Studio Neat’s latest Glif is the one accessory every iPhone owner should have

Back in 2010, people started taking the camera in the iPhone seriously. A couple of guys, Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost of Studio Neat, thought that it would be a good idea to make a tripod mount for the iPhone, and they came up with the idea of the Glif. The product was one of the first crowdfunding successes on Kickstarter, and the Glif has since been updated several times to allow it to work with larger smartphones and make it easier to use. Today we’re looking at the latest incarnation of the Glif (US$29, $55 for set including handle and wrist strap), which proves that even the best products can be improved.

Design

The original Glif was designed with one iPhone in mind — the iPhone 4. It worked well, but when Apple moved to a slightly different design Studio Neat had to rework the Glif. Later versions used an adjustable “jaw” to hold the iPhone, but required use of an Allen wrench to make the adjustment. The latest version is brilliant, using a quick-release lever to adjust the jaw to fit your iPhone or other smartphone with or without case. 

That quick release lever snaps out with a bit of a pull required — that’s a good thing, since you don’t want it popping open while holding your iPhone. Once it’s open, the jaw can be opened to fit your iPhone. It’s spring-loaded to automatically close to the width of the iPhone, at which time the lever can be clicked back into the locked position.

If I remember correctly, the original Glif only had one standard 1/4-20 threaded tripod mount, with several following versions coming with two mounts — one on “top” and one on “bottom”. The new model comes with three, making it simple to mount your iPhone in the traditional landscape orientation and finally in the portrait orientation beloved by social media apps.

On Monday a unanimous three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with a lower court ruling in finding that rules permitting the FBI to send national security letters under gag orders are appropriate and don’t violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s free speech protections. It’s uncertain how this will eventually affect Apple, which prohibits third parties from allowing its user data to be used for surveillance purposes.

Andrew Crocker, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told Reuters that no immediate decision whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court had been made, but called the ruling “disappointing.” The EFF is a non-profit organization that “defends digital privacy, free speech and innovation.”