Add a big red camera button to your iPhone

Popa is an iPhone attachment that lets you take photos by pressing the "big red button." It's a neat idea but seems kind of expensive: $74.99

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Mujokan

I thought Apple had already destroyed the cost-of-production theory of value.
zarray

Push the button Frank…
Jorpho

I was expecting them to extoll the device’s ability to bring Life and Vibrancy and Energy to one’s digital pictures. As disappointing as the lack of such language may be, at least they still provide some fantastic mental imagery:
“a big red button that screams”
“Twist the barrel to swing the connector into view and make the button spring to life!”
jamietie

Sadly, this was announced not long before Apple announced you can use the volume up button on your phone as a shutter button. It’s a great idea, but now you have a free option. It’s a shame because that’s just a great piece of design…
Andrew Singleton

I LIKE buttons. Nice physical clunky buttons you can get a solid click out of when you put your thumb down. However $75? Pass.
- EH
  
  Doesn’t Apple demand like $40 up front for anything that could possibly connect to the dock socket?
  - Andrew Singleton
    
    Ah. That’s where the cost would come in at. Didn’t know, thanks.
  - http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir
    
    There might be a fee, but it’s not $40. I bought a cheap iPhone cable for $8 from ThinkGeek a while back and I doubt they’re losing $32 on every purchase.
    - EH
      
      Cables might have a different fee schedule
boruma

This thing is quite the let down. Hard to put on the phone and doesn’t allow for portrait/landscape flipping. They have a Kickstarter account (Red Pop) and went way over what they asked for. Totally not worth it.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

“kind of expensive”

uhm, yes. VERY expensive by my standards. Also, what is it with our making all of those fancy, futuristic looking amazing machines, only to want to try and bring them back around to looking like machines from a simpler time with stuff like this. Or like the etch-a-sketch frame for the ipad.
- EH
  
  probably because taking a picture with a phone totally sucks under the current state of the art. nostalgic solutions for this problem come as no surprise.
  - http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
    
    You think so? I am just amazed at how easy it seems….and what with it being digital, if you don’t like it, just take a bazillion more till you get it right.
    - penguinchris
      
      I think he means the ergonomics of holding the phone and pressing the button. Using the volume button on a phone works OK – it’s in the same position as the shutter button on a normal camera would be – but any other solution is terrible (and most phones don’t let you use the volume button, including the iPhone until just recently).
      
      But back to your point: when it comes to product design – in electronics especially – there really isn’t anything modern (including Apple stuff) that looks nicer than the classic stuff, like the old-school cameras that this is harkening back to.
      
      Camera manufacturers are realizing this too – no matter what their best efforts at modern camera design, the classic designs still look cooler. Fuji, Leica, and Olympus have modern cameras that look like or harken back to classic cameras (some more than others) and this is the fastest-growing segment of the digital camera market.
      
      I’m open to some new design blowing me away, but I’m not sure it’s even possible. Aesthetically, the best classic cameras are almost unparallelled in terms of beautiful-yet-functional design IMO.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Probably because no matter how much technology changes the human hand doesn’t.
  - http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
    
    which of course begs the question, why don’t designers take that into account when making new things?
cheesebubble

I have two solutions. Glue a red button to your phone. Get a red sharpie and draw on your phone. Okay, I didn’t say they were necessarily good solutions.
macegr

Mighty MakerBot Team – ASSEMBLE! [canned transformation sequence]
ferd

Not as dramatic as the one on my Polaroid Swinger.
ladykatey

Taking photos with the on screen button can often be quite treacherous… I do wish there was a good wrist-strap solution, other than the ‘replace the screws and then you can’t dock it properly” idea. All I want is a bumper with a wrist strap so I can take photos without dropping it.

Oh, and an easy way to add photos to an email reply. Or even attach multiple photos to an email….

Apple is far from perfect, but I still love my iPhone.
daaain

Is it just me, or POPA does sound eerily like an amalgamation of SOPA and PIPA?
costeau

I had a look at the pics on Amazon, and it does come with a hand strap and a pouch that protects the iPhone too. Yes, $75 is still epxensive, but not as expensive as I thought at first.
TheKaz1969

“It’s a neat idea but seems kind of expensive” — kinda sums up most Apple products.