It's not going to be an iPhone fanboy blog entry. I'm too old for that. I'm going to write about the stuff I think most bloggers are missing. The iPhone OS 3.0 software release is not about Cut, Copy, and Paste. It's about the External Accessory Framework (EAF).

If it was just any other device, I wouldn't be so certain in my convictions, but for a Unix box that has become an object of desire for over 40 million users worldwide, I will say that the iPhone is both exciting and scary, because it has a potential to become the interface between the real and the virtual worlds. My mind is churning out all kinds of predictions, good and bad.

Over the next few months we will see a slew of devices of all kinds, from heart monitors to microwave ovens closely coupled with the iPhone. This is both exciting and scary, because the iPhone can become both the control panel for those devices and the receiver and processor of the data sent by those devices. We live the life of the sci-fi heroes from our childhood. EAF, let's hope the developers are going to use you for our good.