Apple's going to make their photos app but if if you're trained on Photoshop you're trained on Photoshop and it's it's for some Industries it's still a standard so it's a great deal uh also Marvel unlimited if you've been enjoying the Marvel Cinematic Universe uh it's almost like Netflix for Comics you pay one price and you can read all the back catalog you can go read Walter Simonson's Thor Run Frank Miller's Daredevil run uh you know Ed Brew Captain America and all the stuff that's influencing all the movies that we watch today you can just go back and read all those comics and read as much as you want you can spend the entire holiday cooking turkey and reading comics it would be just brilliant I got hue light bulbs and Ally already mentioned Sonos I like it too but Hugh light bulbs let me watch Star Wars uh which Ally hasn't done yet but she will eventually let me watch Star Wars with like Tatooine Sunset I can watch the abyss in like deep blue sea I can just make the lights do anything and everything I want them to do it's it's it's it's just terrific uh I've got the same in incase DSLR Pro bag that Ally recommended Kevin mitchelluk has a fantastic tiny little backpack and I asked him what it was and he told me and it was like 500 bucks so I didn't buy it uh but you know if you want a big backpack that can fit all your stuff uh the Inc stuff is great I use that bag for so many things cuz you can pull out the dividers for camera lenses I mean I've used it to like throw Clos in like last minute you know I just like take the dividers and stick them up against the side and I mean you can use those compartments for literally anything I've never found like been in a situation where that bag didn't fit what I needed it to fit I filled it with Canadian Bagels to bring to my American friends I'm so happy right now yeah it's it's just tremendous uh for the last few years my family has been getting me these babies which are Global knives these are Japanese single piece stainless steel kniv I've tried German knives I'm not going to make any jokes about American knives but once you start using if you like to cook if you actually enjoy cooking if you think that it's the closest human beings can get to Alchemy uh then you know good Chef's knives are just amazing and all sorts of good knives I got the set originally on in Canada we have boxing day which is sort of analogous to Black Friday everything is on sale so I got you know a set of them really cheap and every year I've got the steak knives and I've I've got the filet knives and some other things and they're just super super super good quality uh once you start cutting with really good knives it's almost as if you know how to cook almost not quite but I can't it does make cooking feel a little bit uh more com more achievable and some people say yeah I have this eversharp serrated Dart no that's garbage you don't want no eversharp serrated nothing you want really good quality steel uh certain things are just you know good um this is the Arrow Press looks like nothing it's made by the guy who made those uh aobi frisbee things uh but it's just a simple whoops a simple press you fill it with delicious coffee you press down on it and it makes pretty much the best coffee I've had at home it's super cheap it's like 20 bucks you you know it's I see Peter nodding you can't have coffee now Peter so I feel bad recommending it but it's it's a fantastic coffee maker yeah no we've got one and it's awesome absolutely yeah it's a fantastic way to to take a cup of coffee and um what's nice about it is that uh there's very little waste um you know afterwards even the uh the filters are you know extremely extremely small uh but yeah if if you uh uh if you like a good cup of coffee Arrow Press is a great way to go the the downside is that it makes one or two cups at a time so if you have 18 people over for a party it's it's going to be a little bit uh tedious but if you just want a cup or two every morning you know or every afternoon it's it's just absolutely phenomenally good uh and I put a Blue Bottle Coffee Blue Bottle bot Tonks which I recommended last year if you're in an area like you know where Peter is where his wife roasts her own coffee then you know you don't need this but if you're in an area where you can't get fresh roasted coffee Tonks is they have sorry Blue Bottle will send you single origin freshly roasted coffee to your door so and and when you open it up it feels like you're being punched in the face it's it smells so good it's not stale over caffeinated you know it's not the stuff you buy at Starbucks it's it's it's coffee for humans I'll leave it at that and the last thing is something that I just had to recommend and that is Lego uh Lego is just so much fun I have a bunch of it behind me you know here just for decoration but uh I've been getting it for my God kids you know it's just it's so much fun you can get uh they have the Ghostbuster set from Lego creative right now they have a bunch of Star Wars stuff Batman stuff The Lego Movie stuff you can get small sets that cost about 10 bucks up to Giant sets that cost hundreds and hundreds of of celestial space dollars or whatever you're spending on them uh gold press goldplated latinum whatever your currency of choice is but it's good because you know you can build the toy but then you can build anything that your imagination can create and that's the really fun part I watched my little six-year-old godson came to me with an entire scene of Doc Octopus and uh Spider-Man fighting off the edge of a tower that he totally made up and it was it was really awesome and when you see that sort of kids building things with their hands it's it's better than the virtual stuff that we stick them in front way too often yeah it's like Minecraft except in real life yes I like real life Minecraft yeah real life Minecraft 3D non- virtual Minecraft is great I can even see your non- virtual Minecraft behind you Renee I have several of them yeah Batman so cool uh I like Batman I like Lego so of course I like Lego Batman so that's that's U my list uh Derek hesler our U mobile Nations managing editor has put together some magnificent uh Black Friday sales uh posts and uh gift guide posts we'll have links you don't have to remember all this we'll have links to them in the show notes we've got the Apple gift guide we've got uh alie's and Peters I think Ren's is going to be ready soon got mine come out tomorrow yeah so many so many of the links for you to click uh and I we'd love to hear what you guys are getting or what you guys recommend so you can go to any of those guys you can go to this podcast and just write them down below because I still have not done my shopping yet and would appreciate your suggestions after I buy my Hamilton Beach sandwich maker and and all the stuff that Ren is recommending it's gonna be an expensive Christmas all right guys thank you so much uh for being here Ally if people are looking for you over Thanksgiving where can they find you oh I don't know about over Thanksgiving they might not find me um but every day on imore.com and at IM muggle on all of the social things yes what about you Peter on the social things at flar f l g and on imore.com Ren and I will be back on imore.com Monday um and probably tomorrow with a gift guide and on the social things I am at sat s RN all right and until then I want all of you people Everyone listening everyone watching to enjoy your tomorrow turkey drink and I want to once again thank fracture for supporting the show you can get awesome uh images emblazened embedded immersed inside glass the small one starts at $15 for the small square they're fantastic gifts for family and friends they are you know frankly awesome looking and right now you can get 15% off if you go to fracture.me and use the the promo code imor show that's fracture.me and the promo code imore show thanks fractureit is November 26 2014 I'm Renee Richie and right now we're going to do our annual holiday and Black Friday gift guide this is the imore show joining me today is a woman that we're trying very hard to convince that Harry Potter is just Star Wars in land Ali kasm MOA how are you doing Ali I'm good I'm still not convinced it's not the same there's no Hano that's my big that's my big Tipping Point Ron Weasley makes a terrible hand solo what about Sirius Black uh he could be Lando I don't get it that was the voice of Cen Caldwell who has made me incredibly jealous uh by her by being at Disneyland or Disney World sorry this week yay Disney World I'm no longer at Disney World and I got very very wet yesterday uh because we had thunderstorms all day so maybe not 100% jealous but uh it was fun I on an iron armor I did not I did not get a strap on any Iron Man armor sadly um to protect myself from the cold or the wet but I did go on a lot of rides and now I'm in Southern Florida recording this lovely podcast hopefully my connection will stay intact it looks good so far uh and talking about looking good we have with us the lovely and talented Peter Cohen how are you Peter fine Renee thank you how are you today I'm doing very well you guys all have turkey day tomorrow which is why we're doing the show a day early and I keep protesting about this but when I have turkey day you have Columbus Day when you have turkey day I have nothing like ashes in your mouth yeah you take a take a day off for yourself Renee enjoy the enjoy the fact that your colleagues are all off for the lack of Americans a Canadian a Canadian friend of mine who used to run a a ma game site uh would use uh opportunities like uh uh Thanksgiving or Christmas which he didn't celebrate because of his faith um uh as as opportunities to run spoof news uh sort of like April Fool's Day so maybe that should be your cue Renee maybe you should run a whole bunch of joke stories tomorrow I will take that under the strongest of advisements Peter in the meantime I'm going to talk to you guys about holiday gifts uh because holiday gifts are important we we we want to either get stuff for ourselves on Black Friday or unselfishly we want to get stuff for those loved ones friends family people close to us and it can be you know Apple used to have this beautiful little product grid where Steve Jobs would say U mobile and desktop or sorry laptop and desktop consumer and