We have just learned that a new patent has confirmed Cult of Mac’s earlier report that Apple is working on ambitious remote computing tech that would allow files and settings to be transferred between the Mac and iPhone through a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip.
The patent application for a “Mirrored File System” was filed by Apple with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was published this week.
The patent describes a method for “recruiter” machines to share a portion of a user’s file systems that could be shared with “volunteer” machines and mounted as a mirror. Any changes that were made on the “volunteer” machines would be repopulated with the “recruiter.”
More clearly, Apple’s patent would allow your iPhone (the recruiter) to beam its data through NFC to a Mac and then back again, and although the patent emphasizes that this functionality is mostly meant to allow you to offload processor-heavy tasks from your iPhone to your Mac, it follows that the technology being described here would also allow your Mac to pass over its file system to the iPhone for mobile transfer of your desktop data.
As we cautioned in our earlier report, this technology might never see the light of day, and although Apple has been working on it for sometime, there’s a chance it’ll never be released. Patent applications don’t bring Apple’s ambitious remote computing plans any closer to a fruition, but it is a confirmation that Cupertino is not only working on this project, but that they are very serious indeed about decentralizing the way you work with your data.
