Today, HYPER by Sanho Corporation launched a crowdfunding project on Kickstarter for a sleek, silvery flash drive dubbed the iStick, which would feature connectors both for USB and Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) proprietary Lightning connector. The two connectors are mounted at opposite ends of a slide, enabling the user to choose between a USB connection or one designed to slot into Lightning. The Kickstarter is continuing until June 17th, 2014 and requires $100,000 in pledges to be fully funded.
Kickstarter has been successful in funding major projects in the past, assuming that the enthusiasm is present to motivate people to donate. One famous example was the Kickstarter project for the popular game-based webcomic “Order of the Stick,” which set out to collect $57,750 to reprint offline collection books and ended up being funded with over a million dollars – a runaway success that netted $1,254,120, or nearly 22 times the original project goal.
The iStick project has clearly managed to match this success in terms of speed, with $105,299 pledged out of the $100,000 goal in the first day. The majority of backers thus far have pledged between $199 and $299, which entitles them to a 128 GB (gigabyte) black or white iStick at a 50% discount from the retail price of $399. Sharing or Tweeting information about the project gains these backers a free upgrade to the premium silver aluminum iStick instead.
The iStick is Apple (AAPL) approved and MFi certified. It is advertised as a method of transferring files between iPods, iPads, iPhones, and computers (both Mac and Windows) without needing to use the Internet or involving the potentially lengthy process of syncing through iTunes. Touching on the current moment’s paranoia, the iStick is also advertised as a way to avoid NSA observation, though concerns about avoiding hackers are more practical.
The iStick supports direct playback as well as file transfer, meaning it is not even necessary to write files to a device’s memory in order to listen to them. The flash drive includes proprietary decoder software enabling playback of MP4, M4V, MPV, MOV, MPG, MKV, AVI, WMV, RMVB, FLV, 3GP, and GIF files, some of which are not natively supported in iOS in the iStick’s absence.
The iStick will be available in five different capacities, including 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB, plus three colors, black, white, aluminum, and gold. The aluminum colored iStick will actually be cased in that metal, making it much tougher and higher quality than the white or black variants, which are fashioned from plastic. The gold iStick is also aluminum, it golden color an aesthetic coating rather than actual precious metal.