professional and it all fit inside there now they need an entire table to to contain their product lineup and if if you're not sure what to get it can be a little bit confusing so I let's start with iPhones um the cheapest iPhone is the iPhone 5C but at 8 gigabytes I can't recommend it to anybody I would just advise you to get a sale price on a better iPhone yeah yeah the only thing I can see the 5c being good for as as a starter phone for a 12 or 13 year old um and even then that's a it's a little bit of a risk 8 G 16 gigabytes is not enough 18 is just insulting it used to be it used to be in a lot of emerging markets and the the thought process was these places only really use BBM or Facebook Messenger because data and voice were so expensive they were very minimalist but even now I think everyone just fills it up with so many photos you know Ali's done tips on how to remove photos from my message because it clogs it up so much that you really you really need to start thinking about if not 16 certainly 32 and take advantage of the sales I would say to get a better phone cheaper if you can yeah yeah so iPhone 5S this to me is the phone um and Peter tell me what you think this to me is the phone for people who think the new iPhone 6es are too big and that's basically the market right now yeah I mean you know the iPhone 5S is a fantastic phone the A7 processor still has a lot of life left in it and touch ID um as a game Cher um so I think the 5S is a very solid option for people who don't want to be saddled with a larger phone having said that it took me you know about three minutes after getting it out of the box to adapt to the new size of the iPhone 6 and I've really had no problems but I understand why some people may you know still want um a a a 4-inch phone you know that's that's a little narrower than the iPhone 6 is uh maybe you like to stick it in your key pocket in your jeans like one of my co-workers does the store um or you know maybe you just don't want a phone that that's that big whatever the reason the iPhone 5S is a very solid option and uh should not be overlooked if you're looking for a good value in an iPhone uh that's a little bit smaller than than some of the other options that you can you can get yeah if you need to save money don't care about Apple pay and prefer 4 inch phones the 5S is for you if you're John grber or John moltz and you really want a 4-in phone Apple still has one for you it just doesn't have the latest stuff on it um Ren what about the iPhone 6 for me this is like this is the iPhone iPhone of this generation absolutely um I really love my six I've become kind of obsessed about it although I will say now my my recommendation for the six includes buy a case because I have scratched slash uh broken my screen too many times and even with the new I'm generally pretty careful with my phones but um this I've dropped a couple times since getting it uh getting the new one not even on accident it's just it's a much slipperier phone so I put the the Apple case on it and that has made things my life much easier blame the curves yeah it is no it's the curves it's the fact that it it fits in your hand but as a result it also you know there are some problems there but it um the new screen size it does take us a couple seconds to adjust to but it's really nice I barely ever use reachability to to get to top corners because I can it's a little bit more of a reach but I can get to it uh you've got Apple pay built in which is really awesome uh if you have stores near you that accept NFC payments uh you've got the latest processor you've got um and that camera that camera is gorgeous I was taking how all of my Disney World pictures you know I brought my nice camera my DSLR um and I ended up just leaving it in the hotel for two days and just taking my iPhone 6 because my iPhone 6 takes great pictures and I could immediately upload them so there's a there are a lot of things going for this for the iPhone 6 and uh I think it's really the I'm I am going to say you know get the 64 gigabyte version because I think the the 16 gab is not worth it uh but if you if you don't care about super giant screen sizes and you want the latest and greatest that Apple has to offer um camera improvements are not that much better in the iPhone 6 Plus to Warrant getting the six plus solely for camera um improvements so if you're looking for the latest and greatest iPhone for you or your loved ones the iPhone 6 64 gigabyte is the one to do it I don't know if you feel the same way as me Ali I like the 6 a lot but I just can't get over the battery life of the 6 plus I woke up I forgot to charge it last night I've been using it for 2 days and I'm still at 50% yeah I'm kind of in the same boat I I sat there when I was writing my gift guide and I was like I don't know which one to pick I don't know like it was like almost like I had an anxiety attack trying to decide which I liked more so I was like screw it I'm just going to go with the iPad Air to because I mean hands down that's probably my favorite device that Apple has released this year but I use my six Reg regularly I much prefer the size but the battery life of the 6 plus I'm on the edge I don't really want to take two phones when we travel this winter and I really think I'm going to take the six plus just because of the battery life it's just it's insane I will say that um being a Disney World the past couple days at when we hit 6 PM or so I was really being like I wish I had an iPhone 6 Plus right now because my phone was at you know 20 or 30% and there's no battery cases for the six right now until it exists yeah I was like oh man when CES hits next next January I'm going be really unhappy to have only a six I feel like you know the true test for me was my girlfriend is I have never seen anyone be more murderous on batteries than she is just because she's a realtor and she's like phone call actual phone calls eat up more battery than anything she would charge her 5S a minimum of two times by 4 p.m. I mean she just would be on the phone so often and the first she had her six plus she came home so excited she was like I have 40% left on my phone I mean she can go a whole day without having to charge that phone so right there I was like okay the battery life is kind of a big deal so I did Singleton and I did the iPad event without having to worry about battery and that's just never never been the thing before I can't do it with my six my six does pretty much get me through a whole day most of the time I've never had a problem making it past like 5 or 6 p.m. but sometimes I'm down to 20 30% where I feel like if we're going out for the evening I have to charge my phone first where Heather doesn't have that problem and like Ren said the camera like the optical image stabilization is only only really helps you in very specific circumstances and to a very specific for a very specific thing your noise will be slightly less noisy which is a sales thing for a lot of people you really have to put the pictures I did a comparison and I mean if I didn't have the pictures side by side I would have been you're perfectly happy with either and honestly with extensibility and all of the photo extensions now I mean you can lighten a picture in the photos app in a matter of seconds I I haven't gotten anything off my iPhone 6 even in low light that I wasn't happy with the six is a little bit brighter or the six plus but not much the other thing that like there's a promise of of tiny ipad-like functionality because you have the split view controller and Landscape but very few apps take advantage of that and because Apple doesn't let you Target only specific iPhones we're not seeing like the paper app come down or pixel Mater come down to the phone anyway so to me it really is if you want like if you want a big screen if you want a 1080p screen because you want to watch a ton of videos play a ton of games I used to travel with an iPad Mini I don't anymore because the iPhone 6 Plus is big enough for that um I think it really comes down to whether you want a phone or you want something bigger than like more than just a phone um moving on to iPads Ally you said the iPad Air to was your favorite device this year why is that it is um I was really really rooting for an iPad Mini 3 that was the same as the iPad Air 2 I figured you know Apple just screwed up my whole cycle I wanted to do an iPad a large one and then a small one the next year and just keep up with that and it just wasn't it wasn't where it needed to be for the iPad Mini this year but the iPad Air 2 um I can notice a difference weightwise even over the original iPad Air um Touch ID I just I found myself using the iPad a lot more since the original iPad Air came out and since I much prefer the the smaller form factor of the six the iPad Air 2 is still something I like to travel with and have on me for movies and stuff on planes and I don't know I I don't I don't think I would like to watch movies on the iPhone 6 Plus and that's typically what I do when we're traveling and reading books and I can't read on the iPhone I don't know if bad eyes or I don't know I like I like the larger screen of the iPad I love the iPad Air to as well you can get an iPad original iPad for 100 bucks cheaper now and I understand why some people think that's a great value I think the screen is so much better and the ability to have Touch ID and Apple pay um it's it's really like the older ones and same with the iPad Mini the older ones are being discounted heavily it's not that the new ones are expensive but Ren or let me ask Peter first because you work in retail how are you recommending the different iPads to people right now well the iPad mini versus the I the iPad Air you know 2 the iPad Air iPad Mini 3 iPad air to um I think a lot of it comes down to um the preference of the user you know for a lot of my customers because where I live there are a lot of retirees and older people uh it comes down to a matter of both mobility and um and uh how good their eyes are so you know they they may be interested in the smaller iPad but when they actually start using it they realize that it's going to be a little bit more of a challenge to actually interact on the screen and it's going to be a little bit more of a challenge to to see stuff on the screen even using accessibility