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Apple's "iKey" Wants To Unlock All Doors
Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Apple is developing technology, already being nicknamed the 'iKey,' which will allow users to gain access to their office and unlock their car or front door with a single electronic device like an iPhone. Users would simply have to enter a PIN and wave the device over an electronic pad fitted beside a door to open it. 'The device can communicate with an external device to open a lock. By way of example, the electronic device may be a model of an iPhone,' says the newly released patent application. 'The external device may be any suitable electronic device such as a portable media player, personal data assistant or electronic lock that may be used to access a door, car, house, or other physical area.' The technology behind the invention is known as Near Field Communication; it allows electronic devices to transmit information when in proximity. 'If true, it's a very big deal. As well as opening doors and unlocking your car, it could also turn your iPhone into an electronic wallet and ID card,' says Leander Kahney, a consumer technology expert. 'The trouble is that the technology hasn't gone completely mainstream. If Apple were to adopt the technology, they would likely set the standard, and that would drive widespread adoption as everyone scrambles to make their systems iPhone-friendly.'"
I can currently do this with my Zipcar app http://www.zipcar.com/iphone/ . It allows you to unlock, lock and honk your cars horn. It does this using your EDGE/3G connection, so not near-field/RFID however, same kind of thing is currently being done.
This is a bad idea. Mainly because the iPhone doesn't have a very sophisticated security architecture, so any cryptographic keys and wallet information are fundamentally vulnerable to theft. This is best demonstrated by the recent attack where a handful of SMS messages was sufficient to give an attacker root on the device. If you're going to put something like this into widespread deployment you at very least want to include some sort of hardware security module to validate the software and store cryptographic secrets.
Right now I wouldn't want to use the iPhone (or any Android phone, for that matter) to store any kind of critical secrets.
Yes, DRM'ed AAC files will only play on Apple devices and in iTunes (Mac OS X and Windows).
But you seem to be under the impression that AAC is an Apple technology limited to Apple devices.
Just FYI, more than a year ago Apple was allowed by the music labels to remove all DRM from the audio files sold on the iTunes Store, that's why there is three tunes prices now instead of one. Apple also increased the bitrate to 256kbps.
There is a lot of non-Apple devices that can play AAC audio files, such as the Microsoft Zune, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DSi, Sony PSP Slim, some models of Archos / Creative / Cowon / SanDisk / Sony MP3 players, a lot of Digital Photo Frames, etc, etc.
Nice, you've discovered the best way to make a link unclickable in Slashdot. I can't even highlight and select "Go To URL", because it's already a link (to your comment, which doesn't have any content).
http://www.digikey.com/
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