Smarter Stand For iPad Braces Smart Cover For Better Angles

Sometimes it's the simplest ideas that are the most useful, like adapting Apple's iPad Smart Cover so that it can be used to prop up your tablet in a more flexible range of positions. Smarter Stand for iPad, currently $2,000 shy of its $10k Kickstarter goal, consists of a pair of sliding clips that together brace the flexible ribs of Apple's own iPad Smart Cover, meaning it can support the tablet at an angle midway between the existing two extremes.

Normally, the Smart Cover offers either a near-flat position for on-screen typing, or a roughly 80-degree position for media playback. Smarter Stand creator Dotan Saguy wanted some options in-between, however, and so the clips allows for either a 33- or 45-percent angle, arguably more useful for media watching and browsing at the average desk height.

A polyurethane pad is also included, that sticks to the back of the iPad and prevents it from slipping around. If you have the new iPad Smart Case, launched earlier this week, you don't even need that pad.

Of course, you could fashion something similar with a couple of bulldog clips, but that wouldn't be so aesthetically pleasing and might crease the Smart Cover itself. At time of writing there are a few early-bird $9 pledge spots open, and 500 $10 spots, with the Smarter Stand expected to begin shipping in late September or early October in multiple colors.