features even using tap to zoom and stuff like that um or pinch to zoom you know that the it it it isn't the same it isn't the same user experience so for many of them the iPad Air form factor Remains the best option um uh obviously your mileage may vary you know some people like to have the the smaller size it can fit into a purse much more easily it can fit into a small bag much more easily um so there are important considerations for for for carrying it around as well and ren I uh I don't know about you but I still I I can't recommend the original iPad Mini for the same reasons I can't recommend the iPhone 5c no I've stopped I've stopped using my original iPad Mini it makes me so sad because I love that form factor I cannot wait until all the stuff that's the iPad Air 2 shows up the iPad mini but until then I've switched to my iPad Air 2 full-time I mean it it's lighter it's uh it's light enough that it doesn't feel like a 10-inch iPad and the screen's still too big for me but overall it's uh it's quite nice and yeah the iPad Mini is just too slow too old doesn't support the right amount of it's good for schools and Enterprise if you're buying hundreds and thousands of them maybe but I feel like it's not for humans anymore yeah my I I purchased my mom and iPad Mini I think last Christmas and she loves it because she can put it in her purse and take it everywhere she loves to read when she's waiting for stuff so I stuff like that and for casual um I definitely probably recommend the original iPad Mini anymore but uh the iPad Mini the new one or the one with r a display the first gener Apple still has the first generation with rtin a display don't they iPad Mini 2 it's been Rec christened yes yes so that I mean depending on budget and if that's what you can afford it's it's a decent tablet I think so I would say and let me know if anyone disagrees with this that the iPad mini is still for people who prefer portability um and travel and want to have something that they can easily keep with them and the iPad is more for people who want something around the house or around the school or around work who has the larger screen and the larger interface and with the iPad Air 2 specifically that wamp in huge Apple a8x processor which Peter we learned it has a custom GPU now as well not just a custom CPU indeed yes so uh you know games will be gamier than ever I probably wouldn't recommend an iPad Mini to anyone that has an iPhone 6 Plus either that's true I honestly would an an iPad Mini to anyone until next year uh yeah specific I me think the iPad Mini what is it the mini 2 mini3 yeah3 iPad Mini 3 um is a okay device but the performance gains are so much greater than the iPad Air 2 that if you have to have the latest and greatest get the air2 if you can wait a year wait a year yeah absolutely agreed we're take a quick break so I can tell you about fracture fracture is a company that prints photos directly onto glass which has been described as being like hanging your iPad on the wall colors pop like you won't believe and it even comes on a solid backing that's ready to mount right out of the package all you have to do is stick the screw in the wall and hang it they even throw in a screw which is very considerate it's all really affordable too with prices starting at $15 for their small square size and they make F fantastic gifts for family and friends because they're the perfect way to celebrate a shared memory with someone that is also unique and modern gift as well each fracture is hand assembled in check for quality by their small team in Gainesville Florida if you needed another reason to buy one besides them being our sponsor you can get 15% off with the promo code imor show just go to fracture me.com and check it out now fracture you you might have heard of them before and what's really cool is just like I said it it looks like the the image is inside the glass just like looking at your iPhone just like looking at your iPad just like looking at the new retina iMac it's it's a very different feeling and what's really cool is that we're used to seeing photos on glass now we're not used to seeing them printed as much anymore or being on paper or being pigment on some sort of surface we're used to them glowing at us from inside of glass so what fracture does is make it somewhere in between a traditional picture and a frame and something that we're used to from all of our Apple devices now and it creates I don't want to say more realistic because that's a really relative thing but it creates a much more familiar and you know almost more futuristic sort of a look and because it's put right into the glass it really feels custom it really feels like someone took the time and effort to get you something specific it's not just uh you know bring your own photo frame it is a specific object a craft made for that image for that person and that the intent behind that the you know they say that it's it's it's not the gift it's the intent that counts or the thought that counts but in this case it really is the intent the thought it's you're making something special for somebody and Fracture does all the hard work it just it makes them uh look fantastic I know Marco armont said that he gets every icon he makes for all his apps put on a fracture and puts on and put on his wall I'm thinking of getting a bunch of the I the pictures that we take at imore because we take a lot of really what I think is really good photography and I'd love to be able to take some of the current devices the best of the best shots of the current devices and just have them you know maybe instead of some of this stuff behind me have those behind me maybe not like an Apple Store per se but I think photography and showing our world and and having it like that around us is really really cool so I want to thank fracture uh once again for supporting their show and just say you know you can go to fracture fracture me and sorry fracture.me check it out online use the code imor show you get 15% off that's fracture.me thanks fracture all right so moving on to the max which is actually super interesting this year it's Peter it's a Renaissance of the Mac um about about Bloody time just to quote Georgia uh starting with the Mac Mini yes we lost quadcore you know there a couple things that a couple people are upset about but I think it's safe to say that the lower price and with with the newer chipsets you can get a Mac Mini for almost anyone now yeah you really can you know it that we can talk about the relative merits of this generation of Mac Mini compared to some of the other uh ones that have come out of over the past few years until we're blew in the face but I I think for most people um they're going to see a a distinct Improvement um uh for the 2014 Mac Mini compared to the 2012 model single uh single core performance is unquestionably better and that's what a lot of people depend on because they they don't use apps that are uh designed to hammer multicore architectures nearly as much or if they do they're probably not even considering a Mac Mini they're using a a more uh rugged uh multicore machine like I feel like handbreak would be the hardest thing to hit a Mac Mini I'm sorry handbreak is probably one of the hardest things to hit a to hit a Mac Mini yeah I would agree with that you know so the fact that it's it's it's dual core as opposed to um with available with a quad core processor as it was in 2012 is you know a little bit of a detriment for those folks or for people who are planning on running the Mac Mini as a server um but for just about everybody else I think it's it's a solid option napples rebooted the price back to where was in 2005 when the Mac Mini first uh was introduced so it's $4.99 for the entry level model the entry level model is roughly on parody with the um entry-level model for the iMac now it's a 1.4 gahz processor it's a Haswell processor just like it is on the MacBook Air as well uh but that's connected to a 500 gigabyte regular hard disk drive so um relative performance compared to a MacBook Air is going to be a little bit slower because it isn't hitting solid state as uh it does on the the MacBook Air but you can get an SSD for it uh or or if you the best of all worlds um you pay $699 for the mid-range model that's $100 less than the the faster processor twice the amount of storage capacity and twice the amount of ram as well you go from four gigs to eight so um and then there's a high-end model as well if you want to pull out all the stops I had a chance to play with that one uh when Apple lent one to us for a little bit and that is a very very nice machine at a th000 bucks it's questionable as to whether or not you're better off doing that or you know a MacBook Air or um uh or something else but it's uh it's it's it's a good little machine that uh offers a lot of performance a lot of bang for the buck I would recommend it to anyone who has the keyboard and mouse and really just wants to slot in a Mac instead of getting a new PC or someone who wants a home theater PC or someone who wants an you know something that runs OS 10 as a server that they can put in a closet somewhere I think either the mid the mid-range or the high-end will serve that function very well and obviously the high-end will give you a little bit more bang um the low-end model is perfectly suitable if your main requirements are for a machine that can keep you on the internet um have you loading web pages and and looking at uh at emails maybe you're running the occas occasional casual game in a browser or um even using productivity apps including a lot of apps that are available for download from the MACC App Store uh but anything more than that you're going to want to probably spend another couple hundred bucks and get something a little bit faster and a little bit more capable so Ren you you're on the latest Haswell MacBook Air where where are they doing this year where are they going um well I think that the update was a very nice little speed bump uh I I'll admit I got this because my air was four years old and I needed something uh to travel with especially because of continuity and my my old Air just wouldn't support it but I kind of plan on getting rid of this sky and and upgrading to a retina on MacBook Air as soon as it pops its its lovely head out the door