shuffle June 2007 content

[Magnus]

A word from the editor
What is a user group?
by Magnus

I get that question a lot - “so what do you do?” - when I tell someone that EmiratesMac is an Apple User Group. And often I’m not sure what to say because in my mind it’s so clear what we are and what we do, that it’s almost strange to me that someone wouldn’t know. But fact is that user groups, as a way of organizing a community, is not well known here. And a big obstacle that we’ve fought with at EmiratesMac from day one is just that ignorance. So what are we and what do we do? What we do, we can leave for another time, but what we are is important. Just the other day a member told me that being involved in EmiratesMac has helped their business, and that’s an amazing thing to hear, I think. I guess I see EMUG as a family of people with a common interest in Apple and Apple products, that help and support each other in various ways. And we’re also about correcting conceptions people have about the company and products we love, and educating them as well. So we’re a non-profit organization that works toward building and supporting a community, a family if you like, of Apple users. In it’s basic form, it’s that simple. Even though we’re a non-profit organization with very limited income, I believe it can make perfect business sense for a company to work with us and support us. We’re growing as a community and we’re increasingly having the community’s attention on important issues. And it’s up to us to work with businesses to figure out how we can get mutual benefit out of working together. So keep the ideas coming about how we can support each other, and how we can grow our community. The more there are of us, the more influential we can be.

[Magnus]

How I Upgraded an old Mac
by Magnus

This is actually a story from some years ago. I was living in the US at the time, and I had decided to see if I could get a workable Mac that ran Mac OS X but for very little money. In the end I purchased an old PowerMac 8600, upgraded it with a PowerPC G3 processor, added some hard drives, and it all ended up costing less than $500. So even if the story isn’t brand new, I think you may find it interesting.

Background
At the time my main Mac was a Powerbook G4 12-inch which I was very happy with but I wanted a desktop at home to play around with, try different things on, etc. Early on I had decided that I wanted a tower desktop so that I could put different stuff in it. Buying a new PowerMac G4 was out of the question because it would have been too expensive so I set out to find the cheapest way to get a decent performance desktop Mac. So my inspiration was a limited budget but I also got the idea from an article in the August 2003 edition of MacWorld where they put together a G4 computer out of old parts. Their total came to $734, and I didn’t have that much money so I decided to make it cheaper. As it turned out I didn’t make it that much cheaper but more on that later.

The situation
As I said I had a G4 PowerBook but that was my main production machine. I did all my work on it and I could not afford it being down at all really. Basically it needed to always be available to me. So I didn’t really want to set it up a server, play around with UNIX on it and such things. The solution then was to get a desktop at home, on which I could install and set up Apache, FTP, MySQL and other goodies. The machine did not have to have any stellar performance but it should be acceptable to use for these things.

The system
Before we go through my system I should say that I used eBay for pretty much all of the things and the prices I give below are all including shipping and handling. I do that to be up front about the total cost involved. The basis for my new system was a PowerMac 8600 that I got for $97.99. I was basically choosing between a 9600 and a 8600 and was just taking the first one that came along at a good price. I figured the three PCI slots in the 8600 would be enough for me. Some would say that upgrading a 8600 is a total waste of time and money, but I found this to be a viable option for those who have little money to spend or those who just plain don’t want to pay too much, or if you just want to go through the joys of upgrading an old machine. And although this was some years ago it would still today be a viable option.

Upgrades and additions
First thing was naturally to get a CPU upgrade and I really wanted a G4 but I also wanted to keep things tight financially so when a Sonnet G3 400MHz PCI upgrade card came along I snatched it for $84.50. I figured this would give the machine a pretty good boost and should run Mac OS X at ok speed at least. It should perhaps be said that if all you want to do is run OS 9, then the 8600 without a CPU upgrade is actually a viable option. Then came the matter of getting memory for the machine. Since I knew Mac OS X loves RAM I decided to put in four 128Mb RAM chips. I got those chips for $21 each making a total of 512MB RAM in the 8600. That was enough to get started on, and it would be easy enough to add more later. Since I didn’t really need FireWire on the computer I settled for a 5-port USB PCI card that I found for $21.99. As it turned out I didn’t really need this for the first version of my new Mac, but I figured I would need it sooner or later. I was going to get a PCI IDE/ATA card and an IDE harddrive, but after deciding to stay cheap I got a Seagate SCSI 18.2GB drive for $23.50. And while I was at it I got another one for $17. Since I already had a decent 17-inch CRT monitor not being used for anything I decided to use that for the PowerMac. I am not sure why but I still had an old PowerComputing (remember them?) ADB mouse laying around but I still needed an ADB keyboard and got an Apple Extended II for $13.96. I decided to max out the VRAM in the 8600 to the very impressive 4MB (it already had 2Mb installed). I got the two additional megs for $14.99. Finally, I bought a disk set of original Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 for $51.24 and to install XPostFacto I had to run Mac OS 9 and I got Mac OS 9.1 for $35. Grand total: $444.17. If you have Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 already, and take off the VRAM and USB card which were not really crucial, then your looking at about $150 less.

