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iLDOCK - Lightning+headphone jack iPhone 7 dongle, made out of aircraft grade aluminum, with a $5,000 goal and a delivery date of next month (self.shittykickstarters)

danwin が 投稿

Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/291423994/ildock-charge-and-listen-to-iphone-7-at-the-same-t/description

Warning signs:

  • Extremely low funding goal
  • Website registered in China right before the campaign began, even though creators claim to be from Los Angeles and have been working since January
  • $10 is extremely low for this kind of hardware. You can barely get a third-party lightning cable for cheaper than that. Belkin, for comparison's sake, is a long time experienced manufacturer, and its much shittier adapter sells for $40.
  • Early adopters get it for $5, which is definitely unrealistically low. Also, why would any manufacturer undercut themselves so drastically when bringing a product that would be superior to all other existing solutions?
  • "Not only is ILDOCK the first to offer you 3.5 mm + lightning port, but it is also the best looking iPhone dock. We use aircraft grade aluminum and precision CNC to create ILDOCK’s beautiful look that will match your iPhone"

Came across this campaign after reading this clueless article from the Gadgeteer:

Currently, it’s running at 26X their modest funding goal, so they are going to arrive. But it you’d like to get in on the first batch, there are 12 days left.

Edit: That said, they do claim to have a video of a working prototype: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/291423994/ildock-charge-and-listen-to-iphone-7-at-the-same-t/description#prototype-slide-6665

...but, so did ZNAPS, which sells a simpler product at a more believable price range and a longer development time and managed to raise $3M...and yet still hasn't quite delivered while being a year late: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1041610927/znaps-the-9-magnetic-adapter-for-your-mobile-devic/description

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[–]ccricers 12ポイント13ポイント  (3子コメント)

Using "Aircraft Aluminum" is not an improbable feat. It's just a common marketing trick to make the alloy sound "exotic". It almost always refers to using 6061 aluminum alloy which anyone can order from a store that sells raw aluminum.

[–]danwin[S] 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's not improbable, it's just such a frequent trope of bad kickstarters that it's kind of a running joke that claiming to use aircraft grade metal is apparently a good way to impress the gullible.

[–]Dragten 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just like "surgical steel"

[–]Radboy16 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Fancy words make everything fancier, sometimes scarier, like with chemical compounds :)

Don't drink that Dihydrogen-Monoxide, it is fatal!

[–]bloggie2 10ポイント11ポイント  (4子コメント)

Nice.

The "PCB prototype" (last image in the kickstarter prototype gallery - https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/013/912/738/916f962f97ae9d84aeae5d52e4401e40_original.JPG?w=700&fit=max&v=1475128151&auto=format&q=92&s=7e04e18cc4e0e97101cfde399a4692a0 ) seems to be from an existing Chinese product, something that sells on ebay for $5 with free shipping - http://www.ebay.com/itm/221962028777 . Not this exact one, but you get the idea.

So at $5 or $10 even with a garbage DAC and Chinese manufacture, probably doable.

How do these guys deal with stuff like MFI certification, I wonder.

[–]Radboy16 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

I see a fingerprint left behind on one of the connectors. Do some CSI voodoo magic and we can find out who is behind this.

[–]blorg 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah to be honest "website registered in China" suggests to me it's a Chinese company behind it that actually knows how to produce this quickly, in bulk and for the price.

It won't be certified and quality may be questionable but there's nothing inherently new in the idea that the Chinese aren't producing for pennies already.

[–]princeoprinces 6ポイント7ポイント  (4子コメント)

This actually might not be a shitty Kickstarter. Yes, their prices are low. That's because they aren't getting MFi certification on ILDOCK which would be $4 per unit at the minimum. There is another cost for getting something called a "speaking module" which allows you to use your microphone on your headphones. That speaking module costs anywhere from $3-9 per unit depending on how many you purchase from Apple. They also require a DAC that would have to be MFi certified as well. Just add on another $1. You can see that for them to have an MFi product, it would be impossible at their current pricing. So, they'll just ship a non-MFi product, or nothing at all.

Their timeline is impossible unless they've already started production. I could easily see them delivering in December. The PCB and design isn't that complicated and because it's still considered low volume it wouldn't take very long to get these units produced. If they wanted to ship an MFi product, you could expect it in March 2017 at the earliest.

I'm doubtful that this will actually ship due to the nature of most Kickstarters, but it is possible to do what they say.

[–]TheAnimus 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

Wow, that's a great vendor lock in business model, didn't realise they had it that sown up.

I also can't believe so many people would buy such an expensive phone yet want something which to me looks like a device for breaking lighting ports (large long dongle, force x distance and all that) because it's such key functionality for them.

[–]princeoprinces 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

It sucks for anyone who wants to make a product for Apple. I think it's a terrible idea to put a dock like that at the end of your lightning port. It most certainly will break off, possibly leaving the lightning connector stuck in the port on your phone. Be wary of this even if it does ship.

[–]danwin[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I suppose that's why Belkin's $40 offering is plastic and dangly, like another cable. Ugly, but it's less likely to snap off.

[–]princeoprinces 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Exactly. And Belkin had it for more than 4 months before apple even released the iPhone.

[–]splenetic 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

Have you seen the names of the people running this? "Techninja", "Nicholas Beeep" and "joe". And yet people still give them money. Unbelievable.

[–]scuba156 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

Seems like Nicholas 'Beeep' Xu has a website, Instagram, Facebook, twitter and a company twitter account with only 1 tweet.

He has linked to many different 'kickstarters' that he claims he is a part of and products under many different company names. Some examples are the Geak Watch II with IOS & Android, Fastfox $7 wristband/watch, A backup battery (has a link to its pozible page which has been removed) and LMCable which was suspended for fraudulent behavior, and the companies homepage lmcable.com now redirects to www.kshowhome.com which has 6 blog posts on their site in the last 6 months, one of them is the ILDock.

Each product has reviews ranging from the product stopped working after a month, haven't heard a response from the creator, bad build quality, haven't received their product, or just DOA.

I would stay far away from this shitty kickstarter.

[–]skizmo 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

with only 1 tweet.

BEEP !

[–]tylercoder 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

What I don't get is how these chinese projects get people in the US to sign for them given that china isn't on the list of ks-approved countries for creators so they need a US citizen to provide a legal name and their own bank account for the project

So basically if its a scam and it gets ugly the US citizen is fucked

[–]HarryLafranc[🍰] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Canceled by Kickstarter an hour ago (thanks for your informations !)

[–]SnapshillBot 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Snapshots:

  1. This Post - 1, 2, 3, 4

  2. https://www.kickstarter.com/project... - 1, 2, 3

  3. Belkin, for comparison's sake, is a... - 1, 2, 3

  4. clueless article from the Gadgeteer - 1, 2, 3

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[–]djet0 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Speaking of znaps, I thought they got shut down by Apple since thier magnetic adapter was too similar to their magsafe patent.

[–]wolfluchs 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Unbox Therapy has a video about this. Seems to be real from what i can tell.

[–]danwin[S] 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Is he the same guy that had a video promoting the Saygus V Squared on Indiegogo?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBqYWCEVOIc

https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/4jadkh/saygus_v_squared_the_scam_that_never_stops_trying/

edit: A better post showing how long the Saygus vaporware saga has gone on: http://www.androidauthority.com/saygus-delays-what-is-going-on-650149/

That campaign also featured creators with no industry presence promising a device just months after the campaign began. The Unbox guy portrayed it as a something that was physically done and just about ready to ship...a year ago.