You Wouldn’t Download an iPhone…

If you spent any time online in the 2000s, you probably remember the anti-piracy campaign that told us, among other things, that you wouldn’t steal a car.

The internet eventually turned it into the much better line: You wouldn’t download a car.

Twenty years later, that joke has aged in a pretty interesting way.

Because this week, I basically downloaded an iPhone.

I wanted to hold it before I bought it

Apple had just finished announcing the new iPhone Duo, and I immediately had the same question a lot of people probably did: What does this thing actually feel like?

Not what does it look like in a beautifully produced keynote. Not how many millimeters thick is it. I wanted to know what it was like to hold.

How does it feel folded up? How big is it in a pocket? What does it feel like opened? Is it awkward to hold up to your ear? Does that camera bump feel enormous in person?

Normally, the obvious answer would be: go to an Apple Store and try one.

Except you can’t. Not yet.

And that creates an interesting problem with a device like this. Production of a brand-new form factor isn’t necessarily easy, and it’s entirely possible initial inventory will go quickly when pre-orders open.

So you might have a choice: wake up early on pre-order morning and spend around $2,000 on a device you’ve never actually held, or wait and potentially miss the initial batch.

There is, apparently, a third option now.

Print one.

What would you have done 20 years ago?

This is the part I find fascinating.

Imagine having this exact problem before consumer 3D printing existed.

Apple publishes the dimensions of a new device and you desperately want to understand its physical size before ordering one.

What do you do?

Maybe you cut a rectangle out of cardboard. That gets you length and width, but not much else.

You could shape one from a block of foam. If you were particularly committed, maybe you’d head into the garage and carve or mill one out of wood.

But then there’s the thickness. The rounded edges. The camera bump.

And in this case, the hinge.

Recreating all of that accurately enough to learn anything useful would turn a silly little curiosity into an afternoon-long fabrication project.

Instead, less than 24 hours after Apple’s announcement, I had this sitting on my desk.

From keynote to physical object overnight

Someone had already modeled the device based on the dimensions and information Apple released.

Better yet, the model included a print-in-place hinge. It comes off the build plate as a single object, but the two halves can already fold.

I uploaded the model as a public object on Polar Cloud, which makes the rest almost comically easy.

Download and print the iPhone Duo model on Polar Cloud

Pull up the object. Pick your 3D printer. Send it to the printer.

That’s it.

You can start the print on your way out the door in the morning, go about your day, and come home to a physical representation of a device that technically isn’t even available yet.

No woodworking. No foam. No milling. No trying to fabricate a tiny hinge.

Just information becoming an object.

Is it exactly like holding the real thing?

Of course not.

My printed version doesn’t have glass, titanium, batteries, displays, buttons, or the actual weight distribution of the finished product. You’re not going to learn whether you like the screen or how the hinge feels after a thousand folds.

But that’s almost beside the point.

I can put it in my pocket.

I can hold it in one hand.

I can unfold it.

I can put it up to my ear.

I can see how much room it takes up on a desk and compare it directly with the phone I already own.

I jokingly want to say it gives you 90% of the experience, although it’s obviously nowhere close to that. What it does give you is most of the physical information I actually wanted before placing an order.

And all of that came from a digital file based largely on dimensions and specifications announced on a stage the day before.

This is the part of 3D printing I still love

We talk a lot about what 3D printers can manufacture: prototypes, replacement parts, classroom projects, fixtures, tools and finished products.

But sometimes the coolest use is much simpler.

I wanted to know how big something was, so I made it exist.

There was no supply chain involved. I didn’t need Apple to ship me anything. I didn’t even need the actual product to be commercially available.

Someone turned publicly available information into a 3D model. That model became a file anyone could access. I sent that file through Polar Cloud to a printer, and a few hours later I could physically interact with an approximation of a product announced less than a day earlier.

That’s a pretty remarkable chain of events when you stop and think about it.

Twenty years ago, “You wouldn’t download a car” was a joke.

Today?

Give us the dimensions and an STL.