Best gadgets and apps of Macworld 2012

Time to close the iBook on Macworld 2012, which ended Saturday in San Francisco. As is tradition, Macworld magazine has named its Best in Show products. As is also the tradition, I think they got every one wrong.

While the lights of the Macworld expo are turned out, let's look at some of the Mac hardware, software and iOS apps that were really lights-out.

My criteria differ from theirs. My criteria is whether seeing these Mac accessories and iOS apps made passersby say either "Ha!" "Wow!" or "Duuuuuude!"

The biggest wow-generator on the Macworld exhibition floor was surely the set of Alljack diamond studded speakers pictured above. These babies cost a cool $68,000 apiece, they're plated with gold and their bases have magnificent hand-etched floral detailing. Those five speakers up there are the only ones in existence, and Alljack reportedly does not plan on producing any more than those five.

If those speakers don't get you crazy attention from the ladies, I don't know what will.

Also among the best things that you can't actually have is Slickwraps' Steve Jobs memorial iPhone case. This item was only for display and not for sale, presumably because they'd rather not get sued. Those that were for sale offered dazzling surfaces with your choice of fur, leather, maple wood or mood ring material.

Quite a few exhibitors slapped a beer bottle opener onto an iPhone case, but no one did it with the intelligence and panache of the Intoxicase. The Intoxicase comes with a free app that counts how many beers you've opened, tells you where you parked your car and calls you a cab when you've had a few too many. The Intoxicase is a lifesaver in more ways than one! (Check out Joe Thomas's full article on the Intoxicase here.)

In the app department, a company called Apptly has some app-solutely hilarious apps called Fatify, Baldify and Oldify. Each will take anyone's photographic image and convert that person's appearance to an impressively realistic version of themselves as obese, balding or elderly. I don't care how fundamentally useless these things are, they will crack you up for hours.

For both brains and brawn, nothing beats the free app AngryCAD. IMSI Designs makes magnificent technical drawing apps like TurboViewer, but this free app they've offered just for giggles allows you to tear down buildings. You can upload a technical drawing of a structure, and then destroy it with missiles, bombs or sheer force. Architects and industrial designers will have a hard time finding a better form of therapy outside the boudoir.

For more of Allvoices' coverage of Macworld | iWorld 2012, check out allvoices.com/macworld2012.