Hyper, an Apple products’ accessory maker, has launched a new product called iStick. Hyper iStick is the first Apple-approved Made-for-iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (MFi) USB flash drive that has a USB connector as well as includes a built-in Lightning connector. It means iStick can work with both the computer and an iOS device. Unfortunately, the accessory can only be pre-ordered through a funding campaign that company has launched on the Kickstarter.
Basically, iStick is a small Flash drive like accessory that has a sliding switch with a Lightening connector on one end and a USB connector on the other. The USB connector allows you to plug-in the iStick into your computer and use it like a regular flash drive to transfer data, and then you access the same data on your iOS device by connecting the iStick to your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch through Lightning connector end.
As expected, Apple had many concerns for iOS storage products like the iStick. We actually started MFi application for this product more than 2 years ago. It was definitely not an easy process but we managed to address all of Apple’s concerns and finally just got MFi approval.
iStick has a companion app that will allow you to transfer contents from one device to another, play music, download photos and watch videos stored on the accessory. The accessory supports almost any video formats, including native formats like mp4, m4v, mov as well as non-native formats like avi, mkv, wmv etc. You can access all these files directly from the iStick storage without copying them to your iOS device.
The accessory will be available in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB storage capacity and costs $129, $169, $199 and $299 respectively. You can pre-order the product through a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, where you’ll get a 50% discount making it $65 (8GB), $85 (16GB), $99 (32GB) and $149 (64GB).
On crowd funding the iStick project, the company says that “We only reserve Kickstarter launches for our very best products just like what we did with CloudFTP 2 years ago.” It also said it wants to “crowdsource ideas and suggestions to make the product even better and to give it the biggest launch possible.”
Hyper plans to ship the product in August. Click here for more details and to preorder iStick.