In Depth: Top 12 Christmas gifts for Mac users
It’s actually pretty easy to buy presents for the Mac user in your life; generally, anything shiny made by Apple will be warmly received, and in any case most peripherals will work with a Mac these days.
Still, you might need a little inspiration, so here’s our list – written by and for Mac users – of presents that we know will get just the right reaction.
1. Apple Magic Mouse, £55
Apple’s new buttonless wonder doesn’t do anything especially impressive, but it puts in a solid, usable performance as a basic mouse with left-click, right-click, scroll and more gestures on its Multi-Touch surface.
2. Canon Pixma MP640, £199
This isn’t the top-of-the-line Canon MFD – a device packing a printer, scanner copier and more into a single box – but the Canon Pixma MP640 is phenomenal value. You get Wi-Fi printing, dual paper trays, duplex, CD printing and stellar print quality.
3. Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II, £85
Traditional wisdom has it that you at least need a separate bass to get good sound from a desktop speaker system. The Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II, however, prove that wrong; audio is gutsy but defined – and the cheaper T20s acquit themselves well, too.
4. Elgato EyeTV Diversity, £105
Elgato’s range of TV tuners remains the best, and we like this dual-tuner model for Freeview broadcasts in the UK. In areas of low signal, you can boost reception, or opt for watching or recording two channels at once.
5. Imation Apollo UX, £110
Hard disks tend to be commodity items these days, but this tiny 500GB drive – USB powered, and, In Europe, wrapped in protective rubber – really stands out. Consider LaCie’s Starck-designed desktop drives as Time Machine backup targets.
6. iTunes vouchers, from £15
It seems like everyone has an iPod these days – one reason we decided not to include one on this list – and they all need feeding with high-quality music. iTunes vouchers let folks pick the tracks they like from the iTunes Store.
7. Knomo Serra Red, £195
Laptop bags tend to be utilitarian things, but not if you pick Knomo. All its products demonstrate the attention to detail that Mac users appreciate, as this Knomo Serra Red chic trolley case exemplifies. There are more butch lines available too!
8. Kodak Zi8, £117
The iLife suite that comes with all new Macs includes easy-to-use tools to edit movies, and a video camera such as this HD-capable model from Kodak lets you quickly, easily and cheaply capture family and friends at play.
9. M-Audio Axiom 25, £120
In that same iLife package is GarageBand, an astonishingly capable audio application. Even of you don’t think you have a musical bone in your body, a little USB MIDI controller such as this M-Audio Axiom 25 lets you tinkle out a tune.
10. Samsung ST1000, £250
The iPhoto app in the iLife suite now includes a feature called Places that lets you pin where your photos were taken to a map. This Samsung ST1000 12 megapixel compact camera uses GPS to embed this information for you automatically.
11. Subscription to MacFormat magazine, £48
MacFormat magazine, from the same publisher as TechRadar, is packed with useful, easy-to-understand information to help Mac users new and old get the very most from their computer. There’s good reason it’s the UK’s biggest Mac magazine.
12. Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen and Touch Small, £109
This little graphics tablet not only lets you draw and handwrite on your Mac – indeed, it comes bundled with some excellent software – but you can also use your fingers to interact with your Mac, as if it’s a giant trackpad.
 |
 |
I upgraded three computers to 
