Like gecko feet! ∞

   

Yahtzee! My Elevation Docks actually do work again. That Nanopad stuff really does the trick. Like gecko feet!1 (And, yes, it really does seem to be strong enough to hold up a brick. I don’t know for how long, but for a while.)

The surprisingly big idea of the Elevation Dock, a huge hit on Kickstarter, was that it was heavy and used a frictionless connector, so it would stay put nicely — strangely unlike any other dock. And then Apple switched to the (excellent) lightning connector, which held on too tightly, and there simply was no good solution for a quite a while. The Nanopad finally solved the problem by holding the dock firmly in place… but it’s still easy to move it when you want to.

  1. They advertise “microscopic suction cups,” which might be different thing than gecko feet. However, I suspect it’s just marketing speak, because it would be too awkward and cryptic to say “tiny structures that expoit Van der Waals force.” The structures on a gecko foot are called “spatulae (plural of spatula), or microscopic projections” … which I wouldn’t hestitate to call “microscopic suction cups” if I was talking to a kid. Or potential customers. ↩︎