Growing up, I loved Star Trek. It's easy to see why people
want to recreate the experience with today's devices.
There is a guy bringing Star Trek to the world of Macs
starting with LCARS on
the desktop (above).
If you prefer, you could buy a tricorder simulator, TR-580 Mark
III for the iPhone.
The question is why live a fantasy? The iPhone is better than a
tricorder. It is the tricorder, communicator, and universal translator
all rolled into one. Sure, you could claim that the tricorder was an
advanced sensing device, but what it really did was provide answers to
the hundreds of tough situations the crew found itself in.
What would the crew of the Enterprise do if they were given
an iPhone instead of a tricorder ?
Could Dr. McCoy use it in the infirmary? Yes, there is VR-Render
0.7 for viewing medical images. Or how about A to
Z Drug Facts or a program to help understand lab results, Normal Lab Values.
What about First
Officer Spock? He could take a primitive look at how 21-century
scientists viewed Quantum Mechanical
Atomic Orbitals. If the ship went through a wormhole and Spock had
to find their new location, he could whip out Starmap to help pinpoint where they are.
Is there anything for Chief Engineer Scott to use? For starters
there is cadTouch, which will
open schematics of the ship for troubleshooting. If he needs to run
some calculations or pull up a formula, he can open Formula
Pro. And when he has to deal with a turbulent atmosphere on a new
planet, he can use a fluid
dynamics application.
Least we forget, it was always Captain Kirk asking for crazy things
to be accomplished by his crew and their trusty tricorders. He could
ask that controls for the ship be rerouted to the iPhone so it could be
controlled by an application like V-Cockpit GPS. If that
isn't good enough, he could find the lost ensign by using iHound to hunt down the ensign's
location.
What got me thinking about this was a Newsweek article on
the military using the iPod
touch and iPhone. We are seeing the iPhone being turned into a
solution for situations in real life military conditions from face
recognition to ballistic calculations. The iPhone can easily steal the
title of "do everything device" that the tricorder was.