Putting it all together
I was excited when the 8600 arrived and couldn’t wait to get it out of the box, even though I couldn’t do much with it because the only other thing I had at that time was the USB card. However I opened the 8600 up and it was pretty dusty inside, so carefully I cleaned it out. One thing that I had totally overlooked in my joy over getting almost 40Gb SCSI harddrive for what I thought was a really good price, was that both drives had 80-pin SCSI connectors which obviously don’t plug into the 50-pin connectors in the 8600. Also, the 80-pin connector includes the power, so you need a converter that breaks out the power to the standard power connectors you find in most computer cases today. So I had to get two converters for $13.50. Another little thing I had totally overlooked was that the 8600 had a Mac-standard DB-15 video port, which doesn’t just attach to the VGA-standard HD-15 port. So I had to get an adapter for $8.71. A nice surprise about the 8600 was that it came with a keyboard and mouse. Another nice surprise was that the Mac actually had an IXMicro TwinTurbo 128 video card. It was certainly not a match for present day video cards, but it was better than the built-in one. New Grand total: $472.38.

So did it work?
Oh yes! During the time I had it running, I didn’t find anything that didn’t work. I had some problems getting the 8600 to boot with the G3 card in it at first, but once I followed the installation instructions very closely it worked just fine. Most likely the problem was actually a dead PRAM battery. I got a new TL-5151 battery for $10.35. Mac OS 9.1 installed without any problems on the 2Gb disk. With XPostFacto, Jaguar also installed without any problems on one of the 18Gb disks and I managed to get everything going. I had to fiddle around with the SCSI ids but finally I got it right. The 8600 was connected to our broadband router and it worked like a charm both in versions of the OS. Over time I set the 8600 up as a web server, FTP server, and MySQL server, and it all just worked. As expected the performance was not exactly something to brag about, but most of the time it was perfectly acceptable. The main use was as a testing server at home and that role it fulfilled without any problems.

Conclusion
Well I probably didn’t save any money over buying a G3 PowerMac in the first place, but the journey is what is fun and rewarding, isn’t it? I learned a lot about old PowerMacs, adapters, Mac OS X, and a bunch of other stuff. And although I’ve not done anything similar since then it’s certainly not the end. I’m sure I’ll do similar things in the future. This particular PowerMac is now gone. I dismantled it into pieces and before moving to the UAE I sold off parts of it, and just scrapped others that were worth nothing. Sometimes I wish I still had it around, but now I have other Macs that fill the same function, so I wouldn’t need it other than for sentimental reasons. But there are still times when I think of that 8600 and how fun it was to upgrade.

PowerMac 8600 $97.99
Sonnet G3 400MHz PCI upgrade card $84.50
Four 128MB RAM chips 4x$21
5-port USB PCI card $21.99
Seagate SCSI 18.2GB drives $23.50 and $17
2 SCSI Connectors $13.50
Monitor $0
DB-15 converter $8.71
Mouse $0
Apple Extended Keyboard $13.96
2MB VRAM $14.99
Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 $51.24
Mac OS 9.1 $35
Battery $10.35
Grand total: $476.73

[Magnus]

Aperture: what you need to know
by Magnus

Aperture, launched by Apple in 2005, is one of the least known and most misunderstood pieces of software ever created by Apple. People often ask me why they should pay a lot of money for Aperture when they already have iPhoto, and what benefit they would get from Aperture. So I thought I’d try to straighten out some question marks. This article is based on some posts I made on EmiratesMac.com in reply to questions about Aperture (Aperture - Do u use it ? why and how ?).

Professional tool
Let’s get this out of the way first: Aperture is a professional’s tool and Apple developed it squarely aimed at professionals and their needs. In the promotional videos for Aperture you can see professionals working high-end cameras and doing their Aperture work in front of mostly dual 30-inch Cinema Displays. Few among us can afford that sort of equipment, but it’s in those settings Aperture can really shine. Aperture is a professional tool and it demands professional hardware to run like it should.

