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Nov 07, 08 - 12:25 pm Comment from: DLMeyer

And ... that's just for starters! And, none of that has anything to do with its duties as a PHONE.

Nov 07, 08 - 12:41 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

He's predicting a tricorder.

That's the ticket. Star Trek here we come.

His statement about the iPhone starting your car struck a chord. I remembered the concept vehicle control app from Delphi that was demonstrated in January:

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/08/delphi-concept-controls-your-car-through-iphone/

I used to wonder what happened to it. Maybe de la Vega knows.

Hmmm, tight integration with AT & T Uverse. I guess potentially nice features for people who live in the very small part of the county services by Uverse.

Nov 07, 08 - 12:49 pm Comment from: emanon

How about the Land Rover LRX concept car that embeds an iPhone into the car...

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple-iphone/land-rover-lrx-concept-heavily-embeds-iphone-uses-it-to-start-car-334124.php

Nov 07, 08 - 12:53 pm Comment from: Harvey

The translation idea is beyond the computing capabilities of the iPhone, but the rest is plausible. I already use my iPhone as my alarm clock.

Nov 07, 08 - 01:02 pm Comment from: _Bill_

Still, no cheese grader... or even remote start of your automatic cheese grader...

Nov 07, 08 - 01:22 pm Comment from: qka

The translation idea is beyond the computing capabilities of the iPhone

But it potentially could be done by MobileMe, or some other intermediary processing facility. Schematically:

You <=voice=> Intermediary <=voice=> Japan

Today there are services that use a human translator as the intermediary. Some day the intermediary will be a computer.

The matter of is the translation good enough - there is a lot of subtlety in human languages - will be another question.

Nov 07, 08 - 01:23 pm Comment from: twinkie

But, but....It has a glossy screen !!

slightly on the fantasy side of things but some of it is practical

Nov 07, 08 - 01:34 pm Comment from: Cubert

twinkie,

Does the phrase "pie in the sky" mean anything here? JRA is correct... something like the AT&T;Uverse is the key for turning much of his star trek vision into everyday reality. Such a small percentage of the Uverse exists that it's an unlikely scenario.

(Plus, he forgot to mention that 38% of each news story I want to read is going to be redistributed to someone who has less news to read than I do!

... just jestin, don't get your your panties all in a bunch!)

I use the iPhone to wake me up too... but that function is entirely within the phone and requires no connectivity to anything else and does not mean that my iPhone is ready to talk to my coffee maker or my TV... wait... AppleTV! hmmm...

Everything described by de la Vega made me think of a really fat pipe from your wallet to AT&T;'s account.

Nov 07, 08 - 01:48 pm Comment from: macaholic

Cheese grader? Does that mean my iPhone can tell good cheese from bad?
Or what cheese goes with what wine?

But there's no frick'in FireWire port!

And no serial or parallel port. No floppy. Useless piece of crap!

Needs to have a phaser, too.

Of course, having a coffee maker with enough of a brain to interpret these signals would be a good place to start.

Imagine a unified network... a matrix if you will... with the machines controlling everything.

Sound like stuff that Bill Gates predicted years ago. But he never got it onto the market apart from buying Surface: now Apple actually has most pieces of the tech ready.

Three things to concentrate to:

1. ATT hearts iPhone, really really does.

2. ATT sees the manageable future of churns in terms of ATT-Apple continuing partnership where retention is dictated not through added price tags/tax, but added values in terms service not available from others.

3. When a multi-billion dollar company like ATT wants/dreams to bank a significant portion its vision/future based mostly on a product made/controlled by another company already rich enough to not be dictated by ATT in any foreseeable future, it can only bode really really really well for iPhone and hence Apple.

For all its so far unprofitable and seemingly failing ventures from U-verse to failed 2Wire built (ATT bought significant portion of its share) satellite STBs, seems like ATT is desperate to bask in a bit of good fortune that is the Apple star.

Nov 07, 08 - 02:25 pm Comment from: ron

Bill, "Still, no cheese grader..."

That would be grate!

Actually this is all approaching the Knowledge Navigator concept video Apple produced years ago. More skating to where the puck is gonna be!

Nov 07, 08 - 02:56 pm Comment from: Darkness

Not "Star Trek" but "Star Cops". The iPhone will become Nathan Spring's Box...

Nov 07, 08 - 03:03 pm Comment from: Crazylegs

What about any of these things is unique to the iPhone? This story is like porn for MDN!

Nov 07, 08 - 03:06 pm Comment from: drz

Instead of daydreaming, how about AT&T;lowering the price of monthly service?

Yes, but will it flush the toilet when you're done?

It sounds like it "squirts" to me.

... he woke and lay there for a little while, enjoying the bird song. until it occurred to him that it was a weekday. he was late!

his alarm hadn't gone off. he stumbled to the kitchen. there was no hot coffee to greet him... he turned on the tv but there was no news...

a white cord dangled from the notebook computer. the missing iphone still on the dresser where he had left it when he came in, late, from the bar.

he pressed the circular button. nothing. he depressed the silver switch. nothing... sighing, he connected the iPhone to the white cable. After a little while a green battery indicator appeared.

grimacing, he looked at his watch... it would be 30 minutes before he would be able to start his car.

nice to know that it will have all these new "cool uses"... Maybe they should work on it's original use (being a phone)

@byronic

Even the iPhone cannot win against a delinquent user.

Or maybe you are just paranoid of the "Rise of the machines" theory.

Ha ha MDN magic word "human"

@byronic
By then they will have perfected the 'r u drunk' ( http://www.perversiontracker.com/2008/7/30/r-u-drunk-1-0 ) app. Thus the iPhone will become fully alcoholic compatible and open over-consumption standards compliant.

Nov 08, 08 - 04:27 pm Comment from: BC Kelly

Damn

Let's Go

Hook it the f'k up





BC

I was very impressed with urgent care. Free bottled water and a really cool coffee maker, assistants with netbooks, dual screen computer stations for showing Xrays, wireless
Coffee maker