Hasta La Ideas

Like many of you, I was all ears during today’s Apple announcement—and by ears, I mean eyes, by which I mean busily scanning liveblogs from the folks in attendance in Cupertino. In any case, I will likely be acquiring a new black rectangle in a week and a half, and although the initial reactions are mixed, the ‘-S’ denotes enough new features to justify the purchase. Yes, the A7 chip and 64-bit architecture are potential gamechangers. Extended battery life, check; LTE is a plus. The new iSight camera and its myriad features look promising, and who knows what the future holds for TouchID?

However, I couldn’t help but note (wait for it) the glaring omission of a certain feature that smartphones have long been lacking. Tim Cook & Co. have come so close: the size and shape of the iPhone are ideal, striking the perfect balance between usable real estate and hand-holdability. But why confine the interface to the screen? Why not liberate ideas from the glass barrier and put them in eye-pleasing, handwritten print?

Enter the Paperback, a new product by iLoveHandles that is essentially an iPhone-shaped Post-It pad (camera port and all). “Use them one at a time, or put a small stack on the back of your phone to use later. Paperback’s pages have a removable adhesive on most of their surface, keeping the note flat on your iPhone.”

At worst, it’s a neat way to design your own novelty case. All they need to do is make it in four other colors and they’ll sell millions.

(Yep, EOP. Sorry if you were led to believe that this would be meaningful commentary on the new iPhone; you can find that over at your favorite tech blog. For what it’s worth, I did find this analysis of fingerprint scanning technology to be pretty interesting. In any case [yes, pun intended], feel free to sound off in the comments.)

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