The iPod is always a tricky thing to manipulate in this chapping, frostbiting weather. In the December wind, the hand freezes quickly in a contorted, blue-skinned claw around the iPod Classic; fingers pressed against the iPhone’s frigid touchscreen tend to break off like icicles at the tips.
For iPod manipulation in these hypothermic months, then, a solution, courtesy of alpine gear makers, The North Face. They’ve just introduced two new jackets — the Hustle Audio Jacket for guys, the Femphonic Audio Jacket for women — which builds an iPod remote right into the sleeves. You can change tracks, play, pause and wiggle the volume around without once exposing your fingers to the ice-fanged bite of the season.
North Face jackets tend to be expensive, so you can expect to pay $350 for both the Hustle and Femphonic audio jackets, but while that’s a couple hundred dollars more than what you can theoretically buy an off-brand winter coat for, it’s only a $50 premium over North Face’s usual coat prices.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