uh so to be perfectly honest if you have an if you have a laptop a Macbook an air that you that you like that supports continuity which is I think 2012 or is that right yep yeah if you have 2012 or later um and you want to hold out for the screen then hold out until probably next year um if you're on a pre continuity Mac the low-end Mac air is pretty pretty inexpensive at this point you know it starts at $88.99 and I did I got myself a SSD upgrade just because I store a lot of things while on the go apps and the like uh but you can even work with the base model and and especially like there are some sites that are giving you know 50 bucks 100 bucks off of the base model it's pretty pretty decent deals so you're looking at a a very cheap very portable still super Speedy laptop that supports all the major OS 10 us70 features which is which is pretty Rad but if you're if you're really looking for the uh if you're looking for the screen and um and hoping the battery life will keep up with said screen you can wait another year now you do something that I am incapable of doing you and Jim darle can both and I think Jason sell too can all survive on that 11inch screen I love the 11inch screen you know what all right so here's the thing I grew up on a Powerbook Duo um that was my that was my laptop in high school um before I got an iBook so I love the the little portable computer and when um I never got a 12-in MacBook Pro because it just didn't work for my workflow at the time uh but as soon as I moved away from filmmaking and back to writing I I got the 11inch air and then went whole hog and just I have a huge screens workflow and external monitors screens and external monitors are the ways I survive yeah you have an 11 inch Like I Do allly Right 13 13 sorry uh yeah you have the 13 in like I do yeah and I you know I went to the 13 Haswell when it came out from a 15in MacBook Pro and I really miss the screen size I think it's just coming from a 27in iMac which is what I do most of my work on to the 13inch I was like oh it's so small I can't do things but I learned how to use spaces efficiently and you know I just I would love to be able to use the 11 inch but I just think I have bad eyes I just feel like I try to do too much stuff at once too and I I don't know I I don't like photoshop on small screens and when I'm forced to use it makes rage it's like the iPads where if you really want maximum portability you go for the 11 in and if you want screen real estate you go for the 13in but they're both good machines to Ren's point if you if you want retina and you can wait wait till next year yeah but but they're really good solid machines that being said I finally switched I I switched to a 13-inch MacBook Pro because I'm doing a lot of video and especially when I travel if I go to an event or something I need to Crunch a lot of video and the air is just not rendering as fast fast as the MacBook Pro is and that's you know that's proving to be more important to me so I as we speak I am migration assistan assistant toning something you need more better English words um it is migrating to a 13-inch MacBook Pro and I I like the MacBook Pros the only thing about them Peter that makes me sad is that unless you get the highest in highest n 15 inch you're not getting discret Graphics anymore well that really depends on uh whether you're looking for the cash of having discret Graphics or how you're actually measuring performance I'm all about the cache Peter there we go so you know if you're a spec whor then sure I guess it's important but you know for uh for for a lot of people they'll see the same or better performance out of uh the the the integrated Graphics that they will out of the discret graphics that were in the previous generations uh um uh the previous generation model so uh you know it really depends on on what you're doing specifically having said that I'm still using a 2012 model um that that's got discrete graphics so I've got no complaints it can still run just about any app that I throw at it um but you know just because it's got discret graphics doesn't necessarily mean that it's better or um uh better equipped than uh the newer machines ARA Peter because you made an interesting point some people just they've been taught that they have that they that discrete graphics is better and it may not be true anymore but I don't know how often we reset our beliefs on those things well I think that that's very true and I think that that's the problem and for a long time in fairness to people who think that discret Graphics sucked um but has well change things you know uh I Intel uh made a lot of uh core architectural improvements to uh to boost um the performance of integrated Graphics chips um and uh um they they continue to do that yeah you've got Iris and Iris Pro um and are you know much much better than what we've seen you know with the HD 4000 or HD 5000 Graphics or you know the even older slower integrated Graphics that were available before see I used to have I was I'm the opposite of Ren I used to have a 17inch MacBook Pro at my old job uh because I was doing tons of graphic design mostly um in design and just having a ton of screen real estate it was just meant everything to me because I could have like two pages side by side and just so many pixels and then when I went to the retina MacBook Pro it you lose real estate over the high density option of the previous MacBook Pro but I could put it into the scaled mode uh and still get you know ridiculous amounts of pixels so it's going to be interesting to see I think with the 13inch I'm going to put it into scaled mode too but I I go back to this all over again you have the portability and then you have screen real estate and those those they seem to be the theme of the choices we're facing this year and you know Rene it's funny my my um track with laptops is not uh en entirely dissimilar I started well I started way back in the day with other ones but uh for for a number of years when I was at macor I used a 17-inch MacBook Pro that I was very very fond of and that I still have Sitting on a shelf someplace even though it's no longer operational and I went from that to a 13-inch MacBook and then from that to an 11-inch MacBook Air um so I sort of downsized continually um and you know all the things that that that Ren has said about the MacBook Air the 11-inch model are things that rang true with me as well it was trivial to hook up an external display and get it to work when I needed it to but I very rarely needed it to and I adapted to the smaller size very quickly now I use a 15-inch MacBook Pro uh retina MacBook Pro and I don't miss the extra real estate that I used to have on the 17-inch MacBook Air because the screen resolution is higher um the scaled resolution is higher and the native resolution is of course much higher but even the scaled resolution is uh is higher than what I experienced with my MacBook Pro my 17inch so although it takes a little bit for my eyes to adjust to um the the smaller size of the screen um I still think it's an eminently usable um resolution and a very capable machine so Ren on the flip side you have a 21.5 in it's so weird the 21.5 inch iMac is the only one that gets a 0.5 I think in Apple's nomenclature everything else rounded well it has to do I think with uh the diagonals of the screen uh my 21.5 in iMac I like I really want the retina iMac but I can't justify buying a new computer uh that wasn't a laptop for but for for my current needs it's fine it supports continuity it's fast it's Speedy I don't have an SSD in it yet but I think that might be an upgrade that I'm going to make in the new year uh I think it's a it's a really solid machine but if you have the cash the retina iMac is gorgeous well you said you made a good point a while ago that the 21.5 in kind of fits in the nook space that you had for it yeah I mean that's the other thing right is that I live in a studio and um as much as I want the 27inch retina computer uh my desk isn't that big and I really need something that's going to fit in my room without me having to buy the vessa compatible model which of course you know with a new IMAX you have to choose at start whether you want one with the base or you want one that you come out to the wall and given that I rent it's very hard for me to justify oh yeah I'm going to buy something that mounts into my wall and that may or may not tear out my drywall or I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars on a v compatible arm that I can do attach to a bookshelf like there are there are considerations to be made and Ally you have the 27in standard display iMac I do um I have the I bought the 27 in whatever the Top Model was last year when it was the first uh Slimline one that they came out with with where the 21.5 in you can't upgrade the RAM and everyone was in a big uproar about that but the 27 in you can so I have that model I really want the retina model but I can't justify it either I think my first retina computer will be I held off on my laptop I almost bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro this year but I figured I'd wait if I can I'm I've adjusted to the 13inch and I kind of don't want to give up the battery life and just the portability of the air so if I could have a 13in retina MacBook Air even I guess maybe a 12 in was what they were saying I don't know what's going on with that but I figured I'd hold off and wait and that will probably be my first re in a computer my iMac has lots of life in it even the I the 27 inch uh standard iMac is still I don't have that computer but I have the 27in LED display that I was using with my laptop and that's still a gorgeous dis greats panel and it's so big for photos and everything I had a 27inch iMac the the thicker version from I think maybe 2009 before I got this machine and there's a huge difference in display quality because it's a laminated panel it's kind of the difference between the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2 I see a huge difference because you're negating that space between the glass and the uh the display so I it's a gorgeous display um I saw the retina display on the IMAX in an Apple Store a couple weeks ago for the first time and it kind of did make me made me cry a little inside it's it's gorgeous but I just can't