Smartphones can be hard to shut up, which is where the ominously named Mutator enters the equation. Designed for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, Mutator is a pyramid-shaped switch that plugs into the headphone jack to make muting simple.
The Mutator sits in the headphone socket permanently and is activated by a 90-degree twist. In the Off position it does absolutely nothing, allowing you to use your iOS device as usual, but twist it into the On position and it mutes all sounds coming from the device apart from alarms you have set manually.
The iOS devices mentioned previously already have a type of mute button known as the "Ring/Silent" switch, but this only blocks certain sounds such as the ringer. Other sounds, including those emanating from Siri, text messages, video, music, apps, mail alerts, and the camera, will still be audible. Which is risky when you're in an environment where a smartphone sound could cause considerable embarrassment. Mutator solves this problem by muting almost everything.
Mutator creator, Ron Adair from Salt Lake City, Utah, is seeking to bring the product to market with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. Funds raised will be used to create production-level prototypes, buy tooling and assembly equipment and design the packaging. One Mutator costs US$16, with $8 extra required for shipping outside the US.
Aldair explains the thinking behind Mutator in the following video.
Source: Mutator on Kickstarter
Why can I not replace the battery on an iPhone? I CAN.
Why can I not Swype? I CAN.
Why can I not watch flash animations/video? I CAN
Why must it only communicate with my files through iTunes? NOT TRUE.
Why doesn't it play all the video/music formats? IT CAN.
A question for ya - do you really have an iPhone? Seems not.
I suspect that the reason that they are so popular has to do with the status that owning an apple product earns people, both older and younger.
"Other sounds, including those emanating from Siri, text messages, video, music, apps, mail alerts, and the camera, will still be audible"....Umm...Not true. When I mute my iPhone using the ring/silence switch, it mutes all noises exept alarms. This is a $16 snake oil device.
Randy
Tailorbird: your answers are somewhat misleading. They tend to require beyond-the-norm knowledge, access, limitations, and/or jailbreaking.
I remember mentioning the security of my Palm Treo's hardware switch to silence the phone to an Apple Senior Scientist ... he didn't believe me that the iPhone couldn't be silenced, even when I told him the "switch" was really a only "hi, please try to be somewhat quiet" flag. I've noticed that people working at Apple tend to have a greatly distorted view of their own products ... perhaps a result of the famous "reality distortion field" Steve Jobs was said to have :)
That said, the Mutator seems like a clever workaround to the problem. I'd like a more positive tactile clue as to the on/off position of the device, so I could reach down and confirm that it's in the "sound off" position.
The other Mobile OS versions tend to be overlooked by neat gadget hardware due to the vast array of proprietary hardware they run on. In other words every company that makes an "Android" phone uses hardware including ports and interfaces that are unique to that company and frequently that device. This makes it very impractical for developers to test and troubleshoot software and hardware as instead of buying one device they wind up buying a hundred or more just to ensure compatibility. Hardware also suffers from the proprietary ports/interfaces issue in that any hardware a company made as a functional accessory would be limited to the market share that particular phone has gleaned.