Type of Article: MacTech Reviews

The Homecloud Digital Home Manager (www.homecloud.com) from Westell Technologies is cool enough that it might convince Apple fans it’s a better choice than a Time Capsule. It’s designed to create a personal computing “cloud” within a home or a small-business environment.

Overview

By Erick Vlientinck

RadLab (www.gettotallyrad.com) is an US$149 Photoshop action set. With its own palette, you can start RadLab and decide whether you want it to work with your image on the same or a new layer, or as a smart object.

The built-in speakers on Macs are serviceable but certainly don’t provide audiophile-pleasing sound. If you want to enhance your Mac’s audio, the US$249.99 Arcam rPAC (http://macte.ch/28EZW) offers an excellent way to do so.

It’s an USB, bus-powered DAC and headphone amplifier designed to improve the audio performance of both Apple and Windows computers. Compact enough to be transportable — and it comes with a carrying case — the Arcam rPAC provides high-end sound via its use of a digital-to-analogue converter (DAC).

In the late 90s I was the proud owner of an Apple PowerBook Duo, a subcompact notebook that could be complemented by the Apple Duo Dock, which turned the PowerBook Duo into a full-size, AC-powered, fully functional desktop computer with all the standard ports.

By Erick Vlientinck

The US$229 RODE VideoMic Pro (www.rodemic.com) is a directional microphone for DSLR and video cameras. It has a range of 40–20,000 Hz, a –10 to 20 dB loudness switch, a signal-to-noise ratio of 74 dB, and a dynamic range of 114 dB.