RAW Files and non-destructive workflow
With Aperture, Apple is focusing on photographers shooting RAW. Aperture can handle pretty much any other digital picture format but it’s focus is on RAW. Why RAW? Because a RAW file is about as close as you would get to the traditional negative. It’s the light that the camera captures without any processing applied to it at all. When you shoot a picture and the camera saves it as a JPG, the camera does all kinds of compressing, adjusting, color corrections, etc. before it saves the file to the memory card. With RAW, the camera just dumps the image data to the card without processing it. So it's “raw”. This means you can do processing in the computer after the fact. For example, you can set the white balance in the computer, regardless of what it was set at when you took the shot. A JPG already has the white balance set and you cannot change it in the computer. That’s an example of the type of possibilities offered you by shooting RAW. Aperture keeps all changes ever made to a shot so you can go back to any previous point since you have access to the original file (the “master”) which is, in fact, never touched. Whatever changes you make to a master becomes a “version”. Aperture doesn't save a version as a separete picture file, it only saves what adjustments/edits have been applied to it.

Adjustments
The adjustment panel is similar to what you find in other programs,including iPhoto, but in Aperture you have more control over details. There are advanced adjustment-options like levels, that you would find in Photoshop. In Aperture they all work on a photo-level, and there are few adjustments you can make on a part of a photo, or individual pixels.

Lift and stamp
Lift and stamp is a powerful feature in Aperture. Say you have made some adjustments to one picture in a series of shots, for example levels, sharpening and white balance. You want to apply the same changes to a number of other shots. You then use the Lift and stamp tool to “lift” those adjustments from the first shot, and then “stamp” then onto the others, thereby applying the adjustments.

Reviewing photos
A very slick tool in Aperture that you would use a lot when reviewing shots is the loupe. It works pretty much like a real loupe, you put it on your shots to see the details, whether an eye is really in focus or not, for example. You turn it on and off by pressing one key and it’s always available. It’s a really cool and helpful feature that saves a lot of time.

Light Table
Another Aperture feature that helps in reviewing shots is the Light Table. Like with the Loupe it works like it’s real-life counterpart. Pros shooting slide file used to stack their slides onto a light table, move them around, check them with a loupe, etc. You do the same here but on the computer screen. You can resize pictures, put them next to one another to see which ones go together, print out the light table, and more. You can save each light table so you can quickly make some rough layouts up for a publication, for example. Especially if you shoot for print, the Light Table is a helpful feature.

Keywords, Ratings, and Smart Albums
Aperture has support for keywords of course. You can use the standard keywords or enter your own. It’s pretty straight-forward functionality and as your photo library grows, you’ll be glad you spent the time early on to apply keywords. You will see small buttons on the screen that represent keywords, and clicking on them while having a picture selected applies that keyword to the picture. In Aperture you can work with a number of sets of keywords. So you can have one set of keywords that you use for your family shots, another set of keywords for your landscape shots, etc. In Aperture, keywords can be hierarchical, giving you a detailed control over your indexing of pictures. Combine keywords and ratings with Smart Albums and you have a way to automate your library. You can have a Smart Album for all your photos with a particular keyword, from a particular date, with a particular rating, or any combination of them.

Stacks
One feature that definitely sets Aperture apart from many other photo apps is stacks. What is a stack you ask? A stack, in Aperture is a collection of exposures, grouped together by the time they were shot. So if you shoot a fast sequence of some running, Aperture will group a number of those frames together in one stack. Aperture can auto-stack shots and you just tell the app the time difference between shots you want for them to be in the same stack, or you can manually sort shots into stacks. You can open and close stacks, move shots around within and between stacks. It’s a great tool for going through shots fast. The idea is that you most likely only want one shot out of each stack.

Vaults
A vault in Aperture is basically a backup copy of your entire Aperture library file. You can have any number of vaults, preferrably on different drives, and Aperture will tell you when there’s a difference between a vault and your library, so you can update it. With two vaults, for example, you can have two external drives, each one with a vault on it, and one stays attached to the main computer all the time, and the other you take home with you.

Workflow
Aperture is a photography workflow tool. Someone asked me the other day “what’s the workflow like in Aperture?” and I couldn’t really understand the question at first. It was like the person assumed there was s set workflow in Aperture that you have to follow. There isn’t. A nice thing about Aperture is that you can work pretty much as you want to, full screen or not, keywords or not, click with the mouse or keyboard shortcuts, stacks or not, etc.

