• MacBook: Apple recently updated its baseline 13-in. MacBook with a unibody polycarbonate shell for added strength and style. Inside, an efficient LED-backlit screen helps lift battery life to seven hours and provides instant full-screen brightness the moment you turn it on. The new MacBook is greener than previous models, having eliminated harmful toxins like mercury and now using arsenic-free glass. Among its other consumer-friendly features is a spacious glass trackpad that registers multiple-finger inputs like two-finger swipes (for up or down) and four-finger swipes (to choose among open applications).
• Zipcar iPhone App (free): Some trips are well planned; others happen on a whim. For the whimsy in you, there’s Zipcar, which offers its members quick, cheap, hassle-free car rental on short notice. So when your afternoon meeting is canceled during a business trip to San Francisco, your boss may sulk and head back to the hotel, but you can be tooling around Napa in a Zipcar. The Zipcar iPhone app amplifies the quickness and ease of this process. Beyond helping you manage reservations, find nearby pickup locations and browse car models available, the app offers clever capabilities like remote locking and unlocking and honking your car’s horn from your phone when you inevitably forget what it looks like in a crowded lot.
• Yelp iPhone App (free):One of the coolest things about traveling is the chance to try new restaurants. You can’t really rely on airline magazines or those in-room hotel “city guides” for the skinny on where to go, but you can rely on other munchers. The iPhone app connected to Yelp’s social-review platform lets you access the wisdom of the highly opinionated Internet masses for dining tips. From there, the Yelp app’s “Nearby” feature shows you in both list and map format which recommended restaurants are close by. Or you can bookmark the best spots to check out at a later time.
• iPod touch: Big portable gaming devices are nearly obsolete as ever more high-quality games are developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which is why the 32-GB iPod Touch is perfect for long-haul flights or everyday commutes. We like the 32-GB model over the 8-GB because it has four times the memory, a speedier processor and voice control to direct your music. A built-in battery provides up to 30 hours of music playback or six hours of video playback, with storage for as many as 7,000 songs or 40 hours of video. Couple that with the MiFi hotspot, and you have instant access to more than 1 million apps and games likes GeoDefense Swarm, Wurdle, ATV Offroad and Cooking Dash. It’s got so much to enjoy, you may be the last one to leave the plane.
•Joby Gorillamobile: It can be a pain to hold your iPod for extended periods while trying to watch a movie. Now there’s the Joby Gorillamobile, which offers hands-free viewing in just about any situation. Its flexible, wrappable legs virtually secure your device of choice to just about any surface — body parts withstanding, but we haven’t tried — in any position you see fit. It’s easily packable and works with a wide variety of devices, including but not limited to mobile phones, GPS units and digital cameras.
See the full list which also inexplicably omits iPhone (despite containing iPhone apps!) but includes the iPhone wannabe of the moment, Motorola’s Droid (“Pre”sumably because TIME wanted to jump on the bandwagon before this one, too, falls apart), here.
