MMS! Tethering! Copy and paste! Copy and paste! Copy and paste! If you read gadget blogs, this is what you heard in the run-up to Apple’s iPhone 3.0 announcement this week.  And indeed, the iPhone took several small but important steps towards its ultimate destiny as the Tricorder (or really the PADD) of our time.  But as Matt Jones (of Dopplr.com) observed, the real shocker was the announcement of full support for third-party peripherals.

During the presentation, a representative from LifeScan showed off a blood glucometer that connects to the iPhone to allow immediate measurement and transmission of blood glucose levels. Not only can the peripheral be controlled directly using the touchscreen interface, but it can tap into the iPhone’s always-on connectivity, allowing a caregiver, parent, adult child, or diabetes counselor to track the user’s insulin needs in realtime from anywhere. I owned a Visor, and the ability to extend its capabilities at will was a powerful one. By snapping an MP3 cartridge into it the Visor became a media player; add a camera module and you could take photos and videos on the go.

From a technology standpoint, this announcement marks the rebirth of Handspring’s ambitious but ultimately stagnant SpringBoard system introduced in the late 90s as part of their Visor product, which in turn, was a return to basics by the founders of Palm as that company got acquired, split, merged, and split again into near-obscurity. Most of the difficulties HandSpring encountered were distribution-related, given the niche audience and relatively high costs of stocking physical peripherals, and the digital distribution powerhouse that is the App store has solved those.  Since apps can completely take over the iPhone’s UI, Apple has allowed developers to come very close to the extensibility provided by the original SpringBoard platform. The one thing missing has been the ability to add physical computing elements — sensors and actuators — to allow the iPhone to more actively participate in its users’ world.

This announcement is also important from a research standpoint.  As part of her dissertation work, my colleague Lena Mamykina here at Georgia Tech has shown the benefits of the collection, analysis and discussion of regular blood glucose readings.  Her participants feel more in control of their health and are able to create and test hypotheses about their diet.  For her work, Lena created her own infrastructure, customizing cellphones herself and connecting them to glucometers and her web-based forum.  (you can watch her give a talk about her MAHI project at CHI ‘08 here) Far be it from me to speak for Lena, but it seems to me that the existence of a blockbuster mobile phone that has built-in pathways to connect to sensors could greatly expand the impact of work like this, and smooth the transition from research prototype to commercialized product.

But the porting of a robust prototyping platform (like Arduino, for example) to the iPhone would also have implications in the earliest stages of research. Being able to mock up several different physical design directions and test them with potential users without having to worry that the technical infrastructure is going to come crashing down at any moment is every researcher’s (and prototyper’s) dream.

Of course, Apple has a long history of closing down such opportunities in the name of convenience and simplicity, but we can still hope that this time is different. It seems that the infrastructure for some serious mobile ubicomp is finally taking shape.  Now we have to go out and build it.