The Mac Belt Is This Year’s Most Unintentionally Hilarious Gadget [Kickstarter]

Oh man! The Mac Belt is an amazing combination of flat-out utility and naively wrongheaded design. It is exactly the kind of thing you expect a mad professor to come up with, except this crackpot product is actually out there on Kickstarter.

Here’s a brief description: The Mac Belt is a belt (the kind that holds your pants up) with a giant novelty buckle. And that buckle folds out to make a little bracket for your iPad or iPhone. Yup. An iPad stand that mounts on your junk.

Despite the ridicule I am duty-bound to hurl at this thing, I actually think it looks really, really useful. After all, who wouldn’t want a secure way to stow their device in their lap?

The problem arises in use. Even in a world where grown men wear Bluetooth earpieces, and match slacks and polo shirts with belt-hanging leather phone holsters, the Mac Belt is going to struggle to find an audience. Why? Because to use the Mac Belt you’ll need to be both a huge dork, and to have so little shame that you can hang your phone from your dick. In public. I mean, take a look:

No? Then try this:

Now, wipe aways those tears of laughter and we’ll carry on. Not only is the Mac Belt a combination trouser-hoist and cock-warmer (just play GTA Vice City on your Mac Belt-mounted iPhone 5 to get your nuts nice and toasty), it can also be tricked out with custom inserts which you can 3-D print yourself. Inevitably, though, these inserts will end up being given away at trade-show stands along with the branded pens and USB sticks. A viagra-branded belt is the most obvious tie-in.

Yet despite all this, I find myself wanting a Mac Belt. After all, what better way to read your iPad hands-free when you’re sitting? Yes, it’ll look like your giving yourself a quick tug every time you deploy it, but once it’s in place you can sit in happy anonymity. Prices start at £30, or around $48. That’s less than I paid for the belt I’m wearing now.

• Source Kickstarter

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