justify it it's like and we're going to get to this in a second but it's like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari right now where you're you're buying it because you're buying it I mean there's very there's very few other reasons you're just you're saying I have the cash and I want it now I would really like if they would eventually release just a 5k Cinema display yes and I would happily just toss that right next to my current 27inch iMac and then I would have dual displays and but you need something so that's the problem cuz Dell just released their 27in 5K display and it requires two cables and it looks like os10 can't drive it properly and it'll be it'll be to see how PCS do because those two cables mean each side is being rendered separately and then it tears down the middle sometimes so if Apple does release a 5k display my guess is and Peter can correct me if I'm wrong they're going to wait till Skylight comes out when they can use Thunderbolt 3 and you'll need a Mac that has Thunderbolt 3 to drive it wanted that point I might as well just buy a 5k Mac or a retina MacBook Air with a ferbow 3 on it I mean back in the day Apple did have a 30-inch dual link uh DVI display but um I I don't think that apple is going to backslide into into that sort of uh um that sort of configuration again because um you know even on a Mac with Thunderbolt 2 ports as few of them as there are uh you'd have to use uh you know two separate channels in order to to drive all those pixels so yeah my expectation is that we're going to wait until Sky Lake and Thunderbolt 3 before um we uh we we see something like that however you know that's less than a year away so um you know by this time uh next year uh we should be looking at new machines that have that capability so I have neither the self-control nor the good judgment of Serenity or Aly and I immediately ordered the Veta iMac as soon as as soon as I saw it I had to have it I was Covetous of it and really really pleased with it the screen looks like a an iPad Air 2 screen it's not as high down it's 218 versus 264 you know DPI PPI sorry but you're farther away so it still looks like a retina display it's still super close laminated to the surface looks absolutely fantastic but it it really is something for I think you know a photographer a videographer someone a designer someone who will take advantage of those pixels I'm not that important yet no just and the other thing that's interesting though is that the Dell uh 27in 5K display costs as much as the iMac so if you if you are a Mac afficianado do yourself a favor and take the free computer and just get apple yeah right I would really like apple to release some kind of external display I know it probably won't happen I just be interested to be able to see if you could watch displays from other manufacturers and see you know I kind of want to keep an eye on displays for a while and see if the one is gorgeous like the gamut is fantastic I'm going to hold out hope that I can just eventually hook a display it'll come it'll come in time in time uh so Peter that brings me squarely like I I was talking about Lamborghinis and Ferraris but now I want to talk about the Bugatti Veyron of computers which is the Mac Pro that is no big changes to that this year so that the conventional wisdom for that is still if you need that many cores you'll know it yeah no no changes at all since the machine debuted in December of 2013 um so uh you know if if you we're looking for an excuse to buy a Mac Pro um unfortunately Apple hasn't given you one to uh uh a new one to consider anyway but yeah you know the Mac Pro is a parallel processing monster it is has more cores or it can be configured with more cores than any other Mac in the lineup uh it uses a xon processor and uh error correcting uh memory um so it's very heavy duty plus it's got these two gorgeous um gpus Graphics processing units from AMD that are specifically designed as workstation class uh gpus as opposed to the sort of uh home slash gamer parts that you find in other Macs um what that means is that if you're doing work in opencl if you're doing Gene sequencing or Mo physics modeling or if you are uh doing uh video uh production and you're doing sophisticated special effects effect and color correction and other stuff you're going to see a lot of benefit there uh with a very well-configured Mac Pro that you're not going to see out of any other Mac configuration not even the retina iMac but as as you alluded to Renee if you're kind of scratching your head going do I need that much horsepower you've pretty much answered your own question and chances are you don't you know if you have to ask the price you probably can't afford it uh in the same time if if what I'm talking about is just going over your head chances are a Mac Pro is a lot more muscle than you need or is the wrong kind of muscle more than anything um you know some people mistakenly think that well if I drop 3,000 on a Mac Pro I'm going to get a qualitatively um quantitatively better machine uh than any other Mac I can get and that's not necessarily true you know initial benchmarks for example for the model that you got of the Mac the uh Reda iMac show that it actually outperforms that quad core uh base model Mac Pro in some respects so single threaded tasks yeah exactly so um you know it's it's something that you have to be careful with but the Mac Pro is also the most expandable Mac it's got six Thunderbolt two ports on the back of it um it's got four USB 3.0 ports on it it's also got HDMI 1.4 you can drive three 4K displays which you can't do with any other Mac in the product line and it's all solid state there isn't a hard drive inside of it it's SSD um it's it's also got expandable memory so there there's a lot to recommend it uh but if if you don't know if you're going to need it chances are you probably really don't if you need a Lamborghini for your morning commute you probably know you need a Lamborghini for your morning commute and if you need a Lamborghini for your morning commute maybe you need to reassess your morning commute I'm on the autobond for half the drive Peter I mean so St while you were away we sort of we debated whether or not to include iPods on the Apple gift guide this year and we ended up not including them cuz the sales had you know fallen off the s and they' canceled the classic and they hadn't updated them this year and I was a little sad about that frankly but I think it's sort of time to move like the watch is coming up the iPhones are cheaper than ever the I think it's time to move on you know the only thing the only thing iPod related that I would still recommend is a little Shuffle if you really like um something light and easy like so I I use the shuffle when I'm warming up for games and I actually brought it down to Florida this weekend um because I was doing quick warm-ups and I didn't want to carry my phone around and have it you know risk getting getting no seriously so I have like a pair of $20 headphones and uh and my little tiny I have a little blue iPod Shuffle uh with controls not like this thinny the skinny one the latest version iPod Shuffle and that's really useful for me but that's a I think that's a very specific use case if you're an athlete or if you're someone who runs or want something very very lightweight that can store a preset amount of music then it's then it's potenti potentially a good gift otherwise also it's a fun stocking stuffer I have debated the Nano or the shuffle just for the gym because I hate armb bands like when I'm working I hate them so I've never found one that I like Amazon Aly yeah I just I would prefer like I've deated like a little Shuffle just to be able to clip it on to you know my shirt or anything you know and not have to deal with armbands or my phone or anything like that so yeah I could see that being very valid that's probably yeah right the only iPod really worth recommending I think I feel like the touches were like kind of a cheap entry into developing iOS apps and now the iPad Mini is kind of I mean if you just want a really cheap way to develop for iOS you could buy an iPhone 5c you can buy an iPad Mini it just doesn't seem like there's really that many reasons to recommend the current model anymore you know and the the store that I work at um the people who buy shuffles and Nanos the most most frequently are athletes you know people who don't want to be encumbered with a larger device like a phone or like you know in Ren's case or afraid that they're going to break their phone uh because of whatever they're doing um those those are definitely the the the the big use cases but I still think that there's a case to be made for the iPod Touch at least for kids you know if you've got let's say an iPhone 5 that um you're turning into a hand-me-down because you've upgraded to a 5S or you know a six or six plus uh maybe um you know deactivating the five as a phone and just handing it off to your kid as an iPod Touch will be enough that that'll be enough for them I know that in past Generations that's been enough for my kids you know when they've wanted iPod Touches I've taken my old you know three my old iPhone 3GS and uh stuff like that and uh repurposed it uh for them to to use as iPod Touches but um uh the iPod Touch is still a very viable machine um you know can run the latest iOS updates it can run most of the latest software that hasn't been oped my only it's my only drawback the A5 and it's not 128 gigabytes which Peter would love yeah no absolutely I think that those are good things but when I sell them to people those are the people who I'm selling them to people who want um an iOS device for their kids or for a relative who doesn't want to be saddled with um a monthly payment plan uh for a phone or uh doesn't want all the the functionality of phone having said that it is very long in the tooth and it is overdue for an update and I'm hoping that Apple will uh finally get around to bumping up the i iPod Touch to um something iPhone 6ish uh sometime in 2015 but I'm not holding my breath I'm GNA Echo Ren's advice from earlier with the iPad with the U MacBook Air and say that if you can wait till if you can wait till next year do so because you'll have the watch to choose from and maybe there'll be more yep we take a quick