/ Mark Frauenfelder / 1:10 pm Mon Jun 21, 2010

iPad dummies for $49

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What kind of mischief could you concoct with a dummy iPad?

Why would you buy an iPad dummy aka 'display model'? Well, honestly we don't know either, but you know you want one! Use it as a serving tray, decoration in your room or prank your friends with it. There are a million and one uses for it!

The iPad dummy sells for $49 including Free Shipping, all over the world!

More photos after the jump.


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  2. My first (evil) impulse would be to film someone abusing (dropping, placing coffee on it, tossing it around like a Frisbee) outside of an Apple store.

    Watching mac geeks go into shock would be well worth the $50 bucks.

  3. i just remembered, we have like 2 huge boxes full of old Newton dummies. probably 100 of them or so. pops brought em home from work 17 years ago and there they’ve sat.

    1. ever thought about selling them on ebay?

      I wonder if the same trick as ‘glue the iphone dummy to the pavement in front of the apple store’ would work as well …

  6. Fun stuff off the top of my head…

    Taking one of these into an Apple store acting clueless about why it doesn’t work.

    or…

    Pretend to be drunk and passed out on the subway with one of these very loosely being held on your lap while someone else is filming you.

  8. I’m surprised Apple doesn’t give these out for free to film directors and the like. Product placement FTW.

    1. For whatever bizarre reason, Apple seems to never give approval for their products to appear in movies and/or on TV. You’ll see tons of Mac laptops with a sticker over the Apple logo – although why producers then didn’t replace the laptop with something else is beyond me.

      1. What are you, north korean? I’ve seen more apple laptops on TV than any other brand. They must have captured about 80% of the on-tv laptop market.

        Are you trolling, and I’m just dense todaY?

      2. Hey scolbath, for whatever bizarre reason you’re completely incorrect. Apple products are all over the place in both movies and TV.

          1. Rather than simply join in the pile-on (although I would caution you against taking the word of random commenters who apparently don’t even know what “product placement” means), I’d like to relay a story that I’d read somewhere about an early Apple product placement and how it had almost been another computer entirely.

            When the producers of Star Trek IV were looking for a computer to use in a scene in which Scotty shows 20th-century engineers how to create transparent aluminum, the visual-effects people suggested that they use a Commodore Amiga, which was a relatively new microcomputer that had already taken the special effects world by storm with its advanced graphics capabilities. They asked Commodore for a loaner; Commodore refused, either because they were afraid that the movie would portray the computer as primitive by 23rd-century standards (which it was) or that they just wouldn’t have control over its portrayal. So, the Star Trek producers simply order an Amiga from Commodore, like any other buyer… and Commodore deliberately holds up delivery. The producers then went to Apple, whose Macintosh was underpowered and overpriced compared to the Amiga, and not only does Apple give them a Mac, it sends along a tech with it to make sure that the computer does anything that Leonard Nimoy needs it to do. Result? Apple gets product placement in the most popular Trek movie until First Contact; the Amiga remains one of the most underappreciated computers in history, and Commodore eventually goes out of business.

          2. Excellent Star Trek IV story. There’s a similar one: Mars turned down Spielberg’s request to use M&Ms in E.T., so arranged with Hershey to use Reese’s Pieces instead. Result: a boom in sales for Reese’s Pieces.

            Frankly, I’d be surprised if Apple has approved this, with their logo and what is probably a trademarked design. If they didn’t, the makers should expect a cease and desist order by tomorrow.

          3. I don’t think Apple’s approval is the issue – they’re display models, actual iPad shells & glass with nuthin’ inside.

          4. True, it’s no problem if they were made by Apple, or with their permission. But the makers need permission to use the logo (and possibly the design).

      3. I’m 99% sure this is the other way around. Studios and production companies don’t want to give Apple free advertising.

        I don’t think Apple would have a legal leg to stand on with regards to controlling how their product is displayed or used on screen.

      4. Jake Humphries presenting the BBC’s Forumla 1 show has an iPad. Or a dummy. And you see plenty of Macs on British TV.

        Sometimes the apple logo is covered, but I think that might be more the producers doing it as it is very distinctive and so as not to be accused of product placement, which up to a few weeks ago anyway, wasn’t allowed. Of course real brands have to be in TV programmes all the time (Macs all over the screen in Stephen Fry’s “Absolute Power” PR-based TV comedy series, for instance) and props depts can get free ones, but manufacturers and advertisers haven’t been allowed to actively pay production companies to include their stuff.