More flexibility and options
Perhaps the thing I like more than anything else about Aperture is how flexible it can be to work with. You can do things the way you feel comfortable with. Go ahead and throw some shots up on the Light Table, apply some keywords, set up a smart folder, etc. Much of that you can do in iPhoto as well, but the options are more limited which results in less control and flexibility for you as a user. To me that’s more a distinction between the pro-app (Aperture) and consumer-apps (like iPhoto) than probably most other differences.

PULL OUT QUOTE
“Let me also draw the distinction between Aperture and iPhoto. You can see a Raw image in iPhoto, but let’s say you make an adjustment to the file, like changing contrast. In iPhoto, you now have an 8-bit JPEG. You've said goodbye to Raw. So the iPhoto choices are that you work in the world of JPEG, or you go back to Raw and lose all the adjustments you’ve done in iPhoto. It's a binary decision. Aperture never makes that conversion from Raw to JPEG. You crop it, you throw away pixels, and the original Raw image is still there. We’re just applying instructions to it. You’re never more than a click away from Raw. Every time we draw an image to screen, every time we’re decoding the Raw file.” Aperture Product Manager Joe Schorr

[Magnus]

Emiratesmac.com Tips and Tricks
by Magnus

We continue our series of tips and tricks for how to do certain things at Emiratesmac.com. The intent is to tell our users about some of the perhaps less well known features and functions on the site in order to make their experience with the site a bit better.

Since the previous issue of shuffle we have installed some new software on the site. It should help us get better exposure in search engines, among other things. It also means some changes for users of the site. Most noticeable probably is three little icons that now appear in each post. Since I’ve received some questions about these icons I thought I’d spend some time trying to explain what they’re for. Basically by clicking on each icon you can share that particular post with other users via one or more web sites. It can help you remember links to posts for the future, and it can also help the site get more visitors from around the world.

From left to right the icons are:

Digg.com (Digg / News)
Digg.com is a community-driven news site, whereby registered users can submit stories that others can “digg” or not. Also see “The day that the community took over” in this issue of shuffle). Click on the icon and you can submit a new story to Digg.com that others can “digg” and comment on.

Del.icio.us (del.icio.us)
If you set up an account with Del.icio.us you can bookmark sites in much the same way you do now in your web browser. The difference is those bookmarks are store online and you can access them from anywhere. You can also attach “tags” to each bookmark, classifying it so you can remember it later. And you can also see how many others have boomarked a page and what tags they attached.

Technorati.com (Technorati: Home)
Technorati is a blog search engine. It indexes blogs from all over the world, and new posts made in those blogs are continuously listed on the site. You can set up your own searches and get automatic notifications of new posts from other blogs. By clicking on the Technorati icon you can add that post to your favorites in Technorati.

Furl.net (LookSmart's Furl - Your Personal Web)
Furl is a kind of a combination of the other sites. You can save URLs for later retrieval, you can tag them with keywords, and you can organize them in different ways. One unique functionality Furl has is that you can archive copies of web sites so you can visit them later even the actual site is not working.

[Magnus]

iArchitect? Combining current technologies
iPhone + iGoogle = iArchitect.
by Omran Alowais - iDubai

Some months ago Apple revealed the mighty iPhone. I am a huge Apple fan, so I started to jump up and down for no good reason. June is the release-date in US, and I don’t think it will be any where near Middle East for quite some time. So, my excitement had gone with the wind. As a mobile phone, forget about it. But as a device. Hmmm! It’s very interesting.

Many know the close relation between Apple and Google. Apple is creating amazing machines; and I am saying machines not devices. Why? Because I think the amount of power and intelligence it carry per inch is more than the US Space Shuttle. Those are super machines, just because the hardware is so compact. Lately, we have witnessed how Apple TV is so compact, it boost so much from that 19x19cm. Similar to iPhone, it could have GPS by the time it get released - I hope - and it already has horizontal/vertical motion sensor, which I have only seen in high-end DSLR’s. Its multi touch screen is another thing that we don’t see in anything in the market except military. That’s some intelligent stuff!

With Google, they got two applications that amaze me, Google Earth & Sketchup.com. Google Earth have covered some sensitive areas around the world, and we now have access to see those areas in few clicks. Same thing with Sketchup, you don’t have to have a university degree to use the software. Unlike other 3D/CAD programs, you will not see this course covered in a University curriculum, nor in a special training school. It’s so, so simple! If iPhone had GPS, then Google Earth can be synced, and it will show you a live 3D map of your current location. So no more 2D plans, it will actually guide you through a large shopping mall, to the desired floor.