break so I can tell you about grammar if you have ever been frustrated by the Instagram app on on the iPhone uh in non-existent on the iPad then grammar is for you uh grammar was written because people were unhappy with the iOS Instagram app they wanted something better they wanted something that worked the way they thought that it should work so uh you they went through made what's the best way to say this they fixed the things that were wrong with Instagram I'll just say it the best way to say it is the plainest way to say it with grammar you get multiple accounts and you can switch between them it will you know for example we have an imore Instagram account that I almost never use because I have to log out of Instagram log back in and it's a pain uh it's it's they make it hard to do they make it uncomfortable to do maybe that's for a reason but it's not for the reasons that I like so this just multiple accounts you can switch between them all you can decide what feeds you want to see what feeds you want to hide you can use Touch ID to lock your account you know you've always said you give someone your phone they can start going through all your stuff maybe there's stuff in Instagram you do not want them to see it is your business you know it doesn't even have to be anything that you know someone would have a problem with it could just be your stuff mine and I don't want to share it you can lock it with touch IDs which is just phenomenal gives you a list of hashtags trending that are personalized to you you can like people sorry like images follow people you get all the actions you're used to an Instagram just better and more easily accessible you you have a configurable grid view you can double tap images to show them full screen because you know that's what iOS is supposed to do you double tap it and it zooms now you're trying to double tap and it favorites and it's awkward and uh yeah no this double Taps to show the image full screen and from there you can zoom into it swipe around yeah you can do what you want to do when you're on an image page you can swipe left to see all the images from that person and from anywhere you can quickly swipe right uh then left to show everything else without losing your current spot in navigation you know Instagram is terrible terrible at saving state so if all this sounds good to you and if you're an Instagram user I bet it sounded good to you instantly you just like where where can I get it stop talking already Renee and tell me where I can get this app well you can get it from grammar.com that's g r m oy.com or you can just search the app store for grammar and you can get your Gram on I want to thank you grammar for supporting the show so uh now that all the Apple stuff is out of the way we can get to the secret fun stuff um Ally I'm going to start with you because you're the most immediate person on the left uh thanks to Google Hangouts shuffling order what are a few of your favorite you know non-apple non necessarily techie things for this year I I had to really kind of dig for non techie stuff um one of my favorite things that we picked up this year was a water pick um I don't really know how I didn't get one sooner cuz flossing your teeth sucks and those things are like so much better and take half the time um we picked one up a couple months ago and they're awesome so um yeah I don't there's really nothing to say except they're awesome I didn't mean like I mean like the non-apple device thing um what else Sonos was probably my big one for the year um you and Kevin are responsible for that but um it's awesome I love Sonos I don't know how I worked from home without that before um it's just awesome that we can you know divide things up throughout the house if one person's in the living room and one person's in the bedroom um I can like if I want to know what's going on during a football game I can you know be in the office working but have the audio from the TV playing in here so um what else did I have on my list like you had a liquefier or a blender or something I did I had um and anyone who like is not kitchen Al literate will probably laugh at me but I had no idea what an immersion blender was until this fall they're amazing we went over to U one of my really good friends house and we helped her make homemade applesauce like just out of boredom one day this fall and she pulled this thing out after we finished like cutting apples and putting everything in the pot and I was like in awe I she's like have you never seen one of these before I'm like what is it and so um that's yeah amazing it's like a magic wand but for food well pretty much for food for applesauce for Soups for smoothies like 20 seconds my favorite it's one I I got that for Christmas last year and it is one of my favorite kitchen gadgets ever yeah yeah they're pretty awesome and I did not even know what one was but um and you also had the Netflix and the Rio I think yeah I've went back and forth with streaming services um Rio is my favorite I just they have a really well put together app package in general across the mac and iPhone iPad um it's just always suited my needs I just I feel like it's really reliable I've had many times where and I've had this happen with Spotify in a couple like beats especially I would sync stuff for offline playback and it would say that it was there and it was eating my storage but then it would never play and the only service I found that like doesn't have offline playback issues sporadically is Rio I've never had issues with their service um and it syncs everything offline between all of your devices so you don't have to do it on an individual basis um my favorite thing I think I bought Tech wise this year was my Bose headphones um I really really wanted a pair of noise cancelling headphones and I don't like overthe headphones um I just feel like they're I like to be able to shove headphones in my pocket or my coat or something and just walk out the door and I feel like I can't do that there we go see those are ridiculous yeah I don't mind them at a desk but like if I were traveling I just want something I can throw on a bag with my iPad and um I think Bose's only rates them at like five hours of noise cancelling at a time I get way more than that um I feel like I go weeks without charging them and I'm at Starbucks for sometimes hours at a time or another Cafe um doing this Rene now looks like the most ridiculous Princess Leia ever my only hope I don't get it uh Peter you you had I think the most surprising gadget on the list for me you had a a sash muffin with egg maker which looked brilliant yes indeed so Hamilton M Hamilton Beach makes all sorts of kitchen gadgets but this one has got to be my favorite this is a breakfast sandwich maker and breakfast sandwiches and I go way back I think the Egg McMuffin pretty much the perfect food and if McDonald's Had The Egg McMuffin available 247 I would order it in the middle of the day and in the middle of the night because it's it's it's an awesome thing um so for 24 bucks you get this single purpose kitchen gadget and I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of single-purpose kitchen gadgets but I will give this one a pass because breakfast is of course the most important meal of the day and the way that this thing works is that it's it's uh uh stacked and it's got a separate little container uh where you um well first of all you put in your breakfast uh uh your breakfast bread so you can put in a bagel you can put in an English muffin you could put in uh round waffle maybe you might have to trim the edges a little bit or a pancake you know so you can make any kind of breakfast sandwich you want and then you put in your meat um if you want to have meat in it like Canadian bacon or a sausage patty P bacon nothing Canadian about it that's right um and uh a slice of cheese if you want or any other toppings and then there's this little containment vessel on top of that that uh you crack an egg into and then you put your top piece of uh of of breakfast bread in there and then you just assemble the whole thing and uh and cook it for five minutes uh as soon as the green light hits you can take it apart you slide a little trapo to make the egg collapse onto the rest of the thing and uh out comes a breakfast sandwich and all the parts that are in between the cooking services are removable and can pop in a dish washer very easily um some some of our colleagues at other Mobile Nation sites have these uh Renee and they swear by them yeah Adam's ice and I just think it's the coolest uh the coolest little thing for 24 bucks so sounds like a breakfast Miracle quite frankly it really is it's a it's a it's a it's a breakfast Miracle it's the Hamilton Beach breakfast sandwich maker but else was on your list Peter uh let's see well another kitchen gadget actually you know I I drink a lot of tea um because I have haven't been able to drink coffee since August because of the surgery that I had a few weeks ago um and I've come to find out the different teas if you know if you drink a white tea or if you drink a green tea or if you drink a black tea different tea steep at different temperatures um to extract the most flavor but trying to get your water at a specific temperature is kind of a pain in the ass you can sit there with a kitchen thermometer and you know kind of fake it or over boil your water and then wait for it to cool down but it seems seems like a long line for a short ride when all you want is a cup of tea uh so the queas andart cpk1 17 is the answer to this and I first became familiar to with this uh last year um Renee when I met you and the rest of the mobile Nations uh team in New York you guys had one of these in our hotel suite uh where we did much of our filming and uh the CPK 17 uh is this cool little Gadget that has uh from que andart has uh temperature settings right on the handle and a uh a back lit um uh water window showing you how much water it can hold it can hold up to 1.7 lers so it can hold plenty um and you can set it to a full boil if you want to otherwise if you're cooking I mean if you're if you're making white tea or if you're making uh green tea or whatever there are different settings for it a very handy little little Gadget it costs 80 bucks pretty soon'll be able to control that with our iPhones you guys