LAS VEGAS — The iTamtam is perhaps the strangest iPod dock yet conceived — but also the most practical. It’s a sturdy iPod speaker that doubles as a stool. It is based on a famous stool from the sixties that’s now featured in the Museum of Modern Art.
“It’s a speaker you can sit on,” said Patrick Parma, a spokesman for Branex Design, the Parisian firm that holds the rights for the Tam Tam stool.
The seat was updated as a speaker for its 40th anniversary. Called the iTamtam, the speaker/stool has an iPod/iPhone dock on top and a pair of 25-watt speakers built under the seat.
“We wanted to try to evolve the product,” explained Parma, who looked conspicuously stylish at CES. “We looked to the Apple world, because we are big admirers of Apple’s design, and came up with the idea. Apple corresponds very closely with what we are doing.”
The original Tam Tam stool was introduced in 1968 by French designer Henry Massonnet. Made of plastic, at the time a new material for furniture makers, the stool was made famous by an iconic photo of the French sexpot Brigitte Bardot sitting on one. The stool is still produced in the same French factory using the original mold.
The iTeamtam comes in a range of colors matching Apple’s iPod nano line. “They are Apple’s colors, not ours,” said Parma. “We licensed them.”
Branex’s booth was full of the nano-colored speaker stools. They were a big hit with passersby.
“They look cool as hell,” said Thelvis Alston, a CES show-goer as he stopped to admire the iTamtams.
The iTamtam is already on sale in Europe. Branex was at CES looking for U.S. distributor. The company hopes to shortly start selling two versions in the U.S.: a $399 model that plugs into the wall; and a $429 version with a built-in rechargeable battery.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