With simple OpenGL engine, I think iPhone can handle it. So, Sketchup, can compute 3D Objects. It should be able to handle simple geometry objects like cubes, spheres, cones, etc. If that part is developed, then we can use the multi-touch screen to interact and enjoy the process of creating 3D digital spaces on your Phone.

I will add one more step to this, while you can do all that on your Mac, your iPhone will have a special feature, which is that it can view the building in 3D virtual world. I’m actually trying to see what I can do with the motion sensor in iPhone, and to put it to a good use.
Like a gyro, if I point my iphone like you would hold a camera, you would actually see your building in the virtual space. As you move left or right, your perspective thru the iPhone changes. If you get closer, your GPS will help you with the coordinates, and the virtual space will be changed depending on the location. So, in a market of booming real-estate, and upcoming architect, shouldn’t we develop things for us and our clients? Shouldn’t we as city visionaries use our current tech to help us build the better future?

As an architect, I think this technology will be the best marketing tool for architects and developers, as they will enjoy and progress to have the better visual future.

[Magnus]

This is an article about SSH and your Mac. I've mentioned SSH before but now I thought we'd take a closer look at how you can use SSH with your home Mac to do various things and do it encrypted, meaning it's much more secure. In this series we will primarily use the Terminal but don't be scared, it's really not that hard. In the third part we will get to using a GUI interface to remotely control your home Mac.

Enable SSH on your Mac is really easy. Go to System Preferences > Sharing > Services, and click on Remote Login. That's it. To begin with,we will assume you are using SSH inside your network, meaning not behind a router. Later, we'll deal with connecting to your home Mac while you are away from your home. To login to the other machine using the Terminal, type ssh, your username, and the IP-address of the remote Mac, for example:

ssh emiratesmac@192.168.1.100

If you're connecting for the first time, Terminal will tell you that it doesn't know about the remote machine and asks you if you want to continue:

The authenticity of host '192.168.1.100 (192.168.1.100)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 3f:d3:54:bf:a3:df:1c:3b:e6:cd:a7:8b:34:05:75:0c.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

You type in "yes" and you should get a message saying the remote machine has been added to a list of known hosts:

Warning: Permanently added '192.168.1.100' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

Finally, you're asked for your password, so you type your password and press enter. When you've entered your password, Terminal will print a welcome message:

Last login: Sun Jul 30 20:00:54 2006
Welcome to Darwin!

So what can you do via a SSH connection? You can basically do anything you can do with a Terminal sitting at your Mac. Here are a few examples:

See what applications and process that are running:

top

An alternative is the ps command:

ps -aux

If you only want to see applications running, not all processes, you add a bit to the ps command:

ps -aux | grep '.app'

If you want to see what's actually on the screen on the remote computer, you can use the screencapture command:

screencapture -x screen.png

Quit an application or process (you find out the processid by running ps as shown above):

kill processid

You can edit text files on your home-Mac. There are many text editors you can choose from. I tend to use pico the most because it's pretty user-friendly. To edit the file "mytextfile.txt" you would type:

pico mytextfile.txt

Copy a file:

cp filename

Get help with any command:

man nameofcomman

There are also a lot of other things you can do once you have a working SSH connection, like copy files between computers using SFTP (secure alternative to FTP), and do backups with RSYNC (some good instructions here). Next we'll take a look at connecting to your home-Mac while away from home. We'll look at what you need to change in your router, and what you can do on your home Mac to make sure it's all as secure as possible.

[Magnus]

With the hot weather coming, the last thing you really want to do is bake or cook in a hot kitchen. So this month’s recipe is one to keep you cool. The red-currant jelly isn’t what I would have thought to add to this recipe, but it works. So make your Apple Ice Cream and spend the day at the beach or anywhere that you can stay cool, enjoy. This recipe serves around six people.

Apple Ice Cream

Ingredients
500 g (18 oz) desert apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup (75 g) 3oz sugar
pinch cinnamon
2 tsp red-currant jelly
284 ml carton whipping cream
fresh mint and apple slices to serve (optional)

Instructions
1. Place the apples in a pan with the lemon juice and sugar and cook gently, keeping covered, for 5-6 minutes, until soft.
2. Beat in the cinnamon and red-currant jelly and leave to cool.
3. Whip the cream until fairly thick, then fold it into the apple purée.
4. Pour into a plastic container, cover and freeze for 30 minutes.
5. Give the ice cream a stir and refreeze for a further 4-5 hours, or until completely frozen.
6. Decorate with fresh mint and sliced apple before serving.

