Apple’s developer preview today, of iPhone 3.0 software, included the interesting news of support for external accessories, either connected through the physical docking connector or through Bluetooth wireless.
A spokesman from Johnson & Johnson announced an iPhone-blood-pressure-monitor accessory, which provides health biometrics and allows the biometrics to be sent over the iPhone’s network connection as an emergency alert. Their goal is to make diabetes monitoring easier.
The details of the new iPhone interface are in a thin draft document, External Accessory Framework Reference. This doesn’t include the hardware details necessary to connect arbitrary devices, though once it does, I’ll be hooking lots of different devices to the “iPhone-smart-phone-turned-general-purpose-minicomputer”.
I’m sure the game companies already have external joysticks in the works. A recent interview with Pangea software owner revealed their earnings of $1.5 million from downloads of a single iPhone game (Enigmo), with over 800,000 downloads. His biggest complaint: “no D-pad game controller.” Rest assured, that will be solved soon.
Games aside, the iPhone (or iTouch) offers a solid software environment which includes graphical presentation, ease of data entry, network support, wireless roaming, audio support, and now external device data accessories. This is exactly the kind of tool that medical and bioscience needs to help with a deluge of patients.