will probably yell at me I'm like the laziest team maker ever we have a curig for coffee and I sure do just put water in a cup with no K cup in there oh I used to I used to do that all the time I used to do that all the time sometimes I'm not lazy but most of the times I if I'm just making tea and I don't really care I just yeah I use the curing just I can't bring myself to get a curing because to me it feels like paying for printer cartridg is just to drink coffee yeah you really are especially now that the uh the cartridges are DRM no seriously L they are and the new ones they're DRM um it's crazy and then the other another thing I've got on my list are Sony's md10 R RBT uh wireless bluetooth headphones I think that they offer much better bang for the buck than beats do I'm not a big beats fan even though Apple owns them now um and I unlike Ally do prefer to have uh a pair of Cups over my ears these are mine um I don't I don't always wear them on the show um but um I do uh infinitely prefer the sound and the Comfort level um that a nice big pair of Cups uh offers compared to uh inear uh earbuds like these so you can pick them up for about 200 um and uh they work very well and the passive mode uh lets you continue using the headphones with a wire even after the uh the batteries run out batteries last for about 17 hours at a stretch um but uh if you happen to be in the middle of a flight or something and your batter is cut out you just plug in the wire and you're good to go until you can get some new batteries in there awesome how about you Ren what's on your list this year oh God I have a bunch of different things um I actually for iPhone users have a bunch of sort of case and uh and cool little Gadget related uh recommendations you had like a case of the month club or something yeah so um actually of all things this is the only thing I've ever bought thanks to a Facebook ad which seems odd I was like when I first saw this I'm like this is kind of strange there this place called casetify um where they offer these custommade cases that basically artists can design and um sell using this sort of it's a it's a uh just a plastic B covering that covers the corners of your phone but on the back had are all sorts of custom designs that local artists and and people who have uh who have joined the site can build and you can join a um a monthly Club so that you pay 30 bucks for your first case and then every month after that you pay $10 to get a new back plate just at random of a of a design um and you get little uh you get little tokens that you can redeem for like oh someone an artist I like came out with this design um and it it works primarily because the cases are pretty nice but the designs are fabulous and they're clear which um for me you know I have the gold iPhone and I'm like well it seems silly like my current my current uh Apple leather case is very nice but completely covers up the fact that I that I have a gold iPhone whereas the case toy cases um are largely some of them are are fully fully painted but some of them are clear and have like really cool designs that allow the the b the original backing to show through so I've only gotten one of them so far um but I really like the one that I have it has it has fancy stars um I think the um the subscription is currently still iPhone 55s but they're they're working on starting the it for the six but I thought that was really neat especially for people who want different you know multiple cases for their phone for design purposes not just not just for protection for fashion exactly well I mean there's it is a fashion accessory in some in some I don't wear my hair the same way every day R I don't want to have my iPhone in the same case every day oh no um the other thing let's see I had a couple I had a couple apps um including transmit for iOS which I still think is amazing if you have to do any sort of um file transference or uploading to the web I was I was making Gifts of my Disneyland experience and sending them to friends and family by using an app called GIF Mill and then uploading to my web server via transmit because the gifts were too big for Tumblr or Twitter uh so like you know that that's an app that may not appeal to everybody but I think is really awesome um the pixel Mater Suite I think is a fantastic entrylevel option for people who are looking to do some photo editing whether that's just filters whether that's building these beautiful templates for books I think they're it's a really cool set of programs and because handoff is supported you can easily pass it between your IO your um iPad and your Mac which is really really awesome um I put on in the sort of in the camera vein I put on Photo JoJo has a thing called a pocket reflector which basically if for people who aren't in the know um a reflector is basically a j Giant white-sided and silver sided uh piece of fabric that you can hold up and bounce current light in the room onto somebody uh and photo JoJo has I think it's like $20 or something uh where it's a pocket reflector that's about this big but it folds up into about something this big so you can have it in your in your bag and go out and do a photo shoot and have a reflector instantly at your uh at your disposal and I I have one of those and I love it it's their website in general is just full of all kinds of devilry for photography I love I get their white balance lens caps I use those are so much easier than using cards oh for sure the the photo JoJo in general it's such a good stocking stuff replace for like photography friends I've bought so many like little under $20 gadgets that you bu like mugs that look like lenses and all kinds of fun stuff they're really cool and um I would be remiss not to recommend um Canon's 40mm pancake lens for people who want to you know Venture into uh single you know fixed frame photography I got my pancake last year when I went to Italy and it Remains the lens that I use most often on my on my camera um it's helped me not only learn how to shoot manually more uh more effectively but that that that lens produces such beautiful photos that and it's for only 200 bucks which is really really cheap for for that quality of lens and I think you Marco and Tiffany had me totally convinced to buy that lens you you definitely should it's amazing um let's see I I'll I'll quickly highlight three more things um I've been really obsessed with Goal Zero which is a a uh web company that focuses on solar powerered uh solar powered gadgets that also allow you to charge your electronics um and one of their one of their gadgets is a a thing called The Lighthouse 250 Lantern which is a 250 lumens um lantern that has a hand crank and USB ports then can also be charged using a an attached solar panel but I believe it's something like 60 70 bucks and um not only does it have a really bright really awesome light that you can take camping you can charge your phone while you're there you it has a hand crank so that if you really need you know emergency power you can do that um and it works with solar technology in general I I really like those guys I like the stuff that they're doing and I'm I'm really excited to like have a little bit of survivalist gear in my otherwise very non-s survivalist home um as long as there is the sun R yeah as long as our sun does not explode uh I will not be completely destitute in the zombie apocalypse exactly uh and lastly uh this is a bag that I've been testing pretty much all year uh for big long trips and I I love it so much um it's the Waterfield designs outbag duffel um which is basically I wish I had it in this room oh show it's a um it's a if andiana Jones built a beautiful leather canvas duffel bag with fun beehive colored uh paneling indoors it would look like this it's a duffel bag that's incredibly heavy duty but looks really nice it looks it looks as as expensive as it actually is if not more it has a couple of really uh nice compartments and the inside you can get it D dual zippered so that each side of the it's it's split in the middle and you have separate zippers for each side which allows you to compartmentalize like dirty clothes and clean clothes or in my case Derby gear and normal human clothes when I went to travel to Florida to to do roller derby this weekend um it's and it it's uh Airline comp Airline compatible it's carryon compatible so you can take it on TSA approved TSA approved yes exactly uh you can take it on an airplane uh and despite the fact that you can stuff it enor ly full of things it's just it's a very well-crafted bag I I think that in general Waterfield does really nice stuff with their bags they're on the pricey side but but totally worth it um what size do you have I have the large um the double one yeah the large double and those are TSA too like even the large ones are the large one is I think um 3/4 of an inch smaller than tsa's Max required guideline so you might you might not be able to bring it on in like of the super budget European airlines but um it's really it's really nice and the straps are nice too like that's one thing that I always hate about duffel bags if they don't have a a roll um option is like the straps can like eat into your your shoulder or they just don't feel good and they have a really nice long strap that connects to either end of the bag that distributes the weight but also the short straps are just are just big enough that you can carry them or you can put them over one shoulder and um wear it like a backpack and it works really well I think Ren just said that it won't fit in your skinny hipster plane I actually don't know I haven't been on enough European budget Airlines Ally you can go test that for me yeah we always fly American so I don't what what classifies America yeah well I'm thinking like the um oh not WestJet but you know what I'm talking about like the tiny little budget airplanes that fly like between Amsterdam and London or something oh yeah I think we do have one of those like mean yeah I think they do transfer us from like Amsterdam to London this winter so we'll see um but I'm pretty sure those like don't allow any carry on so yeah I don't know I always bring I have the same bag grenades the DSLR the incase pro pack and I've never had issues with that um I like it because I can it has a place for the tripod right on