Kickstarter Spotlight: DGRule – The Invisible Hub for MacBook

I haven’t done one of these in ages, but back when GadgetSyrup was new I would share some of the fun or neat campaigns I would find on Kick Starter. They were pretty popular posts and I really enjoyed sifting through and finding some really useful and interesting items on the platform. So after this long hiatus I thought it would be fun to bring these posts back. First up a USB dock for MacBooks. It may not sound super interesting on the face of it, but is actually really cool.

First a little back story. I spend a lot of time with laptop docks, like a disgusting amount of time. My day job is with computer peripherals company that sells dozens of different types of laptop docking stations, so I think it is safe to say I have “seen ’em all.”

What Is It?

The DGRule dock is touting itself as the first ever invisible dock for the MacBook Pro 16″/15″/13″ and is designed to overcome the dongle life and the limitations brought on by having only Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C ports on the MacBook Pro.

Why Do I Like It?

I’m not a Mac users. I actually find the MacBook Pro laptops to be very boring in design and in some respects kind of ugly. Specifically the football field-sized track pad. However, when looking at the MacBook in a vacuum with the DGRule dock connected, they make a pretty near perfect pair.

The dock secures itself to the bottom side of the MacBook and stretches from the left to right edges. The dock connects itself on those edges by plugging directly into the Thunderbolt 3 ports.

The dock is very low profile and stays out of the way while also packing a lot of I/O connectivity. The DGRule has the following connections:

• USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 with 100 watt power delivery (the image below from DGRule is incorrectly labelled as USB 3.1 Gen 1)
• 3.5 mm audio
• 3 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Type A)
• SD card reader
• microSD card reader
• Mini DisplayPort
• HDMI
• Thunderbolt 3, 40 GB/s

Those ports pretty much have you covered for all modern or accessories from memory cards, USB devices and displays and in a very small package.

The dock also provides passive cooling for your MacBook since it raises the back-end of the laptop off your desk or lap keeping it from overheating and slowing down while you are running intensive tasks like running Final Cut of Adobe Premier.

Where Can You Buy It?

The DGRule is still active on Kickstarter as of the date of this post and has about 7 days to go, ending on Sat, January 18 2020 2:59 AM EST. They have crushed their funding goal of CAD $6,519 with a current total of CAD $373,789!!