Must-have Mac accessories

We continue to hope that Apple will someday embrace HDMI connections on its Mac laptops and desktops. Until that happens, you'll need a dongle like the Griffin Video Display Converter to send your Mac's video signal out to your HDMI-based TV.

Owners of Apple's 27-inch iMac get an added benefit to the pricey all-in-one's large screen: the ability to send a video signal into the display. This opens up lots of possibilities for connecting game consoles, or a Blu-ray player, and turning your iMac into a true home entertainment hub (albeit, one limited to 720p output due to the iMac's display settings).

You'll need an adapter here as well, but in this case it calls for something a bit more heavy duty than a simple dongle. Instead, you'll need a product like the Kanex XD, which was specifically designed to send video into Apple's largest iMac.

External storage has become so inexpensive that it's hard for drives to differentiate themselves, but Seagate has had some success making its FreeAgent GoFlex Pro stand out.

Thanks to a savvy software partnership with Paragon Software, the FreeAgent GoFlex drive family will read and write files in either OS X or Windows, without reformatting the file structure. Designers, video editors, photographers, and others who move large files or collections of files between systems will appreciate the time savings from this bilingual drive.

Finally, if you'd like to improve your MacBook's audio output, but aren't quite ready to make the leap to a full set of external speakers, Twelve South's BassJump could be the ideal solution.

Designed primarily for Apple laptops, the BassJump provides a noticeable improvement to the depth and clarity of your MacBook's audio playback. At $80, it's perhaps a bit expensive for such a focused task, but its Mac-consistent design, compact size, and handy control software help its appeal. We also like that it's USB-powered, so you only need to mess around with a single cable.