Hyper— we’ve reviewed some of its MacBook batteries and iPhone accessories in the past— is today announcing the first Made-For-iPhone/iPad/iPod touch (MFi) flash drive that includes a built-in Lightning connector. Unfortunately you can’t get your hands on one just yet, but you can preorder through a funding campaign the company just launched on Kickstarter.
Hyper told us it’s been working on the product for over two years and just recently got approval from Apple: “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.”
The iStick USB flash drive includes a standard USB connector in addition to the Lightning connector, will come in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB variants, and also a companion app that will let users transfer content from one device to another. The company notes that the iStick allows users the ability to “stream movies (even non-iOS native video formats), music and open files directly from the iStick without first copying to the iOS device.”
When the product finally launches the various models will sell for $129 (8GB), $169 (16GB), $199 (32GB) and $299 (64GB), but early bird Kickstarter backers are getting 50% off making it $65 (8GB), $85 (16GB), $99 (32GB) and $149 (64GB).
Why is Hyper, owned by Sanho Corporation, doing a crowd funding project? The company told us the following: “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 start shipping iStick in August. You can preorder iStick and find out more about the product here. Specs a video below:
iStick-to-USB Speed: 12MB/s (Read), 7.5MB/s (Write) iStick-to-iDevice Speed: 2.5MB/s (Read), 1.9MB/s (Write) Construction: ABS Plastic and/or Aluminum Dimensions: 51.6 x 28.6 x 9.1mm Weight: 10g Supported File Formats: Video .mp4, .m4v, .mpv, .mov, .mpg, .mkv, .avi, .wmv, .rmvb, .flv, .3gp, .gif Audio .wav, .aac, .aif, .aiff, .caf, .m4a, .mp3 Images .jpg, .tiff, .gif Documents .doc and .docx (Microsoft Word); .htm and .html (web pages); .key (Keynote); .numbers (Numbers); .pages (Pages); .pdf (Preview and Adobe Acrobat); .ppt and .pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint); .txt (text); .rtf (rich text format); .vcf (contact information); .xls and .xlsx (Microsoft Excel); .zip; .ics
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_lB3SZTyHQ]
