Few things will kill an hour of time faster than a slot machine. Now you can turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into one. New Potato Technologies this week released an iPhone dock that includes an old school slot-machine arm. Open the free “Jackpot Slots” app, select a game, make your bet and pull the lever. The traditional slot-machine icons spin and stop, with realistic sound effects, including casino background noise for good measure.

I've learned two important things today: I can turn my iPhone into a tiny slot machine, and "appcessory" is a word now. Jackpot Slots—which is both an iPhone app and a dock—just made someone's tech-savvy grandma very happy.

Experience a little bit of Las Vegas in your own home or office with Jackpot Slots for the iPhone: a USB dock with a knob-topped lever on the side which turns the phone into a one-armed-bandit. Still, as docks go, Jackpot Slots isn’t a bad one. It works just like any other to charge and sync, and if you pull the lever all the way forwards, your iPhone or iPad Touch will pop out. Just like the eye of that cheating gambler in Scorsese’s Casino when they squeezed his head in a vice.

Overall, we’re fully supportive of the concept of blending apps with accessories, and though Jackpot Slots feels like more of a test of the concept than a completely realized product, it’s not bad: the dock and the slot machine app do work together, the super-simple one-armed bandit does what it’s supposed to, and there’s at least some potential of a prize at the end of the experience to serve as an incentive to keep playing. That said, a more case-friendly dock, a more compelling set of slot machines, and a prize system with greater frequency of real payouts would take this concept to a level of execution that would be worthy of an asking price like this. For the time being, Jackpot Slots only makes sense as a purchase if you’re not a case user, really want a way to prop up your iPod or iPhone on a desk for charging and synchronization, and are willing to pay a little premium for a chance at prizes down the road.

The Jackpot Slots dock is a little kitchy, and I’d probably be as enthusiastic about it as I would about a lava lamp — but the idea is interesting, and there’s tantalizing evidence of more stuff in development over at New Potato; we hope they keep it coming.