I was dragged kicking and screaming into buying an
iPhone. Let me say up front I have not
had the greatest of luck with Apple products. I don’t hate them and I’m not a “fanboy”
of other brands and/or technologies, it’s just that Apple and me have never
been the ideal fit for the way I want to do things.
When smartphones came along I virtually ignored that iPhone
even existed. 98% of the reason was that for a long time they were sold
exclusively by AT&T and I would rather use two tin cans and a string than
switch to AT&T no matter how good a phone may be. And, reality check, early iPhones quickly got
buried in terms of cool factor by a never-ending barrage of new Android
devices.
And that may be the very reason I got to a point with
Android that I had to kick them out in the rain and lock the front door. Every time I felt I had something “new” from
Android the next day there was something “newer”. And I got tired of all of the inconsistencies
and intrusionary schemes the Android system was foisting on us. iPhone was starting to live up to the motto “it
just works“ at least as far as smartphone
were concerned.
But unless you subscribe to a lifestyle where Apple can do
no wrong, you have to admit that they sometimes are really slow in keeping up
with the next generation of cool.
Cutting to the chase, the Lightning connector is not Apple’s
greatest accomplishment. It’s marginally
better than micro-USB in some ways and marginally worse in others (including
the famous need to be Apple-certified).
And once magnetic connectors and wireless charging came along, well
forget it, I wanted out of the Lightning connector. But I don’t think Apple is going to let that
happen very soon on their iPhones or iPads.
But there’s hope on the horizon. A small group of brilliant
innovators called aMagic based in Hong Kong is showing off something called
MagCable over at Kickstarter. I follow
Kickstarter as often as I can and as much of a techie as I am, and as cool as
some of the stuff I’ve seen is at their program this is the very first time I’ve
signed up and pledged a future-tech product.
And I’m excited!
The magic behind MagCable is that the magic is very
subtle. There is a cable. One end plugs
into a standard USB charger (of your choice, not included). The other end has a
double-sided magnetic connector on it that’s a little bit beefier than a
typical micro-USB or Lightning connector.
But what the hey? There are no
phones or tablets that it can plug in to. Directly. And the magic gets
stronger. What you do is plug in an ultra-tiny adapter into your device (and
that can be a smartphone, tablet, GPS, game player, MP3 player, etc) where it
lives sort of semi-permanently (thereby sealing the connector to a degree
against dust and dirt). That double-sided magnetic connector SNAPS to the
adapter with Herculean power and holds fast. You don’t even have to look at it
to line it up. And when it comes time to remove it you just bend downward a
little and SNAP it breaks loose. But not until you want it to. Brilliant!
You can get ultra-tiny adapters for Lightning connectors,
micro-USB connectors or get a few of each and use the same MagCable to connect
to any one of them.
There are 3 models of MagCable being shown:
+ MagCable - Micro USB Magnetic Cable (100cm)
+ MagCable - Lightning Magnetic Cable (100cm)
+ MagCable - Lightning Magnetic Adapter Cable (15cm)
Model 1 and 2 are cables with different adapters which are
used for Android & Apple devices respectively.
Model 3 is an adapter for you to convert your current fixed
Lightning cable into a magnetic connector cable for Apple devices. In other
words it’s a short dongle if you are in love with your existing cable.
The magic doesn’t stop there though. Midway along the cable is a little push
button switch that does something I’ve never seen before … by pushing it you
can convert the cable from a charging/data cable to an ultrafast charging-only
cable by turning off its data sync capabilities when not needed.
As icing on the cake, there is a 4-way LED status light to
assure you that your device is charging (think how many jams that would have
gotten you out of) and also that data is transferring properly. It also gives
you a heads-up that your device is fully charged and ready to go.
