You know that feeling you get when you upgrade your tech to the newest thing and it almost feels like more of a downgrade yeah that’s how I felt when I switched from the 2015 MacBook Pro to the 2017 sure it gains empower and lost some weight but it also lost a lot of ports that I needed and the battery life has been a wash if you’re in the same boat and switching to PC is just not in the cards well I’ve found some accessories that can help I’m mister mobile and this is your MacBook survival kit for 2018 brought to you by Squarespace up first an accessory I use every single day the hyperdrive the first time I saw this was in 2016 and I knew I had to have it even if it cost me almost a Benjamin which it did the good it’s small enough to disappear into a bag pouch it restores all the ports and slots from the 2015 that I need and it’s much more elegant than the Apple dongles it’s also got an LED to let you know it’s connected and I like lights the bad it’s hard to keep it connected unless it’s stationary on a tabletop moving the computer can easily jog it loose and for some reason ejecting SD cards doesn’t always work so you need to force eject which doesn’t seem to hurt anything but it’s still annoying so why is the hyperdrive still number one on my list well a lot of companies have made variations on this product and most seem to work better than mine Andrew martynuk over at Android Central uses a smaller verbatim branded dock that he says works perfectly so I’ll drop links to that and to mine in the description where you’ll also find links for all these products by the way if you still want the ports and you’re also the type who carries a laptop in a sleeve check out dock case this is another successful Kickstarter gone mainstream and it takes the form of a big envelope made of synthetic leather on its edge is an aluminum rail that includes all the ports we just saw on the hyperdrive plus an extra USB a and an Ethernet jack the idea here is that you lay your MacBook on top while you’re working and a dedicated cable makes the connection to the port rail on the plus side the case is thoughtfully designed with a magnetic closure on the flap some okay-looking stitching and a little sleeve for the connector cable on the downside there’s no mechanism that keeps the sleeve rigid so the laptop sits at a slight angle also you can’t really charge your phone via the dock ports because of low output and a tweaked town reports
inconsistent data throughput as well that’s a significant letdown especially for the list price of this thing a dock case did send over a code so that you can discount if you do want to order this I’ll throw it in the description as well my favorite thing Apple ever brought to the laptop was MagSafe the breakaway magnetic connector that saved my Mac books from countless careless Falls over the years well that’s a feature Apple ditched with the switch to USB see but there is a way to get it back base us or dream vision is the best reviewed company I could find on Amazon making magnetic USB see adapters the good it’s dead simple you plug one side into the charging port you snap the other side onto your cable and boom magnetic charging that pops off if you trip on the wire the bad it’s not on a directional so you need to decide which direction you want the cable facing when you install the computer side Jack and removing that jack to realign it can be tricky for all the complaining I’ve done about the ports on the new MacBook they do enable a convenience for those times you can’t find an outlet you can charge your laptop with a battery pack as long as it has USB power delivery enter the anchor power core 26800 it’s big capacity is right in its name it’s metal casing makes it durable and it is USB PD compliant those are the pros the cons but that metal casing also makes it heavy and you need to use a PD charger to top it back up otherwise it takes forever Ankur sent me the power port plus five for the purpose which has also been my travel charger for a few months now keep in mind that the MacBook is a huge battery drain compared to a phone so you’re only going to gain something like a half a percent per minute but at least it’s going in the right direction and of course you can use the pack to recharge phones or tablets as well by the way this isn’t paid anchor sponsorship or anything they just happen to be a brand I’ve been using for a long time if you’re looking for an alternative I’ve also had good luck with Rav our products and finally there’s the issue of the new butterfly keyboard after about three months I finally got used to it but if you long for the tactility of keys that actually you know move there’s a glut of Bluetooth keyboards out there to choose from I covered these two a long time ago on the Instagram channel they’re called the quirky writer and the lo free and my favorite mouse is still Microsoft’s Ark
touch design which got a refresh last year the new thing I’m showing off here is this lazy susan kind of thing actually it’s called the M stand by Rain design and its whole purpose is to raise your laptop up high so you don’t get that crick in your neck while you work on it if you’re like I was trying to muddle through with a laptop stand made of stacked shoeboxes so your computer clears your microphone the M stand is well worth a look especially now that the price is down to 40 bucks on Amazon oh and Rain design makes smart phone stands too one last time all these products are linked in the description below folks and if you find a better deal on similar stuff elsewhere drop a line in the comments and before you get out of here please also check out mr.Mobile’s sponsor this video is brought to you by Squarespace I bet you didn’t know it but we at mobile nations have a few sites built on Squarespace they’re fresh they’re flexible and if anything ever goes wrong we get 24/7 365 customer support you can build one too whether you’re an artist a musician a designer anything click on through to squarespace.com slash mr. mobile for 10% off your first purchase and hey if there’s something missing from my site that you’d like to see added let me know in the comments and we’ll see what we can do meantime get your own site started at the link in the description squarespace.com slash mr.mobile well it’s time for me to get back to trying to figure out this touch bar folks until next time thanks for watching please subscribe and stay mobile my friends .
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