Here are a few ideas for tech dads you might not have thought of for techy dads. But who isn’t techy these days when grandma has an iPad and grandpa just extended his wireless network to reach out to the garage. Everything seems to have a technological component from outright electronics, to the choice of which plastics (or preferably glass or stainless) you want near your food.

Here are five things for the dad on your list, who will appreciate the thinking behind these products, whether he always wanted to be an engineer or not.

1. Frends earbuds for his iPhone. I guess there was a time when that white cord meant you had an iPod and had immediate street cred. Now, you might want to have a better set of headphones, and Frends makes a set called the Coupe. For only $30, you get a great sets of earbuds with good frequency range (16-2000Hz). But what the dad in your life will really appreciate are two fine details. One, the mic plug is custom made for a secure fit and looks over-engineered to protect against shorting on the connector side. Two, and simple and cool, is the fabric cord. That’s right, instead of plastic, these phones use a cloth cord, and that means you can throw them in their pouch and pull them out without them getting tied in knots. You have to see this to believe it, and I guarantee that once you have cloth cords, you’ll never want to go back to those tangled white ones.