[Magnus]

Review: Belkin TuneStage 2
by Magnus

Do you have an iPod? And do you also have a pretty good sound system? Then perhaps you want to take a look at the Belkin TuneStage 2 for iPod. Simply put it lets you play music from your iPod wirelessly through your sound system. You plug a small transmitter into the dock port of your iPod. Then you connect the base station to your sound system, and you’re ready to go. The base connects via a stereo minijack output or left/right RCA outputs, so you should be able to connect it to pretty much anything. Belkin are also nice enough to throw in the necessary cables, unlike Apple who ships the Apple TV, for example, without cables. The wireless transmission works over Bluetooth, so you won’t get interference with wireless phones, microwave, and similar devices. It limits the range to around 10m but we moved around in most of our apartment and it kept the signal. It was only in the areas furthest away from the base where it would cut out. The transmitter doesn’t have any power supply of its own so it takes power from the iPod. This seems to reduce the battery life of the iPod significantly. The audio quality was surprisingly good. Through our test system the music from the iPod sounded a bit hollow compared to what was played from CD or radio, but that’s to be expected I guess. I doubt the quality is good enough to satisfy real audiophiles, but for most customers it’s more than good enough. Belkin’s TuneStage is not a cheap accessory, but it does extend the use of your iPod and it does it really well.

Price: 799AED
From: Belkin
Distributor: Ashley LLC
Web: IPod Accessories

[Magnus]

Review: Uniea Keyboard Cover
by Magnus

If you really want to protect your Apple notebook, getting a cover for your keyboard may be a good idea. And if you’re the kind of user who likes to eat and drink in front of the computer then you probably know how much dust and particles gather under the keys. I’m sure you only spill coffee on your keyboard once before starting to protect it, especially on a notebook. Uniea offers the kind of silicon cover that has become popular lately, with offerings from several companies coming out. This particular cover fits both MacBook and MacBook Pro (15- and 17-inch) and it comes in pink, blue and transparent. It has a smooth top surface, and your fingers glide easily to find the keys. On the bottom side it’s a bit stickier. Fitting it onto the keyboard took a little while because you have to place it just right. But it’s no major task and once it’s in place you don’t have to move it again. Our cover had a mismatch for the enter key, which Uniea seem to think is split into two keys. Otherwise the match is near perfect and the cover fits very tightly over the keyboard. Perhaps our cover was an early production one and we hope that problem has now been solved. Typing with the cover on is actually pretty nice, but that has a lot to do with personal preference, I think. It makes the keys a bit softer and the typing a bit quieter. I’ve tried these types of covers from other manufacturers and Uniea's seem to be right in line with them in terms of quality and feel.

Price: AED
From: Uniea
Distributor: 4th Dimension
Web: www.uniea.com/u-cover.htm

[Magnus]

Review: Mophie Wraptor for 2G shuffle
by Magnus

The tiny 2nd generation shuffle is hard to design a case for, I’m sure. It’s so small, so what would you do to it to improve it? Mophie has tried with the Wraptor and generally succeeded but also fallen short in a few areas. The Wraptor is a clear plastic shell that covers the front and sides of the shuffle. It leaves the back open as well as spaces for all the controls and connections. Wraptors come in different colors. The best idea with the Wraptor is to do something about the earphone cord that always seem to get in the way and tangled up somehow. The Wraptor has grooves on two sides and you just wrap the cord around the shuffle a few times, and there you go. It’s that easy. The main gripes I have about this case is have to do with the things that make it great. It’s a great idea to be able to wind your earphone cord around the shuffle, but if you have earphones with a longer cable, or a thicker cable, compared to the standard iPhone earphones, you may be in trouble. There simply won’t be enough room to wrap the cable around the Wraptor. But then Mophie couldn’t make the grooves on the sides to wide or deep either. That would defeat the purpose of the small shuffle. The other complaint, is that the shuffle cannot be put into its dock while in the Wraptor case. And since it’s not dead easy to take it out of the case, you won’t want to do that too much. But it’s a similar thing with that, what could Mophie do with the small shuffle.

Price: $10
From: Mophie
Distributor: Mophie
Web: mophie.com/products/wraptor/?pod=shuffle