Printed Antimatter

Guess you won't be smashing that iPhone after all

It's only a few hours until the first iPhones go on sale, and I've been reading blog-coverage by my colleagues Phil and Michal reporting from the lines in front of the Apple Stores in SF and Palo Alto (respectively). The photos and anecdotes of eager little consumers, itching to get their hot li'l paws on a precious digi-bauble made me wonder if the dummies from Smash Some Stuff were going to make an appearance. These are the folks who wait in line for hours to be the first to buy the latest must-have electronic product using donated funds, and then smash it, in order to mock... the folks who wait in line for hours to buy the latest must-have product. Their site claims it's a social experiment, but clearly all it has revealed is how many people are willing to donate their own hard-earned money for no apparent reason. I assume they think it's a commentary on hype and consumerism, but there's no hint of that on the page-- there is plenty of spite though:

"We smash game consoles, MP3 players, TV's, and especially the hopes and dreams of fanboy's." [sic]

"Keith and I created the site on December 28, 2005 for the sole purpose of us destroying stuff."

ANYway, turns out that of the $499 they need to fulfill their iPhone-smashing fantasy, helpful suckers have donated only $117.70. And THAT includes $40 donated by the SSS guys themselves. Sorry guys, I guess your supporters have had enough of funding your Beavis-and-Butthead-meet-Gallagher antics.

This plea on the site is especially poignant:

"If someone does donate $400USD, I will be speechless and just give u the destroyed Apple iPhone and a whole lot more too."

Wow!! $400 for a destroyed iPhone?! What a deal!! You'd have to spend a whole hundred dollars more for one that was brand new and still working!!

Perhaps the Stuff Smashers can take some solace that they still out-raised their clone-rivals at smashmyiphone.com, who to date have raised one whole dollar.

The case of the perfect iPhone case

Okay, I know, you're sick of hearing about the iPhone, and I am too. But that doesn't mean I don't want one badly, so badly it hurts when I pee. However, I've decided I'm only going to drop half a grand on one if some other company comes out with the perfect case first. (You'd think Apple would come out with a good one, but look what they came up with for the iPod: a damn sock.)

Oh, there's a ton of third-party cases out there already. The iPod accessory-makers have churned out a slew of sleeves, holsters, and silicone prophylactics for the Jesus phone, even though they apparently haven't actually seen it in person yet. (Maybe they got non-functional iPhone shells to design around? I smell an eBay scam in the making.) But being the design freak that I am, I have some strict requirements:

1. It must fit in my pocket. I am a major dork, but wearing a cell phone on my belt is one facet of dorkiness I have never embraced. Nor am I such a vain prat that I want to display a gadget on my hip as a conversation piece. I keep my cell phone in my pocket, which has the added benefit of making the vibrate mode a cheap thrill. So my perfect case must have no belt clip (or at least a fully removable one), add very little bulk, and sport some structural rigidity to protect the phone's screen from flexing when sandwiched between tight denim and my rippling, bronzed quadricep.

2. It must have screen protection. An irony of the iPhone is that the most vulnerable part of it must remain uncovered. There are films and thin shields that protect its screen from scratches while you caress and fondle it, but I want something tougher, to protect it from impacts and cracking. (After all, you never know when someone's going to kick you in your rippling quadricep.) But this protection also has to get out of the way quickly when I need to use the phone. It occurs to me the flip-back cover of the Newton is close to my ideal. Or the cover on the original Star Trek's communicator. (Told you I was a major dork.)

3. It can't be ugly. Apple products are beautiful. Most cases are -- how shall I say this? -- not. It pains me to wrap my current iPod in a protective case that makes it look like a cheap pool toy or an old lady's eyeglass case. That's why it's scratched up worse than Roy after a few rounds with Montecore. Similarly, most of the cases I've seen for the iPhone are heinous, which is a terrible insult to the phone itself. Should the iPhone ever attain self-awareness (which I think is planned for revision 2), it will vomit with rage at the thought of being dressed in such tawdry dreck. I think it's too much to hope that a case actually be handsome in its own right, but it has to at least be inoffensive.

I have trolled through many cases to see if any lived up to my ideal. (If you want to troll too, check out ilounge and the google.) I've only found one that seems to satisfy my standards: the FLiP by iQase. Mind you, I haven't actually seen one in person, nor tried it out with an iPhone (they're not out yet, you know), but the FLiP seems pretty well-thought out. All the ports are accessible, although the camera lens is blocked. I'm not completely a fan of the stitched leather look, but it's not a dealbreaker. And at only 30 bucks, it would make my bank account feel slightly less like it was hemorrhaging.

Now, if it were made of rubberized aluminum, it might just be perfect...

If you still haven't had enough iPhone blather, check out blog-cousins Third Screen and Apple 2.0

UPDATE: I take it all back. PC World tried scratching, gouging, and dropping the iPhone, and nothing happened to it. Looks (so far) like a case is not necessary after all...