My wife stole an amazing iPod Touch case from me

Yep, the oth­er day I got this cool iPod Touch case — cool because it’s one of the Pro­porta Alu-Leath­er line of cases that I first looked at when I needed a new case for my Palm T|X. That case, a little worn, is still rockin’ though.

It’s about the case
This nifty little hold­er is quite sleek, boast­ing a nice design, with one chal­lenge we’ll get to in a minute. For starters, it’s hand made and, it’s leath­er. It seems a rather nice grade of leath­er at that. Imme­di­ately obvi­ous is the heavy-duty stitch­ing that holds this unit together.

This case flips open, sim­il­ar to an ori­gin­al-series Star Trek com­mu­nic­at­or. The iPod Touch slips into a hold­er with win­dows for all the ports and buttons.

The case, when closed, is kept closed by mag­nets in the cov­er and in the holder.

Alu­min­um! Say it loud and proud!
Once upon a time, one of the big-brained boffins at Pro­porta came up with their trade­mark ‘Screensaver’ concept. No, this is not some­thing to keep your dis­play from wear­ing out or burn­ing in, rather, it’s a concept that saves your screen from punc­tures, cracks and oth­er break­age that could occur in daily use.

The Screensaver, in this case, is a thin, sturdy sheet of air­craft grade alu­min­um, stitched into the cov­er flap of the case. When the case closes, the alu­min­um flap com­pletely cov­ers the touch screen — a rather neat fea­ture if I do say — one Pro­porta has been incor­por­at­ing in the Alu-Leath­er line since 2003.

One nig­gly little detail
Earli­er I men­tioned that there was one issue with the case, and it has to do with the way the case edges encroach on the touch screen sur­face of the iPod Touch.

Design­ers of some iPhone and iPod Touch apps, try to max­im­ize the screen real estate by extend­ing menus into corners and along the edges of the dis­play area. Unfor­tu­nately the edge of the iPod Touch hold­er por­tion of the case comes right up to the edge of the act­ive touch screen surface.

This can make press­ing small icons or on-screen but­tons a bit of a chal­lenge as your fin­ger rubs up against the edge of the case as you try and tap the screen. It can be espe­cially frus­trat­ing when using the on-screen key­board and try­ing to tap the left or right edge keys — they’re just so tiny that I often found I was mistyp­ing. People with smal­ler fin­ger­tips may have bet­ter luck than I on this.

Case closed
As I men­tioned before, I’ve used a Pro­porta Alu-Leath­er case on my Palm T|X for many years, and have been very very pleased with it…which is I was pleased to receive this case, and why I was rather upset when my wife nabbed it for her iPod Touch. I’m sure she’ll get good use out of it, but now I have to go look­ing for one. And Teal was­n’t exactly my col­our either, yeah, that’s it.