the side so you can just hook it right on there I do have a challenge for our listeners though if they can if anyone can recommend like a light weight small fold up tripod that doesn't suck yes I will have a prize because I can't find I've ordered uh many of them and they're all just you know I either feel they're too flumsy I wouldn't trust them or I would like something that I can just fold up like ideally and put in a smaller bag instead of having to tow it around like a huge tripod I want to bring allly have you tried the um have you tried the fold up tripod that photo JoJo was advertising CU I was looking at that but I had I don't think so I would like to order one before our trip to try because my current tripod I love it but it's heavier and I feel like when I put it on the side of that bag like anytime you're on public transit you're like smacking people with your tripod or you know it's just it's it's too big and it gets heavy and I would like something that's lightweight to carry around and I I want to have the option of having it but I hate carrying it around when I don't I regret it so right we'll ask Martin he'll know otherwise he'll no longer be Martin that'll be the stakes of this request um my list I didn't change too much from last year but I did consolidate quite a bit so uh for apps I recommended Final Cup Pro again because I think if you want to make the step up to doing a lot of fun video stuff it it might seem like it's not a big deal compared to iMovie and it is a little bit pricey but I I I learned to do three camera edits in about five minutes using that and to me that's miraculous so if you want to like if you want to make a little Christopher Nolan uh get get underway this holiday season that's the way to do it I also recommended Space Age which is a little bit cheaper than Final Cup Pro but almost as fun it's a great game from Matt Comey and nein mgan Serenity reviewed it already it's a terrific way to spend a few hours you know over the holidays for services Adobe Creative Cloud I didn't think I would like it I've been using Photoshop forever I've bought you know every second or third generation because it's pricey but for 10 bucks I think there's even a better sale going on right now you can get Photoshop and um uh Lightroom for $10 or less a month it's it's just ridiculous and yeah there's you know pixel Mater and and uh Acorn and a bunch of other great editors uh and you know Apple's going to make their photos app but if if you're trained on Photoshop you're trained on Photoshop and it's it's for some Industries it's still a standard so it's a great deal uh also Marvel unlimited if you've been enjoying the Marvel Cinematic Universe uh it's almost like Netflix for Comics you pay one price and you can read all the back catalog you can go read Walter Simonson's Thor Run Frank Miller's Daredevil run uh you know Ed Brew Captain America and all the stuff that's influencing all the movies that we watch today you can just go back and read all those comics and read as much as you want you can spend the entire holiday cooking turkey and reading comics it would be just brilliant I got hue light bulbs and Ally already mentioned Sonos I like it too but Hugh light bulbs let me watch Star Wars uh which Ally hasn't done yet but she will eventually let me watch Star Wars with like Tatooine Sunset I can watch the abyss in like deep blue sea I can just make the lights do anything and everything I want them to do it's it's it's it's just terrific uh I've got the same in incase DSLR Pro bag that Ally recommended Kevin mitchelluk has a fantastic tiny little backpack and I asked him what it was and he told me and it was like 500 bucks so I didn't buy it uh but you know if you want a big backpack that can fit all your stuff uh the Inc stuff is great I use that bag for so many things cuz you can pull out the dividers for camera lenses I mean I've used it to like throw Clos in like last minute you know I just like take the dividers and stick them up against the side and I mean you can use those compartments for literally anything I've never found like been in a situation where that bag didn't fit what I needed it to fit I filled it with Canadian Bagels to bring to my American friends I'm so happy right now yeah it's it's just tremendous uh for the last few years my family has been getting me these babies which are Global knives these are Japanese single piece stainless steel kniv I've tried German knives I'm not going to make any jokes about American knives but once you start using if you like to cook if you actually enjoy cooking if you think that it's the closest human beings can get to Alchemy uh then you know good Chef's knives are just amazing and all sorts of good knives I got the set originally on in Canada we have boxing day which is sort of analogous to Black Friday everything is on sale so I got you know a set of them really cheap and every year I've got the steak knives and I've I've got the filet knives and some other things and they're just super super super good quality uh once you start cutting with really good knives it's almost as if you know how to cook almost not quite but I can't it does make cooking feel a little bit uh more com more achievable and some people say yeah I have this eversharp serrated Dart no that's garbage you don't want no eversharp serrated nothing you want really good quality steel uh certain things are just you know good um this is the Arrow Press looks like nothing it's made by the guy who made those uh aobi frisbee things uh but it's just a simple whoops a simple press you fill it with delicious coffee you press down on it and it makes pretty much the best coffee I've had at home it's super cheap it's like 20 bucks you you know it's I see Peter nodding you can't have coffee now Peter so I feel bad recommending it but it's it's a fantastic coffee maker yeah no we've got one and it's awesome absolutely yeah it's a fantastic way to to take a cup of coffee and um what's nice about it is that uh there's very little waste um you know afterwards even the uh the filters are you know extremely extremely small uh but yeah if if you uh uh if you like a good cup of coffee Arrow Press is a great way to go the the downside is that it makes one or two cups at a time so if you have 18 people over for a party it's it's going to be a little bit uh tedious but if you just want a cup or two every morning you know or every afternoon it's it's just absolutely phenomenally good uh and I put a Blue Bottle Coffee Blue Bottle bot Tonks which I recommended last year if you're in an area like you know where Peter is where his wife roasts her own coffee then you know you don't need this but if you're in an area where you can't get fresh roasted coffee Tonks is they have sorry Blue Bottle will send you single origin freshly roasted coffee to your door so and and when you open it up it feels like you're being punched in the face it's it smells so good it's not stale over caffeinated you know it's not the stuff you buy at Starbucks it's it's it's coffee for humans I'll leave it at that and the last thing is something that I just had to recommend and that is Lego uh Lego is just so much fun I have a bunch of it behind me you know here just for decoration but uh I've been getting it for my God kids you know it's just it's so much fun you can get uh they have the Ghostbuster set from Lego creative right now they have a bunch of Star Wars stuff Batman stuff The Lego Movie stuff you can get small sets that cost about 10 bucks up to Giant sets that cost hundreds and hundreds of of celestial space dollars or whatever you're spending on them uh gold press goldplated latinum whatever your currency of choice is but it's good because you know you can build the toy but then you can build anything that your imagination can create and that's the really fun part I watched my little six-year-old godson came to me with an entire scene of Doc Octopus and uh Spider-Man fighting off the edge of a tower that he totally made up and it was it was really awesome and when you see that sort of kids building things with their hands it's it's better than the virtual stuff that we stick them in front way too often yeah it's like Minecraft except in real life yes I like real life Minecraft yeah real life Minecraft 3D non- virtual Minecraft is great I can even see your non- virtual Minecraft behind you Renee I have several of them yeah Batman so cool uh I like Batman I like Lego so of course I like Lego Batman so that's that's U my list uh Derek hesler our U mobile Nations managing editor has put together some magnificent uh Black Friday sales uh posts and uh gift guide posts we'll have links you don't have to remember all this we'll have links to them in the show notes we've got the Apple gift guide we've got uh alie's and Peters I think Ren's is going to be ready soon got mine come out tomorrow yeah so many so many of the links for you to click uh and I we'd love to hear what you guys are getting or what you guys recommend so you can go to any of those guys you can go to this podcast and just write them down below because I still have not done my shopping yet and would appreciate your suggestions after I buy my Hamilton Beach sandwich maker and and all the stuff that Ren is recommending it's gonna be an expensive Christmas all right guys thank you so much uh for being here Ally if people are looking for you over Thanksgiving where can they find you oh I don't know about over Thanksgiving they might not find me um but every day on imore.com and at IM muggle on all of the social things yes what about you Peter on the social things at flar f l g and on imore.com Ren and I will be back on imore.com Monday um and probably tomorrow with a gift guide and on the social things I am at sat s RN all right and until then I want all of you people Everyone listening everyone watching to enjoy your tomorrow turkey drink and I want to once again thank fracture for supporting the show you can get awesome uh images emblazened embedded immersed inside glass the small one starts at $15 for the small square they're fantastic gifts for family and friends they are you know frankly awesome looking and right now you can get 15% off if you go to fracture.me and use the the promo code imor show that's fracture.me and the promo code imore show thanks fracture\n"