I somehow get the feeling that people who design protective cases for equipment are given a block of wood that looks like that equipment or maybe just the technical specs. They should be given the actual equipment and told they have to use every feature of the equipment before beginning to design their product.
For example, the iPod Touch has many of the features of the iPod and many of the capabilities of the iPhone. But when we looked at the cases available at Fry's recently, 99% assumed the iPod Touch would be used for listening to music and audio books. One assumed you could also watch video so it had a little pop-out stand. But all those features are part of the iPod legacy series. Did they not realize the additional features of the Touch?
The latest generation of iPod Touch is just a phone call app away from an iPhone. Thus it can be very interactive. It needs to be securely parked in an easy to reach parking place and then easily released from that parking place to be punched, poked, and peered at before being just as easily and securely re-parked. The technology is there but the vision is not. I would even recommend a spring-loaded lanyard attaching the case to the parking place so that people would be discourage from passing your toy around the room and in the case that it is accidentally dropped, the lanyard would reseat the iPod Touch into the parking place before it could hit the ground.
Inventors, anyone?
Seems I know a certain bright Parkinson's patient who has all the right ideas already. Have you looked at Iphone cases. (I mean aren't they the same size and all?) We could try to design something out of Leather in a few weeks.
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