Dock

Despite recent advances in audio technology, there's only so "big" sound can get when it comes from a smallish speaker. And a lot of the more popular speaker docks are, well, smallish.

The problem is, if you want big, rich, room-filling sound from your iPhone or iPod, it'll cost you at least $200.

Or not, if you jump on today's deal -- a Cheapskate exclusive! While supplies last, you can get the Fluance FiSDK500 iPhone/iPod speaker dock for $169.99 shipped when you apply coupon code FISDK5 at checkout. Regular price: $229.99.

This … Read more

Android phones and iPhones pack pretty powerful processors -- powerful enough, in fact, to deliver laptop-level performance, if only they had big screens and keyboards for your viewing and working pleasure.

Enter the ClamCase ClamBook, a kind of laptop extension for Android and iPhone.

It works like this: Your smartphone sits in a wired dock and drives the ClamBook's screen and keyboard. It's effectively your phone writ large, which could be great for everything from watching movies to playing games to working on documents.

ClamCase isn't sharing a lot of details just yet, but here's what … Read more

As we move further away from our analog roots and become more entrenched in digital music, what are we to do with the forgotten musical instruments of yesteryear? Austin, Texas, artist and art teacher Christopher Locke has an idea. He salvages old horned instruments to create incredible audio players for the most ubiquitous digital music devices around. … Read more

Generally, Mac users have been missing out on USB 3.0, instead, they have had Thunderbolt from the beginning of the new standard. Now that's about to change, thanks to Belkin.

The company announced yesterday a new docking device called Thunderbolt Express Dock, model F4U055, which allows for adding three USB 3.0 ports to a Mac via the computer's Thunderbolt port. In addition, it also offers one port of the following connection types: FireWire 800, Gigabit Eithernet, and eSATA, as well as one audio in and one audio out. Similar to most Thunderbolt devices, the dock comes … Read more

A mythical first-generation iPad surfaced on eBay this past week confirming rumors that the device may have originally intended to have two dock connectors, according to MacRumors.

"This is one of a VERY small amount of apple prototype devices and you rarely see these on eBay," the listing says. "This iPad has 16GBs of capacity, and is incredibly unique. For starters, it has 2 dock connectors."

When the iPad was first introduced in 2010, it came with one dock connector in portrait, or vertical, mode. But rumors floated that the device would have another dock connector in landscape, … Read more

A lot of CNET readers like to complain that we cover too many Apple accessories and not enough Android ones. Well, the truth is there just aren't nearly as many accessories out there marketed toward Android users. … Read more

My iTunes library has grow fairly large over the years and contains many songs I don't recognize. After entering a few simple Terminal commands, I now get a notification above the iTunes icon in the Dock with artist and track info when a song starts.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, open up Terminal and enter these three commands:

defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool TRUE

defaults write com.apple.dock notification-always-show-image -bool TRUE

killall Dock

(The first command adds the artist and track information, and the second command adds the iTunes logo to … Read more

The dock area is very handy when you need to access your favorite apps on the fly. However, when all of the icons are for anything but your favorite apps, it makes the dock a lot less appealing. That's why there's a way to change this, but it's hidden in a menu that only appears when looking at your app drawer. Here's how to set up shortcuts you'll actually use:

Step 1: Open the app drawer on your device.

Step 2: Press the Menu button on your device and choose View type.

Step 3: Pick … Read more

In System Preferences, you have a few options in positioning the Dock. You can set it to reside along the bottom, right, or left edge of the display, and you set it to remain visible or hidden until you need it. By default, there's about a half-second delay for the hidden Dock to appear. I've never liked this delay; I frequently wait for iPhoto to spring to life, and there's always a delay when opening iTunes, so why do I need a delay for the Dock? To be sure, it's an admittedly short delay, but I'… Read more