Five Ridiculous(ly Awesome) iPad Mods

The iPad is, of course, a creation of profound innovation in removing the keyboard from a netbook and demanding twice as much for it. We kid, of course. The iPad is a powerful and unique tool that proves Apple knows its way around consumer hardware, and also more importantly gives nerds more stuff to play with. Despite only being around for three months already it’s been used (and abused) to create some sublime (and ridiculous) creations. Here are our five favorites:

5) The iPad Car Mount

There are several of these out there, but since they’re all pretty much the same, we thought we’d go for the cheap one.

We can see why people would want this, being as the iPad has a bigger screen, not to mention a maps application that in no way different from the maps application on any smart phone you happen to own, or is any better than a GPS. But we’re kind of worried about the implications of what else you can do with the iPad. What’s stopping the driver from, say, playing a quick game while at a stop light, and missing a green? Or playing in the parking lot? Or playing on the highway at seventy-five miles an hour? Yeah, we’re a LITTLE concerned.

4) The iPad Guitar

This has to be the most hilariously awkward YouTube video we’ve seen today, but the technology is pretty sound, at least. Meet the “iTar”, which we’re just going to go ahead and keep calling the iPad Guitar.

Granted, making music with your Apple device is absolutely nothing new, with guitar and piano apps available on the iPhone pretty much right from the start. But this takes it to a new level. Unfortunately, that new level seems to be using the iPad as a mixer/central system instead of using it to shred, which is how something called the iPad Guitar should be used. Come on, man, enough of the house music! Let’s hear some “Enter Sandman!”

3) The Macintosh Classic iPad Stand

The main problem with the iPad, beyond being a netbook without a keyboard, is standing it up to use as a normal computer. There are many elegant, simple, useful stands.

This, as you might have gathered, is not one of those stands.

Granted, there’s not much you can do with a Mac Classic these days, aside from gut it and use the case for some other purpose to demonstrate your nerd cred, but isn’t this taking it just a little too far? What are you going to do, lug this around all the time? It’s just not practical.

That said, we’re jealous and we want one badly.

2) The iPad With Legs

Since we can’t seem to find an actual picture of this disturbing (yet cute!) monstrosity, here’s a video of a Japanese guy inventing a self-rising stand, and immediately ruining it by attaching googly eyes and making it walk. We’re just baffled that nobody explained to him that a self rising stand for the iPad would make him disgustingly rich. It combines two things all human beings need: the ability to be even lazier than they already are, and the ability to be a total attention whore while doing it.

1) The iPad Apple IIe Cassette Drive

For those unfamiliar, the Apple IIe is an outdated but much beloved computer that, like a lot of old computers, actually used cassettes as software. Which is pretty neat, but thank God for downloads, you know? Luckily, three decades later, after endless advances in computers, you can…use your $500 iPad to put programs on a computer you can get for ten bucks off of eBay.

Wow, that’s useful! Does it run DOS too?