I’m as surprised as you are, but a stylus that attaches to your face could change the way some people use the iPhone.
Not as bird-brained as it looks?
I rarely lack an opinion on tech matters. I know generally what I like and what I don’t, what wins me over and what won’t, but the latest post from TechCrunch has me pulling a serious Jekyll and Hyde.
To give a brief rundown (although the picture says more than I could ever hope to), a gentleman named Dominic Wilcox went on a one-per-day invention project, and this was was just one of the creations he came up with. That’s fair enough, I think.
Where he loses me is that this stylus-mask is used so that you can take your iPhone/iPad with you in the tub. Now, I’m the sort of guy that chuckles a bit when he hears a story about someone dropping their phone in the toilet, mostly because I’m just not sure how that could ever happen, so the thought of everyone in their bird masks face-tapping their phone in the shower has a lot of mileage with me on some level at least.
But I just feel that we can perhaps leave our iPhones on the kitchen table for a half hour while we take a relaxing bath. Maybe the type of person that would use this isn’t interested in tossing in some Epson salts and an R. Kelly record and getting their mind in a better place, but I could use the break from staring at a glowing screen every once in awhile. Especially if I’ve made the executive decision to chill out in a bathtub.
But as I was formulating that opinion, I looked at Dominick’s actual blog post on the device and his mention of its use for someone without the use of their hands strikes me as the beginnings of a great idea. If you had wanted an iPad for so long but couldn’t manipulate the screen with your hands for one reason or another, wouldn’t this (or some modified version of it) be an ideal solution?
There would maybe need to be some changes to the design to make it less embarrassing to wear in some sort of public space, although I’m not entirely sure how you could keep it from looking like a beak while still retaining its actual usefulness (as the length of the beak is sort of the key). But even just for people who wanted it to use around the house, I could at least see the possibility of it changing someone’s life.
So while I am strictly opposed to people with ten fully functioning fingers wearing the mask to make sure they are never, ever without their iPad, I think there are some real interesting possibilities for some sort of greater good to come out of this odd thing. What do you say, Appolicious readers? Bird masks for everyone?