        A dummy iPad might be useful as some kind of a decoy for burglars. Hide your real iPad away if you go out without it (which might miss the point of having one) but leave a dummy artfully semi-hidden. I sort of do that with old, decrepit laptops – hide my current one, leave a dud one out half out of sight.

      5. For whatever bizarre reason, Apple seems to never give approval for their products to appear in movies and/or on TV.

        What, are you kidding? Apple is one of the most frequent product placements in the business.

        See, for example, this article. Or this one. Or this one.

        If you see an Apple product with an obscured logo, chances are that someone just wanted to use the Apple product they happened to have on hand without the bother of getting formal clearance.

        Either that, or they didn’t want their show to seem like an Apple commercial in disguise when all they’d get for the placement is the free loaner computer.

    2. Because companies pay big bucks for product placement. It’s something like $20K if it’s seen, $40K if it’s mentioned, and $60K if it’s used.

  9. This reminds me of the shock videos that flood youtube after gaming consoles release, of people destroying dummy machines in front of riotous crowds at release events! Too bad these are so late to the party…

  10. this is going to end up like those fake usb drives they sell in china with just the plastic enclosure and no memory inside.

  11. The first thing I thought was that a thief could swap this for the real one in your bag, giving them more getaway time. How realistic is it?

  13. I dont know about ipad dummies, but we got iPhone dummies for our 2 year old toddler. They serve well to keep her away from the real thing for short periods. The iphone dummy we got cost about $10.

  17. use it to replace the old “Iphone stuck to the floor on a busy street trick” and update the youtube video

  19. It’s not just product placement in dramas etc, everytime Apple releases a product it gets splashed over TV news bulletins and newspapers, when other products don’t.

    I don’t believe for a minute that the journalists concerned haven’t been given freebies or other incentives

  21. Clearly it needs to be hinged and have a Moleskine placed inside. (This is BoingBoing after all.)

    Alternately, an outdoors survival kit replete with instructions for using the glass as a signal mirror.

    Radiation tag enclosure?

    Surface for contact speaker drivers to pump?

    Cover it in coloured beeswax (or fill it with coloured beeswax after hinging it) and call it what it ought to have been called all along: the iTablet.

    … Dummy the connections, appropriately weight it, re-etch the generation and serial number, place a silicone case around it, and leave it on a bar in front of a Gizmodo editor – with a handwritten note inside that says “Was it good for you? — Steve (sent from my iMplant)”.

  22. If you’re in an area where burglary is a problem, this is an ideal thing to have that will hopefully convince a burglar that they’ve got something valuable and it’s time to go. Combine it with an old spare wallet with $20 sticking out and you might get away with not losing anything else.

    If you’re particularly sneaky, you could actually attach some sort of trigger to the dummy iPad to set off an alarm if it’s moved.

  23. Is it hollow? If so, it would lend itself as a case for various items.

    One of the iPhone dummies could make a nifty flash drive. Just buy a regular flash drive, connect the USB pins to the respective pins of an iPod connector, and you have an iPhone-shaped object that connects to a computer but appears as a flash drive. There’d be little practical value to it, though; it’d look more conspicuous than before.

  25. Drill hole in it, then proceed to make love with device inside the app store. (If you plan on doing this use protection!)

  26. I’m considering getting one.. so when the wife and I are taking our vacation this summer, I can “accidentally” drop her “ipad” in a river.

    I probably wouldn’t survive the incident, but the look on her face would be worth it.

  28. These fake devices are very useful for model homes or for decorating a home that is for sale.

    Why have the expensive, original products when a bunch of strangers will be visiting these houses? I have seen a lot of fake flat screens, laptops in model homes which look almost real but are enough to give the prospective buyers a sense of what the home would look like furnished.

    I can totally see this “ipad” on a nightstand or on a stylish kitchen counter during an open house.

  29. On the nefarious side, I would be worried about a variation of a fairly common scam (a couple friends and I have had this tried on us in NYC):

    Scammer looks for a mark who is paying attention to a cell phone/iPod/blackberry and not watching where he/she is going. Scammer bumps into mark as if mark had actually bumped into him, and drops pre-broken glasses. Scammer expresses outrage at the mark’s careless behavior, and tries to get mark to give cash to make up for broken glasses.

    Imagine bumping into somebody while texting or checking the map on your phone, and looking up to discover you have caused them to drop and shatter their iPad. I bet a lot of folks would be guilted into giving some money.

    The glasses guy who came after me wasn’t even very good it at (there was a “something’s off here” vibe the whole time which kept me walking away) and I still felt crappy about it for the rest of the day. Wasn’t until later that I found friends who’d been targeted the same way…

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