6 great gifts your Mac will love you for

If you’re looking for cool tech gifts this season, look no further — here are half a dozen products your Mac will love you for.

Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD

Apple’s speedy Thunderbolt I/O is smart enough to handle FireWire 800, HDMI, Mini DisplayPort and Ethernet traffic so long as you have the right cables, but you may sometimes need to handle more devices than your have ports for. This is where Belkin’s solution comes into its own, offering two Thunderbolt 2 ports, three USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet, a speaker and a headphone audio port in one attractive AC-powered device. If you want to drive multiple peripherals (two monitors, a backup drive and a video camera) on your Mac, you could probably use one of these. ($299).

BlueLounge Jimi

Also on an interconnect tip, iMac owners may thank you for this handy little doodad which gives your Mac a USB port on the front. Sure, you can get cheaper flexible interconnect cables but this solid little number’s advantage is it won’t move when you try to connect a peripheral to it. ($14.95)

Western Digital External RAID drive or LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 drive

I’m on the record for imploring Mac users to use backup, but you still need something to backup too. Both these gargantuan drives from these two key external drive manufacturers should do the job. Western Digital’s award-winning RAID drive offers up to 12TB of space in a 256-AES encrypted RAID array; LaCie’s Big Disk delivers RAID0 workstation class performance (but no additional data protection, as noted by reader, Pat Storr below). If you’re looking for storage solutions do take a look at those offered by these two firms. Though if your Mac boasts an SD card slot then you may also want to take a look at the Nifty MiniDrive (c$39). You’ll find more storage ideas here.

Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air

These AirPlay-compatible speakers have taken multiple awards in recognition of their design, sound quality and AirPlay support, the down side is their relative expense (up to $600), some may prefer Logitech’s nice-sounding UE Air System (c.$199).

Apple USB superdrive

This is one of those accessories you can live without in the digital age, but when you actually get to own one it makes a nice difference to your Mac life. It lets you play and record CDs and DVDs — sure those formats may not have much of a future left, but it’s still nice to play media you have on those disks that you may need to pay for again otherwise. (c.$75).

Mobi chargers

These innovative solutions mean you will never run out of battery power in your Apple Keyboard, Trackpad, Magic Pad or Mouse ever again. They’ve been around for a few years but (in very simple terms) this family of charging solutions work with your existing Apple product to deliver wireless inductive charging for these devices. They’re cool, easy to use, cost effective and mean you don’t need to use disposable batteries. (Prices vary depending on compatible Apple device).

One more thing

Not for the Mac but if you’re hoping to get moving early to get your hands on this week’s Black Friday deals you’ll probably want to get dosed up on strong coffee, so keep an eye on the growing market of connected coffee machines, such as the Belkin/Jarden Mr Coffee maker introduced earlier this month ($140).

Come back tomorrow for a hand-picked selection of gift ideas for iOS devices.

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